The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar Page 9

  He hated the literary nippers who read Pushkin’s new poems breathlessly and jealously fought for supremacy in gossip and tittle-tattle; he hated the literary elders of Karamzin’s time, those elegant and arrogant castratos with their witticisms and fripperies; and last of all, the unfathomable Pushkin, with his apparent entitlement to subtle verse and crude talk, seemed to him an absolute upstart, one of poetry’s minions.

  His friendship with Bulgarin suited him fine.

  For the most part, Griboedov favored flawed people. He enjoyed Sashka’s caricaturing of him. And so if a man was tainted or ridiculed or abandoned by all, he became worthy of Griboedov’s attention.

  At first, they were friends because Faddei seemed the most entertaining among the literary scum, and then out of sympathy because of the way this particular scum was maltreated, and in the end, he simply got used to their friendship. Faddei was a writer for shopkeepers and lackeys, and Griboedov did not mind that at all. His own ancestors were the government officials for the Boyar Duma. Pushkin’s pride in his Negro heritage struck him as absurd.

  He knew that poets who extolled friendship made money out of it, and he laughed at this. So Delvig earned his crust by persuading his friends to contribute to his journal, as if collecting a duty from his serfs.

  Two years ago, having lost his favorite horse, he grieved for it as if it were a lover, and he kept recalling its dove-colored eyes. If he’d had a bad-tempered, whining dog, he probably would have loved it more than anything.

  Apart from this, Griboedov could not help imagining any sort of settled life as being like that of the Bulgarin household: frisky adulteries during the day, on the run, round the corner, the silly little Lenochka in the evening, pretty and receptive, the cozy fireside, and the old tante grumbling like thunder somewhere in the depths of the house.

  A life-and-death struggle for home, protecting it, and then betraying that very home, bit by bit.

  A life of heart and stomach.

  The gradual withering of the blood vessels, growing bald.

  Faddei was completely bald by now. The raspberry-colored bald patch of the old quill-driver and cavalryman made him look like a shopkeeper.

  He brought with him from the theater the smell of tobacco and a whiff of fresh gossip.

  He attacked the food like a starving, wild boar, flung away the fork and grabbed the food with his fingers, wolfed it down, hardly noticing what he was eating.

  When eating, he was oblivious to everything, even Griboedov.

  He processed his food, cocking his head slightly to one side, and there was pure love in the movement of his mandibles; his fat lips seemed to be kissing the fodder; his gaze was vague, glazed.

  He swept aside the empty plates with a loud sigh of satisfaction, and for a few seconds relished the feeling of total repose. He was replete with food as if with love.

  Griboedov regarded him uneasily.

  After his little relaxation, Faddei eyed him tenderly. His plump lips began to move again, now processing intellectual food.

  “Incredible scandal,” said Faddei gleefully, “Pushkin has turned out to be a blackmailer!”

  He looked at Griboedov and Lenochka. It was a look of triumph.

  “Word of honor,” he pressed his hand to his chest slowly like a priest, “the word of honor of an honorable man.”

  Griboedov was still uneasy.

  “I’ve just found out from a completely reliable source … Gretsch told me,” he added, as if shifting the responsibility onto Gretsch.

  (Gretsch had told him nothing; Faddei had made it up.)

  “Somewhere near Pskov,” he said, as if reading a printed text, “Pushkin lost the second canto of his Evgeny Onegin to Velikopolsky at cards. Do you remember Velikopolsky?”

  He nodded to Lenochka.

  Lenochka had never even heard of Velikopolsky.

  “Velikopolsky is a gambler, and Pushkin lost heaps of money to him. Heaps. And, by the way, Velikopolsky dabbles in scribbling too. He composed a ‘Satire on the Gamblers’ once. Though he himself is a gambler, he satirizes other gamblers. And Pushkin reciprocated. These two often have such poetic exchanges—one would write something, and the other would respond. Gretsch said that they have an agreement—whoever loses pens a verse. So Velikopolsky responded. Responded to the response.”

