A Russian Story (13 page)

Olya has long since disappeared, but Tanya comes running up to him. She supports Eugene, who is very unsteady on his feet, almost falling on top of the motionless Volodya. Indoors, they are drinking and partying and nobody has noticed the disappearance of the main participants of the celebrations. Tanya and Eugene kneel down and shake Volodya, who does not move. They both instinctively think of summoning Doctor Volodya, who had frequently resuscitated people after celebrations in the village. But of course it is Doctor Volodya himself who is lying here motionless on the cold December ground. Further guests are meanwhile hurrying to the Marukhins, entering the porch, knocking on the door and they are letting them in.

“I think I have to make myself scarce, before your police take me in,” he tells Tanya.

“The last train to Kyiv is at ten,” says Tanya.

She takes him to the car in which he was brought here, and she sits behind the wheel.

“Can you drive?” Despite the state he was in at the time, he was surprised.

“My dad taught me.”

“But you haven’t got a driving licence!”

“We’ll drive to the station without hitting the main road. Anyway, Uncle Roman is on duty tonight, our Hanna Petrivna’s husband.”

They didn’t have much time, so Tanya drove at speed along the frozen paths over the black fields. It was a good thing there had been no snow.

“Tanya, I haven’t got a penny on me!”

“Nor have I. But they never check the tickets on this train.”

“Tanya, my dear, my pet, go straight to the house — here’s the key, take it — in the sideboard, in the soup tureen, there’s some money. I’ve just sold my dollars. There’s five million there — take it. Take my passport home with you as well, because it contains my address. They’ll find it, of course, if they make a search, but perhaps not straight away.”

“Don’t worry, everything will be all right! You will reach your goal.”

By some miracle they reached the station before ten o’clock. There is nobody on the platform — so much the better, fewer witnesses. In the distance the train is hooting and its lights can be seen. It will stop for a moment at the dilapidated platform. He turns to Tanya, taking her by the shoulders.

“Did you want it with Olya?” she asks in a pained voice.

“There was no love there, Tanya. But nothing happened anyway, although it could have. Men are such swine; you’ve seen it for yourself of course.”

“We won’t see one another again, Zhenia!”

“We certainly will see one another! Olya will turn into a corpulent auntie; she won’t be able to get through the doorway. But you will be beautiful, sensible and slender and we will meet in the middle of the Atlantic!” For some unknown reason he remembered the title of that novel for women which was still there on his desk, alongside the two-volume works of Nietzsche and Bacon.

He kissed Tanya on the cheek, jumped onto the slippery metal steps and reached the rear platform of the train. Then, unsteadily, he moved into the empty carriage and slumped onto a seat which had been stripped of its imitation leather upholstery. All that remained of some seats in the carriage was the metal frame.

He didn’t find even a thousand coupons in his jacket pocket, but he took a taxi at the railway station in Kyiv anyway. The driver didn’t get it why this guy was wearing only a jacket when people on the street were in sheepskin coats. When they reached the destination, the taxi driver swore, but accompanied him up to the flat. Mother opened the door to him, exclaiming: “Well, thank goodness!”

“Well, thank goodness!” she repeated. “They’ve already rung you from the embassy about five times! You have to take your passport to the United States embassy tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. You are supposed to fly off to your placement immediately after the New Year holiday. We sent a telegram to the village. It’s a good job you came as soon as you received it!”

“Give me a million, I have to settle up with the taxi driver,” he said, interrupting his mother.

“Where am I supposed to find this million you want?” she shrieked. At that point he asked the driver to go into the lobby, but he responded aggressively, insisting that he was going to stay put. So Eugene brushed his startled mother aside and went into the sitting room, drove his father off the sofa, moving it to one side. Pushing aside a small chest of drawers, he retrieved his last hidden stash, consisting of a miserable hundred and fifty dollars. He went back to the driver and offered him fifty dollars, with the words:

“Sorry mate! There you go! And if anybody should ask, you didn’t drive me here from the station!”

The driver was happier now, and they shook hands.

“Can you just explain to me what actually happened?” asked his mother.

