We walked into the main office. There was a woman sitting there, a retired soldier’s dream. Aurora handed her the register, signed some papers and picked up food vouchers for the group. Then she whispered something to this curvy blonde who immediately shot me a glance. The look expressed a harsh, cursory interest, businesslike concern and mild alarm. She even sat up straighter. Her papers rustled with more of a snap.
“Have you met?” asked Aurora.
I stepped forward.
“I’d like to work at the Pushkin Preserve.”
“We need people…” replied the blonde.
The ellipsis at the end of this rejoinder was palpable. In other words, only good, qualified specialists are needed; random people need not apply…
“Are you familiar with the collection?” asked the blonde, and suddenly introduced herself. “Galina Alexandrovna.”
“I’ve been here two or three times.”
“That’s not enough.”
“I agree. So here I am again…”
“You need to prepare properly. Thoroughly study the guidebooks. So much in Pushkin’s life is waiting to be discovered. Certain things have changed since last year…”
“In Pushkin’s life?” I marvelled.
“Excuse me,” interrupted Aurora. “The tourists are waiting. Good luck.”
And she disappeared – young, wholesome, full of life. Tomorrow I will hear her pure girlish voice in one of the museum’s rooms:
“…Just think, comrades!… ‘I love you so truly, so tenderly…’ – Pushkin contrasted this inspired hymn to selflessness with the mores of the serf-owning world…”
“Not in Pushkin’s life,” the blonde said irritably, “but in the layout of the collection. For instance, they took down the portrait of Hannibal.”
“Why?”
“Some busybody insisted it wasn’t Hannibal. The medals, you see, don’t match. Supposedly, it’s General Zakomelsky.”*
“So who is it really?”
“Really it’s Zakomelsky.”
“Then why is he black?”
“He fought with the Asians in the south. It’s hot there, so he got a tan. Plus the paints get darker with age.”
“So they were right to take it down?”
“Oh, what’s the difference –
Hannibal or Zakomelsky?… The tourists came to see Hannibal. They paid money. What in hell do they need Zakomelsky for?! And so our director hung up Hannibal. I mean Zakomelsky masquerading as Hannibal. And some character didn’t like it. Excuse me, are you married?”
Galina Alexandrovna uttered this phrase suddenly – and shyly, I’d add.
“Divorced,” I said. “Why?”
“Our girls are interested.”
“What girls?”
“They’re not here now. The accountant, the methodologist, the tour guides…”
“And why are they interested in me?”
“They’re not interested in you. They’re interested in everyone. There are a lot of single girls here. The guys left… Who do our girls get to see? The tourists? And what about the tourists? It’s good if they stay a week. The ones from Leningrad stop overnight. Or just for the weekend. How long will you be here?”
“Till autumn. If all goes well.”
“Where are you staying? Would you like me to call the hotel? We have two of them, a good one and a bad one. Which do you prefer?”
“That,” I told her, “requires some thought.”
“The good one’s expensive,” explained Galina.
“All right,” I said, “I’ve no money anyway.”
She immediately dialled somewhere and pleaded with someone for a long time. Finally the matter was settled. Somewhere someone wrote down my name.
“I’ll take you there.”
It had been a while since I’d been the object of such intense female concern. It would prove to be even more insistent in the future, escalating into pressure.
At first I attributed it to my tarnished individuality. Later I discovered just how acute the shortage of males in these parts was. A bow-legged local tractor driver with the tresses of a train-station floozie was always surrounded by pushy pink-cheeked admirers.
“I’m dying for a beer!” he’d whine.
And the girls ran for beer…
Galina locked the door of the main office. We proceeded through the woods towards the settlement.
“Do you love Pushkin?” she asked me unexpectedly.
Something in me winced, but I replied:
“I love…
The Bronze Horseman
,* his prose…”
“And what about the poems?”
“His later poems I love very much.”
“And what about the earlier ones?”
“The earlier ones too,” I surrendered.
“Everything here lives and breathes Pushkin,” continued Galina. “Literally every twig, every blade of grass. You can’t help but expect him to come out from around the corner… The top hat, the cloak, that familiar profile…”
Meanwhile, it was Lenya Guryanov, a former college snitch, who appeared from around the corner.
“Boris, you giant dildo,” he bellowed, “is it really you?!”
I replied with surprising amiability. Yet another lowlife had caught me unawares. I’m always too slow to gather my thoughts…
“I knew you’d come,” Guryanov went on.
Later I was told this story. There was a big booze-up at the beginning of the season. Someone’s wedding or birthday. One of the guests was a local KGB officer. My name came up in conversation. One of our mutual friends said:
“He’s in Tallinn.”
Someone countered:
“No, he’s been in Leningrad at least a year.”
“I heard he was in Riga, staying at Krasilnikov’s…”
More and more versions followed. The KGB agent stayed
focused on the braised duck. Then he lifted his head and stated brusquely:
“There’s intel that he’s getting ready for Pushkin Hills…”
“I’m late,” said Guryanov, as if I was keeping him.
He turned to Galina:
“You’re looking good. Don’t tell me, did you get new teeth?”
His pockets bulged heavily.
“You little prick!” blurted Galina. And the next minute:
“It’s a good thing Pushkin isn’t here to see this.”
“Yes,” I said, “it’s not a bad thing.”
The first floor of the Friendship Hotel was home to three establishments: a general store, a hairdresser’s and the restaurant The Seashore. I should, I thought, invite Galina to dinner for all her help. But my funds were appallingly low. One grand gesture could end in catastrophe.
