A Russian Story (15 page)

Eugene removes his headphones, leaves the glass cabin, makes for the conference hall and surveys the people present. The presenters usually sit in the front row. Here she is. She has changed, but he recognises her. An elegant jacket, an attractive hairstyle and an earnest demeanour. That is exactly how they look when they still think great ideas are born at gatherings like this. She must be thirty by now. She looks very young. A very likeable lady. At this point, the genre requires him to fall at her feet. But he feels light-hearted. Postmodern is postmodern. Reading great themes today does not evoke exhilaration, but it does evoke laughter. So the story of his life has to be such a monumental piece of Russian kitsch!

On the rostrum, the next intellectual speaks in German; quite an astute man, Eugene knows him. Some participants are listening to him without headphones, but most are wearing them, listening to the English or the Russian translation. Tanya, in the front row, has not put on her headphones. Does she know German? On the other hand, as she is about to give her own presentation she may not be listening to the others; he notices that she is gripping the print-out of her talk nervously.

He walks quietly along the corridor beneath the glass partition beyond which the sea is roaring, displaying the grand drama of the raging Atlantic. The seats are not all occupied; he is offered a place and he quietly indicates he doesn’t need one. But he asks for another copy of the programme, because he has left his in the cabin.

There were two final presentations remaining. Tatiana Maroukhina had not specified that she required an interpreter. But she might get stuck with her English; he had met this many times. Perhaps he should offer to help? So while the audience is applauding the German, he sits down next to Tanya in the front row and asks her, just managing to restrain a smile:

“Will you be speaking in English, madam? Will you be requiring any assistance?”

After he had spoken he regretted it, because his presence disturbed her. She is already nervous, and now an old acquaintance makes an inopportune re-appearance.

“You’re balding,” she says, finally.

“You’re quite right. But the moustache is still there.”

He no longer offers his services, sitting in silence next to her in the front row. Now it’s the penultimate presentation, and Burukova starts bellowing on about how the Soviet occupation forces repressed her sexuality. Then it’s the turn of Tatiana Maroukhina. Isn’t she married? Has she kept the surname of her dad from Pskov?

Tanya went up to the rostrum; he sat on the stage by the microphone, occupying the end chair next to the rostrum, where an interpreter sits who is there merely to assist the speaker. Tanya’s voice is shaky. But she speaks quite well. Would he have paid such close attention to her presentation if it was not for the personal connection? Perhaps not. But, bearing in mind the context, this sounds simply brilliant!

“Small nations may occupy quite an extensive territory, but nevertheless they are small, because they generate neither great ideas nor great people. More exactly, people achieve greatness when they go to great countries. Best of all — to America. They go in quest of self-fulfilment, but quite often, on their way across the Atlantic, they lose that vital flame which drove them abroad in search of their identity.

But America itself has also given the world so many dissatisfied, impassioned personalities, such as Ernest Hemingway, who so many years after his death still obliges people to talk about him. Small nations also have figures like Hemingway. But the world is unfamiliar with them. This is not because there are no translators or literary agents to make Eastern European Hemingways visible to the world. Rather it is because the American Hemingway is enough for the entire world. However, this does not mean that Eastern Europeans who have sensed within themselves that impulse, that will to live and that intense affinity with their own culture, should either re-construct themselves and undertake some great imperial, big-nation project, or suppress this flame, lamenting the unfavourable political situation. It is not to do with emigration. Even in emigration you can fulfil your task within the framework of your native culture, and even in your native country you can fail to achieve anything.

To lament the ignorance, the lack of understanding in small nations, their insignificance, from the rostrum of a gathering such as this, has long since become commonplace. But the blank wall of insignificance can only be penetrated if one rejects the commonplace, the vocabulary of sweeping generalisations, sweeping ideas, if one becomes an independent personality, rather than declaring one’s adaptability to the spirit of History. This is precisely what Milan Kundera, perhaps the most brilliant intellectual of Eastern Europe, an émigré, as a matter of fact, wrote about in his novel
Immortality
.

