Евгений Водолазкин - Solovyov and Larionov

The streetlamp was no longer burning when the general went outside. A cold autumn rain had begun. The pharmacy windows were all that prevented Morskaya Street from plunging into darkness.

The cannon struck at 9:30 in the morning. With that shot, they began playing Oginsky’s Polonaise by the fence at the Tsar’s Garden. A detachment of Tatars rode out to the Alushtinsk Road and energetic paving work began on Autskaya Street by the St. Theodor Tiron Church. Shoeshine booths opened in various parts of Yalta during those same minutes. The quantity of staff as well as the abundance of brushes and polish allowed them to shine shoes for the entire coastline but Yaltans preferred not to leave their homes that day. Even the shops did not open that morning, with the exception of a shoe store and a sweet shop. Yalta was at a standstill, awaiting the entrance of the Reds.

First to enter the city was an armored vehicle with the uneven inscription Antichrist . It did not notice the Tatar detachment and drove past at top speed. Shots were fired into the air from the armored vehicle. To the detachment’s surprise, the armored vehicle did not notice a curve in the road, either. It did not brake until the place where the road’s shoulder turned into a steep slope. The vehicle’s front wheels went down and a belated reverse gear could no longer rectify anything. The vehicle rolled into the gorge, topsy-turvy, its armor knocking along the cliff’s overhangs. Moans resounded in the gorge after the last echo had finished rumbling. Local residents—simple, god-fearing people—surrounded the vehicle. They had no love for the Reds but they did not plan to refuse them help. The residents began conferring when they saw the inscription on the armored vehicle. They did not know who lay ahead for them to save. Withered grass rustled in the wind. Nobody could bring themselves to come closer to the vehicle with the eschatological inscription. The moaning soon stopped.

The Reds’ primary troops entered the city at that same time. Comrades Zhloba, Kun, and Zemlyachka were out front on well-fed horses. They met a Tatar detachment and even received kumys from them. Zemlyachka poured out kumys for representatives of the commanding personnel and passed the leftovers on to rank-and-file Red Armymen. Those entering the city praised the kumys, though they noted its sharp taste. Only Kun did not praise the kumys. Surprised by his silence, Zemlyachka asked if he liked the kumys. Still on his horse, Kun vomited in answer and stated that this was because he was not accustomed to it. Zhloba jokingly proposed that Kun have his stomach pumped in the city hospital. Everyone laughed so as not to offend Zhloba. Kun blushed and said he was planning to inspect the hospital anyway. Zemlyachka recommended that he record how much blood was in stock. Seeing a shoe shiner, Kun asked the advance guard to wait while he had his spattered boots cleaned. In addition to the kumys, remnants of beet salad and poorly chewed veal were apparent on his boots. Zhloba’s boots were not dirty but he dismounted to have his shined, too.

General Larionov was having his boots shined, too. This was happening at the other end of the city, by the St. Theodor Tiron Church. The mezzanine of the Chekhov house was visible about a hundred paces from the church. Maria Pavlovna Chekhova was opening the shutters. As he watched how deftly the brush moved in a shoe shiner’s hands, the general said, ‘Chekhov died only sixteen years ago but an entirely new epoch has arrived.’

The roadway was being repaired not far from the church. The knocking of wooden tampers, which pressed the paving stones, spread over Autskaya Street. The stones were laid in a fan shape on a sand foundation. The wind was tearing the last leaves from the trees in a front yard. Blackened and crumpled, they rolled along the brand-new paving stone, settling in a gutter.

The general stopped next to one of the houses as he walked down Autskaya Street. The biting November wind had come this far, too. It sounded in a squeaking gate spring and in a little flapping runner rug that had been flung on the fence. It was quiet in the house. They were playing chess there. Two men sitting on bentwood chairs were considering positions on the board. Their words were inaudible. Their calm could be sensed. A woman with a pail came down the front steps. She went behind the corner of the house and the general could no longer see her. He heard when the well’s door was set aside and the chain began unwinding. The gurgly dipping, the unhurried path up, the knock of the full pail against the well house. The general pressed his cheek to the fence. It was warm, rough wood. The woman wiped her feet and went out on the porch. Poured some water into a tank. Someone began coughing behind a curtain. The bell-like ring of the tank and the patter of water on the bottom of the basin. Everything was authentic, nothing was superfluous: a thin trill at the beginning (a little hysterically), then calmed and muted as it filled. The distant bark of dogs. The general was not worried about this house.

He turned on Botkinskaya Street and went to the pier by Alexander Square. Thick snow had begun to fall. It was wet and not even cold. The sea whipped against the embankment’s stones. There was no ice in the sea but it was hopelessly wintry, from the distant breakers to the splashes that spread in the snow. The pier’s pilings were entwined in its gray strands. The general sniffed the air—only the winter sea smelled like this.

He stopped by the gate at the Tsar’s Garden when he caught sight of the musicians. Pensive, he admired how the snow was coating them, to musical accompaniment. The general put all his money—several million—in the open violin case. Occasional pedestrians donated to the musicians, too. The case gradually filled with snow and multicolored bills that had not yet managed to become old: the snow and the bills already had the same approximate value.

The general picked up another million on the sidewalk by the Frantsia Hotel and gave it to the porter. A horsecab driver bowed to him from the coachman’s seat. The wheels turned snow into water to the sound of wet clopping; black furrows stretched sloppily behind the horsecab. A small dark blue spot was forming on the leaden sky. This was the unpredictable Yalta weather. The snowstorm had begun to subside.

The sun peeked out as the general approached the jetty. He stopped, closed his eyes, and the skin of his face felt the sun’s warmth. After standing like that for a bit, he turned onto the jetty. The snow that had fallen on the concrete was melting at full speed. The general slowly walked the rest of the way to the lighthouse. A small tree was growing out of a crack in its base. The tree’s leaves had fallen so it was difficult to tell what kind of tree it was. The general laid his palm on the base’s dirty-gray stones. They were beginning to warm up, barely enough to feel. This was like a return to life. The general closed his eyes again and imagined it was now summer. The sounds of the sea muffling what might have carried from the embankment. The wheels of coaches, shouts of kvass sellers, cries of children. Rustling of palms. Hot weather.

He opened his eyes and saw people walking toward him. They were walking unhurriedly, even somehow peaceably: Zemlyachka, Kun, and a group of sailors. Their faces were not triumphant; they were most likely preoccupied. Expecting a ploy, they were not taking their eyes off the edge of the jetty where the general stood. Those walking realized that the general was one step from the irretrievable and they feared that step. They feared the general would take it on his own.

They exchanged a few words as they drew closer. They were not looking in the general’s direction at all now. Their hearts were jumping out of their chests. Zemlyachka was striding ahead of them all. She was holding her half-fastened leather coat with her hand and its hem flapped in the wind. Kun walked a little behind her, his boots cleaned to a shine. His wooden gait gave away his flatfootedness. There was an extinguished cigarette between his teeth. He kicked pebbles as he walked but there was nothing carefree in that. Or in the sailors’ feline movements. Those walking were genuine hunters and could not hide that.