Posing the question that way automatically ranked folklore in the realm of make-believe. After stopping on Palace Square, Solovyov asked himself to what degree history itself was make-believe. That question seemed completely natural on the main square of an empire.
It was a warm evening for the beginning of November. Warm and damp, in Petersburg’s way. An angel’s lowered head was looking at the gleaming cobblestones. Solovyov looked at the angel. A silvery haze shimmered in the beams of spotlights directed at the column. That Timofei Zhzhenka did not, prudently, give his characters names still did not render his story make-believe. Maybe he was not so simple, this Timofei. Who in Soviet Russia would have published the general’s valet’s memoirs? (Did the valet write his memoirs? Did he write at all?) Timofei Zhzhenka had seemingly found a witty way to tell future generations about what he had seen. Having no doubt that the general’s life would be studied one day. Solovyov smiled at his thoughts as he opened his umbrella. Sapienti sat.[3] That was about what Timofei might have thought.
The rain intensified as Solovyov approached his building.
It was draining from somewhere above in long, cold streams, drumming on the tin of the ledges and bursting with a roar from rainspouts plastered in adverts. His umbrella saved him only partially. It did not shelter him from the water-saturated wind. The wind swooped down out of nowhere and the gusts stung Solovyov as if he had been hit by a wet rag. The wind twisted the arm holding the umbrella, bending its spokes and exposing the fabric’s inner and defiantly dry side. Solovyov had to close the umbrella when it nearly flew away at the corner of Zhdanovskaya Embankment and Bolshoy Avenue. He felt cold rivulets under his shirt and could hear a repulsive squishing in his shoes, even through the sound of the downpour. The only thing left for him to do was run.
At home, Solovyov undressed and got into the shower. Water manifested itself completely differently now: its flows were hot and friendly here, its embraces ticklish and tender. There was something of Leeza’s touch in that, which made him feel her absence even more acutely. Leeza did not know of the discovery he had made today. And it was so important to him to tell someone about it.
When Solovyov came out of the bathroom, he threw on his robe and dialed Prof. Nikolsky’s number. Nobody came to the phone at the other end of the line. Solovyov dialed the number again and waited a little longer. He almost heard the crackling old apparatus in the professor’s hallway. The professor would hurry for the second call after being too late for the first. That happened with old people. Old people asked that callers wait as long as possible before hanging up. The professor was making his way through a cluttered hallway. Losing his slippers as he went. Holding glasses that were slipping from his nose. (Solovyov felt uncomfortable but did not put the phone down.) The professor’s sleeve caught on a door knob. On a nail sticking out of a bookshelf. His foot grazed a pile of journals on the floor. The pile scattered into a fan that would refresh nobody.
In the end, the professor did not answer. Solovyov wanted to call someone else but there was nobody else to call. He realized that when the tones inside the phone changed, as if they had tired. He kept listening to them, not wanting to put the receiver down; they sounded like signals from Mars might sound. That sort of connection was, essentially, organic at house No. 11 on Zhdanovskaya Embankment. Contact with Planet Earth was ruled out for that evening.
Prof. Nikolsky’s absence troubled Solovyov. He headed to the university in the morning and learned there that the professor was in the hospital. The dean’s office employee was reluctant to answer his question about what had happened to the professor. It was not customary to give out this sort of information.
‘Something about his lungs… They’re doing tests.’
The hospital where Prof. Nikolsky was undergoing tests was in the northern part of the city. Solovyov bought some oranges along the way. Upon reflection, he also bought some German cookies. His thought was that these foodstuffs were incapable of harming the professor’s lungs.
Solovyov had no trouble finding the pulmonary department. There was no sense of the usual stench of Russian hospitals there. Perhaps lung disease did not assume a smell. The nurse on duty was sitting in the corner of the hallway. She was noting down something in a journal, slowly tracing out letter after letter. Solovyov asked which room the professor was in. The nurse answered without raising her head. Her knitting lay next to the journal. Based on her reverie, it was clear she had only just set it aside.
‘What happened to Professor Nikolsky?’ Solovyov asked.
Her pen was moving with the placidity of a knitting needle.
‘Nothing good.’
Prof. Nikolsky had a small but private room. Nobody answered when Solovyov knocked. He pressed the door handle and cautiously opened the door a little. Prof. Nikolsky was half-lying on the bed. This was the same unusual pose the professor himself had talked about at one time, during lectures about the Petrine period. At the time, this—half-sitting (half-lying?)—was considered healthful for sleeping, so blood would not rush to the head. Prof. Nikolsky was half-lying (half-sitting?) like that in his room. His eyes were closed.
Solovyov’s purposeful gaze proved more efficacious than his knock. The professor opened his eyes. It is possible he was not even sleeping. Most likely (Solovyov grasped this from the professor’s tranquility) he had heard the knock.
Solovyov greeted him before crossing the threshold.
‘Come in, my friend.’
The professor gestured, barely noticeably, pointing to a chair beside the bed. There was a whiff of his usual goodwill in that gesture, but there was something more now, too. What Solovyov initially took for tranquility was undoubtedly something else that customary words did not fit.
‘So, I brought… here.’
Solovyov took the oranges out of the bag. When he was on his way here, he had intended to ask the professor about his health but now he could not do so. He remembered the cookies and pulled those out.
‘And these…’
Disheartened by his own eloquence, Solovyov held out the packages for the professor.
‘Thank you.’
He put the packages on the blanket. Now the packages and the blanket moved, barely noticeably, in time with Nikolsky’s breathing. His breathing—so it seemed to Solovyov, anyway—was rapid and irregular. The professor’s pale, hairless chest was visible behind baggy pajamas; a small aluminum cross shone on his chest. Solovyov thought that he had never seen the professor’s body: he did not remember seeing him without a necktie. Nikolsky took Solovyov’s hand.
‘How’s the dissertation?’
‘I’m almost finished.’
‘Good work. Bring it to me, all right?’
Solovyov’s dissertation lay in his bag. He nodded.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Not so great… But even so, better than your general.’
The professor was trying to sit up more and the oranges slid down to the edge of the bed. ‘Did you manage to find the end of his memoirs?’
‘Not yet. But I found something else.’
And Solovyov told of yesterday’s discovery. Nikolsky heard him out without interrupting.
‘The truth is more wonderful than make-believe.’
A nurse came in and held out a plastic lid with several pills for the professor. He tossed all the pills into his mouth at once with a familiar motion that even had a devil-may-care feel, then drank them down with water. This made no impression whatsoever on the nurse.
‘You know,’ said Solovyov after waiting for the door to close behind the nurse, ‘with everything almost done, right now a sort of unusual feeling has come up. Maybe it’s dissatisfaction. It’s hard for me to express…’