Prof. Nikolsky was very satisfied with his former student (and are any students ‘former’?). More than anything, he approved of the result from the point of view that Solovyov had been on the right track with his methods. Despite all his love for brave deductions, the professor considered empirical research the only possible basis for any scholarly work. On top of that, he emphasized that any work, even if it looks pointless at first glance, will certainly bear fruit if the work has a source. In this regard, by the way, he did not rate the future Crimean conference very highly. He called the majority of its participants ‘inspired blowhards’ but did not talk Solovyov out of going.
‘You need to see that, too,’ he told the graduate student in parting. ‘Once, at any rate.’
The second circumstance that evoked the professor’s interest in Solovyov’s finding was its significance for the history of the war itself. Until now, no documents had existed that directly or circumstantially confirmed a personal meeting of the two adversaries. Even so, conjecture about the possibility of such a meeting had been expressed in the émigré press back in 1930. Lacking any factual confirmation for his conjecture, in Ten Years Later, author Yuri Krivich permitted himself to go even further. He posed the question of whether the hypothetical meeting was the general’s attempt to arrange a secret connection with the Reds. Since the question was posed in an accusatory tone, the essence of the general’s betrayal remained unclear. How did it come about that he prevailed over the Reds in one of his most convincing victories as a result of a deal with them? And, consequently, why did the Reds need that sort of deal? The only thing the author could produce to support the theory was the unchanging question: why did the general remain alive at the end of the war?
It is interesting that the Red side later also expressed a supposition regarding the general’s meeting with Zhloba. Moreover, this mention of a deal—this time, naturally, in favor of the Whites—no longer sounded like a hint. The deal was announced as if it were a verified, albeit unconfirmed, fact. Since Zhloba had already been shot by that time—under a decision of the ‘troika’ of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs—in his article ‘At the Last Boundary’, Sergei Drel expressed restrained satisfaction that justice had triumphed after all with regard to the traitor, albeit slightly in advance of the determination of his guilt. Solovyov concluded his talk with this sarcastic phrase, which he thought was not lacking for effect.
Princess Meshcherskaya nodded silently but genially. Zoya watched as Shulgin finished constructing some sort of complex, albeit two-dimensional, figure out of matches. Since the table shook constantly, he had thought it pointless to create a figure with volume. Nesterenko was sleeping.
11
Zoya spent the night at Solovyov’s again. This time there was none of the uncertainty that had tormented them both, and so they made love without hesitation after a light dinner with wine. There was no tension at all. Unhurried and even with a certain flirtatiousness, Solovyov undressed and waited for Zoya under the sheet. She took off her clothes, standing half-facing him. Solovyov delighted in how she moved: Zoya knew how to undress.
She removed her attire calmly and elegantly, with a subtle portion of the resignation any Russian woman simply felt obliged to display for her possessor. After taking off her jeans, she glanced at them in her hand and tossed them onto a chair, with a quick jingle of the belt buckle. She extracted a pair of panties out from under a long shirt with a man’s cut and carefully, using her index finger and thumb, placed them on her jeans. She touched her shirt collar with both hands, slowing down. She undid the long row of buttons as if she were in doubt. The shirt slid from her shoulders but its edge remained in Zoya’s small fist. Set against the background of her dark skin, the bright linen of her shirt fell to the floor casually, folding into an unusual flower scented with deodorant. A bikini tan line flashed on Zoya’s supple bottom.
She was different that night. After revealing her spiritedness the night before, today Zoya demonstrated technique that was no less outstanding. To Solovyov’s surprise, the museum employee’s knowledge of this non-Chekhovian realm was boundless. The image of a boat amongst waves that had entered the researcher’s thoughts yesterday had faded. There was now something else that did not lend itself to instantaneous definition. Solovyov had no time at all for deliberation, though.
The morning was fabulous. Relaxed, quiet, and contented. There was complete calm, like after a visit to the bathhouse. The body’s absolute lack of inhibition, delight emanating from each of its cells. Or even the feeling a day after playing football. A pleasant ache in the leg and pelvic muscles, an unwillingness to get up. Combined with a feeling of deep satisfaction: Solovyov thought he was genuinely experiencing this phrase for the first time.
Zoya sat on top of him and began giving him a massage. She started with his hair. She gathered it in waves, clasping her hands together on top of his head. She kneaded his neck and back. At first she touched him, just barely, with the very tips of her fingers, as if she were injecting through them a mysterious electricity that made goosebumps cover Solovyov. Then her palms made powerful grasping movements. They turned Solovyov’s back to gelatin, to clay, removing the crystalline current it had received and instead pouring in a muscle-stretching energy. From time to time, when Zoya’s movements were particularly vigorous, Solovyov felt the touch of her intimate hair in the small of his back. Then—after Zoya resettled on his legs—she massaged the lower back itself, then his behind (what an apt name that is, anyway). That turned out to be especially pleasant; its softness was made for massages. Zoya sank her palms into the stillness of his strongest muscles. The pulsing of her palms repeated the rhythm of those very same muscles, imitating their ancient movement. She moved on to his legs. She achieved their full relaxation by rubbing them on both sides. This was how footballers going in as substitutes were handled, too. Soles of the feet. Heels, with a rubbing, circular motion. Each toe thoroughly. The apotheosis of the corporeal. A fresh morning breeze with a juniper aroma rushed through the open window and blended with the smell of their bodies.
After breakfast, they headed for the embankment. Solovyov took the opportunity to check his height and weight along the way. He thought medical scales were something one would no longer run into on Petersburg’s streets: splotchy white after having been repainted, the quiet clanging of the hanging weights. Where had they disappeared to? Where had the machines selling carbonated water gone? What about the barrels of kvass and beer? It occurred to Solovyov that not one history book had noted their departure, just as not one history book had said anything about their arrival. But they truly had existed. They had defined a way of life, making it more bearable, if only, needless to say, to the limited degree they could.
An elderly man wearing glasses weighed Solovyov. The lenses of his glasses were large and bulging. His eyes seemed to be, too, as he monitored the markings on the scale. Strictly speaking, he was not monitoring the markings. He could determine anyone’s weight from a distance. There was a rubber band instead of a right temple on his glasses.