  “I don’t get it. Do you?” Griboedov asked Lenochka. “Responded and responded to the response.”

  Faddei winced painfully. He had been interrupted at the most crucial part of the story. He looked at them ruefully.

  “Alexander, my dear chap, I remember it exactly:

  I well remember how ta tum ta …

  “And there was another line, something like:

  The second Canto of Onegin

  Became a victim to an ace.

  “This was Velikopolsky’s response. And like a man of honor—strictly speaking, he is a scalawag but a pretty decent one, and perhaps even an honest chap—he asked someone else to hand a letter to Pushkin, asking whether he minded if the poem were printed?”

  Faddei made a noble gesture: bent his head sideways and spread his hands as if to say that it was the most natural thing to do.

  Of course, there had been no letter. Faddei had intercepted the poem the other day and had handed it to Pushkin just now at the theater.

  He tossed back his head and raised an eyebrow.

  “And what did Pushkin say? ‘I forbid you to publish it. An unpersonable personality. I will deal with him in Canto Eight of Onegin in such a way that it will make him sit up.’ These were his exact words; this is precisely what he told me.”

  “You’ve just said that it was Gretsch who had told you,” said Griboedov, rocking back and forth in his chair.

  “Indeed it was Gretsch, but I was there. You see, Pushkin speaks out against censorship, is all for freedom and all that, and yet he censors others! As if he himself is not a lampoonist! To think how many he has churned out! But try to forbid him squibbing, and he says it’s poetry, inspiration, sweet sounds, and litanies. No doubt he’ll write something so nasty about the poor chap in his Eighth Canto that the poor chap will …” he was lost for words. “One lives in fear of Pushkin: pay up or be damned.”

  Griboedov pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, and glancing at Lenochka, quoted a line about Faddei from an obscene ditty ascribed to Pushkin: “You preen and spruce yourself too much …”

  Faddei fidgeted and suddenly went limp:

  “No, no, he didn’t write that … He swore to me that it was not him, he gave me his word, it’s somebody else, it’s, what’s his name …?”

  He had either forgotten or never even knew.

  His protestations were like a shopkeeper’s, and that’s exactly what he was—the poet of the marketplace.

  His real life was going to the shops and making purchases. The delightfully colored spherical lights over the pharmacy shops were his Persia. The smell of pickled gherkins from the grocers’ tubs warmed his heart with the smell of the Russian national spirit. He failed to notice how he had become more attuned to shopkeepers’ language than he would have cared to admit. He haggled with them over the smallest trifle and was delighted to accept the least concession.

  For a moment, Griboedov thought how absurd the whole thing was. He had just cuckolded his friend, who had betrayed at least two other people that day, and now they were drinking tea together, and he was making fun of his host, and the third party, Lenochka, was pouring the tea.

  He had forced entry into their home, and just like Nightingale-the-Robber in the folktale, he had ravished the eiderdown of the hostess’s two lovely breasts—but the house was still standing.

  He felt a little bit sorry for Faddei. To make him feel slightly better, he started to complain in a thin voice:

  “You, brother Caliban, at least you have your journal, your gossip, your good life …”

  Faddei looked at him with genuine sadness.

  The sadness, however, did not last long.


  “And as for your queen,” continued Griboedov, “as a matter of fact, that piece is back with her sweetheart.”

  Faddei fidgeted and glanced askance at Lenochka. This was about his latest fling with a chorus girl who had cheated on him, as Faddei himself had told Griboedov.

  “No, brother,” he muttered, “you’ve got that wrong, that’s not my queen; I don’t even have one, but your piece is back with her sweetheart, with that officer of hers, from the Preobrazhensky Regiment.”

  Griboedov scalded himself with his tea. He remembered how Katya had kissed him on the head. He had a sudden fleeting memory of the knightly figure with a fireman’s axe at the theater and some army people backstage. Faddei was lying about Katya, but he had inadvertently hit on the truth. Griboedov looked ghastly and pathetic. The thin hairs bristled on the sides of his head.

