Suddenly she bent down, plucked up some weed, pointedly slapped my face with it and let out a short nervous laugh before walking off, gathering her maxiskirt with flounces.
I joined a group headed for Trigorskoye.
To my surprise, I liked the estate curators, a husband and wife. Being married, they could afford the luxury of being friendly. Polina Fyodorovna appeared to be bossy, energetic and a little conceited. Kolya looked like a bemused slouch and kept to the background.
Trigorskoye was in the middle of nowhere and the management rarely came to visit. The exhibition’s layout was beautiful and logical. Pushkin as a youth, charming young ladies in love, an atmosphere of elegant summer romance…
I walked around the park and then down to the river. It was green with upside-down trees. Delicate clouds floated by.
I had an urge to take a dip, but a tour bus had pulled up just then.
I went to the Svyatogorsky Monastery. Old ladies were selling flowers by the gate. I bought a bunch of tulips and walked up to the grave. Tourists were taking photographs by the barrier. Their smiling faces were repugnant. Two sad saps with easels arranged themselves nearby.
I laid down the flowers at the grave and left. I needed to see the layout of the Uspensky Monastery. An echo rolled through the cool stone alcoves. Pigeons slumbered under the domes. The cathedral was real, substantial and graceful. A cracked bell glimmered from the corner of the central chamber. One tourist drummed noisily on it with a key.
In the southern chapel I saw the famous drawing by Bruni.* Also in there glared Pushkin’s white death mask. Two enormous paintings reproduced the secret removal and funeral. Alexander Turgenev* looked like a matron…
A group of tourists entered. I went to the exit. I could hear from the back:
“Cultural history knows no other event as tragic… Tsarist rule carried out by the hand of a high-society rascal…”
And so I settled in at Mikhail Ivanych’s. He drank without pause. He drank to the point of amazement, paralysis and delirium. Moreover, his delirium expressed itself strictly in obscenities. He swore with the same feeling a dignified older man might have while softly humming a tune – in other words, to himself, without any expectation of approval or protest.
I had seen him sober twice. On these paradoxical days, Mikhail Ivanych had the TV and radio going simultaneously. He would lie down on the bed in his trousers, pull out a box marked “Fairy Cake” and read out loud postcards received over the course of his life. He read and expounded:
“Hello Godfather!… Well, hello, hello, you ovine spermatoid… I’d like to wish you success at work… He’d like to wish me success… Well, fuck your mama in the ear! Always yours, Radik… Always yours, always yours… The hell I need you for?”
Mikhail Ivanych was not liked in the village. People envied him. I’d drink, too, they thought. I’d drink and how, my friends! I’d drink myself into a motherfuckin’ grave, I would! But I got a household to run… What’s he got? Mikhail Ivanych had no household. Just the two bony dogs that occasionally disappeared for long stretches of time, a scraggy apple tree and a patch of spring onions.
One rainy evening he and I got talking:
“Misha, did you love your wife?”
“Whatsa?! My wife?! As in my woman?! Lizka, you mean?” Mikhail Ivanych was startled.
“Liza. Yelizaveta Prokhorovna.”
“Why do I need to love ’er? Just grab her by the thing and off you go…”
“But what attracted you to her?”
Mikhail Ivanych fell silent for a long time.
“She slept tidy,” he said. “Quiet as a caterpillar…”
I got my milk from the neighbours, the Nikitins. They lived respectably. A television set, Kramskoy’s Portrait of a Woman on the wall…* The master of the house ran errands from five o’clock in the morning. He would fix the fence, potter around in the garden… One time I see he’s got a heifer strung up by the legs. Skinning it. The blade gleamed clearest white and was covered in blood…
Mikhail Ivanych held the Nikitins in contempt. As they did him, naturally.
“Still drinking?” enquired Nadezhda Fyodorovna, mixing chicken feed in the pail.
“I saw him at the centre,” said Nikitin, wielding a jointer plane. “Laced since the morning.”
I didn’t want to encourage them.
“But he is kind.”
“Kind,” agreed Nikitin. “Nearly killed his wife with a knife. Set all ’er dresses ablaze. The little ones running around in canvas shoes in winter… But yes, other than that he’s kind…”
“Misha is a reckless man, I understand, but he is also kind and noble at heart…”
It’s true there was something aristocratic about Mikhail Ivanych. He didn’t return empty bottles, for example; he threw them away.
“I’d feel ashamed,” he’d say. “How could I, like a beggar?”
One day he woke up feeling poorly and complained:
“I’ve got the shakes all over.”
I gave him a rouble. At lunchtime I asked:
“How goes it, feeling any better?”
“Whatsa?”
“Did you have a pick-me-up?”
“Huh! It went down like water on a hot pan, it sizzled!”
In the evening he was in pain again.
“I’ll go see Nikitin. Maybe he’ll gimme a rouble or just pour some…”
I stepped onto the porch and was witness to this conversation:
“Hey, neighbour, you scrud, gimme a fiver.”
“You owe me since Intercession.”*
“I’ll pay you back.”
“We’ll talk when you do.”
“You’ll get it when I get paid.”
“Get paid?! You got booted for cause ages ago.”
“Fuck ’em and the horse they rode in on! Gimme a fiver anyway. Do it on principle, for Christ’s sake! Show them our Soviet character!”
“Don’t tell me, for vodka?”
“Whatsa? I got business…”
“A parasite like you? What kinda business?”
Mikhail Ivanych found it hard to lie; he was weak.
“I need a drink,” he said.
“I won’t give it to you. Be mad, if you want, but I won’t give it you!”
“But I’ll pay you back, from my wages.”
“No.”
And to end the conversation Nikitin went back into the house, slamming the heavy door with the blue mailbox.
“You just wait, neighbour,” fumed Mikhail Ivanych. “You wait! You’re gonna get yours! That’s right! You’ll remember this conversation!”
There was no sound in response. Chickens maundered about. Golden braids of onions hung above the porch…
“I’ll make your life hell! I’ll…”
Red-faced and dishevelled, Mikhail Ivanych bellowed:
“Have you forgot?! Have you forgot everything, you snake? Clean forgot it?!”
“What’d I forget?” Nikitin leant out.
“If you forgot, we’ll remind you!”
“What’d I forget, eh?”
“We remember everything! We remember 1917! We whatchamacallit… We dispossessed you, you scummy scrud! We’ll dispossess your whole Party lot! We’ll ship you off to the Cheka… Like Daddy Makhno*… There they’ll show you…”
And after a short pause:
“Hey neighbour, lend me a fiver… All right, a trey… I’m begging you, for the love of Christ… you larder bitch!”
Finally I mustered up the courage to start work. I was assigned a group of tourists from the Baltics. These were reserved, disciplined people who listened contentedly and did not ask questions. I tried to be brief and was not entirely sure I was being understood.
Later I would be given a full overview. Tourists from Riga are the best-mannered. Whatever you say, they smile and nod in agreement. If they do ask questions, then they’re always on the practical side: how many serfs did Pushkin own? What was the revenue from Mikhailovskoye? What was the total cost of renovations to the manor house?
The Caucasians behaved differently. Generally, they didn’t listen at all. They talked among themselves and laughed loudly. On the drive to Trigorskoye they lovingly gazed at the sheep. Evidently they were able to identify their potential as kebabs. And if they asked questions, it was always something entirely unexpected. For instance: “What was the duel between Pushkin and Lermontov about?”*