02

An Arab horse gallops twice in a race.

A camel ambles gently night and day.

▶ Sa’di, The Gulistan

1

A short notice appeared in the newspaper the Northern Bee on March 14:

At 3 o’clock this afternoon, a cannon shot from the Peter and Paul Fortress announced to the residents of the capital city that a peace with Persia has been concluded. News of this and of the treaty itself have been delivered today from the headquarters of the Russian army operating in Persia by Collegiate Councillor Griboedov, of the State College of Foreign Affairs.

The three o’clock shot alarmed everyone.

The cannons of the Peter and Paul Fortress were Petersburg’s artillery newspaper. From time immemorial, they had boomed each noon, and signaled an approaching flood. For a moment, everyone in Petersburg would be struck dumb. The cannon shot invaded the life of every room and every office. The brief moment of surprise always ended with the adults checking their watches and the children unconsciously starting to play with their toy soldiers.

The force of habit was so strong that when a flood did occur, the clerks rushed to check the clocks.

But at three o’clock on March 14, 1828, the guns boomed out in military style. Two hundred and one shots were fired.

The Peter and Paul Fortress was the place of rest for dead emperors and of torment for living rebels.

Two hundred and one discharges, made one after another, suggested not a celebration, but an insurrection.

In point of fact, the matter was surprisingly simple and somewhat mundane.

Collegiate Councillor Griboedov had arrived at Demout’s Hotel on the previous night.

He requested three convenient, interconnected rooms. He went to bed and slept like a log all through the night. Now and again, his sleep was disturbed by the wallpaper design and the shuffle of slippers in the corridor. The unfamiliar old furniture creaked unusually loudly. It was as if he had sunk deep into the heavy, soft sofa that enshrouded him on all sides, as if he had fallen right through it, and the hotel curtains on the windows seemed to have been drawn for all eternity.

By ten in the morning, he had shaved, put on a clean shirt, as if before execution or an important exam, and at twelve, he was already on his way to the College of Foreign Affairs.

Officials of various ranks met him in the large hall. How many different hands he shook! And they looked at him as if a secret trap had been sprung for him in the depths of the hall that he was about to cross.

That day, every St. Petersburg collegiate councillor was drunk with jealousy, sick with it, and when night came prayed into his pillow inconsolably, fervently.

There was no trap. He was taken straight to Nesselrode.

And there was Nesselrode himself—standing in the depths of the hall.

Karl Robert Nesselrode, the gray-faced dwarf, the head of Russian foreign policy.

The collegiate councillor was wearing a green uniform tailcoat and stood erect, unbending, in front of this condottiero1 and contractor of whispers.

Finally, he bowed his head with the movement of a gymnast holding a pole across his neck and supporting another gymnast.

“It is my honor to present myself to Your Excellency.”

The dwarf stuck out his tiny, feminine hand and the little white hand laid itself down onto the yellow hand.

The collegiate councillors stared at them.

Then they heard the collegiate councillor’s repeated incantation:

“Your Excellency, on behalf of His Excellency, the commander-in-chief, I have the honor to hand over to you the Turkmenchai Treaty.”

The tiny white hand laid itself down on a bulky package stamped with several wax seals.

The tiny gray head came alive, a Jewish nose drew in air, and German lips said in French:

“I congratulate you, Mr. Secretary, and you, gentlemen, on the glorious peace.”

Karl Robert Nesselrode did not speak Russian.

He turned on his tiny heels and opened the door to his office for Griboedov to enter. Open sesame. The somber portraits of emperors in bright frames hung on the walls, and the desk was as bare as a lectern.

Unable to come to rest on either a book or a case file, the eye had no option but to retreat inward into abstraction.

At this point Nesselrode offered him a seat.

“Before our visit to the emperor, Mr. Griboedov, I would like to express personally my deep gratitude for both your industry and your expertise.”

A cross of some award dangled on his tiny chest, ridiculously fragile, as if inviting anybody who cared to yank it off.

“The conditions of the peace in which you have assisted us so greatly have brought such benefits to Russia, that at first glance would have seemed unattainable.”

He smiled sadly and pleasantly and let that little smile linger on his face, while his gray eyes flickered all over Griboedov.

Griboedov assumed a stony expression. This was not the collegiate councillor sitting before the minister; they were two augurers pitting their prophecies against one another. Nesselrode was acting as if his knowledge were superior.

“A superb, honorable peace,” he said with a sigh, “but …”

The other augurer had no intention of lowering the price of his knowledge, did not even crane his neck to signify awareness.

“… but don’t you think, dear Mr. Griboedov,” Nesselrode brought the price down just a little, “that on the one hand …”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence.

Then the younger one began to speak:

“I believe, Your Excellency, that on the one hand, our border along the Aras, as far as the Edibuluk ford, will henceforth be our natural frontier. We’ll be protected not only by the wisdom of Your Excellency’s policies, but also by the river and the mountains.”

“Yes, of course.”

