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Part 1 |
Chapter
X SOME
OF MY HEROES 1921-1922
For a while, two years behind the times, everyone in the city--I'm
talking about Petersburg, not Leningrad--was infected with
Spenglerianism.
Thin-legged young people, bird-headed young ladies and family fathers just
getting over dropsy, went about main streets and side streets talking
about the Decline of the West.
Some Ivan Ivanovich would meet some Anatoly Leonidovich, grasp each
other by the hand and say, "You know, the West, of course, is in
decline, the falling apart, dear sir. The culture of the
future--civilization is on the rise..."
They would sigh.
They would arrange meetings.
They would suffer.
The poet Troitsyn also believed in the Decline of the West.
Returning with the unknown poet from a visit, hiccupping from the hefty
meal that had just materialized, he ruefully whispered, "We
western people shall perish, shall perish."
The unknown poet recited:
He talked about Konstantin
Leontyev and giggled at his colleague. After all, what's decline for
the unknown poet? A tied score to scoff at. Everything repeats itself
all over again, a turn of the cycle, dear sir.
"Pick up your foot and take a leap," he felt like suggesting
to Troitsyn. He slapped him on the shoulder, saying, "Feast your
eye on the spectacle of the world," and pointed to a dog relieving
himself near a gate.
Troitsyn stopped. There still weren't many dogs in the
city then.
"Just the same, I feel sad, ...chka," he called the unknown
poet affectionately. "Look at you, writing poetry, and who needs
it? No readers, no audience--that's sad."
"Write idylls," suggested the unknown poet. "You have a
talent for idylls. Do your own job: a flower blooms, the grass grows, a
bird sings, you should write poetry."
They stopped talking.
"The moon. The stars," Troitsyn sweetly yawned. "What do
you say we spend the night going for a walk?"
"Let's take a walk," agreed the unknown poet.
In their worn-out heels and rags, the poets walked first toward
Pokrovskaya Square, then to the Sands, then to the Workers' Garden.
"You love Petersburg and have a feel for it," said Troitsyn
near Kazan Cathedral, lost in contemplation of the stars.
"No wonder," observed the unknown poet, examining his boots.
"I've been present in it in the guise of four generations."
"Four generations is quite enough to get the feel of a city,
Troitsyn affirmed, reaching for a handkerchief. "But," he
continued, "I'm from Ladoga."
"Write about Ladoga. You have childhood impressions there, mine are
here. In your childhood you loved the fields with cornflowers, the
marshes, the woods, the old-time wooden church. I, the Summer Garden
with the gravel paths, the flower beds, the statues, the building. You
liked a sip of tea from a saucer."
They stopped talking.
The unknown poet looked around.
"I saw a park instead of a field, a Venus without arms instead of a
country girl with a tan. How in the world could I come up with a love
for fields and villages? No way I could come up with it."
They sat down on a bench near the fence around the Yusupov Garden.
"Recite a poem," Troitsyn suggested.
The unknown poet laid aside his walking stick.
"Lord knows," said Troitsyn, deeply moved. "That's real
Petersburg poetry. Look, can you see the moon through the ruins?"
The unknown poet lit up a cigarette.
"Don't look at the moon," he said, "it's a disturbing influence." And, rising up in front of Troitsyn, he
wanted to block it out.
In the year of Spenglerianism, Misha Kotikov arrived, was dazzled and
fell in love with the strength, the pride, the world view of the
recently drowned Petersburg artist and poet, Zaevphratsky,
a tall, gray old man who traveled with two valets. Since the age of
thirty-five, the poet Zaevphratsky had been working on his biography.
For this, he climbed Mount Ararat, Mount Elbrus, the
Himalayas--accompanied by a luxurious retinue. His tent was seen by the
oases of every desert. His foot made its way into every fantastical
palace. He conversed with every dark-skinned potentate.
Not once did Misha Kotikov see Zaevphratsky, yet he was dazzled. Misha
had reddish hair with a ruddy complexion. He was a big-headed boy, neat,
with a small mouth. "Amazing!" he often whispered, hunched
over Zaevphratsky's notebooks and drawings.
When Alexander Petrovich Zaevphratsky passed away, his wife cried and
wrung her hands.
Zaevphratsky's friends used the opportunity to go to her and give
comfort.
