Евгений Водолазкин - Solovyov and Larionov

‘The transition from life to death interests me,’ said the general.

‘It is, Your Excellency, inevitable.’

Patches of light from the fire changed the color and contours of Kologrivov’s face.

‘I do know that. How does it happen?’

‘There are two ways: natural and unnatural. Natural…’

‘Natural isn’t a threat to us now,’ the general interrupted. ‘Tell me about the second way. Let’s go.’

He took Kologrivov by the elbow and led him to the wire. As they walked past the staff tent, the general took the kerosene lantern that hung there. A broad but dim circle now preceded their motion.

The attackers had managed to upend one of the supports at the part of the barrier they had reached. It hung on the wire, almost touching the ground. Three bodies hung alongside it. They belonged to Red cadets (no longer belonged, thought the general). The bodies of several more cadets lay on the ground. Things had come to single combat in this defense sector.

The general cast light on one of the bodies on the wire. Somehow, this body was hanging particularly inconsolably: arms spread, head nearly touching the ground. Kologrivov took the dead man’s shoulder and turned him on his back. With a squeak, the two other bodies began swaying.

‘Aorta chopped in two,’ Kologrivov said, showing it on the corpse. ‘More than one liter of blood flowed out.’

‘More than one? How much is that?’ asked the general. ‘Three? Five? Ten?’

‘A person has only five or six liters of blood. At least two and a half flowed out of him.’

The general directed the lantern at the ground underneath the wire. It was crimson. The blood had frozen as it flowed out. In concentric circles. Like lava. It was still warm in the body but had frozen on the ground.

‘Blood is a special liquid tissue,’ said Kologrivov. ‘It moves through the circulatory vessels of the living body.’

‘What does this body lack for being alive?’ asked the general.

‘Blood, I suppose. Approximately two and a half liters. I’ll use this opportunity to point out that one-thirteenth of the weight of the human body is blood.’

‘One can come to understand the combined action of the organs, but for me that still doesn’t add up to life,’ said the general. He outlined a circle with the lantern. ‘Life as such.’

‘And one hundred grams of blood contains approximately seventeen grams of hemoglobin.’

‘But even if you gave that cadet two and a half liters of blood, he still wouldn’t come back to life.’

‘He wouldn’t come back to life,’ said Kologrivov. He crouched in front of one of those lying on the ground. ‘And this person was struck on the skull by a saber. Shine the light, Your Excellency… As I thought, the right temporal lobe is cut in two.’

‘You’ve explained the causes of their deaths but I still have no clarity,’ agonized the general, seeking the right words. ‘Maybe the whole trouble is that you haven’t explained the causes of their life to me.’

‘A person’s life is inexplicable. Only death is explicable,’ said Kologrivov. He stroked the dead man’s hair, which stood like wire. ‘The saber entered about five centimeters into the temporal lobe. In my view, he had no chance. It’s interesting that the right temporal lobe is responsible for libido, sense of humor, and memory of events, sounds, and images.’

‘Does that mean that when the soldier was dying he no longer remembered events, sounds, or images?’

‘He did not even have a sense of humor. And his libido was missing. This death belongs in the “unnatural” category.’

A cannon struck somewhere in the distance; indistinctly, as if groggy. Its echo rolled through the sky and went quiet.

‘Come to think of it,’ said the general, ‘who among us knows what’s natural and what’s not?’

‘I’ll note, à propos , that the human brain weighs an average of 1,470 grams.’

‘Maybe death is natural if it comes to a person in the prime of his life?’

‘And has a volume of 1,456 cubic centimeters.’

‘Maybe there’s a certain logic to death at that highest point?’

‘And it consists of eighty percent water. That’s just for your information.’

‘Then why bother to wait for the point when the body’s becoming decrepit and almost disintegrated?’

The captain stood up.

‘Because, Your Excellency, by then nobody begrudges the loss of the body, when it’s like that.’

The general looked closely at Kologrivov. He walked over to him and embraced his shoulders.

‘Well, of course: death comes only to a person’s body. I’d simply forgotten the most important part.’

Solovyov continued searching for Leeza. The unexpected complications he ran into at the university had not stopped him, although they had made him more cautious. The scholar realized that direct contact with women possessing a surname dear to him harbored its own dangers. He had already made paper-based correspondence a top priority in his appeals to other educational institutions because he was able to analyze the responses carefully and keep personal communications with the Larionovas to a minimum.

Since Solovyov did not know which university city Leeza might have gone to, he decided to try his luck in Moscow, too. To some extent, using postal communication methods also disposed him favorably toward Moscow. Considering his challenging experience with the search, the postal method struck the young historian as the safest way to go.

Solovyov wrote a long letter to the rector of Moscow State University, asking that his request be treated sympathetically. He composed the letter with an informal air, even telling of his childhood friendship with a person he had (regretably, largely due to his own fault!) lost. To sound more convincing, Solovyov also referred to the readers’ triangle consisting of himself, Nadezhda Nikiforovna, and Yelizaveta, the person being sought. Not wishing to create the impression he was a simpleminded person, Solovyov did not let slip a single word about his designs on Nadezhda Nikiforovna.

For some reason, Solovyov was counting a great deal on his appeal to MSU so waited impatiently for a response. He did not know exactly how long it took for letters to travel from Petersburg to Moscow but figured they should not take very long. He still remembered, from a university course on Russian literature, that Dostoevsky’s letters from Germany took four or five days. Considering that fact—as well as the technological revolution that had taken place—Solovyov allocated about two days for letters to travel from Petersburg to Moscow. He assumed the same for the return journey. Solovyov allotted about three or four days for the Moscow rector to check into his question.

To his surprise, no answer had arrived ten days later. Nor did one arrive twenty days or even a month later. Solovyov wanted to send another letter to Moscow but feared being pushy. So as not to lose time, he decided to look for Leeza in other Petersburg educational institutions. Solovyov was flabbergasted when he opened a directory for college applicants. The number of educational institutions was beyond the bounds of reason.

Solovyov appealed first to the Herzen State Pedagogical University, which had still been called an institute not long before. This establishment—where opportunities had broadened after the renaming—not only found a Yelizaveta Larionova among its ranks but also allowed Solovyov to take a look at her personal records.

Solovyov heard his heart beating as he entered the dean’s office at the philology department. It reverberated out from under the ceiling, where two workers nailing up a cable seemed to be echoing his heart. Solovyov was asked to wait a little. In case they checked biographical data, he had the years Leeza had started and graduated from high school. They were the same as his years. What else could be in the document? He crossed his arms over his chest to muffle his heartbeats. The sad-faced workers slowed their pace, too, as they drew a green cable along a pink wall. A woman from the dean’s office brought a thin folder and extended it to Solovyov.