Nesselrode looked sulky, as if slightly offended. He stopped his swaying, and the little cross froze on his chest as if stitched to it. Now it was his turn to fall silent.

“On the other hand,” said the younger man, and paused as if he had reached the end of the sentence. He had learned a lot in Persia.

“On the other hand,” said Nesselrode as if excusing the inexperience of the younger man and regretting it, “will we be able to ensure the implementation of all the clauses of such a splendid treaty, if we take into consideration …?”

And the tiny hand made a gesture.

The gesture meant—“the Turkish war.”

“Hopefully, Your Excellency, the Turkish campaign will soon be at an end.”

The older man turned around helplessly: the bandy-legged Greek, Rodofinikin, in charge of the Asian Department, was off with a fever. His good-natured vulgarity in conversation was helpful in communication with subordinates. The bandy-legged one would have put on a smile at this point and reduced the talk to some everyday trifles of the most humdrum character (“What halva they have in Persia! What date-plums!”), and then would have patted him on the shoulder, figuratively speaking.

Nesselrode smiled triumphantly:

“Yes, I hope so too. You probably know that His Majesty and his small circle—O! La bande des joyeux!” Nesselrode waved his tiny hand with desperate bravado, “—are setting off for the theater of war, as soon as we declare it.”

In fact, the war had already broken out but wasn’t yet officially declared.

The younger man knew nothing of that narrow circle and raised his eyebrows high. His superior easily understood that Griboedov was no fool.

After all, he couldn’t say to the collegiate councillor in so many words that just as he had previously wanted to speed up the shamefully protracted and futile Persian war, now he had to do everything he could to try to slow down the war with Turkey.

So far as he was concerned, war was chaos, unpredictability, brouhaha.

In the recollections of his youth, war was always associated with the downfall of some minister. And now he was a minister.

And here he was, waving his intrepid little hand, while what he really ought to have done was simply leave, retire, while he still had time.

His old friend, Count de La Ferronays, who had recently been recalled to France, wrote to him weekly from Paris: the French were concerned, they were displeased; Europe was weighing Russian military might against her own, and it would be better if he, Nesselrode, came to an agreement with the new ambassador. Count de La Ferronays also advised: Peace, peace whatever the cost, any peace, as soon as we achieve military success—or failure.

Prince Lieven, the Russian ambassador in London, wrote to Nesselrode that he had stopped appearing in public because Wellington did not wish to have anything to do with him and would be placated only by a few defeats inflicted on Russian troops.

And now Lord Aberdeen had begun, strangely enough, to sympathize with Metternich. That wasn’t just brouhaha—that was much worse. Metternich …

But here the old wound opened up—the Viennese mentor renounced his Petersburg disciple and called him a Danton and an idiot in every language he knew.

While all that was going on, Karl Robert Nesselrode had to govern, govern, govern.

And enjoy himself nonstop, night and day.

He hadn’t the energy for both.

So he handed over the governing to his wife and decided to concentrate on enjoying himself. That was no easy task. He knew that his nickname in Petersburg was “fried face,” and some hack had lampooned him in an abominably vulgar scribble: that he was not the minister for Europe but a pathetic péteur, a stinker.

Karl Robert Nesselrode, the son of a Prussian and a Jewess, had in fact been born aboard an English ship bound for Lisbon.

The balance of power and overlapping friendships was tilting and pitching like that English ship, and it was now he, he, Karl Robert Nesselrode, who was in agony like his mother at the moment of that childbirth at sea.

The outward expression of his inner agony was different, however. He smiled.

He wanted this strange courier to lower his price, he wanted to make sense of the man, but instead, he seemed to have expressed his dissatisfaction with the peace treaty and thus revealed the fact that it had been concluded without him, Nesselrode. The young man was also one of these … clever sorts. And he was related to General Paskevich. Nesselrode turned toward the collegiate councillor, who projected a mixture of Russian churlishness and Asian deviousness, and gave him a cheerful smile.

“We’ll have time to talk later, dear Mr. Griboedov. Right now we have to hurry. The emperor awaits us.”

2

I was summoned to the Headquarters

And dragged in for a dressing-down.

▶ Griboedov

The diplomatic class traveled in soft damask–upholstered coaches. Nesselrode offered Griboedov a seat next to himself. Inside it was stuffy and unpleasant. The dwarf had left the pleasant smile at home. He would reclaim it at the palace. In the carriage, in his strange, almost clownish outfit and with no expression on his little gray face, he looked quite terrifying.

He had on a dark-green uniform with a red cloth collar and red cuffs. Gold edging ran along the collar, the cuffs, the pocket flaps, underneath them, down the coattails, along the seams. He had braid embroidered in coils on his little chest. Birds’ heads glittered on the brand-new buttons—the emblem of the state.

And when the dwarf was arranging the uniform on his knees, the sheen of the dark-green silk lining could be glimpsed.

This was his court uniform. His hat was adorned with a plume.

They were rumbling along to the palace.