Even Svechin gave comfort.
But the next day he was snarling, "Idiot, bird-brain, she lies
there like a log."
And he paced all around his rather small, wooden house and trumpeted,
"There he is with her, but she sighs, 'Ah, Alexander Petrovich!'"
A year later, Misha Kotikov, as an admirer of Zaevphratsky, came to know
Ekaterina
Ivanovna.
When it got around evening, he brought over some wine and treats. With
her little head bowed, Ekaterina Ivanovna went on and on about
Zaevphratsky. What kind of dresses he liked her to wear, what kind of
hands Alexander Petrovich had, what beautiful gray hair, how enormous he
was, how he paced about the room and how she, standing on tip-toes,
would kiss him.
Misha Kotikov sat, opening his tiny little crimson mouth, gazed with his
crystal-clear deep blue eyes, began to stroke and caress Ekaterina Ivanovna's hands and kissed
Ekaterina Ivanovna on the forehead.
All the time he kept asking, "And what kind of nose did Alexander
Petrovich have? And what kind of long arms? And did Alexander Petrovich
put starch in his collar or did he prefer it soft? And did Alexander
Petrovich drum his fingers on the glass?
Ekaterina Ivanovna answered all the questions and began to cry. She
took the man's handkerchief with his initials and raised it to her eyes.
"Wasn't that Alexander Petrovich's handkerchief?" asked Misha
Kotikov.
She sat for a long time without speaking and wiped her eyes with
Zaevphratsky's handkerchief.
Then she handed over the handkerchief to Misha Kotikov, saying,
"Keep this in memory of Alexander Petrovich."
Again she started crying.
Misha Kotikov neatly folded the handkerchief and quickly hid it.
"And what did Alexander Petrovich say about art?" Misha
Kotikov asked, stuffing the handkerchief into his pocket. "What was
poetry for Alexander Petrovich?"
"He didn't talk about poetry with me," said Ekaterina Ivanovna, looking into the mirror with her eyes open wide.
She scampered up toward the mirror.
"Look! Isn't it true I'm graceful?" she asked. She began to
spread her hands, lower her head. "Alexander Petrovich found me
graceful."
"And when did Alexander Petrovich begin to write poetry, at what
age?" Misha Kotikov put the question, lighting up a Russian
cigarette.
"Isn't it true I look like a virgin?" said Ekaterina Ivanovna,
sitting down in an armchair. "Alexander Petrovich used to say I
looked like a virgin."
"Ekaterina Ivanovna, which table shall we set?" Misha Kotikov
asked angrily, getting up from the armchair.
"This one here," said Ekaterina Ivanovna, pointing to a round
table. "But I don't have anything."
"I brought some Bordeaux and..., " Misha Kotikov said with
pride, "some appetizers and and fruit."
"My, how nice of you!" said Ekaterina Ivanovna, starting to
laugh. "I love wine and fruit."
"Alexander Petrovich's friends have completely abandoned me,"
she said, sighing, just as Misha Kotikov, standing on tip-toes, took
down the wineglasses from the cupboard.
"They don't worry about me at all. They know I have no willpower,
that I don't know how to live. They don't pay any attention to me at
all. They don't come by, they don't talk about Alexander Petrovich. They
don't look after me. Let's be friends," she added. "Let's talk
about Alexander Petrovich."
After finishing the wine and the appetizers, Misha Kotikov began to
examine things in the room.
"Isn't this the table where Alexander Petrovich used to
write?" he asked, indicating a mid-sized round table. "Why
don't you wipe off the dust?" he added.
"I don't know how to dust," Ekaterina Ivanovna answered.
"In Alexander Petrovich's time, I didn't do any dusting."
The next day, Misha Kotikov woke up in Alexander Petrovich's bed.
Next to him, with her mouth open and her arm sticking out, was Ekaterina
Ivanovna.
"Too bad she's so stupid," Misha Kotikov was thinking.
"She can't pass on to me any valuable information about Alexander
Petrovich whatsoever. Well, never mind, I'll get the valuable
information from Alexander Petrovich's friends."
"Ekaterina Ivanovna, ah, Ekaterina Ivanovna. How did Alexander
Petrovich write?
Ekaterina Ivanovna woke up, stretched out her arms, nudged Misha
Kotikov with her knee, turned around on her other side and went back to
sleep.