“It isn’t from
Immortality
, it’s from
Testaments Betrayed
,” said Eugene, correcting her with a smile. In America he had once failed to find a copy of
Immortality
in Russian, which he had not finished reading, so he had bought it in English. The same went for other books by this extraordinary Czech.

Tanya thanked him for the correction; yes, of course, it is from
Testaments Betrayed
, not from
Immortality
. Initially, Tanya was put off her stride, but then she forgot that the audience, including quite well-known people, judged emotional young women severely. She even forgot that he was next to her, although the presentation was addressed to him, the man she had once declared her love for, whose books, forgotten in his fear, she had gradually been reading very attentively, so as one day to be his equal.

“Goethe said:
Werde der du bist
, — become who you are. Later, this thought was taken up with a vengeance by Nietzsche. This coincides with the fact that it is the core of any religion: to comprehend one’s vocation, which is not easy, and then to fulfil that vocation, which is incredibly demanding. Indeed, it is possible to achieve this only on condition that you will not be afraid of there being no recompense during your lifetime and of its being forgotten when you are dead!”

“Bravo, Tanya! Who would have thought it? This is better than marrying a general, the hero of 1812! … Incidentally, how are things at the General’s house?”

Tanya was enthusiastically applauded. Perhaps it was cynical applause greeting the end of the plenary session, after which everybody was in for a sumptuous lunch. It could be that the impassioned voice of the young speaker had created a few ripples at this largely predictable meeting. They congratulated her, pressed their business cards into her hand, and an informal discussion of her paper was proposed, to follow the evening session. In the bar or somewhere.

The interpreters were served separately, so he did not see Tanya at the lunch. Afterwards, he was interpreting for one section while Tanya was participating in a different one. Then he had dinner with the organisers in a small circle at which Tanya was not present. Naturally, he was interpreting more than eating or drinking. On the following day he was interpreting at a round table discussion for the first half of the day, and the second half was devoted to a big reception given by the governor of the island of Terceira, where he had met up with Tanya at last. They did not have much time to chat. People were offering compliments to Tanya and to Eugene, telling him he was the best interpreter. Burukova quipped that she would immediately telephone Dounia and tell her about his charming friend. Yukusai asked Eugene where he had heard his name mentioned. He replied that Yukusai’s name was so significant in the present context that the original source was lost in the mists of time. But he and Tanya nevertheless did have a chance to be alone together over drinks, sitting on a large window-sill in the corridor.

“I am very happy for you, my dear.”

“And I am infinitely grateful to you.”

“For what, Tanya?”

“Firstly, that you did not defile me fifteen years ago.”

“And all those years I thought the sexual rejection had been traumatic for you.”

“Secondly, I am grateful that you were so scared after you had beaten up Volodya that you ran away, leaving your books behind. Kundera, Nietzsche and the German textbooks. And the bilingual text of
Eugene Onegin
too.”

“Tanya, hang on! You said I 
beat him up
!!!”

“How else can I put it? He was in a coma for several days; then he revived, but he couldn’t recognise anybody. After that he continued to get better and now he is fully recovered, long since.”

“I have lived all these years with the burden of having involuntarily killed someone!”

“I drove back from the station burdened with a similar thought. I told myself I had saved you, but I had left him on the frozen ground by the barn, just at the place where my dad had built the concrete steps. But Olya had gone to his side.”

“Olya at Volodya’s side?”

“When we all went outside — well, you remember all that…”

“I remember, Tanya; how could I forget?”

“It was on the same day as our birthday that a telegram arrived and was read out aloud, saying that you were expected at the American embassy. Nobody thought I was rescuing Volodya’s murderer, no — I was driving you to the station so you would make it to the US embassy the next day. Olya realised that you were going to America, so she immediately switched back to Volodya. Olya looked after him the whole time, giving up her studies. Later, she rejoined the second year and graduated from the college of medicine a year later.”