“Your telegram found me at the Larins’ ball. If I had run round home I would have missed the last train. That’s why I’ve turned up here without a coat and without any money.”

“That’s clear,” replied his mother. “Only it isn’t clear what the Larins are doing in Irivka.”

The rest of the story takes place in America. Except, of course, for that short period before his departure when he lived in a constant state of terror, fearing that they would come for him and call him to account for the murder he had committed. As far as possible, he kept away from the house, and he did not even see in the New Year, his last New Year in Kyiv, at home with his parents, but with a bottle of beer in the metro, at Khreshchatik station, where besides him there were crowds of other restless folk around. The only thing which gave him comfort at that time was the prophecy made by the fortune-teller Demyanivna of Kobivka: “You’ll be uneasy abroad!” If only he could go abroad! Better to be abroad than in prison!

But the nerve-racking phase passed. He experienced a final stomach-churning climax during the passport control at Boryspol airport. When the border guard finally handed back his passport at the checkpoint window, he felt not just relief but that other-worldly light-headedness when your own body becomes weightless and you are at risk of floating up to the ceiling. If they had been searching for him with the intention of placing him under arrest they would not have allowed him through passport control. But here he is, en route to Amsterdam, and transferring to the flight to America. He didn’t even know for which city or which university in his new homeland he was bound. But the flight numbers shown on his ticket were clearly displayed on the announcement board, so within a few hours he had reached the correct destination. Anyway, this was not his first visit to America. Of course, he had previously been invited to visit big cities on the Atlantic coast, whereas now he had to fly further on, across a whole time-zone. But Eugene Samarsky successfully completed this journey too, involving a number of changes; he was met and driven to his accommodation, where he was able to get some sleep for the first time since leaving the General’s house, which remained in a totally different sphere of existence, one into which he had wandered accidentally, and which had to be put out of his mind. He would begin to work on that a little later, once he had adjusted to the American environment.

Half-way into the period of his placement, when he had to consider not returning, he began to respond to the engaging Dounia Gourman, with whom he had become acquainted at one of the numerous university socials. Dounia had appealed to him immediately, not as a potential wife, but as a friend, as the elder sister he had never had, and would have liked to have at that time. They became quite close, and in due course he told Dounia Gourman about the General’s house, about Doctor Volodya, about the little tart Olya, about the touchingly simple Tanya, and also about the secondary participants in that drama. Dounia found all Eugene’s experiences in the village of Irivka extremely exciting. She exclaimed:

“What a Russian Story! It’s straight out of Dostoevsky!”

After all, the way the Russian story developed in a Ukrainian village was more reminiscent of Dostoevsky than of Pushkin: a young, unspoilt girl, intellectually undeveloped however, offers herself to a mature, highly educated man. The man rejects her because she is not sufficiently mature to tempt him. (Although, actually, behaving in a Dostoevskyan manner would mean taking under-age girls, particularly if they are so forward.) Another young person, a sinful one, a corrupt one, offers herself to the same man, and he is tempted. There is no sophisticated duel with the fiancé of the loose girl and the man she enticed, but a drunken brawl. The enticed man accidentally kills the virtuous fiancé. The first girl, despite having suffered the severe shock of sexual rejection, assists the enticed man to escape from justice. There is a distressing, heart-rending scene at the station in the midst of the fields. The train crosses the boundless Russian steppe; on the enticed man’s lips will remain for ever the salt from the tears running down the cheeks of the young girl …

Who is to blame?

All the blame could be placed on the enticed man who killed the fiancé. But he was acting in self-defence; it was either him or his attacker. All the blame could be placed on the fiancé who wanted to kill the enticed man, but he was overcome by a fit of passion and unable to control himself. Again, the blame could be placed on the enticed man, not because he defended himself, but because he succumbed to temptation. But he had been without a woman for a long time, so he could not control himself. All the blame could be placed on the loose young woman, but it is not she who is to blame; it is the primitive circumstances of her life. The girl strove as best she could to find another life, different from that offered by a dull Russian village. The blame could be placed on the other girl, who assisted the enticed man to escape from justice. But she was rescuing the man she loved. And what good would it do if he was condemned to several years in prison for an unpremeditated killing? That would not bring the fiancé back to life.