For two weeks, Misha Kotikov kept going to see Ekaterina Ivanovna. He
picked up various intimate details about Alexander Petrovich. Sometimes
he took Ekaterina Ivanovna to a movie, sometimes to the theater.
Sometimes they just walked the streets.
Misha Kotikov found out everything: how many birthmarks there were on
Alexander Petrovich's body, how many calluses. He found out that in
191... Alexander Petrovich broke out in boils on his back, that
Alexander Petrovich liked coconuts, that from the time of his marriage
to Ekaterina Ivanovna, Alexander Petrovich had a swarm of mistresses
but loved her very much.
And when he found out everything and wrote everything down, he then
decided that Alexander Petrovich's mistresses must have been smarter
than his wife and could give him more information about Alexander
Petrovich's soul. He stopped seeing Ekaterina Ivanovna. He was such a
clean boy, dressed as neatly as can be. Dirt never stuck to him, not
even under his little fingernail.
He found out that a student, X, was Alexander Petrovich's last mistress.
He met her in a certain familiar building where literary gatherings were
held.
The building was wonderful. Two young ladies--and both wrote poetry.
One--with haziness and melancholy, the other--with zeal and spontaneity. They both decided to divide the world in two parts: one would
take the sorrow of the world, the other its delights.
There were also all sorts of young men and women who had organized a
poetic circle. They all recited poems sitting in a circle, while some
stood on the balcony admiring the starry sky and the chimney pipes. And
this is where Misha Kotikov met the student, X.
He also recited a poem here, sitting on a sofa cushion with his legs
outspread and his eyes closed. Sitting right next to him was the
student, X, cheerful with long legs.
"Evgenya Alexandrovna," he said, "after the soiree,
what do you say we go for a walk around the city, to the Toma
Exchange?"
"Only if we go in a group," Evgenya Alexandrovna
whispered in reply.
A group got together at two o'clock in the morning.
The group walked past the stallions rearing up over the Fontanka.
Wherever they went, Misha Kotikov looked after Zhenya. He was saying she
was a wonderful and extraordinary girl. When they got near the Toma
Exchange, Misha and Zhenya went off together, their heads tenderly
slouched.
Misha Kotikov turned red, Zhenichka turned pink, and they got up from
the steps.
"Tell me, Zhenichka," Misha Kotiov asked. "Did Alexander
Petrovich love you very much?"
"He promised to love me for two months, then he avoided me."
"And when was that?"
"February eleventh."
"Did Alexander Petrovich talk with you about poetry?"
"He said," Zhenya answered, straightening her skirt, "he said every girl should write poetry. In France, everyone writes."
"And what did Alexander Petrovich say about assonances?"
"Zhenichka, straighten your skirt a bit more, otherwise they'll
notice."
The young people said good-bye. The city was gradually coming back to
life. Painted buildings were coming into view. The poet, Troitsyn,
walked by, in the company of his pharmacist's wife. How he came to know
the pharmacist's wife was unusual. Once, while he was walking by
the drugstore, he saw a nice, little thing at the counter, went up and
asked for something to relieve a headache. The nice, little thing knew it
was Troitsyn. If only she hadn't known! Troitsyn recited poetry
everywhere. He was terribly fond of reciting poetry.
She gave him some headache medication and began talking to Troitsyn
about the stars. Troitsyn was a simply unearthly man. The stars were all
he could talk about.
"Look," he would say, pointing out the window, "What a
Bear."
"And what an enormous moon," the girl answered.
"And what clean night air," said Troitsyn.
"And do you know my poem The Lady with the Camellias?"
Troitsyn asked.
"No, I don't."
"Would you like me to recite it?"
"Recite," the young lady replied.
Troitsyn recited.
"What poetic verses!" the girl said, falling into a trance.
Troitsyn leaned all the way across the counter. The young lady looked at
the clock.
"My friend will come any minute. I'm taking her place today."
"I'll escort you," said Troitsyn.
"All right," said the young lady opening her eyes.
A half hour later, they walked past Petrovsky Park.
"What do you say we toss some snowballs?" Troitsyn suggested.
Now she ran off, now he ran off. There were no passers-by. White from
the snowballs, they sat down to catch their breath.
