The door opened anyway. Solovyov looked around after entering the small rectangular room. The window faced what was not quite a garden: it was an ambiguous green environment where all the objects (bed frames, bar counters, tires) served as plant stands. There really were cats strolling along a wall overgrown with ivy.
Solovyov left his things in the room and went out into the city. He enjoyed taking a deep breath of Kerch’s evening air. The sea in Kerch was not Yalta’s resort sea. The sea was regarded completely differently here. It even smelled different. It had an ancient port aroma that included a light tinge of decay: seaweed on the breakwaters, fish in crates, and fruit crushed during shipment.
Solovyov walked along Kerch’s main street and liked it. ‘Le… Street,’ he read on a half-faded sign. Some sort of French continuation might have followed that, and the street itself did seem a bit French to him. The crowns of old acacias had intertwined over the street’s three-story houses, giving it the look of an endless gazebo. It was cool in the thick shadow that was turning to darkness. Le… Street. Solovyov could guess the street’s full name.
He bought himself some yellow bird cherries. When he saw a pump in a courtyard, he stopped there to wash them. To do so, he had to make several motions with the pump handle (it was cast iron with a lion on the grip) and then quickly run over to the spout and put the plastic bag of cherries underneath. Solovyov filled the bag with water, turned it upside-down, and released the water. The water disappeared through a blackened metal grate. Several cherries rolled down there, too.
The cherries turned out to be delicious: ripe, but firm. Solovyov took them in pairs, by their fused stalks, and gently—one after another—removed them from their stalks with his lips. He rolled the cherries in his mouth. Delighted in their form. Carefully bit into them, sensing the cherries’ special (yellow) sweetness. The flesh came away from the pits easily and the pits moved toward his lips, as if on their own, casually jumping down into Solovyov’s palm.
It was already dark when he returned to the hotel. Solovyov noticed some sort of motion even before turning on the light in his room. When he flicked the switch, he saw a cat on the windowsill. The cat neither hid nor ran. He walked away calmly, even seeming to hesitate. If Solovyov had addressed him, he would have stayed. His smoke-colored tail quivered. A clump of fur, also smoke-colored, hung on the zipper of Solovyov’s bag.
‘So you were digging around in my bag?’ Solovyov asked and then remembered, with shame, how he himself had dug around in Taras’s things.
The cat looked out the window with affected indifference. He was observing Solovyov with his peripheral vision and attempting to understand what might follow this sort of tone. Anything at all could follow. When Solovyov took a step toward the window, the cat jumped down from the windowsill to the ledge.
Feeling tired after his day of travel, Solovyov decided to go to bed. He fell asleep immediately and slept dreamlessly. A heavy slapping on the floor woke him up at dawn. He opened one eye halfway and saw two cats next to his bed. Solovyov waved his arm drowsily and the cats left, in a dignified manner. Solovyov thought that he ought to close the window after all, but fell straight back to sleep.
Participant registration for the ‘General Larionov as Text’ conference began at nine that morning. It took place at the Pushkin Theater, a stately building with a hint of classicism, on Kerch’s central square. The city was offering the best it had for studying General Larionov as text.
Solovyov saw the registration table when he entered the theater’s cool lobby. A young woman with red hair was sitting on a swiveling barstool beside the table. Her nose ring sparkled dimly.
‘Solovyov, Petersburg,’ said Solovyov. He thought the woman was no younger than thirty.
‘Wow!’ She made a full turn on the swiveling stool and was once again face-to-face with Solovyov. ‘Dunya, Moscow. I’ll register you, Solovyov.’
Dunya jumped down from the stool (Solovyov noticed the same kind of stools at the bar at the other end of the lobby), marked something in her papers, and held out a conference folder with the program. Solovyov opened the program and walked slowly toward the auditorium.
‘Your badge,’ Dunya bleated after him.
Solovyov turned. Dunya was sitting on her stool again and holding a nametag with his surname.
‘Mizter, you forgot your badge,’ she said, beckoning to him. ‘I’ll pin it on for you.’
Without getting up from her stool, Dunya pinned the nametag to Solovyov’s shirt, breathed on its plastic glossiness, and wiped it with her skirt hem. Solovyov examined Dunya’s untanned legs for several seconds.
‘Thank you.’
He started walking away but Dunya politely took him by the elbow.
‘What about your folder?’
He really had left it on the table.
‘Another absent-minded professor,’ said Dunya, shaking her head. ‘Your type needs looking after.’
Several people were already standing behind Solovyov and he rushed to get out of their way. He glanced at the program as he walked. His paper was set for the conference’s second—and final—day.
About forty minutes remained until the beginning of the morning session, so Solovyov decided to go for a walk. During that time, he managed to have a look at the Lenin monument, the post office, and the Chaika department store. When he returned to the theater, he saw Dunya by the columns. She was smoking.
‘Is it time?’ Solovyov politely asked.
‘It’s time to get out of here. The opening’s the most insipid part. That’s right, young man.’ Dunya put out her cigarette on the column’s rough surface. ‘You’d be better off treating a lady to coffee. I know a place nearby.’
A Volga sedan pulled up to the theater. A fat man in a light-brown suit got out and headed toward the entrance, tucking his shirt into his pants as he walked.
‘Local boss,’ said Dunya. ‘With a story about the cannery that’s sponsoring us. You interested?’
Solovyov shrugged. Dunya made such a face at the word ‘cannery’ that it would have been awkward to take an interest.
As Solovyov followed the energetic Dunya, he was angry with himself for his indecisiveness. In the first place, he did want to see the conference opening. In the second place (Solovyov suddenly realized this in all its clarity), more than anything, he felt tired of Zoya. This was the start of the second reel of some strange film he did not even seem to have agreed to be involved in.
They walked half a block and ended up in a dark vaulted basement. A chandelier shaped like a steering wheel hung from an enormous hook where the basement’s vaulted ceiling came together.
‘This little joint reminds me of “Gambrinus”,’ said Dunya.
‘I discovered it yesterday.’
Solovyov ordered two coffees with Chartreuse. The liqueur was served in faceted vodka glasses. Dunya poured half her shot into her coffee and drank the other half in one swallow.
‘When will academician Grunsky speak?’ asked Solovyov.
‘I think it’s actually right now. Alas, neither academician Likhachev nor academician Sakharov will be here today. So you can relax.’ Dunya lit a cigarette and the smoke began rising prettily toward the steering wheel. ‘I’d advise you not to get caught up in the academicians, the title has depreciated a lot. And Grunsky’s just plain stupid.’
‘Then how’d he get to be an academician?’
‘He had enough maneuverability. Connections.’ She blew out smoke in a thin stream. ‘Well, and he was brownnosing everybody in charge at the Academy.’