A holy fool named Arseny, who called himself Ustin, lived around the John the Baptist Convent, said Alexandra, by the cemetery wall.
There’s no wall there now.
There isn’t even a cemetery. Alexandra topped up Stroev’s tea. The cemetery became Komsomol Square.
But what about the deceased? the boy asked. Did they all become Komsomol members or something?
Stroev bent right to the boy’s ear:
That will be determined during the excavations.
They went out for a walk the next evening. They crossed Trud Street, came to the Thundering Tower, and sat there on the bank of the Pskova River. The boy tossed pebbles into the river. Stroev found several shards of tile and launched them so they skipped like a frog along the river’s surface. The largest piece hopped along the water five times.
Another time they went to Zavelichye. They crossed the Velikaya River over the Soviet Army Bridge and headed to the John the Baptist Convent. They came to the church and stood for a long time at the rim of the excavation site. They cautiously went down the stairs. They stroked ancient stones warmed by the August evening. Warmed for the first time in many centuries. And someone was stroking them for the first time in many centuries. That’s what Alexandra was thinking. She was imagining an ancient holy fool near those stones and could not answer her own question about whether or not she actually believed what she had read. Had a holy fool even really existed? And, one might ask, had his love existed? And if so, then what had that love turned into during those hundreds of years gone by? And who, then, could feel that love now, if those who had loved had been reduced to dust long ago?
I like being with both of them, Stroev said in his heart, because I feel a certain something kindred in both of them. A definite consonance, you might say, despite her German heritage. She is calm, dark blonde, and her facial features are well balanced. Why is she a single mother to her boy, and where is her husband? What is she doing here in the Russian provinces among windows sunken into the ground that have little view, old automobiles, untucked linen shirts (with patch pockets), and the wrinkled, yellow-faced, dust-strewn photographic denizens of honor boards (a breeze blows, ever so slightly, through the feather grass under them)? I don’t know, he answered himself, what she’s doing, for she is not organic to this world. And his heart faltered when he imagined Alexandra Muller on a teeming Leningrad street or, for example, at the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater, with her face flushed just before intermission’s third belclass="underline" it was within his power to take her there.
Then they returned home and drank tea, and the violin began plinking on the other side of the wall.
That’s Parkhomenko playing, said the boy. We love listening to him.
Alexandra shrugged.
Stroev imagined himself gazing from the street and tried to see them—all three of them—in the window, in the yellow electric light. Maybe he was even gazing from Leningrad. He already knew, now, that he would yearn for that kitchen, for the automobile by the window, the cobblestone roadway, and Parkhomenko’s unseen violin. He was already scrutinizing them, sitting there, as if they were themselves a cherished photograph: the window frame was its frame and the chandelier’s light flooded it with the yellowing of time. Why am I (thought Stroev) yearning in advance, predestining events, and moving ahead of time? And how is it that I always know in advance about my yearning? What is it inside me that gives rise to this vexing feeling?
I teach Russian language and literature at a school, said Alexandra, but that’s not of much interest to anyone here.
Stroev took a cookie from the dish and pressed it to his lower lip.
And what does interest them?
I don’t know. After a silence, she asked:
So why did you choose medieval history?
It’s hard to say… Maybe because historians in the Middle Ages were unlike historians these days. They always looked for moral reasons as an explanation for historical events. It’s like they didn’t notice the direct connection between events. Or didn’t attach much significance to it.
But how can you explain the world without seeing the connections? said Alexandra, surprised.
They were looking above the everyday and seeing higher connections. Besides, time connected all events, even though people didn’t consider that connection reliable.
The boy was holding a cookie by his lower lip. Alexandra smiled:
Sasha’s copying your body language.
Stroev went home two weeks later. The semester started and, contrary to his expectations, he didn’t feel any yearning at first. He didn’t feel it later, either, because he was so busy that autumn, finishing his dissertation and preparing for the defense of it that he would be expected to present. Stroev successfully gave his defense at the very end of the year. Everyone was satisfied with his dissertation, especially Professor Nechiporuk, who was convinced the decision to send the dissertator to the excavation had turned out to be the one and only correct thing to do. Stroev entered January of the new year by tossing off the burden that had been weighing on him for so long and, let’s be honest, making his life thoroughly miserable. His soul felt lighter. And in that weightless, almost soaring condition, it sensed the absence of Alexandra Muller.
This doesn’t mean Stroev began thinking constantly about Alexandra, let alone took steps to see her: action was not his strong point. But he remembered Alexandra before going to sleep, in that flickery instant when daytime matters have already receded and dreams aren’t yet drawing close. Her kitchen drifted in front of him, with the fabric lampshade over the table and the tea pot painted with leaves. As he lay in his bed, Stroev inhaled the scent of the old Pskov building. From outside the window, he heard pedestrians’ footsteps and snatches of their conversations. He saw the boy’s body language, which turned out to be his own body language. Stroev calmed and fell asleep.
One time he told Ilya Borisovich Utkin, his friend and colleague, about Alexandra.
It’s possible that’s love, said Utkin, wavering.
But love (Stroev flapped his arms around) is such an overpowering feeling that, as I understand things, it just convulses you. Practically makes you high. But I’m not feeling that. I miss her, yes. I’d like to be with her, yes. Hear her voice, yes. But not behave like a madman.
You’re talking about passion that really is a form of insanity. But I’m talking about love, which is sensible and, if you like, predestined. Because when you miss someone, we’re talking about lacking a piece of you, yourself. And you’re looking to be reunited with that piece.
That sounds very romantic, thought Stroev, but how do notions like that fit into real life? And so Alexandra, let’s say, has a son, a very sweet little boy. But he’s not my son. I know nothing about his father. Stroev bit his lips. And, when it comes down to it, I don’t want to know. I can’t rule out that there are some bleak stories connected with this person. Some sort of, for all I know, gulfs in Alexandra’s life. For the most part, though, this isn’t about him. I’m just afraid I wouldn’t be able to get along with the boy.
About a month later, he said to Utkin:
I keep thinking about the kid. Would he get in the way between me and Alexandra?
Has she really already said she’ll marry you?
What, you think she won’t?
I don’t know that. Call her, ask.
Things like that aren’t resolved over the phone.
So go there.
Oh, come on, Ilya, what are you talking about?! I’m not ready for that yet.
I don’t know myself what I want, Stroev admitted to himself. I have lots of different thoughts and feelings, but, yet again, I can’t reach conclusions.
In March, it was Utkin who asked Stroev about Alexandra.
I’m afraid, Stroev said, she might marry me just to get out of the provinces. Or so her kid has a father.