Troitsyn looked around and saw nobody. She looked around. Nobody. They
headed off farther back from the road.
The next day, Troitsyn was running all over town and telling
everyone. For two weeks, he kept company with the
druggist's wife, turning up everywhere with the druggist's wife, pulling
his friends aside and whispering in their ears, "I'm tired of her.
This is all perpendicular love. Like Don Juan, I'm searching for true
love."
Young people eyed the couple as they drifted off and laughed at Troitsyn.
Misha Kotikov said good-bye to Zhenya. They agreed to meet the next day.
Misha Kotikov went to see the unknown poet.
"I'm working on a biography of Alexander Petrovich. You wouldn't be
able to give me the necessary information?"
"Hmm," lazily answered the unknown poet. "Go ask Troitsyn.
He knows everything."
The next day, Misha Kotikov was sitting at Troitsyn's place. The room
was half in shadow. It smelled of raspberry jam. In the windows hung
muslin curtains. A maid's room beauty was turning green on the window
sill. Hung on the walls were portraits of French poets, nailed-up prints
depicting Manon Lescaut, Ophelia and the Prodigal Son.
"Here's a pen of Alexander Petrovich," said Troitsyn, as he
extended a holder to Misha Kotikov. "Here's an inkwell, here's a
handkerchief of Alexander Petrovich."
"I have a handkerchief of Alexander Petrovich," answered Misha
Kotikov with pride.
"Do you mean to say you also collect poetic objects?"
"They're things for a biography," Misha Kotikov answered.
"It's important to establish in which year Alexander Petrovich
carried which handkerchief. You see, you have a cambric and I have a
linen. There's a connection between the things and the man. The linen
reveals one texture of soul, the cambric another."
"I have a handkerchief from 1913."
"There, you see," Misha Kotikov observed. "But mine's a
1916. Therefore, Alexander Petrovich underwent some kind of internal
drama or worsening of economic condition. Judging by the handkerchief,
we can reconstruct the owner's soul and economic condition."
"But I collect poetic objects in general," Troitsyn said,
taking out a box. "Here's a lace from the boots of a famous poetess
(he identified her by her first name). Here's a tie that belonged to the
poet Lebedinsky, here's an autograph from Linsky, from Petrov, here it
is--Alexander Petrovich."
Misha Kotikov took the autograph of Alexander Petrovich and began to
look it over.
"And where could I get hold of an autograph of Alexander Petrovich?"
"From Natalya Levantovskaya," Troitsyn replied.
"Ah...," thought Misha Kotikov. Chapter
XI THE ISLAND
It was still spring when Teptyolkin moved to Peterhof and rented an
uncommon building.
At the entrance he began to reflect: here he'll receive his friends,
walk around the park with his friends like the ancient philosophers and,
walking to and fro, explain and interpret and talk about lofty matters.
And coming to visit will be his life's dream, the uncommon and radiant
creature --Marya Petrovna Dalmatovna. Also coming to visit will be his
old mentor, the philosopher,
and an uncommon poet, the spiritual offspring of western great poets,
will recite his new works to them all in the bosom of nature. And other
acquaintances will come. Teptyolkin began to reflect.
When it was morning, he got up, flung open the window and started
singing like a bird. Down below, sparrows were chirping, taking flight,
and a thrush came.
"What balmy weather," he thought and stretched out his hand
toward the sun shining through the tree branches. "It's quiet here,
absolutely quiet. Far from the city, I shall work. Here I can
concentrate and not scatter myself."
He leaned his elbows on a table.
When it was evening, the inhabitants of neighboring dachas, becalmed
Soviet bureaucrats, laughed "Ha-ha," walking the paths from
from the dachas and plunging into the green of the park.
"Ha-ha!" The philosopher has arrived. What's more, he has
picked out a room!
Ha-ha, the fool, in the morning he picks flowers.
From day to day, Teptyolkin awaited the arrival of his friends. In the
morning, he picked flowers so he could meet his friends with flowers.
There he goes with an armful of bird cherry--Marya Petrovna loves bird
cherry. There he is turning the corner with a bouquet of lilacs.
Ekaterina Ivanovna loves lilacs.
But why wasn't there a sign of Natalya Ardalyanovna? Where was she
hiding?
