Pushkin Hills (6 page)

Later on, we were disheartened to learn that Mitrofanov wasn’t simply a slacker. He was diagnosed with a rare clinical condition – aboulia, or total atrophy of will.

He was a phenomenon that belonged to the vegetable kingdom, a bright, fanciful flower. A chrysanthemum cannot hoe its own soil and water itself.

And then Mitrofanov heard about Pushkin Hills. He came, looked around and ascertained that this was the only institution where he could be useful.

What’s expected of a tour guide? A vivid and dramatic story, and nothing more.

And Mitrofanov knew how to tell a story. His tours were full of surprising references, dazzling suppositions, rare archival notes and quotations in six languages.

His tours were twice longer than the average. At times, tourists fainted from the strain.

There were some complications, of course: Mitrofanov was reluctant to climb Savkin Hill. The tourists struggled to the top while Mitrofanov stood at the foot of the knoll, articulating:

“As it has for so many years, this large green mound rises above the river Sorot. The remarkable symmetry of its form points to its artificial origins. When it comes to the etymology
of the name
Sorot
, it is rather curious, even if not entirely decorous…”

Once the tourists laid out a fake leather coat and hauled Mitrofanov up the hill, while he continued broadcasting with a satisfied smile:

“Legend has it that one of the Voronich monasteries stood on this site…”

He was valued at the Preserve…

A no less colourful personality was Stasik Pototsky. He was born in Cheboksary and until the age of sixteen did not stand out. He played hockey without giving a thought to serious matters. Then finally he turned up in Leningrad with a delegation of young athletes.

On the very first day, he lost his virginity to a floor monitor at the Hotel Sokol. He was lucky – she was old and affectionate. She treated the junior to Alabashly wine and whispered to her drunk and lovesick boy:

“Look at you! So little yet so spirited!”

Pototsky quickly came to realize that there were two things on this earth worth living for – wine and women. The rest did not deserve his attention. But women and wine cost money. Therefore, you had to know how to earn it. Preferably without much effort and without ending up in jail.

He decided to become a writer of best-sellers. He read twelve contemporary novels and grew confident that he could do no worse. And so he bought a calico notebook, a ballpoint pen and a refill.

His first composition was published in
Youth Magazine
. The
story was titled ‘The Victory of Shurka Chemodanov’. A young hockey player, Chemodanov, becomes full of himself and quits school. Then he comes to his senses, turns into a model student and an even better hockey player. The piece ended like this:

“‘The most important thing, Shurka, is being a human being,’ said Lukyanych, and walked away. For a long, long time, Shurka’s eyes followed him…”

The story was extraordinarily unremarkable. Hundreds just like it graced the pages of youth magazines. The editors were forgiving towards Pototsky. Apparently he deserved a break, as a provincial author.

Within a year, he succeeded in publishing seven short stories and a novella. His creations were banal, ideologically sound and dull. A recognizable thread ran through all of them. A reliable armour of literary conventionality protected them from censorship. They sounded convincing, like quotations. The most exciting things about them were syntax errors and misprints:

“Misha excepted that he had finally turned thirteen…” (From the story ‘Misha’s Woe’.)

“‘May he rest in piece!’ Odintsov concluded his speech…” (From the story ‘The Smoke Rises Skyward’.)

“‘Don’t throw a wench in the works,’ threatened Lepko…” (From the novel
Seagulls Fly to the Horizon
.)

