Евгений Водолазкин - Solovyov and Larionov

Solovyov saw the nurse through the door, which was ajar. She was looking sternly at him, even shaking her head. Solovyov nodded that he understood everything. He turned toward the professor to say goodbye but the professor was asleep. He was dreaming of the article, ‘Regarding a Christian Understanding of History’, that he had begun writing before ending up in the hospital. Despite the fact that the article opened with a minutely detailed examination of the category of progress, the scholar did not perceive substantial signs of progress in history. The majority of nations had periods of ascent but as a rule achieved those a) at the expense of other peoples and b) for an extremely limited time. The interaction of those rises and falls was the sum of the vectors that absorbed one another and constituted the essence of world history. It had no common vector. With this state of things, it remained unclear what historical progress, which is now taken as an axiom, was composed of. Was it in the ability—the professor dreamt of a rhetorical question—to destroy ever larger numbers of people with each century? He did not consider it necessary to answer that question, but even in his sleep he did not forget to cite studies, such as Nikolai Berdyaev’s The Meaning of History , on similar problematic issues. With this state of affairs, Prof. Nikolsky refused to assess events in world history according to their degree of progressiveness. He allowed only one single criterion for their assessment: the moral criterion. Declaring the notion of progress a fiction, the sleeping historian noted that the structure of a nation’s life is very much reminiscent of the life of an individual and that it ends in the exact same nonprogressive way: in death. This gave him grounds to move on to the problem of the correlation of history and the individual. Prof. Nikolsky preferred the question of how history allows the individual to play a role over the traditional exploration of the role the individual plays in history. In the scholar’s treatment, history, when compared with the individual, appeared as something derivative and, in a certain sense, ancillary. To him, history looked like a frame—sometimes meager, sometimes sumptuous—where the individual placed his portrait. The scholar did not propose another intended goal for history. His fingers slid, barely noticeably, along the blanket’s creases as if he were attempting to fumble for that frame. As he moved on to the next point in his article, the professor dreamt that he would very likely never finish writing it.

A quiet whistling began sounding at dawn. Solovyov opened his eyes a little, just the tiniest bit, so as not to let his dream slip away. He did not exclude the possibility that the whistling had been in his dream. The dream was pleasant. The dream attempted to hold on to Solovyov’s flickering eyelashes even as it receded. Solovyov could not have retold the dream; he could not remember, even roughly, what the dream had been about, though he continued to feel its mood. The mood was all that remained of the dream and Solovyov realized he had woken up. Despite the early morning hour, it was not dark in the room. Solovyov knew this light. It was the light of the first snow. The freshness of the first snow was drifting through a small open window in the kitchen.

The whistle was sounding in his waking life. It was a quiet, cautious whistling, more of an intermittent whistle. Solovyov raised himself up on his elbow and looked around. The whistling disappeared. There was nothing unusual in the room. Solovyov lay down again and the whistling resumed. He slid his feet into his slippers and went to the kitchen. He stopped in the kitchen doorway. A great titmouse was sitting on the cupboard door.

The bird was obviously watching him, though for some reason it was not facing Solovyov. Only one of its eyes was visible, lending the bird an inappropriately coquettish appearance. The bird had flown in through the high ventilation window, which had been opened for the night. Why had it not flown out through the window? Unable to find it? Or did it not want to? Solovyov thought that they might live together. He took a step toward the bird, who fluttered to the ceiling light fixture. The sound of wings was unexpectedly loud in the quiet of the kitchen. The thought even flashed through his mind that the word fluttered was onomatopoeic. This was exactly how bird wings sounded.

Solovyov shrugged and walked over to the window. A drum beat was streaming through the little window along with the frosty air. Initially it was pure rhythm, barely discernible and almost lacking sound. This rhythm was resounding from Ofitsersky Lane, just in front of the Military Space Academy. It was located in the buildings of the former Second Cadet Corps.

Solovyov stood with his forehead pressed to the glass, surprised at the unusualness of his current place of residence. Its markedly military-space orientation. He watched as a column of cadets moved, implausibly slowly, toward the archway of his building. They probably wanted to salute the spot where engineer Los’s workshop had stood. After all, they must want very much to go to Mars if they had entered the Military Space Academy.

Despite their outward unhurriedness (and in this lies the monumentalness of how the masses move), the forward column had managed to cover a significant distance in the murky snow. Solovyov had already discerned several drummers leading the column. A man with a banner was marching ahead of the drummers. His legs rose to waist-level and with each step that imprinted itself in the snow, a tassel on the banner’s peak flew up recklessly. Perhaps he wanted to go to Mars more than the rest.

A whistling sounded behind Solovyov’s back. The bird was sitting on the cabinet again. This time the bird was not looking at him sideways. His bright yellow breast faced Solovyov. Solovyov stood on tiptoe and opened the window wider. Out of uncertainty, he spoke to the bird at full volume, ‘If you don’t want to stay, then fly.’

He walked away from the window for effect and pointed at the small ventilation window with his hand. Both the gesture and his intonation felt utterly false. The bird preferred not to move and if Solovyov were the bird, he would not have flown away, either. When Solovyov attempted to come closer to the cabinet, approaching from the other side, the bird flew up toward the lower window and hit the glass several times with a ringing thud. The bird fell to the floor, flew up, and struck the glass again. Solovyov rushed to the window and the bird flew off into the other room, tracing a semi-circle around the kitchen.

Solovyov followed the bird slowly into the other room. The bird was sitting on a bookshelf, prepared for a further encounter with the glass. Its eyes shone with the determination of a kamikaze. Solovyov stopped at the threshold, leaning against the doorjamb. He pitied the bird. He pitied the glass that might not withstand it. But the sound of the bird striking the window was genuinely unbearable for him. A prolonged, throbbing sound. The sound of live clashing with unlive.

‘Now listen, bird…’

Solovyov thought this was a voice for addressing someone standing on a ledge. Someone who had strapped on explosives. It was an unnaturally calm voice. A voice for difficult situations.

‘The big window’s taped up for winter. But I’ll open it so you can fly away…’

The bird was listening. Solovyov slowly moved along the opposite wall. After reaching the window, he forcefully slid the latch and pulled the window handle. The frame gave way with a dry crackling. Shreds of loosened cotton wool began fluttering in the wind. Holding his breath, Solovyov stole back to the doorway. Steam came out of his mouth when he finally exhaled. The surprised bird observed snowflakes melting on the parquet floor. The first column of cadets had managed to come through the archway and was now drumming from the side of the house with the open window.