What was to be done?

Because he was involuntarily enticed by two girls and killed the fiancé of one of them, it is not in his interest to return to his home country. Most likely, no proceedings had been initiated, because if they were searching for him his parents, with whom he spoke on the phone from time to time, would have known about it. But the state of fear was ruining his life. In America, on the other hand, he will be able to dismiss this fear. Interpol will not be looking for the killer of a village doctor, even if they do belatedly open the case.

So what was to be done, actually?

It is possible to live in America on an illegal basis. This is possible; lots of people do live like this. In America there is plenty of work specifically for illegal immigrants in the building trade and on the farms — in their state it is common in both. You can also marry an American woman. Then everything generally becomes very straightforward. All right, their university is no Harvard. But there are great opportunities here too.

It was summer, the unbearable American summer. But, strange to say, there is a breeze blowing on this hill in the midst of the prairie. Above the prairie, swallows are circling. This couple, a thirty year old man from Eastern Europe, intelligent, handsome, dark-haired, with a fine moustache, who has certain problems back home — but who hasn’t? — and a slightly older American woman, also attractive in her own way, with luxuriant red hair and pleasant, kindly, freckled features. They are sitting not on a blanket but on folding chairs. Eugene felt even less inclined to embrace the mature Dounia than the immature Tanya a year previously. But at that moment he congratulated himself on reaching
the coast
. The Atlantic coast. Although it was a long way to the Atlantic from the prairie.

He was looking for somebody to confide in about his problems, for which Dounia was his choice. As for Dounia, she was openly, naively and genuinely searching for a young Russian man interested in an academic career in the field of Russian Studies, someone she could give a decent opportunity, for which Eugene was her choice.

In the event, he did not become a Russianist, although Dounia kept prodding him to do so in all possible ways: the daughter of a great Russian 20
^th
century composer used to work in the Russian department at their university, you know! In Ukraine there is a musical group with the same name, replied Eugene, but this was of no interest to Dounia. As your Nietzsche said, Eugene, limited knowledge is wisdom. Knowledge of Ukraine did not figure in Dounia’s plans.

You can, of course, devote yourself to something marginal, Dounia thought. A true scholar finds both ideas and their manifestation everywhere. The point is not that Ukrainian Studies is an even narrower field than Irish Studies, which is, however, represented at virtually every university. It is also true that Russian Studies is restricted to the sphere of the universities; it is no Hollywood project. The point is that we are not at Harvard. And if this is how it has turned out, why not get involved in Russian Studies? Is your heart not in it? But why not? Dounia felt she had grasped the crux of the problem, believing that his reluctance to immerse himself in the Russian nineteenth-century golden age was the fault of his mother, who over-enthusiastically sought to ‘matchmake’ her son with Turgenev’s girls, to such an extent that he came to hate them all — Liza Kalitina, Elena Stakhova and Natalia Lasunskaya. And the whole of Russian literature became for him a kind of correct young Turgenev girl, troubled about whether to give herself to some revolutionary, not necessarily a Russian one. Or to take the veil.

“But in Russian literature there are so many fallen women! You could study one of them!” exclaimed Dounia Gourman spontaneously; she genuinely believed that a fallen woman was far more interesting than a so-called pure one. At least to a literary scholar!

He did not want to become a Russianist, but he didn’t intend to become a Ukrainian scholar either, and Harvard was beside the point here. If
Harvard
is the apotheosis of an earthly academic career, then wherever he was he would be
not at Harvard
. Dounia could not understand him at all, and he was unable to explain it to her; indeed he did not try. She did not show a trace of the tyrannical wealthy wife so frequently found in her beloved Dostoevsky, so thank goodness for that! You can happily live in America. But in America the Nietzschean spirit vanishes. Although Nietzsche Studies is found in many American universities, not just at Harvard. But hadn’t he himself searched for opportunities to remain in America? So who was responsible for the weakening of his will to live? Pushkin? During his childhood there used to be an idiotic saying amongst young schoolchildren: “If something isn’t right, whose fault is it? Pushkin’s?”