  He rocked back in his chair and glanced at the unfinished veal. He seemed perplexed.

  The tableau burst into movement.

  It was more than Lenochka could bear. She stopped looking from husband to lover. The fleshy German mouth twitched like an old lady’s and went all wrinkled; she fixed the anguished plums of her eyes on Griboedov, then gave a desperate cry and began to slide off the chair. Griboedov and Faddei carried her to the sofa, where her lips quivered rapidly, and she babbled some incoherent nonsense.

  The door flew open and the large tante, disheveled from her sleep, surged like a rolling wave to the sofa. The apartment was soon filled with the feline smell of valerian.

  Faddei rinsed a glass, deftly and swiftly.

  Griboedov took himself off to the study.

  When Faddei, making a show of exhaling affectedly, joined him and said something inconsequential—“Women’s stuff, what can you do?”—Griboedov was at the table, leafing hastily through a book. Then he got up heavily, took Faddei by the shoulders, clenching his teeth and looking hard through his spectacles, in which there were tears, at the sweaty, eyebrowless face of a clown, and said:

  “Can I write? I do have things to say. Why on earth am I silent, as silent as the grave?”

  6

  Each instant a breath of life is spent.

  Before we know it, all too few are left.

  ▶ Sa’adi, The Gulistan

  At night, he allowed himself a break.

  That was how it was in the East, where people haggle for appearance’s sake while putting a high value on every hour of idleness and a well-spent night. He had grown used to living like this, and that’s why his body had stayed young while his face had grown old.

  It was his version of the Mohammedan prayer, sitting in the hotel’s soft armchairs, stretching his long legs, his feet slippered, and sipping his coffee.

  Sashka was politely silent. Griboedov would not have responded even if he had said something.

  He banished the memory of Nesselrode, banished the thought of Faddei, of Lenochka’s eyes, of the ballerina’s legs.

  He banished the memory of meeting Pushkin, of all the talk about him.

  He allowed himself a break.

  But those plums of eyes kept coming back, as did Nesselrode and Pushkin, and some deeply buried memory began to work its way up through his conscience again.

  The sums weren’t coming out right.

  And he closed his eyes and began to declaim Sa’di’s poems slowly from memory. They comforted him not with their sentiments, but with their sound:

  Hardam az omr miravad nafasi

  Chun negah mikonam namand basi.

  “Each instant a breath of life is spent.

  Before we know it, all too few are left.”

  Sashka went to bed.

  Hardam az omr …

  The sums had come out.

  There was a childhood secret that he would forget in the morning: burying his face in the pillow until the camels began to cross the fresh white dunes.

  They were followed by faces, all of them unfamiliar, and by sleep.

  He hated those garrulous, pillow-talking mistresses who deprived him of this boyish joy and most of whom wanted to chatter in bed.

  The garrulous gender did not understand a thing.

  Hardam az omr …

  “Each instant a breath of life is spent …”

  7

  The hotel waiter brought his breakfast and left, the first morning encounter of a paying guest with an alien face.

  Then the servant knocked on the door again.

  Griboedov couldn’t bear sloppy service.

  “Come in.”

  No one did.

  He opened the door himself, dying to say, “Swine.” He was greeted by a watery smile and eyes as expressive as seawater.

  The person who was knocking on his door was Dr. McNeill.

  He was looking at Griboedov with an expression that in the Tabriz mission could pass for a smile, though his manner was tight-lipped: “It’s me.”

  Griboedov was livid. He stood for a moment in front of the Englishman, blocking his entry.

  Suddenly he cheered up.

  It must be the devil who brought you here, he thought, all the while smiling politely, and said aloud in English:

  “Well met! Glad to see you, dear doctor.”

  Griboedov drew the armchairs closer together and, sparing speech in the English manner, pointed silently to the breakfast.

  But the Englishman declined the food. He touched Griboedov’s sleeve confidentially, as if it were a stone, and spoke quietly and genially:

  “I am your neighbor. From next door.”

  “How odd. When did that happen, doctor?”

  And he thought in Russian: … why couldn’t you have stayed in Tabriz?

