Евгений Водолазкин - Solovyov and Larionov

Just before giving birth, Nina Fedorovna asked the general what she should name the child.

‘Name her Zoya,’ said the general.

It remained unknown whether he was emphasizing the life-affirming meaning of what had happened—in keeping with the name, Zoya—or was simply oriented to the church calendar, with its saints’ days. The woman was only asking what to name the baby if it was a boy but the general replied that it would be a girl.

She was taken to the maternity hospital a few days later. After ordering that a small icon of Saint Panteleimon be removed from the windowsill, the head doctor—in light of the arriving patient’s age—made the decision to perform a caesarean section. During the entire nine months of her pregnancy Nina Fedorovna had feared childbirth complications and her anxieties, sadly, were warranted.

The complications were brought on by forceps that were forgotten in the birthing mother’s belly during the operation. The doctors must, however, be given credit. When they heard complaints of sharp pain in the abdominal cavity, they flawlessly chose, from an abundance of possibilities, (the nurse who forgot the forceps made the diagnosis), the correct reason, which essentially ensured the success of the second operation, too.

Nina Fedorovna left the hospital about twenty days later. When she crossed the apartment threshold with Zoya, who was wearing a pink ribbon, the general was already gone. He had died.

Solovyov looked into the cultural worker’s bottomless eyes. A deep knowledge of the city’s cultural life and a willingness to share that knowledge were discernible there. Sympathy for the fate of General Larionov and those around him was also apparent. At the same time—Solovyov’s conversation partner expressed this with a deep sigh—the Yalta City Executive Committee’s influence on human fates had it limitations.

After lunch, Solovyov headed to the Chekhov Museum. He climbed up a long, winding lane, crossing from one sidewalk to the other, seeking out the shade. The ascent reminded him of scholarly work, which—as he had already managed to comprehend—never moves in a straight line. Its trajectory is unpredictable and describing the research requires inserting a hundred vignettes. Any research is like the motion of a dog following a scent. The motion is chaotic (outwardly) and sometimes reminiscent of spinning in place, but it is the only possible path to a result. It is essential for research to check its own rhythm against the rhythm of the material under study. If they resonate with one another and if their pulses beat in time, then research is ending and fate is beginning. Thus spoke Prof. Nikolsky.

Finally, Solovyov saw what he was looking for. Before him lay a small square that—amidst all Yalta’s development—reminded him of a crater after an explosion. A group of hideous bronze figures was arranged along its perimeter, depicting, according to the sculptor, Chekhov’s most famous characters. The sculptures, however, did not seem to insist on having any direct relationship with Chekhov. Seemingly too shy to walk right up to the writer’s house, they huddled forlornly by the trees that framed the square.

The museum itself consisted of a concrete administrative building and an elegant cottage from the beginning of the century (this was Chekhov’s house). Inside the concrete structure, Solovyov asked for Zoya Ivanovna. They looked at him with curiosity and made a telephone call. Solovyov stepped outside for some air while he waited for Zoya Ivanovna. A few minutes later, the Chekhov garden’s little gate clanged and a young woman appeared. The honey-colored tone of her skin and dark hair left no doubt: this was Zoya Ivanovna. It was her patronymic that had been called into question at Yalta’s city hall. There was something multi-ethnic about her, of the carnival in Rio—most definitely not Chekhovian. Her face was imperturbable.

She was wearing a gauzy, nearly immaterial dress, flustering the young researcher. Distracted, he began telling her about his study of General Larionov, for some reason alluding, again, to graduate student Kalyuzhny. Angry with himself, he switched abruptly to an analysis of mistakes in Dupont’s book and unexpectedly finished with Prof. Nikolsky’s response to the Latvian veterans.

‘Would you like me to show you the museum?’ Zoya asked sternly.

‘I’d like that,’ said Solovyov.

He followed Zoya (‘just don’t call me Ivanovna!’), mechanically copying her light, feline gait. How could her father have been an ‘Ivan’…

It was cool inside the Chekhov house. Solovyov mentally thanked Russian literature as he went inside, out of the Yalta heat. It occurred to him that the coolness inside the house reflected something invigorating, some sort of wellspring source of the country’s literature. He liked that phrase and so uttered it for Zoya.

‘Unfortunately,’ and here she touched the wall with her palm, ‘it wasn’t only cool here in the summer.’

Zoya told him the house was also impossible to heat properly in winter. It was put up by a Moscow architect who was unfamiliar with Yalta’s climactic peculiarities and so was, consequently, incapable of building anything satisfactory here. Zoya’s slender fingers slid prettily along the wallpaper’s rhombuses. The portrayal of a boundless Russia systematically ruined by Moscow served as the backdrop to her story. She had a grateful listener in the Petersburger Solovyov.

The tour turned out to be very detailed. The museum guest visited all the rooms in the Chekhov house, even the ones not usually intended for visits. He was permitted to lift the telephone receiver in which Lev Tolstoy’s voice was once heard, calling Chekhov from Gaspra. In the bedroom, he touched bed linens embroidered with the laundry’s mark ACh . With the look of an illusionist pulling the final and most beautiful dove out of a hat, Zoya sat him down next to her on the writer’s bed. Solovyov forgot about Chekhov entirely while sitting on the museum exhibit. His tour guide’s dark body, which shone through the whiteness of her dress, commanded his attention.

Then they went out to the garden (out to the garden, Solovyov whispered). Walking past bamboo planted by Chekhov, Zoya led her visitor to two benches that formed a right angle in the very corner of the garden. At Zoya’s suggestion (a restrained presidential gesture), they each sat on a bench, as if they were in negotiations. Solovyov explained again the aim of his stay in Yalta, this time more calmly and lucidly.

Zoya listened to him, almost leaning against the back of the bench but not quite resting against it. Solovyov recalled that in the cadet corps this was customarily done to improve one’s posture. He reported on his trip to Yalta’s City Hall, too, though he kept quiet about the details relating to Zoya personally. At the story about Nina Fedorovna’s return from the maternity hospital, Zoya interrupted him, ‘His room was completely ransacked when my mother and I came home. The new resident greeted us wearing the general’s slippers.’

Zoya turned out to be very observant for a person who was wearing a newborn’s pink ribbon when she arrived.

The Kozachenko family had moved into the general’s room. They were not Yaltans. The Kozachenkos had landed themselves in the Russian Riviera from some remote place or other; they were from around either Ternopol or Lvov. On its own, life in the middle of nowhere was probably incapable of prying them from that spot: that life did not burden them. As it happened, Petr Terentyevich Kozachenko, a civil defense specialist, had taken ill with tuberculosis, an uncharacteristic illness for specialists like him; it was even a bit bohemian.

While undergoing treatment in Alupka, Petr Terentyevich managed to determine that the Magarach Wine Institute in Yalta had an urgent need for a specialist of his type. He was accepted quickly after offering his services and returned to his historical motherland as an employee of the wine institute. Petr Terentyevich’s new employment turned out to be completely unexpected for his family. His wife, Galina Artemovna, was astounded at her husband’s abuse of power and flat-out refused to move. In the family scene that followed, she inserted their son, Taras, between herself and Petr Terentyevich. Pointing at Taras, she accused Petr Terentyevich of irresponsibility. Ten-year-old Taras looked off to the side, plentiful soundless tears rolling down his cheeks.