Walking downhill along Botkinskaya, the uneasy Solovyov wondered what would happen to Zoya now. His unease was momentary, though, and without it, Solovyov, a person with scruples, could not have surrendered himself to the joy of possessing the manuscript. The small packet of sheets, which were inscribed with a compact, precise script, belonged only to him. It fluttered with each swing of an arm that was beginning to tan, and (this was unbelievable) the packet evoked not the slightest interest among pedestrians.
Solovyov did not feel like going home. It was tough to be alone with his happiness, just as it is tough when someone’s relationship is condemned, illegitimate, and, perhaps, even criminal. People put that out in the open. They rush out in public with it, visiting receptions, clubs, and shows… Solovyov went to the embankment. As he stepped down from its upper sections, he saw a row of seats like those that line stadiums. These grandstands for spectators faced the best show on earth: the sea.
Solovyov delighted in the motion of the waves and himself felt a little like the general. Like the inveterate smoker who lingers before lighting a cigarette (a special type of voluptuousness), Solovyov was in no hurry to begin reading. Rejoicing in his spoils by feel, he stroked the slightly limp edge of the sheets and knocked the packet against his knees to give it an ideally correct appearance.
The general’s memoirs began like this, ‘At the age of ten, my parents sent me to the Second Cadet Corps.’ Ten years old. The description of everything that happened before that had been published by Dupont, who, as we know, assumed that a continuation existed. And so the French researcher’s scholarly intuition permitted her to predict this sweet moment Solovyov was experiencing on the embankment in Yalta. He read sheet after sheet, placing what he had read at the end of the packet. Distancing himself from the first sheet even as he inexorably neared it. Tearing himself away from Akinfeeva’s close lines from time to time, he scanned the horizon and thought about how his reading process was akin to a round-the-world journey whose goal is to return to the starting point.
9
The general’s parents sent him to the Second Cadet Corps at the age of ten. We will acknowledge the anachronism of the previous sentence and leave it at that. In some sense, he was already a general as a ten-year-old because strictly (although nonhistorically) speaking, he was always a general. Who could have dared imagine him as anything other than a general? Dupont had already posed that question in her day. And—in the article ‘This Is Not Today’s Tribe’—she answered in her characteristically uncompromising manner: nobody.
In dictating to Nina Fedorovna his recollections of the years of his life at the Second Corps, the general emphasized that the gold stitching on the black uniforms at that educational institution was somewhat thinner than in other corps (the First, the Nikolaevsky, and even the Alexandersky, for example), not to mention that the trousers for the Second Corps’ cadets, unlike those for many other corps, were dark blue, not black. The general also pointed out that later, when weapons handling was introduced in the combatant companies, the Second Corps was given the right to carry dragoon sabers on sword belts as the guards did.
They rose early, at six in the morning. To a horn. That was fine in summer, during the white nights, but it was intolerable in winter. In summer, the future general rose a half hour before reveille so he could greet the horn fully conscious, in order not to let it horn in on his sweetest morning dreams. That did not work out in winter. He could not bear to leave a bed warmed during the night and plunge into the bedroom’s penetrating cold. The temperature never rose above ten degrees there, that was the rule. In the late nineteenth century, it was not recommended that young men sleep in warm quarters.
They washed in cold water to the waist and that was a little worse than the horn. They went out on the platz in just woolen jackets. In any weather. It is possible that this Spartan training drew cadet Larionov’s attention to King Leonidas’s feat. The opposite, however, cannot be ruled out, either: that the Spartan king’s feat reconciled Larionov to such a harsh routine. What does remain a fact is that both the Spartan training, and the cadet’s extensive familiarity with the course of battle, came in very, very handy for him during his mature years.
When he walked outside for morning formations, Larionov would try not to notice the snowflakes melting underneath his collar. He thought about how the Spartans—who, generally speaking, were connoisseurs of difficulty—did not have a problem like the Russian cold. Larionov would lift his head from time to time and look at his classmates huddled in the darkness of the December platz. They were small, not awake, and covered in bits of ice. In the glint of the gaslights, only the insignias on their hats, polished to glimmering, and their red noses, were visible. Their eyes watered from the prickly morning wind and from sleep that had not passed. The difficulties did not break them. On the contrary, they nourished them, tempering body and spirit. They grew into strong fellows and genuine officers. ‘They have all died,’ the general wrote over one line.
Cadet Lanskoy had a special place in the general’s life at that time. The general obviously singled out this handsome and, judging from the description, arrogant boy in his reminiscences. Cadets Larionov and Lanskoy stuck together for several years. Their relations were not friendship in the usual sense. Lanskoy did absolutely nothing to bring about or, later, strengthen those relations. His contribution to the friendship was that he permitted himself to be admired.
In some certain way, Lanskoy was worth admiring. He was possibly the best student of all, without making visible efforts. He pronounced his answers softly and even, somehow, condescendingly. This annoyed the teachers, but there was nothing to find fault in. His audacity was reckless. On a dare, he swam under the ice of the Zhdanovka River, from one hole in the ice to another. Despite very strict rules, he sometimes left the corps’ billeting before bedtime and returned toward morning, through the window.
One time, cadet Larionov escaped with him. After changing into civilian clothes, they rambled around snow-covered Petersburg for half the night. Larionov felt absolutely wretched about it. Violating discipline felt like genuine betrayal to him. He himself would have been hard pressed to say what, exactly, he had betrayed, but he had no doubt that betrayal had come to pass. Around 2:30, the cadets dropped in at a tavern and ordered a half-glass of vodka each. They managed to return unnoticed that night but in the morning Larionov, who had never before been sick, got sick. His temperature rose. He was hit with the chills. Tears streamed from his eyes. They were tears of repentance but nobody knew that. Nobody but Lanskoy. He visited Larionov at the infirmary on the third day and said, ‘Larionov, you’re a decent person. You’re sick from violating the routine. You shouldn’t have escaped with me.’
Cadet Larionov expected his friend to visit him again but that did not happen. After Larionov’s release from the infirmary, Lanskoy greeted him from afar. Larionov nodded and did not even approach him. They fell out of touch after graduating from the corps.
The majority of subjects (other than languages) were taught at the corps by military men. Cadets were supposed to have six lessons a day, followed by horseback riding and drill training. At first, riding devoured almost all Larionov’s attention. It is likely that this is the age that should be considered the beginning of the general’s long conversations with horses, something referred to in the literature (such as cavalry commander Semyon Budyonny’s A Good Attitude Toward Horses) multiple times.