Solovyov and Larionov Read online

  her back and chest, spreading the suffocating smell of

  turpentine through the house. A few days later, Solovyov’s mother announced unexpectedly that she was dying.

  Exaggeration was not the norm in his family, so the old

  woman grew worried. There was no point in sending to

  the nearest village, since there was nobody there but a

  drunken doctor’s assistant. The old woman ran to the

  control booth to stop a train. Solovyov’s mother died, but the old woman kept on waving her daughter’s baton. Not

  one train stopped.

  The trains almost never stopped anyway. Only rarely,

  predominantly in the summer, when the tracks were over-

  loaded, did trains pull up to the station, sighing heavily. The carriage attendants would step out onto the pock-marked

  slabs of the platform as if they owned the place. Behind

  them were fat men in T-shirts and women in tight-fitting

  exercise pants. And more rarely, children. Children were

  usually allowed no further than the vestibule, where they

  burst from their pensive grandmothers’ hands. Adults

  smoked, drank beer straight from the bottle, and crushed

  mosquitoes with resounding slaps. When the children

  580VV_txt.indd 28

  22/08/2018 15:38

  S O L O V Y O V A N D L A R I O N O V

  29

  managed to make it to the platform, little Solovyov would

  run off, but continue to follow the proceedings from the

  bushes. During those moments, he was not the only one

  keeping an eye on the train that had arrived: the six houses surrounding the station were all eyes and ears, too. The

  residents pressed themselves against windows, stood in doorways, or cast quick glances at the arrivals as they pretended to dig in their kitchen gardens. It was not the done thing to walk up to the platform.

  Only Solovyov’s mother—when she was alive—was

  within sight of the passengers. The passengers, whose

  appearance seemed even more idle when compared with

  the railway worker’s focused, solemn standing, made no

  attempt to call out to her. It was obvious right away that this motionlessness was of a specific type. Paying no attention to the passengers, Solovyov’s mother gazed at the point where the rails met, as if watching for the arrival of her impending death. When reading later about the elderly

  general’s famous gaze, Solovyov imagined it without the

  slightest effort. He remembered the way his mother had

  looked into the distance.

  Solovyov’s grandmother did not watch in that same way.

  Gazes into the distance were not really characteristic of her.

  Most often, she would sit, propping up her cheek with the

  palm of her hand and looking straight ahead. She outlived

  her daughter by several years and died not long before

  Solovyov graduated from high school. Her death pushed

  him to move to Petersburg. It was in Petersburg that he

  first heard about General Larionov.

  Broadly speaking, it was not accidental that both Solovyov and Larionov were children of railroad workers. Perhaps it 580VV_txt.indd 29

  22/08/2018 15:38

  30

  E U G E N E V O D O L A Z K I N

  was exactly this that determined certain similar characteristics, despite all their external differences. Railroad workers in Russia have a special mission because the role of the

  railroad in our country is not the same as in other places.

  The time that we spend traveling is measured in days. That time is enough not only for a good conversation but—in

  successful cases—even for making marriage plans. What

  marriage could be planned on the Munich–Berlin express in seats lined up one after the other, with radio jacks in the armrests? Most likely, none.

  People who are somehow involved with the railroad are

  all predominantly even-tempered and unhurried. They know

  about conquering an expanse. These people know how to

  listen to the sound of the even clatter of wheels and will never start rushing around: they understand that they still have time. This is why the most serious of foreigners also choose a week or two, once a year, to take a ride on the

  Trans-Siberian Railway. There is little need to mention that these people resolutely prefer a train to an airplane, other than for transatlantic situations, at any rate. The Americans leave them no choice at all.

  General Larionov’s father had no choice, either. Airplanes were simply not flying at the time he decided to associate his life with the railroad. Strictly speaking, at that time, even the railroad itself had not yet become a truly day-to-day

  matter. Using it demanded of passengers not only a certain degree of courage but also a progressive mindset. Possessing these qualities in full measure, Larionov, director of the railroad department, spent half of his on-duty hours on

  wheels. He was entitled to use a special first-class lounge carriage that was hitched to the end of the train. It was in 580VV_txt.indd 30

  22/08/2018 15:38

  S O L O V Y O V A N D L A R I O N O V

  31

  that carriage that he would set off to Crimea, for his vacation. As a scrupulous person, the department director paid for his family’s passage in that carriage, notwithstanding the persuasion of railroad employees who considered that his

  privileges should extend to his family. The governess rode in second class on the same train and the servants in third.

  This latter circumstance served later as cause for various forms of speculation and even conclusions regarding the

  openly undemocratic character of relationships within the

  Larionov household.

  In answer to accusations of that sort, one might cite the

  opinion of Ieronim A. Ratsimor, who pointed out in his

  1992 article ‘Sprouts of Democracy in the Russian Military Environment from the Late 19th to Early 20th Centuries’,

  that, for a number of reasons, class ideology prevailed over democratic ideology at the end of the nineteenth century.