"We are the last island of the Renaissance in a sea of dogmatism
surrounding us," Teptyolkin was saying to those assembled.
"We, we alone, preserve the flames of critical thinking, respect
for the sciences, respect for man. For us there is neither master nor
slave. We are all in a high tower. We hear the granite sides pounded by
furious waves."
The tower itself was real, a remnant of a merchant class dacha. The
bottom floor of the dacha had been taken apart by residents of
neighboring houses to heat their kitchens, but the upper floor remained
and it was cozy in the room. There stood a table covered with a green
tablecloth. Sitting around the table was society: a lady in a hat with
ostrich feathers and an amethyst pendant, a dog at her side on a chair;
an old man looking over his fingernails and doing his manicure right
there; a youth in a military jacket with an old-fashioned student's cap
on his knees; the philosopher Andrei Ivanovich Andrievsky; three old
maids and four old bachelors. In a corner, Ekaterina Ivanovna was
curling her hair with her fingers.
"My God, how few of us there are," Teptyolkin said, as he
shook his graying hair. "Let's ask the venerable Andrei Ivanovich
to play." He turned toward the tall philosopher, completely gray
with a long bushy moustache.
The philosopher got up, went to the case and took out his violin.
Teptyolkin opened the window and stepped aside. The philosopher sat on
the window sill, tucked the corner of a handkerchief inside his starched
collar, tuned the strings and began to play.
Down below, the last lilacs were in bloom. The room was penetrated by a
violet light. Out there, in the distance, the sea was glimmering, lit up
by a moon since dethroned but which, for those present, had preserved
its charm. In front of the sea, fountains strove to reach the height of
the moon in multicolored spurts, tailing off above in a flutter of white
birds.
The philosopher played a tune from long ago.
Below, in the alley of fountains, Kostya Rotikov was passing by with a
Komsomol boy. The Komsomol boy had the eyes of a cherubim. The Komsomol
boy was playing a balalaika.
Kostya Rotikov was intoxicated with love and with the night.
The philosopher played. He saw Marburg, the great Cohen and his journey
among the capitals of the western European world. He remembered how he
spent a year on Place Jeanne D'Arc; he remembered how in Rome... the
violin sang, more and more heartbroken, more and more heartbroken.
The philosopher, with his thick, gray mane, with his young-looking face,
with his fluffy moustache and his Vandyke, saw himself magnificently
attired in a top hat with a cane, going for a walk with his young wife.
"My God, how she loved me," he thought and longed for his
deceased wife to be young again.
"I can't," he said. "I can't play any more." He put
down the violin and turned away into the violet night.
The whole group went out below into the park.
For some time, the philosopher walked without saying a word.
"As I see it," he broke his silence, "a writer must
appear who would sing of us, our feelings."
"That's what Philostratus is," said the unknown poet, stopping
and looking over a flower he had just picked.
"Let it be as you wish. We'll call the unknown who must appear
Philostratus."
"We'll be vilified, no doubt," continued the unknown poet,
"but Philostratus has to depict us as creatures of light, not some kind of
devils."
"Yes indeed. Of that you can be sure," someone remarked.
"The winners always vilify the losers and turn them, whether
they're gods or people, into devils. That's how it always was, and
that's how it'll be with us. They'll turn us into devils, they will. Of
that you can be sure."
"They're doing it already," someone remarked.
"Could it be we'll soon split off from each other?" Teptyolkin
muttered, horrified, blinking his eyes. "Could it be we'll see each
other as devils?"
They walked toward the Babyegonsky Heights.
The group spread out a rug. Each rolled up their jacket into a cushion.
"What a sofa!" exclaimed Teptyolkin.
Up ahead, lit by a Moslem crescent moon, Belvedere rose in a dark
mass; on the right lay Peterhof, on the left a Finnish village.
When everyone had settled down, the unknown poet began:
Teptyolkin, leaning against a tree, was crying, and it seemed to all of
them this night that they were terribly young and terribly beautiful,
that they were all terribly good people.
And they got up -- partner with partner, and started dancing on a meadow
spread with flowers, and the violin appeared in the philosopher's hands
and began to sing so purely and sweetly. And with their very own eyes
they all beheld Philostratus: with magical
eyes shaded by the wings of his eyelashes, in drooping garments and a
crown of laurel, a
slender youth singing.
