Евгений Водолазкин - Solovyov and Larionov

Solovyov’s first recollections of smells and sounds were attached to the railroad. Locomotive whistles woke him up in the mornings and the rhythmic clacking of wheels lulled him to sleep at night. His bed vibrated slightly when trains went by and his ceiling was streaked with the reflections of the lights in the compartments. As he dropped off to sleep, he stopped distinguishing exactly where that smooth but loud movement was coming from—here or outside. The iron knobs at the head of his bed jingled rhythmically and the bed slowly gathered speed, carrying Solovyov off to cheerful childhood dreams.

Solovyov learned to read using the placards on long-distance trains. It is worth noting that it was the trains’ swiftness that brought about his speed-reading skills, which later eased his perusal of publications about the general: those publications were just as numerous as they were fantastic. It was from those same placards that Solovyov first learned of the existence of a series of cities to which the rails under his own windows ran, leading due north on one side and due south on the other. The station called Kilometer 715 lay in the middle of the world.

Solovyov watched the trains with Leeza Larionova. After walking up the steps to the platform, they would sit down on a bench that had lost its color long ago and begin their observations. They loved it when the long-distance trains reduced their speed near the station. Then they could discern not only the placards but also rolled-up mattresses on bunks, tea glasses in special metal holders, and—most important of all—passengers who represented the mysterious world from which the train had come. It was not that they were glad for the trains because they were longing for a world unfamiliar to them; more likely, the very idea of ‘long-distance’ captivated them.

Their regard for the electric local trains and freight trains that occasionally streaked past the station was calmer. The people on the locals were more or less familiar to them, but as far as the freight trains went, well, there were no people on them at all. These were the longest and dullest of trains. They consisted of tank cars filled with oil, flatcars burdened with lumber, or just closed-up boxcars.

By a very early age, Solovyov knew the schedule for all the trains that went by the station. This information, which some might think capable of becoming a useless burden, played a considerable role in the future historian’s life. For one thing, Solovyov was inculcated with a taste for valid knowledge—this may be why the young historian’s regard for the mythology surrounding General Larionov was subsequently so unforgiving—from the very beginning of his conscious life. For another, a faultless mastery of the schedule cultivated in Solovyov a heightened perception of time, a real necessity for a genuine historian. The schedule used numbers that were never round. Nowhere in those figures were there approximate denotations such as after lunch , in the first half of the day , or around midnight . There were only 13:31, 14:09, 15:27. These unkempt fringes of time were as tousled as existence itself and possessed a very specific sort of beauty: the beauty of verity.

Solovyov’s mastery of the schedule was not accidental. His mother worked as a controller at a crossing adjacent to the station. And though there was not much of anything to control there (the crossing could go unintersected by cars or trucks for days), Solovyov’s mother would lower the crossing gate three minutes before any train appeared, put on her uniform jacket, and step out onto the control booth’s little balcony. There was something captain-like in her unnaturally straight figure, her motionlessness, and her stern facial features. Sometimes the din of a train would wake Solovyov up in the middle of the night and he would look out the window at his mother. Her resolute standing, baton raised, held him spellbound. It was like that, in profile, that she imprinted herself upon his memory, amidst the train’s rumbling and its flickering lights. When Solovyov read later about churches in abandoned northern villages and how a priest in that area ministered to an empty church, he thought that referred to his mother, too. Her selfless service, without any visible goal, continued, unvarying, like the sunrise. Regardless of changes in government, time of day, or weather conditions.

It was weather conditions, however, that turned out to be fatal for her. One frosty winter night, she was chilled to the bone and contracted pneumonia. She initially treated it with vodka and honey. From time to time, her mother, granny Solovyova, would take the baton and head out to substitute for her daughter at the crossing. Some time later, when the patient became worse, the old woman massaged her back and chest, spreading the suffocating smell of turpentine through the house. A few days later, Solovyov’s mother announced unexpectedly that she was dying. Exaggeration was not the norm in his family, so the old woman grew worried. There was no point in sending to the nearest village, since there was nobody there but a drunken doctor’s assistant. The old woman ran to the control booth to stop a train. Solovyov’s mother died, but the old woman kept on waving her daughter’s baton. Not one train stopped.

The trains almost never stopped anyway. Only rarely, predominantly in the summer, when the tracks were overloaded, did trains pull up to the station, sighing heavily. The carriage attendants would step out onto the pock-marked slabs of the platform as if they owned the place. Behind them were fat men in T-shirts and women in tight-fitting exercise pants. And more rarely, children. Children were usually allowed no further than the vestibule, where they burst from their pensive grandmothers’ hands. Adults smoked, drank beer straight from the bottle, and crushed mosquitoes with resounding slaps. When the children managed to make it to the platform, little Solovyov would run off, but continue to follow the proceedings from the bushes. During those moments, he was not the only one keeping an eye on the train that had arrived: the six houses surrounding the station were all eyes and ears, too. The residents pressed themselves against windows, stood in doorways, or cast quick glances at the arrivals as they pretended to dig in their kitchen gardens. It was not the done thing to walk up to the platform.

Only Solovyov’s mother—when she was alive—was within sight of the passengers. The passengers, whose appearance seemed even more idle when compared with the railway worker’s focused, solemn standing, made no attempt to call out to her. It was obvious right away that this motionlessness was of a specific type. Paying no attention to the passengers, Solovyov’s mother gazed at the point where the rails met, as if watching for the arrival of her impending death. When reading later about the elderly general’s famous gaze, Solovyov imagined it without the slightest effort. He remembered the way his mother had looked into the distance.

Solovyov’s grandmother did not watch in that same way. Gazes into the distance were not really characteristic of her. Most often, she would sit, propping up her cheek with the palm of her hand and looking straight ahead. She outlived her daughter by several years and died not long before Solovyov graduated from high school. Her death pushed him to move to Petersburg. It was in Petersburg that he first heard about General Larionov.

Broadly speaking, it was not accidental that both Solovyov and Larionov were children of railroad workers. Perhaps it was exactly this that determined certain similar characteristics, despite all their external differences. Railroad workers in Russia have a special mission because the role of the railroad in our country is not the same as in other places. The time that we spend traveling is measured in days. That time is enough not only for a good conversation but—in successful cases—even for making marriage plans. What marriage could be planned on the Munich–Berlin express in seats lined up one after the other, with radio jacks in the armrests? Most likely, none.