  Ratsimor also put forth the supposition that democracy is

  not a universal concept and is generally not obligatory for characterizing all times and peoples. When established in

  countries not prepared for it, democracy is capable of

  bearing the saddest of fruits. According to the historian’s convictions, the distinctness of Russia’s class divide regulated social relationships far more effectively than democratic

  procedures. Using material from the general’s biography, he convincingly demonstrated that, while still a pupil and junior cadet, Larionov was obligated to ride second class but after becoming a senior cadet, he could only ride third since

  senior cadets were already considered to have attained a

  low army rank and were not admitted into the two other

  classes.

  Less radical points of view were also expressed with

  580VV_txt.indd 31

  22/08/2018 15:38

  32

  E U G E N E V O D O L A Z K I N

  regard to democracy in the Larionov family. The graduate

  student Kalyuzhny surmised, verbally, that the defining traits of the seating arrangements of those riding south were

  determined not so much by the opinion of Larionov, depart-

  ment director, as by the presence at the station of the elder General Larionov, who was allegedly incapable of coming

  to terms with scorn for Russia’s class divide. The latter man was, to be sure, known for his conservatism, which he

  expressed in part through a disdainful regard for the railroad.

  To him, the realm of the railroad seemed unworthy of their family lin
e—in the veteran’s watery eyes, it presented something akin to a circus attraction. Only the post of department director brought a certain seriousness to his grandson’s work and partially reconciled the old man with this odd choice

  of profession. And though the hero of the Battle of Borodino considered train travel inappropriate for himself, he invariably came to the train station at Tsarskoe Selo to see his family off on their travels. As he made his way along the

  row of carriages on his peg leg, he would stop by the locomotive with unexpected timidity and spend a long while

  watching the steam bursting out of the boilers. Then he

  would shrug his shoulders for effect, hurriedly make the

  sign of the cross over his family members, and resolutely

  hobble toward the exit, an echo resonating under the

  station’s metal arches. One might suppose the last thing on his mind at those moments was the passengers’ seating

  arrangements.

  Those trips were preserved in the future general’s

  memory as one of the brightest pages of his childhood. In

  Notes for an Autobiography, which Dupont found and published, General Larionov describes in detail the railroad 580VV_txt.indd 32

  22/08/2018 15:38

  S O L O V Y O V A N D L A R I O N O V

  33

  journeys of his childhood. The carriage itself evoked the

  greatest delight for him; with brass handles polished to a shine, oak paneling, and—most importantly—a glass rear

  wall that displayed the entire expanse of road already traveled. To the juvenile Larionov, it seemed as if the carriage at their disposal was a giant spider capable of producing

  two steel threads that ran out from under it at high speed and converged on the horizon.

  The child was particularly keen on watching sunsets that

  lent enchanting colors to the forest on both sides of the

  railroad bed. The colors dimmed with every minute and

  the trees darkened, approaching the railroad bed ever closer.

  For the future general, who had first-hand familiarity with Russian folk tales, the train’s motion was reminiscent of an escape from a spellbound forest. Clutching at the nickel

  handle on the bunk, he anxiously observed the rocking of

  fir crowns, from which, to his mind, it would be most

  opportune for an unseen adversary to attack. Only after

  some time had passed, when it was completely dark and

  the small glass wall had begun reflecting the carriage’s cozy luxury, would the child calm down, unclench his numbed

  fingers, and let go of the nickel handle. General Larionov caught himself making that motion later, when he let go

  of a handle on the hatch of an armored train one summer

  evening in 1920. The scent of wormwood wafted from a

  stilled field. Sudden silence had replaced the sounds of battle, with the only exception being the brooding metallic noises that carried from somewhere below, deep underneath the

  carriage and inaccessible to the eye.

  His Crimean battles ended just as abruptly as they had

  begun. These battles took place while traveling and were

  580VV_txt.indd 33

  22/08/2018 15:38

  34

  E U G E N E V O D O L A Z K I N

  just as unpredictable as the movements of the general’s

  armored train around Crimea. Larionov was often

  reproached—justifiably so, one must deem, albeit with a

  certain qualification—for excessive use of railroad transportation. The qualification is the fact that the railroad network in Crimea is not overly developed to this day. As is common knowledge, central Crimea is linked to only three cities on the coast: Kerch, Sevastopol, and Yevpatoria. It thus follows that the general’s excessiveness, even in the worst case, could have had only an extremely limited character.

  There did exist, however, a positive side to the general’s predilection. Constrained by the lack of railroad track,

  General Larionov actively worked toward its construction.

  Even in his pre-Crimean period, he put together a narrow-

  gauge railroad in the forest near Kiev, as a test. He entered Crimea’s railway history first and foremost as the person

  who built a fully fledged railroad bed from Dzhankoy to

  Yushun.