And behind him, the rustling of an olive grove. And, wavering like an
apparition, Rome was on the rise.
"I propose to write a poem," the unknown poet was saying (when
the vision had dispersed). "The city is being ravaged by a
metaphysical plague. The signori assume Greek names and go off to a
castle. There they pass the time in study of sciences, music, in works
of poetry, painting and sculpture. But they know they are doomed,
that the last assault on the castle is being prepared. The signori know
that it is not for them to triumph. They go down underground. There they
store radiant images for future generations and come out to veritable
destruction, to ridicule, to death without glory, for there exists for
them now nothing but death."
"Ugh. Isn't it the truth, I've become a complete idiot now,"
Ekaterina Ivanovna said, starting to latch on to Teptyolkin. "I've
become a complete idiot without Alexander Petrovich and totally
unhappy."
"Listen," Teptyolkin said, turning aside to Ekaterina Ivanovna, "you're not an idiot at all. It's just the way life turns
out." ("Zaevphratsky has completely depraved her," he
thought to himself).
"But where's Mikhail Petrovich Kotikov," Ekaterina Ivanovna
whispered. "Why doesn't he come by and talk with me about Alexander
Petrovich?"
After a silence, Teptyolkin said, "I don't know."
Lifting her leg a bit, Ekaterina Ivanovna started looking over her
shoes.
"You know, my shoes are cracked all over," she said, with her
eyes wide open. "And, at home, there's no blanket. I have to cover
myself with an overcoat."
And she started thinking.
"Don't you have any candies?"
"No," Teptyolkin answered sadly.
"But Alexander Petrovich was a great poet, you know, wasn't he? No
more poets like that now." She straightened up with pride. "He
loved me more than anyone else in the world," she said, and smiled.
Musya came up to Teptyolkin in an old-fashioned straw hat with blue
ribbons and touched him with her slightly shining fingernails.
"Tell me," she said, "what it means:"
"Ah-huh," Teptyolkin nodded. "Hidden in these lines is a
whole world-view, a whole swirling sea of meanings, now rising like
waves, now vanishing."
"It's so nice to be with you," said Musya. "He was saying
to me," she said, glancing toward the unknown poet in conversation
with an old bachelor, "that you are the last remaining leaves of
high autumn. I didn't quite understand that, even though I've finished
the university; but, then again, that isn't taught in universities these
days."
"It isn't taught, it's felt," Teptyolkin observed.
"Why don't we sit down on that little step," Musya indicated
with her chin.
They went a little higher up. They sat down on a step between the
caryatids of the Belvedere portico.
"How the nightingales sing!" said Musya. "Why are girls
always excited by nightingales?"
"Not just girls," Teptyolkin replied. "I've always been
excited by nightingales."
He looked Musya in the eye.
"But I'm scared of women," he let out wistfully. "They're
a frightful element."
"What do you mean frightful?" Musya smiled.
"Why, they turn your head, turn your head and leave. It happened
with my friends, and once they left, no way you could beg them to live
together. And to think how my friends used to worship their wives and
carry around their pictures in their wallets! But they always, always
leave."
Teptyolkin felt hurt for his friends.
Musya took out a comb and began to stroke Teptyolkin's hair.
Down below, young people were singing:
Teptyolkin remembered finishing the university, then plunged into his
childhood and, there, came across Elena Stavrogina. It seemed to him
there was something of Elena Stavrogina in Maria Petrovna Dalmatova,
that she was, as it were, a distorted image of Elena Stavrogina,
distorted but none the less dear. He kissed her hand.
"My God," he said, "if you only knew..."
"What, what?" Musya asked.
"Nothing," Teptyolkin answered softly.
Down below they were singing:
In the morning, Kostya Rotikov and the unknown poet were going back to
Leningrad by train. The unknown poet was unbearably sad. After all,
there awaits him total oblivion. Kostya Rotikov amused him as much as he
could and talked about the Baroque.
"Isn't it true," he was saying, "you strive, not for
perfection and conclusiveness, but for starting out and becoming, not
for the limited and the tangible, but for the unending and the
colossal."
There was no one else in the car, and they were sitting together. Kostya
Rotikov stood up and recited a sonnet by Gongora.
