Евгений Водолазкин - Solovyov and Larionov

Solovyov went still when he felt the water’s milk-warm touch. This was comparable to his experience the first time Leeza Larionova’s lips touched him. Standing in water up to his ankles, Solovyov no longer knew which of those touches made a greater impression on him. He felt dizzy when he looked at the two light swirls of water by his feet. Solovyov took several steps forward so he could stay on his feet. Now he was standing in water up to his knees. The waves around him were no longer seething, they were shifting instead with unfathomable motions akin, perhaps, to the play of muscles under skin. Here—a few steps from the surf where the sea was beating itself into froth and spray behind his back—there was not even a trace of that hysteria. The sea was greeting Solovyov with a powerful rhythm of rising and dropping, and with the calm inquisitiveness of its depths. Solovyov stopped when the water reached his chest. He did not know how to swim.

As has already been noted, there were no bodies of water at Kilometer 715 . The adolescent’s imagination was fed by books about nautical adventures and by radio shows (an old wall radio was the only form of mass media in the Solovyov home). Station Kilometer 715 ’s strictly continental location only stoked that imagination. Why did Solovyov not become a sailor? He himself could not have given a precise answer. Yes, his love for the sea and everything connected with the sea was infinite, but even so… We could approach the explanation from another angle. There exist people who possess the gift of contemplation. They are not inclined to interfere with the course life takes and do not create new events, because they believe there are already enough events in the world. They see their role as comprehending what has already taken place. Might that attitude toward the world be what begets genuine historians?

Oddly enough, contemplativeness was characteristic of General Larionov to a certain degree, too. This manifested itself, perhaps, in a special way, and not all at once, but let us ask ourselves the question: are there many generals who are known to be contemplative? Basically, no, there are not many. In essence, a general’s task is contrary to contemplation. But seeing the commander’s fogged-over eyes and seeing how, in the middle of a seething battle, his gaze hardens at the most distant point of the landscape—that place where you can no longer track down even the enemy’s rear guard—well, anyone seeing a general like that would think that he was a contemplative person.

That is what those who accompanied General Larionov on the Crimean campaign in 1920 thought, too. The abrupt pensiveness that seized him, both during the breaks between battles and during the course of battles, was noticed not just by his brothers in arms: it often became a topic for discussion, too. Needless to say, these discussions carried the highest degree of confidentiality and were told only in the discussants’ memoirs (the general was not the sort of person to permit himself to be discussed so unceremoniously), but they existed, which means there was a reason the conversations came about.

For many who had the opportunity to observe the general in 1920, Larionov made the impression of someone who was pensive and even slightly aloof. That impression was all the more unexpected since nothing of the sort had been noticed about him during his previous campaigns. To the contrary: he embodied action and decisiveness. In fact, those were the very qualities that had made him a general.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that not everyone noticed, to an equal degree, the change that took place with the general in 1920. Numerous memoirists thus seem to rely on later impressions and when they underscore the general’s aloofness, they are obviously exaggerating the degree of his condition in 1920. Some agree, a bit uncertainly, with the descriptions, almost out of politeness, saying that the facts could not be denied in 1920, either, in light of the general’s later mentality. By reconciling various testimony, as Vladimir Blagoi does in his article ‘Pensiveness: His Special Friend,’ all that can be established with veracity is that General Larionov had revealed a certain contemplativeness by 1920. This quality developed as the years passed, eventually leading to the general’s utter engrossment with the sea.

What ended General Larionov’s activity became the beginning of historian Solovyov’s activity. A contemplative relationship with the sea did not permit the latter to master one single maritime profession. He was afraid that if his relationship with the sea was too close, that could lead to disappointment and force him to fall out of love with the watery element. Standing up to his chest in water, the young researcher experienced doubts (in view of his unstable position, this could also be called wavering) as to whether he and the object of his love were engaged in relations that were too intimate.

Apart from this wavering, which was completely new to him, the Petersburg graduate student asked himself yet again about the correctness of his chosen research topic; though in some sense the topic had been chosen for him. He had asked Prof. Nikolsky this same question at one time, when Nikolsky first proposed he work on land-based topics.

‘No matter what a person studies, above all he is studying himself,’ the professor said enigmatically. ‘Keep in mind, young man, that accidental topics do not exist.’

The words left the professor’s lips in a shell of cigarette smoke. The words’ very tangible appearance, coupled with his teacher’s wisdom, played their role because Solovyov decided not to insist on a nautical topic and threw all his passion into researching continental events. After the suggestion to conduct his graduate work on the fate of General Larionov, Solovyov went to see Prof. Nikolsky again and asked him the old question about the choice of topic. The old man no longer smoked because his doctor had forbidden it. Otherwise, though, his answer was the same as several years before.

Was Solovyov studying himself by studying General Larionov’s fate? This was yet another difficult question the historian posed to himself. Sensing that he was beginning to freeze in the water, he knew he lacked the time to resolve the question now. Beyond that, the bather’s motionless standing in the water had already attracted the attention of the few people remaining on the beach. Solovyov decided to leave the question open; he began slowly moving toward shore.

The researcher’s body had taken on a cyanotic tinge and was covered with goosebumps because he had stayed in the water so long. His awkward inhibitedness before bathing had given way to something altogether mechanical that had no relation to walking. Not one of Solovyov’s joints would bend, and only by force of will did the young man move his body in the direction of his towel. Solovyov felt much better after drying off. Neither the sea nor the air were cold that evening. Motionlessness (it occurred to Solovyov) is very unhealthy for a person.

The sun was no longer on the beach. Yalta’s beaches are surrounded by mountains from the west, so the sun disappears fairly early. It sets beyond the mountain ranges, but for a long time its diffused light still streams over the quieting sea, the stalls for changing clothes, and seagulls pecking at watermelon rinds. The city beach after six in the evening is a peculiar beach. Its colors are dim, shot through with the yellowness of a vanishing sun, just as it shoots through black-and-white photographs of beaches in bygone years. Maybe, Solovyov asked himself, the Yalta beach in evening is actually a remnant of what the young Larionov saw? Or perhaps this was the beach the juvenile Larionov saw, only now, years later, through the depths, as it were, of decades?