The audience awaited Papitsa’s paper with impatience. This was not related to the researcher having some sort of high standing in historical science. Papitsa did not have high standing. This was not even connected with Papitsa’s beard, which made his oral presentations far more attractive than the written ones. The reason for the interest lay in generaliana’s fundamental question, which was expressed in his paper’s title: ‘Why Did the General Remain Alive?’
There was movement in the lighting balcony, just as Papitsa began his paper. The face of the man who had gone onstage came into sight behind the balcony’s steel structure; a moment later, spotlights began shining, one after another. Backlighting was coming only from the right balcony, causing sinister black shadows to form onstage. Two colored beams—green and dark blue—were directed at the co-chairs.
Papitsa read with an energetic delivery, gesturing and stamping his feet as he stood. He was reading in the literal sense, without taking his eyes from the text. His gnarled fingers slid along the edge of the lectern, sometimes coming away from it, sometimes falling still. Papitsa leaned on the microphone from time to time, deafening the audience with the crackling of his beard. Then he would push himself sharply away from the lectern so his body would stretch up perfectly straight, inclining and then freezing at that unnatural angle.
Papitsa painstakingly enumerated the reasons why the general should have been shot. There were, in the researcher’s assessment, twenty-seven reasons. At the same time, there were only two alternatives for avoiding execution. The general did not use either; implied were escape to Constantinople or going underground. From this, there followed the existence of a third alternative, hitherto unknown. This alternative for escaping the firing squad was—and here the presenter straightened up and looked into the audience—collaboration with the Reds.
The researcher’s argumentation was not new. Papitsa repeated conjecture about the general meeting with Dmitry Zhloba, things that had been stated back in the day, both in the émigré and the Soviet press, in Krivich’s Ten Years Later as well as Drel’s At the Front Line, but he did not draw in any additional evidence. Papitsa did not know the results of Solovyov’s work, showing that on the night of June 13–14, 1920, from 23:55 until 03:35, Zhloba’s and General Larionov’s armored trains stood facing each other at the station in Gnadenfeld. Going further than his predecessors, Papitsa also surmised that Dzerzhinsky (at this moment, the presenter looked, extraordinarily, like Dali) had recruited Larionov back in 1918 and that Larionov fulfilled all the Cheka’s assignments to the letter from then on. The researcher explained the general’s resounding victories as tactical considerations. He surmised that they were launched with the goal of deflecting attention from the decisive battle in the autumn of 1920 at Perekop, which the general allegedly lost under an agreement. Papitsa called all the battles waged before that ‘staged’ and appealed for them not to be taken seriously.
‘General Larionov was a Cheka agent for the entire Civil War, from beginning to end,’ concluded the presenter. ‘And there’s your answer to the question of why he was not executed.’
‘He’s lying,’ rang out a female voice in the auditorium.
A lady was moving toward the stage along the center aisle of the parterre. A click sounded in the lighting balcony and Papitsa found himself in the center of a red beam.
‘If I may,’ said Kvasha, moderating, ‘The general had better alternatives for helping the Reds, though. Why, then, one might ask, would he wait around until November 1920…?’
The lady walking through the hall went up on the stage and approached the presenter. Solovyov recognized her when she turned toward the audience. She was Nina Fedorovna Akinfeeva.
‘He’s lying,’ Nina Fedorovna repeated into the microphone.
She was exactly a head taller than the speaker. Papitsa ran a hand along his red beard, ‘I’m open to counterarguments. Prove to me that I’m wrong.’
Without saying a word, Nina Fedorovna took him by the beard and led him out from behind the lectern. Papitsa did not resist. As they walked through the parterre, another spotlight came on and followed them right to the exit. Nina Fedorovna’s face expressed rage. Papitsa’s face (it was turned upward) was devoid of expression. Once the two of them had disappeared behind the velvet drape at the exit, Alex Schwartz announced Solovyov’s paper. The emancipation of Russian women had exceeded all her expectations.
Solovyov felt close to desperation. This was the second time he had seen Nina Fedorovna Akinfeeva and the second time she had eluded him. Even as he began his paper, he kept glancing at the velvet drape, hoping Nina Fedorovna would return after all. But she did not come back.
Solovyov handled himself calmly behind the lectern. He had read this paper for the small Yalta circle so felt no anxiety now. He did not even glance at the text. As he was presenting, he noticed everything taking place in the audience and on the stage. The cannery director nodded sympathetically from the first row of the parterre as Solovyov spoke. Schwartz occasionally said something to Kvasha, who shrugged in reply. The lighting technician’s face flashed again somewhere among the spotlights and then, drawn by some outside force, disappeared from the balcony forever. Papitsa, who had returned to the room unnoticed, was sitting in the back row. Only Nina Fedorovna was missing.
Solovyov looked around again after finishing his paper. He had always been interested in how actors feel onstage. Do they hear chairs creaking? A cough? Whispering in the parterre? Now he knew: they hear it. They see when someone is leaving the hall, half bent over. That is annoying. At Kvasha’s nod, Solovyov left the podium. Deliberately and with dignity, as a person not in a hurry.
Solovyov heard the next presenter begin as he walked past the first half of the rows of the parterre. He thought he should stay in the auditorium a few more minutes, if only as a courtesy. He thought that but did not stop. He felt fatigue. Without slowing his pace, Solovyov walked to the end of the parterre and exited the hall. Nina Fedorovna was smoking nervously by one of the columns. She was watching the door intently, obviously believing Papitsa had gotten out of this too easily. Deliberating whether or not to repeat her impressive performance with the researcher.
Solovyov felt unrestrained by gravity. It seemed as if he would be carried away by the very first gust of a sea breeze and his meeting with Nina Fedorovna would, again, not take place. But he was not carried off. After sensing solid ground under his feet, Solovyov took a step toward the elderly woman. He touched her arm with the gesture of someone capturing the Firebird. He knew she would not escape now.
‘That was great… how you got him.’ Solovyov smiled, lost. He had waited a long time for this conversation but had not imagined it would begin like this.
‘Uh-huh.’
Surprise replaced indignation. Nina Fedorovna took a deep drag on the cigarette.
‘I’m writing my dissertation about the general… I need your help.’
Solovyov began speaking quickly and muddledly, as if he were afraid Nina Fedorovna would refuse. He told her about what he had already accomplished in Petersburg and even named most of the corrections he had made to Dupont’s data. Nina Fedorovna listened to him sympathetically, though a bit absently, too. Clearly, she could not keep up with the abundance of figures Solovyov cited. Nina Fedorovna went to the waste bin (Solovyov went with her), put out her cigarette butt on its concrete edge, and shot it into the urn’s maw like a catapult, with two fingers. Nina Fedorovna lit another cigarette when Solovyov began telling her about his Yalta investigations. She livened up noticeably during the story about his searches with Zoya. After some hesitation, Solovyov decided to describe it all.