  The Englishman spoke in a calm, quiet voice:

  “I’ve been instructed by Lord Macdonald to request the awards for some of the staff in our mission.”

  Lord Macdonald was the British ambassador in Persia.

  “The awards have already been made, doctor …”

  The British mission had been rewarded for its mediation in the conclusion of the Turkmenchai treaty.

  “Beyond expectations,” said the doctor, sounding bored. “But they forgot to send the papers to His Majesty’s Government requesting permission for the decorations to be worn in Britain. Without this paperwork the awards are invalid.”

  “And is that why you have traveled all the way from Tabriz to Petersburg?”

  “You should be aware, Mr. Griboedov, of the importance Lord Macdonald attaches to decorations. Colonel and Lady Macdonald send you their kindest regards.”

  “Please thank the Colonel and Lady Macdonald.”

  “This Moscow of yours is a fine city,” said the Englishman, speaking impassively, in the voice of a schoolmaster. “And I was pleasantly surprised by Petersburg’s hospitality. Mr. Nesselrode is an extremely courteous and broad-minded man. He is one of the greatest statesmen in Russia.”

  “He is a chump,” said Griboedov suddenly and loudly, turning red in the face.

  “He is a champ!”

  And the Englishman gave a lively nod of agreement.

  “You must be happy,” he said dispassionately, “to have been born in this country, and this country must be happy to have men like you.”

  “You look tired, doctor, and the compliments are flying left, right, and center.”

  The doctor looked at him with his seawatery eyes:

  “I have good reason to be tired, my dear friend, after covering such distances for the most trivial reasons. What’s Hecuba to me?”

  “Ah, you’re alluding to Hamlet?”

  “Every Englishman has the right to his insanity,” grimaced the doctor. “The same as men of other nations.”

  He still spoke in his flat voice, without giving much thought to his replies. His face gave precious little away. The tight frock coat and the stiff collar were indubitably in bad taste, but in Tabriz and Tehran, this was not conspicuous. He had hung about Shah Alaiar-Khan’s harem in Tehran with his clysters, poultices, and powders
. There, he had applied ointments and fed purgatives to the army of wives, and the capable acting envoy, Macdonald, had tolerated him.

  Russia had been conquering the East with the Cossack lance, and Britain had been doing the same with money and a physician’s pills. An insignificant physician of the Gujarat company, having successfully cured one of the Hindustani autocrats, procured the assets that later grew into the East India Company. McNeill worked his magic on the shah’s wives in Persia, and with his fancy sugary pills ousted the Persian hakim-bashi from the harems.

  McNeill seemed displeased, and this softened Griboedov.

  “I am talking to you as a private individual,” said the doctor, as if he were reading an income-expenditure book. “Please pay attention to what I have to say. I am not holding you up, my dear Griboedov, am I?”

  Griboedov glanced at his watch. He had an hour before he had to attend the examinations at the School of Oriental Languages at the Foreign College.

  “You are probably in a hurry to attend the final public examinations at the Oriental University,” the Englishman continued. “I have had the honor of receiving an invitation, but I’ve caught a cold and will find no pleasure in attending the public exam. My ignorance in languages makes my presence there quite pointless, I am sure.”

  Griboedov frowned and thought, Who isn’t invited to these exams? As long as he is a foreigner.

  The Englishman smiled the vaguest of smiles:

  “I am not a great devotee of that kind of honor either, especially as this Oriental School is hardly Oxford.”

  “Do you know that our Cossack Platov was awarded an honorary doctorate by your Oxford?” asked Griboedov.

  “Who?” asked McNeill, and the face once again became impassive. Griboedov smiled:

  “Platov, a Cossack chieftain, the Lord of the Cossacks.”

  McNeill struggled to remember.

  Finally, he parted his lips slightly and nodded.

  “So he was. I do remember. I saw him fourteen years ago in Paris. He was diamond-studded, all over: the saber, the uniform, the Cossack hat. Platov. I’d forgotten the name. The Russian Murat.”