Later Pototsky would say to me:

“I’m a fuckin’ writer, sort of like Chekhov. Chekhov was absolutely right. You can write a story just about anything. There’s no shortage of subject matter. Take any profession. Say a doctor. And here you have it: a fuckin’ surgeon goes to operate
and recognizes his patient as the man who slept with his wife. The surgeon is faced with a moral fuckin’ dilemma – to save the man or cut off his… No, that’s too much, that’s fuckin’ overkill. Bottom line, the surgeon is hesitant. Then he picks up a scalpel and performs a miracle. The fuckin’ end goes something like this: ‘For a long, long time the nurse’s gaze followed him…’ Or take the sea, for example,” Pototsky went on, “Nothing to it… A sailor retires and leaves his beloved fuckin’ ship. His friends, his past, his youth are all left behind. He goes for a walk along the Fontanka River, looking forlorn. And he spots a fuckin’ drowning boy. Without a second thought the sailor leaps into the icy vortex. Risking his life, he saves the kid. The end goes like this: ‘Vitya will never forget this hand. Large, calloused, with a light-blue anchor on the wrist…’ Meaning – a sailor will always be a sailor, even if he is fuckin’ retired…”

Pototsky would complete a story a day. He published a book. It was called
Dark Roads to Happiness
. It received kind reviews that gently pointed out the author’s backwater origins.

Stasik decided to leave Cheboksary. He wanted to spread his wings, so he moved to Leningrad and became very fond of the Europa restaurant and two models.

In Leningrad, his stories were received coolly. The standards there were a little higher. A complete absence of talent did not pay, while its presence made people nervous. Genius instilled fear. The most bankable were “obvious literary abilities”. Pototsky had no obvious abilities. Something glimmered in his compositions, slipped through, flickered. An accidental phrase, an unexpected remark… “Opaline bulb of garlic.” “A
stewardess on paraffin legs.” But no obvious abilities.

They stopped publishing him. What was forgiven a provincial novice affronted in a cosmopolitan writer. Stasik started to drink, and not in Europa but in artists’ basements. And not with models, but with the floor-monitor friend. (She now sold fruit from a stall.)

He drank for four years. Did a year for vagrancy. The floor-monitor friend (now a worker in the food industry) left him. He may have given her a beating, or stolen from her…

His clothes turned into rags. Friends ceased lending him money and refrained from giving him cast-off slacks. The militia threatened to throw him back in jail for violating the residency rules. Someone put him on to Pushkin Hills. This lifted his spirits. Stasik prepared, began giving tours. And he wasn’t bad. His trump card was his confiding intimacy:

“Pushkin’s personal tragedy causes us heartache even to this day…”

Pototsky embellished his monologues with fantastic detail, acted out the duel scene in character, and once even fell on the grass. He would conclude the tour with a mysterious metaphysical contrivance:

“Finally, after a long and agonizing illness, Russia’s great citizen had succumbed, but
d’Anthès is still alive, comrades…”*

Every now and again he would go on a binge, neglecting his job, bumming some change in front of a local watering hole, hunting for empty bottles in the bushes and sleeping on the cracked gravestone of Alexei Nikolayevich Vulf.

Whenever Captain Shatko of the militia ran into him, he’d
say reproachfully:

“Pototsky, your appearance disturbs the harmony of these parts.”

Then Pototsky came up with a new gimmick. He would stroll through the monastery on the trail of the next group. Lie in wait by the grave until the end of the tour. Call the group leader to the side and whisper:

“
Antra noo!
Between us! Pull thirty copecks each and I’ll show you the true grave of Pushkin that the Bolsheviks are hiding from the people!”

He then would lead the group into the woods, pointing to a nondescript mound. Occasionally some stickler would ask:

“But why would they conceal the real grave?”

“Why?” Pototsky would flash a sardonic smile. “You want to know why? Comrades, this compatriot is asking why?”

“I see, I see,” the tourist would mutter.

On the day I arrived, Stasik was worn out after a week-long binge. He wangled a rouble from me and a pair of brown sandals with perforations. Then he shared a dramatic story:

“I nearly made a fortune, man. I came up with this exceptional financial trick. Listen: I meet some sucker. He’s got a car, some cash, some other fuckin’ shit. We take one, note, just one broad and drive out into the great outdoors. There we both check in—”

“I don’t understand.”

