“I’m collecting eyewitness accounts,” I say. “In connection with Nilus, he wrote about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. What did this Ževahov look like?”
“In his youth he was attractive, tall. The last time I saw him was back before the war. He was still wearing his old-fashioned pincenez and an Order of St. Nicholas on his shabby old dress coat.”
I give Nikolaj the manuscript of my first book. (It would end up being published three or four years later.)
“It’s as if you belonged to the circle of the Serapion Brothers,” he says. “There are hints here that you share the same artistic program. Your reality is a poetic one.”
I say something to the effect that poetic reality is still reality.
“Reality is like grass and earth,” he says. “Reality is the grass that grows and it’s the feet that mangle it.”
I tell him that this is also a poetic image. A metaphor.
“An image, perhaps,” he says. “Let’s have another round. This is homemade kirsch. Some friends brought it to me. A writer,” he went on, “is supposed to observe life in its totality. The writer has to point out the great theme, dying — so that humans might be less proud, less selfish, less evil — and, on the other hand, he or she must imbue life with some kind of meaning. Art is the balance between those two contradictory concepts. And a person’s duty, especially for a writer — and now you’ll say I’m talking like an old man — involves leaving behind in this world not work (everything is work) but rather some goodness, some knowledge. Every written word is a piece of creation.” He paused. “Listen to that: the birds are singing already. Let’s turn in. Marija Nikolajevna will be angry if we go on like this till morning. She’s had a difficult life. Very difficult.”
I never had the nerve to ask him what kind of conflagration left its terrible tracks on her body. Just as I also never came to learn anything about his own life. From my “acquaintance,” the woman who had called my attention to this apartment and recommended me to the couple, I knew only that Marija Nikolajevna “had suffered burns while escaping from Russia” and that Nikolaj Aleksinski had come to Belgrade by way of Constantinople and was a specialist in forestry (a profession that I later assigned to the fictitious protagonist of one of my stories, in memory of Nikolaj Aleksinski, who already struck me as fictive, even back then). Although I spent many nights in conversation with this lively, good-hearted old man, I never heard so much as a single sentence from him spoken in confidence. I figured that my own shared confidences would make him my debtor, that he would one day grow communicative. But despite my confessions he never revealed anything about his earlier life.
I say to him: “What. should. I. do? I. am. in. love. with. two. women.”
At once his face assumes an expression of sincere concern. His eyes, twinkling with encouragement, betray the fact that my romantic woes have touched his heart.
“Love is a frightfully tricky thing. Don’t hurt either one of them. And don’t rush into anything. For your sake, and theirs.”
I say: “You’ve met one of them. I introduced her to you a month ago.”
“Clytemnaestra,” he comments. “A real Clytemnaestra. She’s capable of doing serious harm. Harm to herself or to you. Love is a terrible thing. What can I tell you? One can’t learn anything from the romantic experiences of other people. Every encounter between a man and a woman starts off as if it were the first such meeting on earth. As if there haven’t already been billions of such encounters since the time of Adam and Eve. You see, experience in love is nontransferable. This is a great misfortune. And a great piece of luck. God set things up this way. Just one more, and then I’ll put the bottle away. Marija Nikolajevna would be upset. Be careful. Don’t hurt anyone. Our souls carry the wounds of love longer than anything. And take care that literature doesn’t come to be a substitute for love for you. Literature is dangerous that way too. Life can’t be replaced by anything.”
Sometimes I asked him to play on his lute for me. When he was in a good mood, he’d say, “Tune it for me. I know you know how to do it.”
I would tune the lute and he’d start to play. He knew a few lieder and some Gypsy romances by heart. His ears had gone deaf but a few melodies still tingled in them, like distant memories; and he would make these remarkable sounds as he played, as though humming to himself.
“I think it sounds good today,” he’d say.
I would nod in agreement.
“That’s because it’s cloudy outside,” he stated. “The lute has been drying out. But weather like this suits it. Is it in tune?”
Leaning over the instrument as if he was listening for something, he strummed a few chords. Then he looked me in the eyes.
“A-minor,” I responded.
“It’s cloudy outside: the humidity does it good.”
I continued visiting him for years afterward, long after I had moved out. When my spirits were low, or when I needed advice, I would look him up. I knew he was reading all my writing in the journals, along with the reviews of my books.
“Talent is a curse,” he said to me. “Pushkin suffered on account of his talent. People envy nothing so much as a divine gift. Prodigies are rare, while mediocrity is legion. It’s an unending struggle. And don’t you go bury yourself in books. Travel. Listen to people. And listen to your own inner voice. Now, Marija Nikolajevna is expecting to see you too. Don’t get upset if she scolds you from time to time. She’s sick. And unhappy.”
Marija Nikolajevna, wrapped in a threadbare woolen shawl, was sitting by the window. The window gave onto a gloomy courtyard surrounded by battered walls.
“I read in the newspaper,” she said, “that the theater company you work with is going to Russia. Are you going along?”
“Yes,” I answered. “We’re going on a fifteen-day tour.”
“That’s what the paper said. Could you do us a favor?”
“I’d be happy to.”
“I’ve written down two addresses for you here. The first one is my sister’s: Valerija Mihajlovna Ščukina. The second is for Marija, like me, Marija Jermolajevna Siskova. That’s her best friend. Once she was my best friend, too. The last letter I received from either of them was in January of ’56. So, nine years ago. There’s a chance that they’re both still alive, or at least that one of them is. I assume that there would’ve been somebody to notify me if they had died. But just in case, take this — another name. Karajeva. Natalija Viktorovna. She’s the youngest of all of them. Let me write down her address for you, too. She could tell you what became of them, in the event you can’t find those first two. Would it be too hard for you to do this for us?”
On the second day after our arrival in Moscow, I was able to bribe the stern-looking caretaker on our floor. In front of the entrance to the hotel an invalid in a shabby army coat was standing propped up on crutches; he held out his greasy cap to the passersby. I gave him a bit of change. He tendered his thanks as though reciting a passage from Dostoyevsky.
I had barely turned the corner when I came upon the taxi stand that I’d discovered the day before, during our official tour of the city. The taxi took me to a large apartment building with a grim entrance and long, cold corridors.
I approached a couple of girls who were playing by the door. They looked at me, flabbergasted, and then scattered without a word. Finally a woman showed up and I read off the name and address to her.