The unknown poet looked on with affection at Kostya Rotikov, sarcastic
and witty, a bit frivolous, reading only foreign books and somewhat
condescendingly admiring the handiwork of mankind.
"Let's keep up the struggle," he said, straightening up.
"What's the matter with you?" asked Kostya Rotikov.
"Nothing," the unknown poet smiled. "I've been thinking
over a new Baroque poem."
Outside the window, fields with tall grass flew by. Having appeared,
Kostya Rotikov was now reading a sonnet by
Camões
and finding a huge similarity with Pushkin's work
In a car at the end of the train, Ekaterina Ivanovna was sitting by
herself and plucking a daisy: he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me,
he loves me not. But who loves her or who doesn't, she didn't know. But
she felt she ought to be loved and looked after.
In the very last car, the philosopher with his bushy moustache was
riding and thinking:
"The world is given, the world is not; reality is given, reality is
not."
Cheeva, cheeva, the wheels were turning.
Cheeva, cheeva...
And there's the station.
Kostya Rotikov has a walking stick with a large cat's eye.
Kostya Rotikov has blue eyes, almost sapphire.
Kostya Rotikov has long, pink fingernails.
"Where to?" the unknown poet cheerfully asked. "All the
same, there's nothing to do."
"Let's go listen to fatherland's aspens changing their
language," Kostya Rotikov said with a smile.
Kostya Rotikov and the unknown poet spent the whole day together. They
walked through the Summer
Garden, along the banks of the Fontanka, the Catherine
Canal, the Moika, the Neva. They stood before the Bronze Horseman
and lamented that the city fathers couldn't get around to cleaning off
the green--the beautiful black-green patina. They sat down on a bench.
They had a smoke. They talked about how the city was, from its
inception, a large palace.
They talked about books.
A summer evening. No official business whatsoever. No university chair
whatsoever. A swarm of midges circles and hovers. Teptyolkin sits in a
boat and rows. Reeds are nodding on the shore. Higher up, the Peterhof
Palace can be seen. On the shore stands the unknown poet.
"You've come!" Teptyolkin cries and rows toward the shore.
"Finally, you've come. If only you knew how sad I've been living
here. Especially today."
The boat reached the shore. The unknown poet gets on board, and
Teptyolkin, stoop-shouldered, graying, rows away from the shore. The
unknown poet steers with the rudder. The boats drifts off to sea.
"I was thinking back," said Teptyolkin, "to when I was
teaching, some years ago, at a university city. I remember the very day,
the hour when we--a young woman who was a student and myself--headed off
to the opposite side of a river and there, in a grove, I gave a
lecture."
Dusk.
Finally, in darkness, they secured the boat and went for a walk in the
park.
A pink strip of daybreak had appeared in the east when, without speaking
a word, they went up to the tower.
The unknown poet was listening to Teptyolkin knocking about upstairs in
the one and only habitable room, taking off his boots and propping them
by the bed, clinking a teaspoon in a glass.
"He takes his tea cold," he surmised.
In the morning, Kostya Rotikov saw the unknown poet napping on a white
bench in the park near a large fir tree that was straight as a mast. The
friends said a jolly hello and headed off toward the sea, leaving a
trail of parted grass. A firm and pink Kostya Rotikov squatted in the sea. On the shore, the unknown poet naps on stones warmed by the
morning sun.
"And did you know," Kostya Rotikov said as he came into view, "Andrei
Ivanovich has come to stay here?"
Shaking his leg and drying himself with a Turkish towel, he continued,
"I'll be taking lessons with him on the methodology of artistic
theory."
The stones and the sand were scorched. Kostya Rotikov laces up his boots
with round toes. The unknown poet hops gleefully from stone to stone and
has a smoke.
The young people skirted the cemetery and made their way at an angle,
along a path, in the middle of an uncut, fluffy meadow, littered with
black bugs and greenish-metallic beetles and snail streaks, with
caraway, red and white clover and sorrel, toward the road leading to New
Peterhof, toward the unspurting fountains (it was a weekday), toward the
statues with the peeled-off gold leaf, where an invalid selling
cigarettes walks back and forth near the balustrade, a bow-legged little
boy runs about hawking irises and an ice cream vendor, propped against a
cooler with his legs crossed, from time to time scoops his nose with a
touch of melancholy.
