Prof. Nikolsky never tired of repeating to his mentee that, as a rule, pretty phrases in scholarship are misguided, and the beauty of those phrases is based on their alleged universality and an absence of exceptions. But—and here the cigarette in the professor’s hand would trace a smoky ellipsis—that absence is spurious. No exhaustive truths exist (hardly any exist, the professor corrected himself, bringing the statement into accord with his own theory). For each a there is always a b and a c to be found, as well as something that no letters can convey. An honest researcher takes all that into account, but his pronouncements cease being beautiful. Thus spoke Prof. Nikolsky.
At some point, Solovyov’s blue-eyed romanticism gave way to a pronounced inclination toward precision, so this was a time when he discovered a particular beauty: the beauty of reliable knowledge. This was a time when the young man’s papers started to be mottled with enormous quantities of exhaustive and meticulously formatted footnotes. Footnotes became for him more than an occasion to express respect for his predecessors. They revealed to him that there was no one realm of knowledge where he, Solovyov, would be first, and that scholarship is, to the highest degree, a process that is bequeathed. They were representatives of great, all-encompassing knowledge. They watched after Solovyov and educated him, forcing him to rid himself of approximate and uncertain assertions. They blew open his smooth school-based exposition, because a text, just like existence itself, cannot exist without conditions.
Solovyov inserted footnote after footnote, marveling that he had managed to get by without them at the beginning of his scholarly career. When footnotes began accompanying nearly every word he wrote, Prof. Nikolsky was forced to stop him. He announced to Solovyov, in passing, that scholars usually get by without footnotes at the end of their careers, too. The young researcher felt disheartened.
Despite Solovyov’s expectations, the Pacific Ocean—to which he fought his way in his first important paper—did not become his primary topic. Prof. Nikolsky was able to convince his student that the most important part of history takes place on a continent. Only a strong familiarity with that part of history gives a researcher the right to leave dry land from time to time. After a wrenching internal struggle, Solovyov decided to postpone setting sail.
Solovyov came to appreciate Petersburg fully during his five university years. He began wearing high-quality but unostentatious clothing (clothing becomes more colorful when advancing south, and not only in Russia), referenced the powers that be with the short word they, and took a liking to evening strolls on Vasilevsky Island. His habit of taking strolls continued later, after renting an apartment on the Petrograd Side (Zhdanovskaya Embankment, No. 11). He would walk home after finishing his work at the library. Sadovaya Street. Summer Garden. Troitsky Bridge. In the winter, when the Summer Garden was closed (in accordance with its name) and its statues were boarded up in boxes, Solovyov would choose another route. He would reach the Neva River via Griboedov Canal and then turn on to Dvortsovy Bridge, after walking past the Winter Palace (which was open year-round, unlike the Summer Garden). At home, he would place his soaked boots on the radiator. By morning they would turn white, from the salt scattered by the yard workers.
Solovyov came to love the Public Library’s special winter coziness: Catherine the Great’s figure in a half-frosted window, pre-war lamps on the tables, and the barely audible whispering of those sitting behind him. He liked the indescribable library scent. That scent united the aromas of books, oak shelves, and worn runner rugs. All libraries smell that way. The snow-covered, one-story village library where the young Solovyov had borrowed books smelled that way. It was an hour and a half’s walk from the Kilometer 715 station; Solovyov stopped by the library after school before heading back to his station. He would sit, half-facing the elderly librarian Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s desk, while she searched for his books somewhere behind the cabinets. As he awaited Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s return, Solovyov would examine his violet fingers, which he sank into his rabbit-fur hat. Her voice would emerge from behind the cabinets from time to time.
‘Captain Blood: His Odyssey?’
‘Already read it.’
He read everything. The village library became his first true revelation and Nadezhda Nikiforovna was his first love.
Unlike the houses by the railroad, the library was very quiet and did not smell of railroad ties. Mixed in with the fabulous library potion was the smell of Red Moscow perfume. This was Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s perfume. If there was anything Solovyov felt was missing later, in his Petersburg life, it was likely Red Moscow.
‘In Search of the Castaways?’
Her quiet voice made goosebumps slowly descend down Solovyov’s spine. After licking a fingertip, Nadezhda Nikiforovna would pull his library card out of the drawer and enter the necessary notation. Fascinated, Solovyov followed the movement of her large fingers, with their dulled nails. A cameo glistened on her ring finger. When she placed a book on a shelf, Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s ring grazed the wood and the cameo produced a muffled plastic sound. That sound took on an extraordinary elegance, almost an elite quality, in Solovyov’s ears because it was so unlike the clanging of train carriage couplers. Later, he would qualify it as world culture’s first bashful knock at the door of his soul.
More often than not, Solovyov did not come to the library alone: he was with a girl named Leeza, who lived in the house next door. Leeza was not allowed to walk home by herself and was ordered to wait for Solovyov at the library. She would sit some distance away, silently observing the book exchange process. Sometimes she would borrow something Solovyov had already read. Solovyov immediately forgot about Leeza after coming home. He would recollect all the details of his visit to the library, indulging himself in dreams of married life with Nadezhda Nikiforovna.
It should be emphasized that he was eight years old then and his dreams were fully virtuous. Remote as he was from civilization’s hotbeds (and based on Nadezhda Nikiforovna’s expression, from those hotbeds’ settled ashes, too), Solovyov vaguely imagined the tasks of marriage, as well as the ways it takes its course. As it happened, that village library was his sole link to the outside world, ruling out the availability not only of erotic publications but of suggestive illustrations in periodicals as well. Nadezhda Nikiforovna censored new acquisitions in her free time, ruthlessly cutting those items out.
There is nothing surprising in the fact that five years later, when their instincts were awakening, Solovyov and Leeza were deprived of all manner of guidance in that sphere and progressed by groping along, in the literal sense of the word. Nevertheless, when the adolescent Solovyov engaged in sex in later years, he did not consider himself unfaithful to Nadezhda Nikiforovna. The idea of marriage, which had so warmed his heart as a child, lost no attraction for him then, either. The change took place only upon recognizing that certain things should not be demanded of Nadezhda Nikiforovna.
Leeza’s surname—Larionova—does not lack interest in this present narrative. This present narrative is inclined to accentuate various resemblances and coincidences because there is meaning in any similarity: similarity opens up another dimension and alludes to a true perspective, without which one’s view would certainly hit a wall. In taking on research into General Larionov’s life and work, Solovyov bore in mind his own previous familiarity with that same surname. He placed significance on such things. Needless to say, the young researcher could not yet explain the role of the Larionovs in his life, though even then he felt the role would not be secondary.