What vexed Pierre the most was that his rare and complex sensibility had long ago been pinned down and preserved for all time by the writer Sirin, thirty years before. As proof of this, he sent his friends books by this author, unknown in Russia, who by this time had replaced his pseudonym with his actual surname: Nabokov.
Like a character in a Sirin novel, Pierre’s “feat” was to send the books of a small Brussels publishing house to Russia. They were, for the most part, religious books. This was his form of social activism, akin to Komsomol work. In 1963 Pierre spent five months in Moscow, at Moscow State University, studying Russian as a foreign language. He lived in a dormitory on Volgin Street, rambled around Moscow, explored the dark underside of the city with Ilya, attended remarkable concerts with his friend Sanya, and, once, even visited the deaf-mute boarding school with Mikha. He was researching his beloved Russia.
Five months later someone denounced Pierre—perhaps on account of the books he received through the diplomatic mail pouch for his Moscow friends—and he was deported from the country as a spy. They were very strict about these things at his Institute for Russian as a Foreign Language.
There was a scandaclass="underline" an article appeared in a major newspaper alleging his involvement in subversive activities and spreading anti-Soviet literature, as well as spying. It was clear that besides the denunciation, they had no evidence against him—only overblown suspicions.
* * *
During these five months, Pierre managed to fall in love with a pretty girl named Alla, with light northern eyes and straw-colored hair. But they were not destined to be united, about which Alla grieved until her dotage. She had done a foolish thing. If she hadn’t written the denunciation, perhaps she could have gotten him to marry her. They had pressured her, though, threatening to kick her out of the dormitory, to expose her as a prostitute, and to make her life generally miserable. The girl, who was not in the habit of trusting the Soviet authorities, believed them on this count.
* * *
Ultimately, being deported was far better than the Nabokovian prospect: “… and presently I’m led to a ravine, / to a ravine led to be killed.”
* * *
After departing from his beloved spiritual homeland within the three days allotted, Pierre spent the rest of his life yearning desperately to go back to Russia, as so many thousands yearned desperately to leave it. Some they wouldn’t allow in, some they wouldn’t allow out.
* * *
Life, however, led Pierre in the opposite geographical direction. He became a Slavist, and was invited to teach in a California university. Though his ties with his Moscow friends remained strong, communication became more sporadic. Still, this did not prevent him from receiving, in 1970, a book from Russia, soon after it had been published in samizdat. It was the strange novella Moscow—Petushki, by an unknown writer named Venedikt Erofeev.
* * *
Ilya had done his utmost. He had even written an accompanying letter, in which he explained to Pierre that the novel was the best thing that had come out of post-Revolutionary Russia. Pierre ardently agreed with his friend, and began translating it. Within three months, he realized that he couldn’t manage. The task was too daunting, the text too unwieldy. The deeper he delved into the book, the more layers he uncovered.
Enormous cultural depths rested on the device linking the novel to the tradition of Sentimentalism. These were the notes of a Russian traveler. From his roots in Radishchev and Griboyedov, however, the newfangled author had strayed very far afield—lurching off in the direction of Dostoevsky and Blok, or into the deep recesses of folk idiom, crude and incorruptible. The text was full of citations: spurious and authentic, twisted, ridiculed. The book contained parody and mystification, true suffering, and genuine talent.
Pierre wrote a long article about it and sent it to a scholarly journal, where it was rejected. No one knew the author, and the editors considered the article to be too daring.
* * *
Pierre was deeply offended by this, and got very drunk, after which he started calling his Russian friends. He couldn’t get hold of Ilya and Mikha. Sanya was home, however. Sanya told Pierre about the tragedy: Mikha was dead. He added a few incoherent phrases—along the lines of life having no meaning, what did it matter when the best people, and one’s dearest, die anyway, or leave you. And even meaning has no meaning.
Pierre sobered up and said that he would think of a way out for Sanya. They had already talked through his two-week paycheck. He said that he needed to go back and drink what was left in the bottle. And that Sanya should be expecting a call from his friend Evgeny.
Sanya immediately forgot about this conversation, as though he were the one who was drunk, and not Pierre. He had been gripped by despair, like a fever. He could do nothing but lie there on Nuta’s divan, his unseeing, vacant gaze fixed on the tapestry fabric of a tattered pillow, and a few visual outliers of the dense weave of varicolored threads—light blue, pale yellow, lilac—which vibrated in front of the woven image of a flower basket and the bouquet crimped with serpentine ribbon.
* * *
When had he left home the last time? For Nuta’s funeral? To go to the forty-day memorial service at the church? Yes, Mikha was at the church, too; he stood next to him, and Mikha was crying. Sanya was no longer able to cry. The very capacity of emotional response was already exhausted in him, and he had no feelings except a sense of terrible alienation from everything around him. Yes, first it was Nuta, and then Mikha. The only one left was Mama, whom he kept having to recognize anew, she was so changed. Rather, he guessed it was her. Every day before she went to work, Nadezhda Borisovna, her hair now dyed brunette, would tiptoe up to the sleeping Sanya and, tenderly, warily, leave him some tea with bread and cheese. In the evening she brought him a bowl of soup.
Sometimes Sanya ate his food without even noticing it. A gulp of liquid, a swallow of some chewed-up substance. That was all. He wanted strong, sweet tea with lemon. The kind his grandmother had brought him when he was ill.
Now it seemed that Nuta had died a beautiful death, and the memory of her was beautiful as well. Mikha’s death had been horrific, lawless. Sanya was on his way home from the Kirovskaya metro station, and was passing Mikha’s house. He turned toward the building as though he were going to stop in, out of habit, as he used to do during Mikha’s absence. Sanya was the first of the family and friends to see Mikha there on the ground. He was lying on the stone border of a flower bed that had long since disappeared, his head smashed.
He was wearing an old plaid shirt that Nuta had bought him. Sanya had one just like it … For some reason he was wearing no shoes, only socks. A small crowd was already gathering around the body. They needed to hurry and remove it.
They covered the body with a sheet that had been snatched off a clothesline. It had a large patch in the middle.
He already knew that Alyona and Maya had gone to the Ryazan countryside. Mikha had told him, not even trying to hide his grief and confusion. Now he would have to find Alyona. How would he tell her?
Right after Mikha’s funeral, Sanya took to his bed. He would sleep, then wake up, hear Lastochkin’s muttering and his belching, or the nauseating grumble of the television—when Nuta was alive they had never had a television! At six in the morning, the anthem assaulted his ears, then there was a surge of coffee-making smells and activity—Mama prepared it in the room, over a spirit lamp, as Nuta had always done. Then everything would go quiet again. Sanya dozed off, woke up, got out of bed when nature called him to the WC, and went to lie down again. Nadezhda Borisovna grew alarmed and tried to ask him questions, which made no sense to him; and again he turned his face toward the wall.