Everything was predetermined, and yet both men were anxious. They were entering the realm of absolute order, of immutable truths: the very color of the lining and the shape of the hairstyle were specified, the harmony was preordained. Nesselrode examined Griboedov uneasily. He remembered the decree on mustaches, which only the military were permitted to wear, and another banning the wearing of Jewish-looking beards.

The collegiate councillor was apparently aware of the decree, and his coiffure was absolutely appropriate.

Instead of entering the main gate of the palace, they rolled up to the side one. The guardsmen stood to attention, and the officer gave them a salute.

As soon as the dwarf, followed by Griboedov, climbed out of the carriage, a thickset, unfamiliar face arose in front of them. The face was that of the Court Outrunner. In a smooth and dignified manner, as if entering the pulpit, he took them through the heavy door to a portico and led them in the same kind of solemn pace up the stairs. Two huge ostrich feathers fluttered above his head: a black one and a white one. At the entrance to the imperial chambers, the Outrunner halted, made a bow, left the new arrivals, and slowly began to descend the stairs. He ushered in the remaining members of the diplomatic caste three men at a time.

Griboedov looked as jaundiced as a lemon.

The Outrunner and Hoff-Quartermaster marched silently ahead of them. They were beefy, clean-shaven, calm and collected.

The diplomats entered the antechamber.

They were met by the Ceremonial Affairs Officer. He joined the Outrunner and the Hoff-Quartermaster.

First ahead of them were the Hoff-Quartermaster and the Outrunner.

Then the Ceremonial Affairs Officer, the Hoff-Quartermaster, and the Outrunner.

The Master of Ceremonies, the Ceremonial Affairs Officer, the Hoff-Quartermaster, and the Outrunner.

The Chief Master of Ceremonies, the Master of Ceremonies, the Officer of the abovementioned Affairs, the Hoff-Quartermaster, and the Outrunner.

They were met in each room that followed and were joined in silence. Without looking at each other, they marched on, some on the sides, some in front—evidently according to etiquette.

A quiet little children’s game, played by old men in gilded garments, was getting under way.

As soon as a new rank joined them in each room that followed, Griboedov experienced a childish fear: how patiently they waited for them, how imperceptibly they materialized out of the brightly decorated walls, and with what concentration they measured their step with theirs.

It felt like a bad dream. In the Audience Hall, the Chief Master of Ceremonies lingered at the door according to protocol, and they were met by the Hoff-Marshall and the Ober-Hoff-Marshall.

Nesselrode panted rapidly from the pleasure and the pace. His tiny gray face was flushed—they were being shown great honor, quite extraordinary.

And here was the Famous Face, with the neck bulging at the collar, with a hairpiece concealing an early bald patch, and with breeches so white they made the legs look almost edible. The face was pink.

He said something and smiled with his chin: the big chin sank downward. He took the package from the dwarf’s hands and jerked his head and eyes sideways, in the direction of the Ober-Hoff-Marshall. The old man in gold bestirred himself while remaining stationary. He was all bustle, face and body, without actually moving an inch from where he stood. It was like a frenzied running on the spot.

When the first shot boomed, Griboedov gathered what was happening.

The mechanism worked like this: an invisible thread ran from the Famous Face via the Hoff-Marshall to the Peter and Paul cannon. The Face had given the sign, but the shot was slow in coming, and now the face registered displeasure.

Then the two-hour-long booming began.

Emperor Nicholas spoke to Nesselrode, holding him by his gold lace. Then he approached Griboedov and asked:

“How is the health of my Commander?”

When he was still an heir to the throne, the emperor had served under Paskevich’s command, and since then he called him “Commander” or “Father Commander.”

“I seem to remember meeting you at his place about three years ago.”

“Your Majesty has an excellent memory.”

The cannon were striking like clocks.

Was it worth it, spending a month being jolted in a carriage, in hot and cold weather, in order to pay this trite compliment?

The dwarf was blossoming like a gray rose.

He was counting the shots.

He knew that with each shot he was rising through the ranks.

Thus, little by little, he was becoming count, vice chancellor.

And here now were leases, rents, country estates.

“Congratulations, gentlemen!”

Griboedov already knew what he was being congratulated for.

The Order of St. Anna, second class, studded with diamonds, had been promised to him by Paskevich. He was worried in case Paskevich had forgotten the money—Griboedov had requested four thousand chervontsy. To buy off dear mother.

The dwarf was counting, his face lit up.

He looked like a goldfish in a tank.

He seemed to be growing, straightening, stretching; he was no longer what he had been an hour earlier, the mere Karl Robert Nesselrode; he was now vice chancellor of the empire. He would endeavor to aspire even higher and perhaps he would reach as far as … who knows?

If he’d had gills, they would have fluttered like mad.

Cannon shots.

Paskevich was becoming a count, Nesselrode the vice chancellor.

Collegiate Councillor Griboedov was receiving a decoration and the money.

The silver medals had been minted with an inscription on the obverse: “For the Persian war,” and on the reverse, “1826, 1827, and 1828.”

By the time everyone had moved to the court chapel, Nesselrode had come back to earth.

