Solovyov and Larionov Read online

  Solovyov and Larionov

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  Solovyov and Larionov

  EUGENE VODOLAZKIN

  Translated from the Russian

  by Lisa C. Hayden

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  A Oneworld Book

  First published in North America, Great Britain and Australia by Oneworld Publications 2018

  This ebook published 2018

  Originally published in Russian as Соловьев и Ларионов

  by AST, Eleny Shubinoi imprint

  The publication of the book was negotiated through Banke,

  Goumen & Smirnova Literary Agency (www.bgs-agency.com) Copyright © Eugene Vodolazkin, 2009

  English translation copyright © Lisa C. Hayden, 2018

  The moral right of Eugene Vodolazkin to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78607-035-7

  ISBN 978-1-78607-036-4 (ebook)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This publication was effected under the auspices of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation TRANSCRIPT Programme to Support Translations of Russian Literature Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation (Russia) Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire Oneworld Publications

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  In memory of my great-grandfather

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  He was born by the train station bearing the unprepossessing name Kilometer 715. The station was not very big, despite the three-digit numeral. There was no movie theater, no post

  office, not even a school. Nothing but six wooden houses

  stood along the railroad bed. He left that station shortly after his sixteenth birthday. He went to Petersburg, was accepted at the university, and began studying history. This was to be expected, considering the surname—Solovyov, just like the

  famous historian—with which he had been born.

  Solovyov’s advisor at the university, Professor Nikolsky,

  called Solovyov a typical self-made man, who had come to the capital with a string of sledges bearing fish, but of course that was a joke. Petersburg had ceased being the capital long before Solovyov’s arrival in 1991, and no fish was ever to be found at Kilometer 715. To the adolescent Solovyov’s great regret, there was neither a river nor even a pond there. Reading one book after another about maritime journeys, the future historian cursed his landlocked existence and decided to spend the remainder of his days—a rather considerable number at

  the time—at the place where land and sea met. The attraction of large bodies of water, along with his thirst for knowledge, 580VV_txt.indd 1

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  E U G E N E V O D O L A Z K I N

  settled his choice in favor of Petersburg. In other words, the comment about the fish sledges would have remained a joke

  if not for its emphasis on overcoming one’s initial circumstances; something elegantly stated in the English expression.

  Say what you will, but the historian Solovyov was a most

  genuine self-made man.

  General Larionov (1882–1976) was another matter. He came

  into the world in Petersburg, in a family where being a military officer was hereditary. All of his relatives were officers, with the exception of the future general’s father, who served as the director of the railroad department. As a child, Larionov even had the good fortune to know his great-grandfather (there

  was a penchant for longevity in the family), who was, naturally, a general, too. He was a tall, straight-backed old man who had lost his leg back in the Battle of Borodino.

  In the eyes of the young Larionov, every movement his

  great-grandfather made, even the very knock of his peg leg on the parquet floor, was filled with a special dignity. When nobody was watching, the child loved to lift his right foot up, traverse the room on his left leg, and recline on the sofa with a deep sigh, resting his arms on the back of the sofa like great-grandfather Larionov. Larionov’s grandfather and his lush-mustached uncles were not really any worse than his

  great-grandfather, but neither their gallant officer’s appearance nor their talent for eloquence (his great-grandfather was not a talker) could even begin to compete with the

  absence of a leg.

  All that reconciled the child to his two-legged relatives

  was their abundance of medals. He liked a medal one of

  his uncles had received, For the suppression of the Polish rebellion, more than anything. The melody of the word

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  combination fascinated the boy, who did not have the faintest idea about Poles. In light of the child’s obvious affinity for the medal, his uncle finally gave it to him. The boy wore

  this medal—along with the medal For the conquest of Shipka, which he received from another uncle—right up until the

  age of seven. The word Shipka certainly lost out to the word rebellion in terms of sonority but the beauty of the medal itself made up for its phonetic shortcomings. The child’s

  happiest moments were spent sitting among his officer relatives with the two medals on his chest.

  These were still Russian officers of a bygone time. They

  knew how to use cutlery (including the fish knife, now

  forgotten), effortlessly kissed ladies’ hands, and performed numerous other courtesies unimaginable for officers of a

  later epoch. General Larionov had no need to overcome his

  circumstances. Quite the opposite: he needed only to absorb the qualities of his environs, to brim with them. Which is, in fact, what he did.