The young people went into a public cafeteria located near the palace
and began to eat sour cabbage soup. One plate was heavy and nautical,
the other with a coat of arms. The spoons were made of tin.
"What does Philostratus represent?" Kostya Rotikov asked,
raising a spoon to his mouth.
But, just then, the philosopher Andrei Ivanovich walked into the
cafeteria, in the company of a pharmacist and a woman who was a research
assistant from the local institute.
Kostya Rotikov and the unknown poet, rising, greeted the philosopher.
After dinner, they all headed for Old Peterhof to a celebration of the
local institute's anniversary. But, along the way, they decided to drop
in on Teptyolkin.
At the time, Teptyolkin was sunbathing. He was sitting naked in a
three-legged armchair and wiggling his toes, and smiling, and drinking
tea and reading The Genius of Christianity by
Châteaubriand.
Kostya Rotikov went in first and did an about-face. He blocked the door,
asked the others coming up to wait a while, opened the door a crack and
elegantly slipped into the room. Teptyolkin turned red all over from
unexpectedness.
Settling down near the tower, in the garden with a broken fence, with
acacia bushes and the remains of flowerbeds, the group was amusing
itself. During this time, it grew even larger. A student of medium
height, sitting on a stump, was playing on a comb. Another, of tiny
stature, was whistling. The philosopher was sitting on a bench recently
put in place and still unpainted. Next to him sat the
pharmacist, his lips quivering all the time. The research assistant from
the local institute sat primly on the grass. It was then that Kostya
Rotikov came down from the height of the tower, arm in arm with
Teptyolkin.
The pharmacist had finally just begun to speak. He felt bad about being
disturbed. He was of enormous height, dressed in starched linen and
didn't so much wear his suit as give it a presentation. Right then and
there, telling them to hold still, a young man with a passion for
Freudianism took a picture of the whole group with a Kodak. He had even
taken a few lessons in German with Teptyolkin so he could read Freud in
the original.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said Teptyolkin. "Perhaps,
instead of going to the anniversary, we'll sit here a while longer,
because a pupil from the city will be coming to see me an hour from
now."
While Teptyolkin was in the tower preparing a student from
workers school for an institution of higher learning, the unknown poet
and Kostya Rotikov went off for some beer. All the while they took turns
drinking from a little glass someone had turned up, fanned themselves
with their handkerchiefs, and swatted and chased away mosquitoes. A man's footsteps were heard. On the road, a wrinkled
gypsy woman appeared in high, blacked boots. Catching sight of the tower
and the group, she quickly ran toward it. "Come on, I'll tell your fortune," she said.
"Come on, I'll tell your fortune! Your eyes are foreign!" She walked among them as they were lying, sitting or standing. "Don't bother, don't bother," they answered
her, "we know our future." Nobody noticed that a pupil had slipped in from the
tower with Krayevich's physics under his arm. "La-la, la-la," Teptyolkin sang, pocketing
his money and coming down the stairway. The sun was already setting when the group neared the local institute. They were late. The academic part was over. Music floated from a not-so-large hall of a not-so-large palace of Leichtenberg Dukes. Glass doors were opened to the park, and girls, attractive and unattractive, in carefully preserved lace dresses, were hovering near the entrance. Inside, there was dancing. Everything wore a pure and innocent character. The happy faces of young girls and young men, the ballroom pianist who kept a slow tempo, the professors sitting along the wall in dignified conversation. The group entered the hall in single file. The moon has been dazzling for quite a while now. Kostya Rotikov dances till he's soaked in sweat; the philosopher cautiously makes his way among the dancers and converses with professors; Teptyolkin emerges from the doorway to the park with the pharmacist. Moths fly about and pelt the lit-up windows. Darkness. The philosopher, the pharmacist and the
research assistant move in three silhouettes. The pharmacist walks
behind so the philosopher won't stumble, so he won't hurt himself, so
one of the last philosophical luminaries won't fall astray. Two silhouettes and a third kiss each other at a tidy
porch. "Good night, dear Andrei Ivanovich," they
say. In the morning, students once again scattered about the
park to collect insects, small beetles and all sorts of herbs. Some were
sailing in boats around little ponds, fishing for algæ with nets in the
water. It was hot. The sun was scorching. There was a smell of hay.
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