Finally, friends got him a job as a watchman at a movie theatre. It was a night job, so you could sleep if you wanted, or read, or think, if you were so inclined. Mitrofanov had but a single responsibility – after midnight he had to flip on some sort of switch. And he’d forget to do it. Or was too lazy. He got fired…
Later on, we were disheartened to learn that Mitrofanov wasn’t simply a slacker. He was diagnosed with a rare clinical condition – aboulia, or total atrophy of will.
He was a phenomenon that belonged to the vegetable kingdom, a bright, fanciful flower. A chrysanthemum cannot hoe its own soil and water itself.
And then Mitrofanov heard about Pushkin Hills. He came, looked around and ascertained that this was the only institution where he could be useful.
What’s expected of a tour guide? A vivid and dramatic story, and nothing more.
And Mitrofanov knew how to tell a story. His tours were full of surprising references, dazzling suppositions, rare archival notes and quotations in six languages.
His tours were twice longer than the average. At times, tourists fainted from the strain.
There were some complications, of course: Mitrofanov was reluctant to climb Savkin Hill. The tourists struggled to the top while Mitrofanov stood at the foot of the knoll, articulating:
“As it has for so many years, this large green mound rises above the river Sorot. The remarkable symmetry of its form points to its artificial origins. When it comes to the etymology of the name Sorot, it is rather curious, even if not entirely decorous…”
Once the tourists laid out a fake leather coat and hauled Mitrofanov up the hill, while he continued broadcasting with a satisfied smile:
“Legend has it that one of the Voronich monasteries stood on this site…”
He was valued at the Preserve…
A no less colourful personality was Stasik Pototsky. He was born in Cheboksary and until the age of sixteen did not stand out. He played hockey without giving a thought to serious matters. Then finally he turned up in Leningrad with a delegation of young athletes.
On the very first day, he lost his virginity to a floor monitor at the Hotel Sokol. He was lucky – she was old and affectionate. She treated the junior to Alabashly wine and whispered to her drunk and lovesick boy:
“Look at you! So little yet so spirited!”
Pototsky quickly came to realize that there were two things on this earth worth living for – wine and women. The rest did not deserve his attention. But women and wine cost money. Therefore, you had to know how to earn it. Preferably without much effort and without ending up in jail.
He decided to become a writer of best-sellers. He read twelve contemporary novels and grew confident that he could do no worse. And so he bought a calico notebook, a ballpoint pen and a refill.
His first composition was published in Youth Magazine. The story was titled ‘The Victory of Shurka Chemodanov’. A young hockey player, Chemodanov, becomes full of himself and quits school. Then he comes to his senses, turns into a model student and an even better hockey player. The piece ended like this:
“‘The most important thing, Shurka, is being a human being,’ said Lukyanych, and walked away. For a long, long time, Shurka’s eyes followed him…”
The story was extraordinarily unremarkable. Hundreds just like it graced the pages of youth magazines. The editors were forgiving towards Pototsky. Apparently he deserved a break, as a provincial author.
Within a year, he succeeded in publishing seven short stories and a novella. His creations were banal, ideologically sound and dull. A recognizable thread ran through all of them. A reliable armour of literary conventionality protected them from censorship. They sounded convincing, like quotations. The most exciting things about them were syntax errors and misprints:
“Misha excepted that he had finally turned thirteen…” (From the story ‘Misha’s Woe’.)
“‘May he rest in piece!’ Odintsov concluded his speech…” (From the story ‘The Smoke Rises Skyward’.)
“‘Don’t throw a wench in the works,’ threatened Lepko…” (From the novel Seagulls Fly to the Horizon.)
Later Pototsky would say to me:
“I’m a fuckin’ writer, sort of like Chekhov. Chekhov was absolutely right. You can write a story just about anything. There’s no shortage of subject matter. Take any profession. Say a doctor. And here you have it: a fuckin’ surgeon goes to operate and recognizes his patient as the man who slept with his wife. The surgeon is faced with a moral fuckin’ dilemma – to save the man or cut off his… No, that’s too much, that’s fuckin’ overkill. Bottom line, the surgeon is hesitant. Then he picks up a scalpel and performs a miracle. The fuckin’ end goes something like this: ‘For a long, long time the nurse’s gaze followed him…’ Or take the sea, for example,” Pototsky went on, “Nothing to it… A sailor retires and leaves his beloved fuckin’ ship. His friends, his past, his youth are all left behind. He goes for a walk along the Fontanka River, looking forlorn. And he spots a fuckin’ drowning boy. Without a second thought the sailor leaps into the icy vortex. Risking his life, he saves the kid. The end goes like this: ‘Vitya will never forget this hand. Large, calloused, with a light-blue anchor on the wrist…’ Meaning – a sailor will always be a sailor, even if he is fuckin’ retired…”
Pototsky would complete a story a day. He published a book. It was called Dark Roads to Happiness. It received kind reviews that gently pointed out the author’s backwater origins.
Stasik decided to leave Cheboksary. He wanted to spread his wings, so he moved to Leningrad and became very fond of the Europa restaurant and two models.
In Leningrad, his stories were received coolly. The standards there were a little higher. A complete absence of talent did not pay, while its presence made people nervous. Genius instilled fear. The most bankable were “obvious literary abilities”. Pototsky had no obvious abilities. Something glimmered in his compositions, slipped through, flickered. An accidental phrase, an unexpected remark… “Opaline bulb of garlic.” “A stewardess on paraffin legs.” But no obvious abilities.
They stopped publishing him. What was forgiven a provincial novice affronted in a cosmopolitan writer. Stasik started to drink, and not in Europa but in artists’ basements. And not with models, but with the floor-monitor friend. (She now sold fruit from a stall.)
He drank for four years. Did a year for vagrancy. The floor-monitor friend (now a worker in the food industry) left him. He may have given her a beating, or stolen from her…
His clothes turned into rags. Friends ceased lending him money and refrained from giving him cast-off slacks. The militia threatened to throw him back in jail for violating the residency rules. Someone put him on to Pushkin Hills. This lifted his spirits. Stasik prepared, began giving tours. And he wasn’t bad. His trump card was his confiding intimacy:
“Pushkin’s personal tragedy causes us heartache even to this day…”
Pototsky embellished his monologues with fantastic detail, acted out the duel scene in character, and once even fell on the grass. He would conclude the tour with a mysterious metaphysical contrivance:
“Finally, after a long and agonizing illness, Russia’s great citizen had succumbed, but d’Anthès is still alive, comrades…”*
Every now and again he would go on a binge, neglecting his job, bumming some change in front of a local watering hole, hunting for empty bottles in the bushes and sleeping on the cracked gravestone of Alexei Nikolayevich Vulf.
Whenever Captain Shatko of the militia ran into him, he’d say reproachfully:
“Pototsky, your appearance disturbs the harmony of these parts.”