He belonged to the Anglican Church—the son of a Catholic father and a Protestant mother—and he was accustomed to praying in an Orthodox church.

The cannon fire stopped. The city was booming with the pealing of church bells. The chimes were not as in Moscow, sonorous and deep, but had a different sound—hollow and clinking, like the clip-clopping of the cavalry’s hooves.

There was a silent understanding.

The ship that had once made for Lisbon was bobbing on the waves. Undercurrents were stirring among the diplomatic estate and among eminent persons of both genders.

Nobody knew where the ship was bound for, least of all the head of Russian politics.

But everyone sensed that the color of the uniforms determined the direction of minds. They all knew that the collegiate councillor’s collar should be black and velvety. Otherwise, the threads would lose tangibility, slip through his hands, become elusive. The ship would start spinning; there would be another uprising, similar to the Decembrists’, which would make heads whirl.

There was a silent understanding between the Famous Face, the dwarf, and the Russian god.

One last time, God accepted the report from Griboedov in his rank as collegiate councillor at the court church, which looked like a children’s Christmas party. The Famous Face accepted the report from God and smiled.

3

He was more exhausted by the palace than by his travels, and when he sped to his hotel rooms, he hugged all and sundry just to unwind. How many were there! All of his old friends. He calmed down only when he mistakenly hugged Sashka, who was in the way, and he burst into laughter.

“Why are you getting under my feet?”

He examined them all like a mischievous birthday boy until Faddei Bulgarin was suddenly all over him.

Faddei had grown bald and bold. A big tear hung on his reddish eyelids. He giggled, looked at Griboedov like a lost soul, shifted his glance from him to the others, and from the others back to him.

Griboedov sat down, young and carefree.

How many old friends had rolled up to see him! He also noticed many strangers and didn’t like that. Did he look ridiculous?

They tried to drag him off to the theater, insisted on going, kept reminding him all at once of their old fondness; and some were afraid that Griboedov might not even recognize them. Then Nesselrode’s footman arrived with an invitation to the ball.

He left them all in the front room and went through to the adjacent bedroom. The third room was used as a study.

Oriental ambassadors and couriers were treated to such apartments at Demout’s Hotel.

Faddei slithered in behind him.

“How are you doing, Faddei, you old rag-and-bone man? Who are you at war with now?”

Griboedov was preparing to change. He poured ice-cold water onto his head and snorted.

Faddei observed all this like a religious ritual. He gathered that the changing of clothes signified the end of the court ceremony.

Griboedov threw off his shirt, heavy with palace sweat, as if it were a uniform.

“You are tanned, you have put on some weight,” Faddei said affectionately, and stroked Griboedov’s yellowish hand.

Sashka circled Griboedov with a towel.

Between the soapy water and the eau de cologne, Griboedov learned that Lenochka Bulgarina was well, remembered him, and would be at the theater tonight, that the old Privy Councillor Korneev had died and that his wife had wasted no time in getting married again—“a scandal, my friend, an utter scandal”—that the latest fashion at balls was narrow trousers, and that there was nothing new in the journals—everyone was awaiting him.

Griboedov splashed him with water on purpose, and Faddei said:

“What swinish behavior, my friend, quite immature really. You’ve grown young again.”

4

Washed, corseted, fresh undergarments and softer collar on, having thrown off a thousand years, he entered the familiar auditorium.

It was the royal attendance night at the Bolshoi Theater.2

His black tailcoat cut through the crowd as a ship slices through the waves.

He hadn’t been here for two years, and everything was different. The auditorium was freshly painted, the ceiling now of an azure color and laden with cornices. The music was swelling with Boieldieu’s bravura, preventing him from taking a proper look round.

He preferred the austere desert of the old theater, where the stage was the scaffold, the boxes were the judges, the stalls were the mob, and the theater machinery the guillotine.

The edgy atmosphere of theater gossip was his school of diplomacy; skirmishes with the police were his wars; actresses’ embraces and backstage fondling were lovers’ prison visits.

Where was Katenin, where was Shakhovskoy, his enemy Yakubovich?

Where was Pushkin, dutifully witty, Pushkin, who in the front row used to bring to the theater the rough spirit of the Parisian streets?

That evening, Pushkin approached him without ceremony and extended his hand.

“Glad to see you,” he shouted through Boieldieu. “I envy you. You ride all over Persia as we cavort all over the journals.”

His sideburns could be classed as Jewish. There was some new independence of manner about him.

“And are you as bored as I am?” asked Griboedov.

He was undecided. His Woe from Wit had been put aside, unpublished, unstaged, buried, and he was now writing another play. There was something equivocal about being the author of a single comic play. He used to write for the theater; now he wanted to be a poet. One had to be careful with Pushkin. He intrigued Griboedov like a creature of a different breed.

“Vyazemsky now calls Abbas Mirza ‘Abbé Mirza,’” said Pushkin. “I envy you. Let’s change places.”

If only they could!

Both noticed that they were surrounded.