“Take turns with her. The next morning I show up at his place, screaming ‘Man, my dick’s dripping.’ He panics, so I say: ‘I can be of fuckin’ service, for twenty-five bills.’ The fool jumps for joy. I fill a syringe with tap water and give us both a shot in
the derrière. The chump happily tosses me the bills and we part friends. The broad gets some stockings for seven roubles. That’s eighteen roubs of pure profit. It was brilliant. Operation – Clap Trap. And fuckin’ hell, it fell through…”

“Why?”

“At first everything went smoothly. The chump was wild about me. We picked up some cognac, sandwiches. I enlisted cross-eyed Milka who works at the Cavalier, and we took off for the great fuckin’ outdoors. We booze it up, get down to business and guess what? The next morning, the sap shows up at my place, screaming, ‘Fuck, my pecker’s dripping,’ gets in his fuckin’ car and takes off. I rush to the clinic to find Fima. This and that, I say. And Fima goes: ‘Twenty-five roubles!’… Dear God, who’s got that kind of cash?! I had to run around all over Pskov and the city limits and barely scraped it together… Eleven days I stayed sober and then I fuckin’ broke fast. What about you, how are you on the subject?”

“You mean the great outdoors?”

“I mean a drink.”

I waved my arms in protest. A start is all I need. It’s stopping that I never learnt. A dump truck without brakes.

Stas flipped a rouble coin in his palm and left…

“Your evaluation is tomorrow,” said Galina.

“So soon?”

“I think you’re ready. Why put it off?”

At first I was nervous, noticing Victoria Albertovna among the tourists. Vika was smiling, kindly or perhaps ironically.

Gradually I became bolder. The group was demanding – voluntary-army activists from Torzhok – they kept asking questions.

“This,” I say, “is the famous portrait by
Kiprensky… commissioned by Delvig… sublime treatment… hints of romantic embellishment… ‘I see myself as if in a looking glass…’* Bought by Pushkin for the Baron’s widow…”

“When? What year?”

“I think in 1830.”

“For how much?”

“What’s the difference?!” I exploded.

Vika was trying to help me, silently moving her lips.

We entered the study. I pointed out the portrait of Byron, the cane, the bookcase… I moved on to the work… “Intense period… Articles… Draft of the magazine…”,
“
Godunov
”, “
Gypsies
”… The library… “I shall soon die completely, but if you love my shadow…”* And so on.

Suddenly I hear:

“Are the pistols real?”

“An original duelling set from Le Page.”

The same voice:

“Le Page? I though they were Pushkin’s.”

I explained:

“The pistols are from the same period. Made by the famous gunsmith Le Page. Pushkin knew and appreciated good firearms. He owned the same pistols…”

“What about the calibre?”

“What
about
the calibre?”

“I am interested in the calibre.”

“The calibre,” I said, “is just right.”

“Very good.” The tourist unexpectedly submitted.

While my group looked at the nanny’s home, Victoria Albertovna whispered:

“Your delivery is very good, very natural… You have your own personal point of view. But never… I am simply horrified… You called Pushkin a crazed ape…”

“That’s not entirely true.”

“I beg you – a little more restraint.”

“I will try.”

“But overall it’s not bad…”

I began giving tours regularly. Sometimes two in one shift. Evidently they liked me. If we had cultural leaders, teachers or the intelligentsia in – they got me. Something in my tours stood out. For example, my “easy-going manner of presentation”, according to the curator at Trigorskoye. This was, of course, largely due to my acting ability. Even though I had memorized the entire text after approximately five days, I had no trouble simulating emotional improvisation. I artfully stammered as if searching for words, deliberately slipped up, waved my arms, embellishing my carefully rehearsed impromptu remarks with aphorisms from
Gukovsky and Shchegolev.* The more I got to know Pushkin, the less I felt like talking about him. Especially at this embarrassing level. I performed my role mechanically and was well remunerated for it. (A full tour was about eight roubles.)

I found a dozen rare books about Pushkin in the local library.
I also reread everything he wrote. What intrigued me most about Pushkin was his Olympian detachment. His willingness to accept and express any point of view. His invariable striving for the highest, utmost objectivity. Like the moon, illuminating the way for prey and predator both.