“How are things otherwise in ‘our’ village?” asked Eugene with a smile.

“Olya and Volodya are married.”

“Have they got any children?”

“Three. They live in your house. Although Volodya has had a place built now. But they haven’t moved in yet. Volodya said it was in your house, on the site of the sorcerers’ sabbath, that he recovered completely from his head injury.”

“The ancient Kobi knew where to brew their potion…”

“Actually, that house belongs to you. What about coming over to sort out your property!”

“Oh, let them carry on living there!”

“No! Volodya can’t help feeling he is living in somebody else’s house. They will move out soon, and the house will stand empty once more and become a ruin, as it was before your General moved in, which is a shame. As a matter of fact, nobody has ever lived in the north wing, and the children were not allowed to go in there. It has always been a museum.”

“A museum?”

“The General’s and yours. Volodya transferred all the notes the General made into there. There was no question of throwing them all on the fire.”

“Actually, I wanted to read them one day…”

“If you’re up for it, they’re waiting… Volodya moved the General’s bookcase and that sideboard to the sitting room in the north wing as well, so as not to damage his magnificent monogram dinner service which awaits your grand arrival in person.”

“Oh my goodness!”

“That’s right! All those things that you left behind at the time are still there. Including the photograph of some attractive woman on the desk.”

“That’s the General’s first wife.”

“Really? For a long time I wondered whose photograph that was … Everything is there, just as you left it: the books, the CD player and the typewriter on the window-sill…”

“So it really is a museum…”

“And your leather jacket on the back of the chair. And your five million coupons in the soup tureen.”

“But why didn’t you spend them on something you wanted? They were legal tender then!”

“Straight afterwards, I couldn’t! I couldn’t even bring myself to touch them. By the time I could, they were worthless, and there was no way I could exchange them.”

Footsteps were heard in the corridor.

“Mr Samarsky, there you are! At last! The mayor is looking for you. That man from Russia has arrived; your assistance is essential!”

That’s right, he is at work now, so he is not allowed to weaken, unlike the conference delegates. Eugene hurries to the hall, because the Russian billionaire who generously financed this sumptuous celebration of the intellect has arrived and he wants to speak with the organisers. Apparently, his own interpreters cannot cope. Eugene takes his leave of Tanya, handing her his business card, but his son Myroslav hurries towards her with the greeting
Guten Tag, Tatiana Mikaelivna!

“How do you know her?” Eugene asks his son on the plane during their return flight.

“She taught German at our high school. And she ran the German philosophy option.”

“Well, it turns out Kyiv is still a big village, where at any party, even outside Kyiv, the denizens meet, if not their friends, at any rate the friends of their friends.”

“How do you know her?” asks Myroslav.

“Oh, I’ve only just met her.”

“So why did she ask after you when she was our teacher? She asked me if I was your son. I said I was. Well, aren’t I?”

“But why did she ask you about that, of all things, out of the blue?”

“Man! You gave me your surname! Have you forgotten?”

The food and wine is served. Myroslav orders wine:

“Red wine, please!”

“You are too young to drink wine,” says Eugene, pretending to adopt the tone of an overbearing father; for himself, he orders a whisky.

“I don’t drive yet.”

“But Tanya did, at your age.” Eugene does not say this out loud — he keeps this to himself, as he contemplates what an attractive woman Tanya has become. He could go for her, of course he could. But could he have any expectations? Actually, he was quite perturbed about how earlier events had turned out, in the end. Indeed, as time went by he found it increasingly disturbing. It would be an exaggeration to speak of his being battered by
a storm of emotions
, but for the moment he is even unable to eat. Of course, the most enjoyable thing about plane journeys is the food, and he always relishes the fact that life does not oblige him to fly with budget airlines, which do not serve meals. He tries to calm down, taking out his smartphone; after all, this is no time to be taking a sleeping pill. He is in business class, so he has internet access. While Myroslav is chomping on his lunch, Eugene checks his mail.