The mob was watching them. Sideburns no longer spread down faces toward chins, as they had done last time he’d been here. Instead, they descended in a straight line under the collar, trimmed evenly at an angle. Everyone boasted tight trousers, and those worn by the dandies were ridiculously clingy. Artificial bouquets were attached higher up on the ladies’ shoulders, right on the shoulder itself. Shoulders and arms were barer, dresses shorter. Behind the fans, their eyes slid over both men; the men’s sideburns moved when they spoke.

The ladies had grown astonishingly brazen. They would come up, take a point-blank look, and then be off, giggling.

It looked like the two of them were giving a free show before the ballet had even begun. Pushkin glanced at his Breguet watch. Evidently, he was well used to the ladies.

“As always, the show will start later because of His Majesty,” he said. “I dislike this custom; it smacks of waiting in the chancellery and of Emperor Alexander Pavlovich’s rituals … This is how the theater explains the wait.”

“His Majesty is honorable, full of vigor,” he continued glumly, his eyes moving over faces and shoulders. “He is also ever so forthright and could be just about to reprieve the exiles any day now. I seem to have made my peace with him,” he said, and gave Griboedov a searching glance, “but I don’t like being kept waiting.”

“And has he made peace with you?” smiled Griboedov.

Pushkin shrugged his shoulders and then said:

“Out of envy of you, I am starting to write the history of the wars in the Caucasus, and I have written to Ermolov. Too afraid to approach you.”

Bulgarin walked straight toward them, leading Lenochka by her elbow. Pushkin shook hands with Griboedov and said very quickly:

“We’ll meet again. Glad to see you. There are so few of us, and some are far away.”

Under cover of the musical bravura, he intended to escape. But having left Lenochka and Griboedov to their own devices, Bulgarin dashed toward Pushkin, fussing happily, took him by the arm in front of everybody, and led him sedately into the corner. Never pausing in his chatter, he pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and offered it to Pushkin.

Griboedov kissed Lenochka’s hand ardently, and she blushed. Bulgarin, who abandoned Pushkin as quickly as he had previously abandoned Lenochka, spoke breathlessly and deftly got rid of some small fry. He considered Griboedov his property and was annoyed that their seats were not together.

The ushers put the lights out, and the ballet began.

Griboedov felt a particular lightness all over his body; his muscles tensed. He grew lighter than usual, hardly conscious of his own weight. He reclined in his seat, only his glasses pointing ahead, and looked around. The bald and polished pates, the pinkish white shoulders disturbed him.

Yes, he felt young again; he wanted to giggle.

The semidark void, stirring and resonating with little coughs, was his youth. He was rediscovering his true self: the anxiety that emanated from his body was natural here, everybody felt excited, everybody’s eyes were searching for somebody else, and everybody was restless. The ladies made one last tilt of the head before an invisible mirror, the men picked pieces of fluff off their tailcoats.

He was the master of them all, towering above them.

The negotiations with Abbas, the obsequiousness in front of Paskevich, today’s ceremony at the palace—it had all been a preparation, a precondition for his owning this crowd.

Handel’s God Save the King3 was performed. The crowd hesitated and got up on its feet submissively.

He looked proudly in the direction of the emperor’s box.

Which of them had more power?

Today he had realized Nicholas’s equivocal existence. The emperor was an incomplete man. His icy look was extraordinary. The soldierly fabric of his uniform smelled of ladies’ powder, the breeches were of a sickly sweet color. Pushkin had addressed the emperor in his poem “Stances.” Nicholas had such a hold over his imagination because Pushkin was a man of a different breed.

Griboedov turned in his seat and squinted at the emperor’s box. He would outwit him.

A storm of applause—the audience demanded an encore of the anthem, the Russian national anthem, composed by a German for an English king.

No one knew that mischief was sitting in the second row by the aisle, dressed in a prim black tailcoat. He peered ahead. Straight in front of him was the magnificent bald head of a dignitary, as naked as a newborn babe.

Hairless heads terrified him. There was something helpless and shameless about bald human heads. He couldn’t bear to behold baldies and snub noses.

He recalled how one such baldie had once applauded a bad actress very loudly, and how, sitting behind him, he had felt so impatient about it all that he had reached out and clapped him calmly on his bald patch. He had been young and insolent then. The policeman was lost for words, and he had received a bizarre reprimand.

“What kind of applause is that, gentlemen, clapping on bald pates?!”

He had managed to get away with it back then. He glanced at tonight’s bald patch and smiled.

All of a sudden, the curtain rose and the man with the bald patch shouted:

“Bravo!”

Then, with the same happy smile, Griboedov calmly stretched out his narrow hand and lightly slapped the bald head.

And sat back.

A pair of human eyes, elderly, indignant, and blue, bulged at him. They saw a frozen gaze, fixed on the stage, the famous pair of spectacles and the highly held, celebrated head.

The man was choking with rage. He recoiled, nonplussed.

He shifted a bit in his seat and once again glanced at Griboedov apprehensively and suspiciously. Then he stroked his head and glanced in the direction of the boxes.

