‘I’ve heard,’ I said.
‘We had to stand in the queue for so long, I was exhausted. And the worst thing was, by the time we arrived at the counter, there were no Happy Meals left.’
‘What did you have?’
‘A cheeseburger.’
‘Liked it?’
‘I was so disappointed,’ she said. ‘All I really wanted was the box with the toy.’
It was always a pleasant walk along the Boulevard, especially in summer, if you ignored the lanes of traffic on either side and the drunks on the benches. We passed other couples, dyevs carrying bouquets of flowers, men holding bottles of Baltika. Vika walked slowly, as if savouring every step, her sandals treading elegantly along an imaginary straight line ahead of her. She took my arm. I let her hold it a minute, then withdrew it.
At the junction of the Boulevard and Malaya Nikitskaya, we crossed the road into a small park that ended in a circular open space with a gravel path and a few benches. Vika wiped the surface of one of the benches with a paper tissue, we sat down.
‘That’s where they got married,’ she said, pointing at the yellowish church across the street.
‘Who?’
‘Pushkin and Natalya.That’s why they made this fountain.’
The benches formed a circle around a fountain, at the centre of which stood a bizarre shrine with a golden dome and thick Greek columns. It looked like a tacky burial monument and, although I’d passed in front of it many times during my walks, I’d never noticed the statues sheltered by the golden dome. Now, as Vika pointed inside, I realised the statue was none other than Aleksandr Sergeyevich himself, standing next his wife, Natalya Nikolaevna.
‘It’s so romantic,’ Vika said. ‘Pushkin, Natalya, such a beautiful love story.’ She took her sunglasses off and threw them into her handbag. Her lovely eyes were framed by long eyelashes, thick with mascara.
‘It is,’ I said, ‘except, she was a bit of a slut, wasn’t she?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know, she was cheating on Pushkin and all that.’
‘We don’t know that.’ Vika inched away from me, seemingly annoyed by my remark.
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘we don’t know. But I always assumed that if Aleksandr Sergeyevich challenged D’Anthès to a duel it was because something must have being going on. Why would Pushkin risk his life if his wife was not cheating on him?’
‘To defend her honour.’
‘So you think D’Anthès and Natalya didn’t have a thing?’
‘Of course not,’ Vika said, fiddling with her glossy hair. ‘Natalya loved Pushkin very much.’
‘It doesn’t mean she couldn’t have had a little fling with the French guy.’
I squeezed Vika’s arm and laughed, but Vika remained serious.
‘If you truly love someone,’ Vika said, ‘you would not want to be with another person.’
We remained silent for a couple of minutes. A duel, I thought, what a stupid way to die. And yet how beautiful and poetic. Pushkin. Lermontov.
I wrapped my arm around Vika’s waist. She closed her eyes and threw her head back, facing the sun. I kissed her. She kissed me back. I could hear the heavy traffic, as our kissing got faster and deeper.
Now my hands were under her dress and I was kissing her neck and shoulders, with the bitter taste of suntan lotion. Abruptly she pushed me away. ‘Ne nado,’ she said. Then she took a deep breath and laughed. She opened her handbag, took out a small mirror and put on some lipstick. People on other benches paid us no attention.
‘Nu, tak,’ she said.
‘Tak,’ I said. ‘Let’s walk.’
‘Davay.’
As I stood up I realised I was all sweaty, my shirt stuck to my back. We walked into Malaya Nikitskaya, then turned right through Spiridonovka and meandered among the quiet streets and alleys of this old part of town. I knew these streets well because they headed towards the back of my building. We walked in silence, my entire body aching with expectation. I put an arm around Vika and slipped a finger under the strap of her dress. Her skin felt soft.
As we turned a corner into one of the smaller pereuloks, we bumped into a Caucasian fruit seller, sitting sleepily on the shaded pavement, next to a large cage brimming with enormous watermelons. I bought one of the smallest melons, which he handed me in a black plastic bag.
We carried on and soon we were at the garden entrance to Scandinavia.
‘This is where I live,’ I said, casually, as if it was only by chance that we’d arrived at my building. With one hand I was carrying the watermelon, with the other I was pointing at the balconies on the top floor.
‘Nice place.’
‘Let’s go up for a cup of tea,’ I said and, not waiting for an answer, I grabbed her hand and led her towards the door of my building.
47
THE OFFICIAL VERSION — AS I first heard it from Lyudmila Aleksandrovna — is that Aleksandr Sergeyevich was going through tough times. On top of financial difficulties, he was bored of aristocratic life in Peter, and, for some reason, pissed off at the tsar. It was at that low moment in his life that his enemies spread a rumour that linked D’Anthès, a French exile and notorious womaniser, to Natalya Nikolaevna, Pushkin’s beautiful wife. So Aleksandr Sergeyevich, who was not only the greatest of poets but also an honourable gentleman, challenged D’Anthès to a duel.
Of course, when I first heard the story, I assumed there was more to it, some facts buried in order to avoid a scandal. You can be as Russian and romantic as you want, but you don’t go around asking someone to shoot you with a gun for nothing.
In any case, despite attempts by his friends to avert the duel, on the fateful morning of 27 January 1837, Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin met D’Anthès in a forest outside Peter. Pushkin got shot in the stomach and fell, bleeding, on the snow. He was taken back home to Peter, put to bed. After two days of agony, he died. He was thirty-seven.
When I went up to Peter for a weekend I visited Pushkin’s last apartment, a museum these days, and was shown around by a very old and very devoted guide. She narrated the story of Pushkin’s final days with enormous dedication, interpreting the voices of the different characters, as if telling a fairy tale to a child. I found myself absorbed in the storytelling and, as I listened to the monologue that the guide must have repeated thousands of times, I could picture Aleksandr Sergeyevich vividly, in his flat, but also in the forest, pointing the gun, receiving the shot, falling in the snow, firing a shot that only wounded D’Anthès’ arm. By the time the babushka had finished her narration, all the museum visitors were standing around her, next to the exhibit of a gun similar to the ones used by Pushkin and D’Anthès.
As far as I could tell, Russians are divided on Pushkin’s wife. Some, like Vika or Lyudmila Aleksandrovna, seemed to believe the official version, the beautiful love story depicted in statues and monuments across the country — such as the golden statue of Aleksandr Sergeyevich and Natalya in the middle of the Old Arbat, at whose feet young Moscow lovers lay bouquets of flowers.
Others think differently. All these years, entire generations of more cynical Russians have blamed Natalya for Pushkin’s death.
In the end, we will never know what really happened between Natalya and D’Anthès. Besides, in the eyes of most Russians, causing Pushkin’s death is not Natalya’s worst sin. Natalya is most loathed for not understanding Pushkin’s greatness, for taking him lightly. For that, she cannot be forgiven.
Yet, Pushkin’s self-induced death doesn’t make much sense. From a historical and artistic perspective he was a successful man. Why did he risk his precious life in a stupid duel? Fuck knows. But whatever his reasons, his early death assured him the kind of glory older people don’t attain. It made him an instant legend. And whether D’Anthès was banging Natalya or not is, to a certain extent, irrelevant.