When they got out of the bus, they heard the roar of the Black Sea for the first time, and began moving toward the captivating sound. The sea was raging for the second week in a row, in accordance with its seasonal mandate. It was even harder to accommodate the sea with one’s vision than one’s ears. Mikha and Zhenya were experiencing the sea for the first time. Alyona’s parents had once taken her to the seaside by the Caucasus Mountains, and Edik knew the sea—albeit a different one altogether: the Baltic.
* * *
They turned to walk along the shore in the direction of Voloshin’s house. They didn’t ask anyone the way—the road simply beckoned them. They recognized the house immediately, by its eloquent appearance, its tower, its contrast with everything else that was built here after the Revolution, after the war. They sat on some rocks below the house. They pulled out a bottle of wine and the remains of their Moscow rations.
Mikha couldn’t contain himself and began reciting poems. He had already burst out in a fit of lyrical passion on the train, but they had squelched it.
“As in a small seashell, the Great
Ocean roars its breath,
As its flesh shimmers and burns
with tides and silvery mist,
and its curves repeat
in the motion and scrolls of a wave—
Thus, in your coves,
O dark land of Cimmeria, my soul
is imprisoned and transfigured.”
The wind tore at their jackets and carried off their words. They huddled together, but Mikha couldn’t stop. He didn’t even notice when a flabby old woman with an ornate walking stick in her hand, wearing a huge, tattered raincoat and turbid glasses, glued together at the bridge, appeared in their midst, listening intently.
“Let’s go into the house,” she said. The hospitable invitation contradicted the severity and gloom of her expression. She led them to a house they could not have imagined in their wildest dreams …
This was Voloshin’s widow, Maria Stepanovna. She gave them a personal tour of her home. On the first floor, which at that time was called “Corpus 1,” vacationing miners working in the Donbas region were usually housed; they hadn’t yet arrived on their local Communist Party tourist vouchers. The widow tried to fend off this invasion as best she could, but there was little she could do. She opened up two rooms for the young people on the lower floor.
“You can live here, until the strangers arrive.”
* * *
They spent several happy days under Maria Stepanovna’s wing. Mikha and Edik undertook some urgent household tasks and repairs, of which there were many. Zhenya and Alyona washed floors, dusted the books on the tall shelves. They spent one whole day tidying up Voloshin’s grave. Mikha and Edik restored the path leading to it, which had crumbled during the winter.
In the evenings they sat in Voloshin’s freezing study, drank tea, and talked under the huge sculpture of Queen Taiakh, which was described in almost all the memoirs of his friends. Sometimes local inhabitants in their declining years would stop in—old ladies, some of them girlish, some of them like reptiles, as well as young writers from the House of the Arts. Once a famous young poet came over with a can of unbottled wine; another time his rival visited. They hated each other with a vengeance, but, in the tradition of the house, they refrained from quarreling when they both turned up at the same time.
They were both too Soviet and official for Mikha’s and Edik’s taste. But, as soon became clear, they were no better, nor worse, than those who congregated around Mayakovsky’s statue.
At the end, when the young people were preparing to go home, Maria Stepanovna commanded them all to go to Staryi Krym. The way was not short—about ten miles—but unless they took this little detour, they could not be considered “kin.”
“You’ll be able to rest up a bit there, my friend will feed you.”
Maria Stepanovna wondered whether she should send these young people to a rival widow. Assol, as she was called, had already done time in prison and returned to Staryi Krym, to fulfill her duties as the writer Grin’s widow. Perhaps Faina Lvovna would be better, Maria Stepanovna thought, and gave them a note for a local lady whose husband, a dentist, fixed all the teeth of the elderly inhabitants.
They decided to go home by way of Simferopol, with a trip to Bakhchisaray. Maria Stepanovna explained that it was inadmissable not to go there—it was the very heart of old Crimea. The route was a bit convoluted: from Staryi Krym, bypassing Koktebel, to Bakhchisaray, where they would stay overnight, then go directly to Simferopol, to the railroad station.
Real spring had already begun in Staryi Krym. The leaves on the trees looked like delicate green lace. People sat in their gardens, prepared the beds for planting, or rushed about, setting out seedlings. The almond trees had blossomed.
The whole way, Mikha and Edik debated the nature of Soviet power, which, in Mikha’s view, was weaker on the periphery of the empire than in the center, and more humane as well. Edik did not agree. He even claimed that in some places they were crueler and more stupid, citing Voloshin as an example: if he had lived closer to the center of power, they would have executed him by 1918.
Zhenya and Alyona walked behind their husbands, like Eastern wives, and talked about art. Alyona didn’t approve of Voloshin’s watercolors, which were all over the house. Zhenya argued hotly that one couldn’t judge this artist by the immediate fruits of his activities—paintings or poems. His greatness was spiritual in nature, and when the specious verdict made way for a lasting, authentic one, the true scale of his greatness would become clear. Zhenya was a well-educated young woman. She read both French and English, and even knew a thing or two about anthroposophy. This irked Alyona somewhat.
In Staryi Krym, they had dinner at Faina Lvovna’s. She received them with great solemnity, like visiting dignitaries from a friendly kingdom. She was wearing very long beads, and a dress with a dropped waist from the NEP period in the mid-1920s, as well as a flirtatious tendril pasted to her forehead. She fed her guests a modest but fashionable meal—bean soup and patties made from some indeterminate kind of grain, with kissel gravy.
They walked around the local cemetery, and strolled past the house of Alexander Grin. It was closed, but it felt like the residents had just stepped out and would be back any moment.
They arrived in Bakhchisaray in early evening—they were able to hitch a ride just in time. Again on the recommendation of Maria Stepanovna, they went to see a curator at the museum of local history. They immediately hit it off, and soon it seemed they had known each other their whole lives. Here, in the Crimea, there seemed to be a secret society of “former” people. They were privy to some arcane secret of the Crimea, but, however much they revealed of it, the secret remained intact. The curator turned out to be not Crimean at all, but from Leningrad; still, she seemed to be a keeper of secrets. She showed them wax figures of harem wives and eunuchs, bronze vases, a fountain that recalled Pushkin, “the tomb of khans, the final home of sovereigns…” The woman from the museum said that she would take them to Chuft-Kale the next morning, but that they couldn’t stay overnight at her house, since her aunt had arrived that night from Petersburg for a visit.
In the evening they went to a hotel, in which they found the ordinary provincial squalor. They stowed their rucksacks in the storeroom, a small closet next to the reception desk. They agreed that the rooms would be waiting for them later in the evening, and they would register then. They went out to walk through the dark town, and to have a meal in some eating-house somewhere. They couldn’t find any place to eat, but they did find a grocery store that was about to close in five minutes.