Griboedov realized that in the uncertain dimness, the man thought he had dreamt it.

He had lost the habit of theatergoing and was intoxicated by it, like a man who had not had a drink for ages and now got drunk on a single glass.

The ballet was called Acis et Galatée.

Acis dashed about the stage, leaping from one corner to another with his hands pressed to his heart. This, incidentally, also helped him in his leaps. The music flung him wherever it wished. He walked on his points, extended, froze, and then again he was swept all over the stage. Finally, he twirled and sank down on one knee. The little feather on his little hat fluttered; he breathed heavily and smiled. Powder flaked from his nose. Hearing the applause, he got up, made a low bow, and again fell on one knee.

Katya Teleshova emerged from the wings with tiny steps, wearing Galatea’s tights and with little wings on her back; she swam to Acis and then flew back, drumming with her feet along the line drawn on the stage. Turning her head from one side to the other, she tripped in sharp staccato to the other end of the stage. She was used to the clapping, and as soon as she heard it, she curtsied readily, like a circus horse.

Acis quickly stood up from his kneeling position.

But Griboedov was not interested in Acis.

Katya Teleshova, whom he knew like his own hands or chest, was curtsying on stage.

She had brownish-pink, rather shortish legs and arms that were confident in their helplessness; the foam of her tutu was beating against her thighs.

He knew that she was dancing for him, and when the applause came, he tilted his head slightly, involuntarily imitating her. He knew that she hadn’t danced like this when he was away.

He raised the opera glasses to his spectacles, then took them off and pressed the glasses right into the sockets of his eyes—to bring her closer to him.

And so he saw her face. It was simple, almost peasantlike, the pretty face of a milkmaid. The low, white neckline flooded his eyes, like fresh, warm milk. He remembered her scent. One mustn’t smile and dance like this in public. Katya must be mad.

Acis irritated him. He watched furiously how he supported her, so clumsily. His dancing was pretty bad, and he looked like a flying fool, particularly when he performed battements. He had silly white thighs; the very color of his tights was silly, indolent, insolent. His average height Griboedov found something of an insult, indicative of Katya’s poor taste.

He gave a soft whistle and kept saying:

“All right, all right, tap away for now.”

Her partner’s leaps provided Katya with resting time.

“This is impossible, impossible!” Griboedov kept saying softly, plaintively.

And when everything stirred around him, when they started to clap their hands, he turned around and, without joining in, looked curiously at the stalls.

Acis came out from the wings, leading Katya by the hand and bowing.

And who on earth was asking for him?

After the ballet had ended, the lights did not go up and the theater immediately began to rock and cough. It was springtime, and the snivels would cease only for the duration of the performance.

Next was an interlude, a tableau of Apollo and the nine Muses. He bit his nails angrily. He couldn’t go backstage right now. And at this point, the stage machinery took pity on him.

The device that was lowering the platform holding Apollo and the nine Muses stalled in midair. It stopped halfway, revealing the white legs of Apollo and nine pairs of pink female legs. So there they were, stuck on high in all their glory, sitting meekly on their movable platform.

A frightened female shriek, then laughter, and somebody got on their feet.

Total turmoil followed.

Griboedov knew that the stuck platform meant the sacking of the machinery operator; he would be kicked out: the emperor was sensitive to these incidents and could not abide the unexpected. Today the stage machine was out of order, and the Muses were stuck in midair; tomorrow something else might get stuck, and the whole world would be in a state of chaos.

Griboedov laughed into his handkerchief, left the auditorium, and went backstage.

Either because order had already been restored or because there was commotion in the auditorium, the wings were deserted. Except for a figure resembling a knight with a fireman’s hatchet and two military men who were waiting for somebody.

Katya’s door was open. He entered the room, smiling.

Candles were lit. She was standing by an open wardrobe filled with costumes and seemed to be expecting him.

“Let’s go to your place,” he said in a flat voice, adding, “sunshine” or some such word, which did not come out right. He saw how she winced.

Suddenly the corridor erupted: with laughter, coughing, rasping French dialogue, the bass voice of a thespian—the intermission had begun.

Katya took his head with both hands, kissed him quickly on the forehead and pushed him toward the door.

He found himself suddenly out in the corridor, ejected like a little boy. There, he turned back into the prim tailcoat, perambulating slowly, ogled and whispered about.

On the stage, the corps de ballet was performing a cotillion. It was a gala show. The pairs stood still on the spot, their faces turned upward, like horses champing at the bit.

They were arranged crisscross, and on the four points of the cross, the pairs danced in a circular movement.

They rotated around an immobile but diminishing cross, the pairs flung off faster and faster, curtsying with the exaggerated politesse of the dance, and the cross melted away. This was the latest fashionable figure, curiously named the boa.

The orchestra slowed down, the boa curtsied, dispersed, and went off stage.

Griboedov was infuriated. Katya would be tied up until the end of the show in the Russian dance. He was irked and feeling increasingly ridiculous. Strictly speaking, his whole situation was ludicrous: to have his pleasure put on hold for so long.