  His inclination to become a general manifested itself in

  early childhood, when he began lining up wooden hussars

  in even rows on the floor before he had fully learned to

  walk. Seeing him engaged in this pursuit, those present

  uttered the only possible combination of words, ‘General

  Larionov.’ Ponder the naturalness of the union of those two words: they were made for one another, they were

  pronounced without a pause and became a united whole,

  flowing from one to the other, just as a rider and his horse become a united whole in battle. General Larionov. This

  was his first and only name among the family, and he became accustomed to it immediately and forever. General Larionov.

  Whenever the child heard that form of address, he stood

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  and silent
ly saluted. He did not learn to speak until he was three and a half years old.

  What, one might ask, unites two such dissimilar individ-

  uals as the historian Solovyov and the General Larionov, if of course it is permissible to speak of uniting a budding

  young researcher and a battle-weary commander who,

  furthermore, is no longer of this earth? The answer lies at the surface: historian Solovyov was studying General

  Larionov’s activity. After graduating from St. Petersburg

  University, Solovyov began his graduate studies at the

  Institute of Russian History, where General Larionov

  became his dissertation topic. Based on entries in reference books, there is no reason to doubt that by 1996—that being the time under discussion—General Larionov already

  belonged wholly to Russian history.

  Needless to say, Solovyov was not the first to devote

  himself to studying the famous general’s biography. Over

  the years, a couple of dozen scholarly articles had appeared at various times. They were devoted to various stages of

  Larionov’s life and, above all, the mysteries associated with him that have yet to be unraveled. Although the number

  of works appears considerable at first glance, it seems

  completely insufficient if compared to the interest that

  General Larionov has always inspired, both in Russia and

  overseas. The fact that the number of scholarly research

  works is significantly fewer than the number of novels, films, plays, etcetera, in which the general appears—either as a

  figure or as a prototype for a character—does not appear

  to be accidental. This state of affairs symbolizes, as it were, the predominance of mythology over positive knowledge

  in everything concerning the deceased.

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  Beyond that, critical analysis by French researcher Amélie Dupont has shown that the mythology has even penetrated

  various scholarly articles about the commander. Which

  explains why the topic of research becomes a minefield, to a certain extent, for anyone just beginning work on the

  subject. However, even those articles (and Dupont writes

  about this, too) in which the truth comes across, thanks to all the splendor of scholarly argumentation, shed light on such narrow problems and episodes, that the significance

  of the extracted and argued truth is reduced to nearly

  nothing. It is remarkable that Dupont’s work ( The Enigma of the Russian General, a book published in French and Russian) is still the sole monographic research dedicated to General Larionov. This circumstance emphasizes, yet again, the dearth of sources on the subject. The fact that the French researcher managed to collect material for a monograph is

  due exclusively to her selflessness and particular treatment of her topic, which she has called the topic of her life.

  In reality, it is no exaggeration to say that Dupont was

  born to research the Russian commander. In her case, this

  was not a matter of the historian’s external features, something the scholarly community permits itself to mock, due

  to her height (187 centimeters) and the emergence of a

  mustache after the age of forty. It is known, after all, that barbs and jokes behind a prominent specialist’s back (Dupont is called mon general in certain narrow circles) are usually nothing more than a form of envy. Consequently, mentioning Dupont’s destiny for her designated topic is, above all, a reference to her unusual persistence, something without

  which it would essentially have been impossible to discover the tremendously important sources she subsequently

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  published. And, truly, those who surmise that the emergence of the mustache that caused the inappropriate reaction in

  scholarly circles could be attributed, first and foremost, to the researcher’s fascination with her topic, were not far from the truth. For the sake of objectivity, however, it must be noted that General Larionov himself did not have a

  mustache.