I kept quiet.
We walked up to the barrier, behind which sat the administrator. Galina introduced me. The woman extended a chunky key with the number 231.
“And tomorrow you can find a room,” said Galina. “Perhaps in the settlement… Or in Voronich, but it’s expensive… Or you can look in one of the nearby villages: Savkino, Gaiki…”
“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been a great help.”
“So, I’ll be going then.”
The words ended with a barely audible question mark: “So, I’ll be going then?”
“Shall I walk you home?”
“I live in the housing development,” the young woman responded mysteriously.
And then – distinctly and clearly, very distinctly and very clearly:
“There’s no need to walk me… And don’t get any ideas, I’m not that type…”
She gave the administrator a proud nod and strutted away.
I climbed to the second floor and opened the door. The bed was neatly made. The loudspeaker sputtered intermittently. The hangers swung on the crossbar of an open built-in closet.
In this room, in this narrow dinghy, I was setting sail for the distant shores of my independent bachelor life.
I showered, washing away the ticklish residue of Galina’s attentions, the sticky coating of a crammed bus, the lamina of many days of drinking.
My mood improved noticeably. A cold shower worked like a loud scream.
I dried myself, put on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and lit a cigarette.
Footsteps shuffled down the hall. Somewhere music was playing. Trucks and countless mopeds caused a ruckus outside the window.
I lay on top of the duvet and opened a little grey volume by
Victor Likhonosov.* I decided it was time to find out exactly what this village prose was, to arm myself with a sort of guide…
While reading, I fell asleep. When I woke up it was two in the morning. The shadowy light of summer dawn filled the room. You could already count the leaves of the rubber plant on the window sill.
I decided to think things through calmly, to try and get rid of the feeling of catastrophe and deadlock.
Life spread out before me as an immeasurable minefield and I was at its centre. It was time to divide this field into lots and get down to business. To break the chain of dramatic events, to analyse the feeling of failure, to examine each aspect in isolation.
A man has been writing stories for twenty years. He is convinced that he picked up the pen for a reason. People he trusts are ready to attest to this.
You are not being published. You are not welcomed into their circles, into their band of bandits. But is that really what you dreamt of when you mumbled your first lines?
You want justice? Relax, that fruit doesn’t grow here. A few shining truths were supposed to change the world for the better, but what really happened?
You have a dozen readers and you should pray to God for fewer…
You don’t make any money – now that’s not good. Money is freedom, space, caprice… Money makes poverty bearable…
You must learn to make money without being a hypocrite. Go work as a stevedore and do your writing at night.
Mandelstam* said that people will preserve what they need. So write…
You have some ability – you might not have. Write. Create a masterpiece. Give your reader a revelation. One single living person… That’s the goal of a lifetime.
And what if you don’t succeed? Well, you’ve said it yourself – morally, a failed attempt is even more noble, if only because it is unrewarded…
Write, since you picked up the pen, and bear this burden. The heavier it is, the easier…
You are weighed down by debts? Name someone who hasn’t been! Don’t let it upset you. After all, it’s the only bond that really connects you to other people.
Looking around, do you see ruins? That was to be expected. He who lives in the world of words does not get along with things.
You envy anyone who calls himself a writer, anyone who can present a legal document with proof of that fact.
But let’s look at what your contemporaries have written. You’ve stumbled on the following in
the writer Volin’s work:*
“It became comprehensibly clear to me…”
And on the same page:
“With incomprehensible clarity Kim felt…”
A word is turned upside down. Its contents fall out. Or rather, it turns out it didn’t have any. Words piled intangibly, like the shadow of an empty bottle…
But that’s not the point! I’m so tired of your constant manipulation!
Life is impossible. You must either live or write. Either the word or business. But the word is your business. And you detest all Business with a capital B. It is surrounded by empty, dead space. It destroys everything that interferes with your business. It destroys hopes, dreams and memories. It is ruled by contemptible, incontrovertible and unequivocal materialism.
And again – that’s not the point!
What have you done to your wife? She was trusting, flirtatious
and fun-loving. You made her jealous, suspicious and neurotic. Her persistent response: “What do you mean by that?” is a monument to your cunning…
Your outrageousness borders on the extraordinary. Do you remember when you came home around four o’clock in the morning and began undoing your shoelaces? Your wife woke up and groaned:
“Dear God, where are you off to at this hour?!”
“You’re right, you’re right, it’s too early,” you mumbled, undressed quickly and lay down.
Oh, what more is there to say?
Morning. Footsteps muffled by the crimson runner. Abrupt sputtering of the loudspeaker. The splash of water next door. Trucks outside. The startling call of a rooster somewhere in the distance.
In my childhood the sound of summer was marked by the whistling of steam engines… Country dachas… The smell of burnt coal and hot sand… Table tennis under the trees… The taut and clear snap of the ball… Dancing on the veranda (your older cousin trusted you to wind the gramophone)…
Gleb Romanov… Ruzhena Sikora… “This song for two
soldi
, this song for two pennies…”, ‘I Daydreamt of You in Bucharest…’*
The beach burnt by the sun… The rugged sedge… Long bathing trunks and elastic marks on your calves… Sand in your shoes…
Someone knocked on the door:
“Telephone!”
“That must be a mistake,” I said.
“Are you Alikhanov?”
I was shown to the housekeeper’s room. I picked up the receiver.