A couple of poles were being set up on stage, with a rope tied tight between them. A little Italian busied himself at it fussily and gave it a good feel. This was the second number—the tightrope walker, Ciarini.

The grave Italian, who was holding up the end of his evening, was making his blood boil.

He turned and, trying not to look around, began to make his way to the exit. Spotting Faddei, he bolted toward the stairs and ran into Lenochka.

Then, like a boy, like a guardsman, he took her hands in his and led her away. Lenochka affected surprise, and her black eyes looked like two plums. She was no fool and surrendered herself to chance, while not having a clue what was afoot, not a solitary clue. Still astonished, she allowed a fur coat to be thrown over her shoulders, and only in the carriage told Griboedov, looking at him with the same innocent plums:

“Vous êtes fou. Das ist unmöglich.”4

This was möglich all right. Faddei was an unselfish friend; he would never show that he knew. It was a kind of Oriental hospitality.

“Lenchen,” said Griboedov and leaned toward her, “you had a headache, you felt dizzy, so I took you home.”

Out on the road, the mud was brittle and icy. The wheels cut through it swiftly and evenly as in the days of his youth.

They entered the house stealthily, and now it was Lenochka who was in charge. In the long corridor, she pressed her finger to her lips to prevent her old aunt, tante, from hearing them. In Faddei’s household, she acted as the mother-in-law. Lenchen opened the door to the study and peeked inside. Griboedov went in, and Lenochka sank onto the sofa. Her plums were glistening. She said:

“Das ist unmöglich.”

Their lovemaking was angry, repetitive, mechanistic, until levity flared his nostrils and he burst out laughing.

There was supreme power and supreme order on earth.

That power belonged to him.

With a blunt iron, he was entering the rich earth, cutting through the Caucasus, ploughing Transcaucasia, driving a wedge deep into Persia.

What the hell! Here he was, conquering her, the earth, slowly and stubbornly, entering into every detail.

Until the moment came when he ceased to care.

His panting breath was the highwayman Stenka Razin’s,5 heard all over the world.

He was making the best of what was left, plundering the country, committing his final robberies, and each raid was becoming briefer, deeper.

Anger was thrashing the world.

And then came complete equilibrium—the infant Asia was breathing next to him. Easy laughter played on his lips.

The green curtains at Faddei’s were beautiful.

Then he saw the funny side of it all: he had behaved like a boy, couldn’t wait, had run off and made mischief. He felt sorry for Faddei.

And he dug the infant Asia lightly in the ribs.

5

When Faddei came back from the theater, Lenochka was having tea with Griboedov in the dining room, her head bandaged.

Faddei was delighted.

He was unconcerned about Lenochka’s migraine, which was so bad that she had to be brought home from the theater. When Griboedov was around, Faddei paid little attention to anybody else. And in spite of the headache, Lenochka was making a good job of pouring the tea. Faddei seemed to respect her all the more for Griboedov’s attention to her.

This for Faddei was true happiness.

He had experienced everything in his life: a penurious Polish youth; the war, which had terrified him; treason; the brush with death; destitution; the detention cell; his friendship with the police; and being in the service of the Third Department.6

But he was as slippery as an eel and had managed to save his skin because his view of life was simple, physical.

Faddei was a moralist, and a man interested in the banalities of life.

He was neither a man of letters nor a man of office. He was an official of literary affairs, good at spotting trends and sniffing the air.

If this Caliban had not been endowed with an inborn craving for eating, sleeping, quarreling, and telling salacious, unsavory jokes, he might have occupied a major post. But these days, even policemen were expected to behave with decorum, and nothing that he did was anything of the kind. He had a natural taste for scandal, typical of impoverished and squalid Polish landowners—a taste for the tavern, a beer, a half-eaten fish, and shenanigans with chambermaids.

Griboedov was his hero, the greatest thing that had ever happened to him, the teardrop in his pint of beer, his sentimental friendship.

He ran errands for him, borrowed money for him, tried to get his comedy published, although it couldn’t get past the censors, and for hours on end boasted about him brazenly to his drinking chums from the journals, as if he were his private property.

Griboedov hated the vanity of the literary scum. In his heart of hearts, he hated literature itself. It was in the wrong hands, everything was going haywire, nothing was being done as it should.

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.”

So he’s dragged himself to Paris too, has he? thought Griboedov.

“He was no more Murat, my dear doctor, than you are Hamlet. He was a Cossack and a Doctor of Law at Oxford University.”

Again the Englishman agreed.

Griboedov looked at him.

Was Macdonald eager to rid himself of his doctor, and for that reason he had sent him on such a piffling mission from Tabriz to Petersburg? Or had the doctor himself, God forbid, taken it into his head to offer his services to the Russians? It was highly unlikely that he had arrived in Petersburg solely on account of these ridiculous decorations. But anything could be expected of the English.

The doctor was in the grip of the sullen English melancholia. He appeared perfectly frank and said something inconsequential:

“I am not an Oxford graduate. I went to a medical school. It was curiosity that compelled me to travel to the East.”