  In all the preserved photographs (see the insets in

  Dupont’s book), there appears before us a carefully shaven person with his hair cut short and parted. The part is so

  even and the quality of the shaving so flawless that one

  unwittingly detects the scent of eau du toilette when

  contemplating the photographs. With regard to his appear-

  ance, General Larionov made the only possible valid

  decision, just as he did in most other situations. Thinking that his ideally proportioned facial features needed no

  framing, he did not style himself after Alexander III, as did the officers around him. What is interesting is that his face did not look handsome, despite its proportions. His face

  became livelier at a mature age, particularly in elderliness.

  It is not uncommon to contemplate a photograph of a

  person in his youth, marveling at its blatant insufficiencies and almost embryonic look when compared to what came

  later. In cases of this sort, one experiences regret regarding the existence of that stage in the life of the person portrayed.

  Needless to say, feelings of this sort are very highly ahistorical. As far as the general goes, his face looked more chiseled thanks to wrinkles that appeared, with age, under his eyes, and the bump that emerged on his nose. During one period

  of his life, between the ages of thirty-five and forty, his appearance was reminiscent of Cardinal Richelieu because

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  of his facial expression and that bump, though not because of all his features. The peak of the general’s activity—as well as the mysteries connected with him—dates back to

  this period. Perhaps his resemblance to Richelieu was the

  resemblance of people possessing mysteries? Whatever the

  reason, that resemblance departed with time, too.

  Even a fleeting glance at Dupont’s illustrative material

  attests to the undeniable prevalence of photographs from

  the final period of General Larionov’s life. The old man

  never made a point of having his picture taken but he also never put on airs by turning away from any cameras that

  greeted him: he regarded them with utmost indifference.

  That regard gave portraits of the general a naturalness rare for the genre. Perhaps the triumph of two photographic

  portraits of the general in international competitions at

  various times should be ascribed, above all, to that naturalness?

  There is no doubt that even those who are not at all

  familiar with the general’s activity and have not heard his name would recall the black-and-white photograph of the

  old man sitting on a folding chair at the very edge of a jetty (Yalta, 1964). It became a classic of world photography,

  rather like the locomotive falling out the window of a Paris train station, rather like the lighthouse among raging waves, etcetera. Despite the summer heat, the old man is dressed

  in a white service jacket. He is sitting under a partially transparent awning, his legs crossed. The toe of a light-colored shoe is stretched before him, parallel to the ground, and almost blends in with the jetty, making it seem as if

  the lighthouse standing close by is balanced on the toe of that elegant shoe. The old man’s gaze is directed into the 580VV_txt.indd 7

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  distance and filled with the
particular attention of one not interested in anything closer than the horizon. That old man is General Larionov. One cannot deny that all previous

  photographs pale in comparison with that shot of the

  general, that they have grown to feel inexpressive and, to some extent, unworthy of this outstanding person. That

  the general remained in his descendants’ memory in his

  most, so to speak, mature form, could be considered

  his indisputable success. However, the biggest success

  of his life was, most likely, simply that he was not shot at the conclusion of the Civil War. This has always been

  considered inexplicable.

  What is consequential, though, is that historian Solovyov

  decided to concentrate on that very enigma. Here, one

  might foresee objections of the sort that question whether historian Solovyov is, say, a figure capable of untangling this very complex historical snarl. And is it even worth placing hope on a very recent graduate who is, moreover, a self-made man? These objections do not seem well founded. It is sufficient to point out—and Dupont was the first to establish

  this fact—that Arkady Gaidar was commanding a regiment

  at the age of sixteen and a half. As far as self-made man goes, well, under a broad understanding of the term, anyone who

  has ever succeeded at accomplishing anything in life should be considered one.

  It is sufficient to mention just one detail with regard to Solovyov’s work on self-improvement: he was able to change his Southern Russian pronunciation to aristocratic Petersburg pronunciation. Needless to say, there is nothing about the Southern Russian pronunciation, in and of itself, that is

  shameful or belittles the dignity of its speakers (just as, 580VV_txt.indd 8

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  say, deficient Moscow speech is incapable of discrediting

  residents of the capital). Mikhail Gorbachev, after all, led perestroika in Russia using Southern Russian pronunciation.

  Unlike Solovyov, Gorbachev was not a historian—he himself

  made history without taking particular care about the

  orthoepic side of matters, a tendency that continued even

  after he left his post and retired. As far as Solovyov goes, when he murmured Russian tongue twisters in the dormitory