  The general’s childhood impressions turned out to be so

  strong that he even chose an armored carriage as his place of residence in Crimea. A host of legends has formed about that carriage, but all that is known and confirmed docu-mentarily is that it was home to four birds (a crane, a crow, a raven, and a starling) and that Alexander Vertinsky visited the hospitable carriage and sang the well-known anti-war

  song ‘I Don’t Know Who Needs That And Why’ for the

  general. According to Alexei Ravenov’s In the Blue Train Carriage, those present said General Larionov’s distinctive, unearthly gaze was noticeable even then; it was reflected, in particular, in the photograph from 1964 that reminded

  historian Solovyov of his deceased mother’s gaze.

  580VV_txt.indd 34

  22/08/2018 15:38

  S O L O V Y O V A N D L A R I O N O V

  35

  Solovyov thought back to that gaze yet again as he was

  speeding past railroad crossings, booths, and controllers with batons. He was standing by an open train window, the

  curtain flittering to his right like a bird that had been shot.

  Sunlight illuminated waves of fine hair along his arm, which felt the window frame’s metallic coolness. Solovyov thought the hairs were coarsening in the sweltering August wind,

  that their bright glistening was a sign of a gradual transformation to copper. He pressed his lips to the hairs for a

  minute, as if to assess their wiriness, but they turned out to be surprisingly soft.

  Solovyov was a most genuine passenger of long-distance

  trains. He drank tea from a glass in a metal holder without pulling out the spoon, went to the lavatory with a towel on his shoulder, and sauntered around stations in a Petersburg University T-shirt. But the important thing was that he was riding in a compartment carriage for the first time in his life. After closing the compartment door for the night, he took a passing, admiring glance at his reflection in the

  mirror. The bulbs from the light in the lower bunk were

  reflected behind his back, too, as were some bottles with

  little plastic cups on them, a taciturn gentleman in a tracksuit, and two young female students. In short, there was

  everything that created the railroad’s aching coziness; a brief unity before parting forever. As he lay down in his upper

  bunk, Solovyov enjoyed listening to the students’ whispers.

  He did not even notice himself falling asleep.

  He was awoken by light falling across his face. The train

  was standing still. Solovyov’s window was under a station

  streetlamp. Slowly, so as not to awaken the sleepers, he

  lowered the snug-fitting window and a warm, night breeze

  580VV_txt.indd 35

  22/08/2018 15:38

  36

  E U G E N E V O D O L A Z K I N

  wafted into the compartment. A central Russian breeze, it

  abstractly occurred to Solovyov, who did not know where

  the train had stopped. The name of the deserted station

  was hidden in the darkness: apparently, it was a lone streetlamp burning in the window. But the lack of people in that expanse was illusory. In the depths of the station, where

  window glass meekly gleamed against the building’s dark

  contours, a quiet conversation was taking its course between two people. After sliding into the shaded part of his bunk, Solovyov discerned their unmoving figures on a bench,

  facing one a
nother. He saw, in their bentness and in their chins that rested on their hands, something extraordinarily familiar that he could not, however, call to mind.

  They were having a conversation that was utterly connected to the place in which the train was standing. The people they were naming were undoubtedly known only here and the

  details mentioned were also not likely to be understood

  without the preliminaries of living here a long time, but even so, Solovyov was unable to shake off an agonizing sense of déjà vu. In an attempt to determine where he had seen these same figures, Solovyov recalled all the stations and substations he had ever traveled through, but nothing similar came to

  mind. It turned out that situations varied at each of the

  stations he had seen. There were completely different people sitting everywhere (and even, perhaps, at the very same time), and it followed from that, in turn, that if the train were to stop at one hundred stations during the night, he would hear one hundred different stories. The diversity of existence made his head spin.

  Meanwhile, the talkers fell silent. The one sitting on the right took out cigarettes, which he shared with his conver-580VV_txt.indd 36

  22/08/2018 15:38

  S O L O V Y O V A N D L A R I O N O V

  37

  sation partner. Two small fires appeared in the dark, one

  after the other, bringing to mind the lights at a crossing.

  ‘That’s all crap,’ said the one sitting on the left.

  Solovyov suddenly recalled where he’d seen figures like

  these. They were chimeras from Notre-Dame Cathedral,

  on the cover of a history textbook.

  The train arrived in Simferopol at three o’clock the

  following afternoon. It was raining in the Crimean capital.

  The rain had most likely just begun—steam was still rising from the hot pavement. Solovyov purchased a trolleybus

  ticket to Yalta after a short wait at the ticket window. He decided to travel between the two cities using this unusual trolleybus connection, perhaps the only one in the world.

  The route from Simferopol to Yalta had surprised even

  General Larionov in his time: he lived to see the launch of the trolleybus route, and, by then, nothing had surprised

  him in a long time. His fantasies, which were historically limited to the railroad, had never hinted at the possibility of an intercity connection of this sort.