He chuckled.

Griboedov waited patiently.

“But I often ask myself: what’s in the East for you? Do you find my bluntness surprising? I am a physician. The East attracts old men with its wines,” continued the doctor, “it attracts states with its cotton and sulfur, and poets are lured by pride. They are gratified by their exile, though usually no one even thinks of banishing them. Our unfortunate Lord Byron perished for this very reason.”

“Byron perished through the fault of his and your compatriots. You insult the East too much to my face today,” said Griboedov.

The Englishman bit his lips.

“You are right,” he nodded blankly, “I am exaggerating somewhat. I’ve been feeling homesick today.”

He looked around the hotel room critically.

“No one asked me to say what I am going to tell you now. Bear that in mind. Nor is it part of my responsibilities. It’s just that when two Europeans meet among savages, they must do each other favors.”

Griboedov nodded patiently.

“I’m treating Alaiar-Khan’s wives.”

The Englishman lit up a cigar.

“Do you mind my smoking? A bad habit that is hard to get rid of. And yet it is so much better than your vodka, which gives one a headache and stomach cramps. Count de Ségur (or was it someone else?) claimed that Napoleon lost the Russian campaign because of your vodka. His soldiers died of it, damn it!”

Only at this point did Griboedov notice that the Englishman was a little tipsy. He was talking too much and too flatly, as if reading his own sober thoughts. He must have been fighting nausea this whole time.

“So, I treat the shah’s wives, and these ladies are hypochondriacs. They don’t care for clysters, they prefer sugar albi pills and extract of roses. But the pills in general have very little effect. I am warning you: these ladies are neurotics, their husbands are unhappy, and they try to find reasons for their unhappiness; that’s the way I see it.”

“And who is to blame, in your opinion?” asked Griboedov.

“We are in no better position than you are,” McNeill answered slowly. “We must facilitate the Persians’ repartitions to you according to the peace treaty. I know you, and I know the Persians. We are taking a great risk, and we’ll gain nothing by it.”

“Do you want me to tell you what you’ll gain?” said Griboedov politely.

The Englishman lent an ear. Griboedov went on, speaking astutely:

“You’ll gain red copper, Khorasan turquoise, sulfur, olive oil …”

“Let’s drop this conversation, my dear Griboedov,” said McNeill. He sounded serious. “I am sick of Persia. I will ask for a transfer. And you, it seems, liked Persia this time round, didn’t you?”

He checked his watch and finally rose.

Griboedov waited.

“One more informal question. I’ve been away from Russia for a long time. Your Nesselrode is a charming enough chap, with the mind of a statesman, but I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He is too subtle for me.”

Griboedov burst out laughing.

“Bravo, doctor!”

“I like clarity. We have the East India Company. Until now, the consensus has been that there is not and cannot be any other East India.” The Englishman blew a cloud of tobacco smoke at Griboedov. “But you have your superb native cavalry—the Kyrgyz, and you would be inclined to go slightly … deeper inland … On the other hand, why shouldn’t you establish your own colonies? To use Malta in order to withstand us in the Mediterranean—that was not a bad idea of your Emperor Paul. Aye, there’s the rub. And Nesselrode is so subtle, and everybody is so reticent over here …”

He began to whistle a march and waved his hand:

“We’ll see each other before Tabriz. You will go to Tabriz, won’t you?”

“I will not go to Tabriz, dear doctor, and right now I am off to the exams.”

McNeill was satisfied.

“And I am off to a parade. Over here, it’s all the war, the exams, the parades. Great fun.”

They left the hotel together onto Nevsky Prospect. Cabs dashed by; walking sticks flashed here and there.

“This is like Bond Street!” said McNeill. “I envy you staying here. So much fun! No time to think!”

8

“Semiramis7 was a great harlot, gentlemen!”

There was a commotion in the vestibule.

Semiramis might well have been a woman of easy virtue, but the tall man who was berating her looked bizarre. His fur coat trailed on the floor like a cloak. An ancient man standing next to him, bent at a right angle, with a decoration in a shape of a star on his chest, was trying to reason with the tall one. But the tall man kept tight hold of the chain that was attached to a large placid dog, and wouldn’t give in. He was making a fuss because of the dog, which the old man was reluctant to let into the exam. Griboedov was unclear as to how Semiramis had come up in the conversation.

Any conversation overheard at its conclusion can sound odd.

The old man was the school’s headmaster, Academician Adelung. The tall young man was the eminent professor and journalist Senkovsky. He always took his dog with him to lectures, an expression of defiance and of his disdainful free thinking, more like an old man’s eccentricity. The privy councillor was a German, young in spirit; the young professor was a Pole, as old as Poland itself.

Just before Griboedov arrived, the youthful ninety-year-old German had been trying to convince the antiquated, beardless Pole that his dog would be a distraction during the exam.

Senkovsky responded frostily:

“He is well trained and would be no such thing.”

With old-fashioned, scholarly courtesy, the academician cited the instance of dogs tearing Actaeon into pieces after he had spied on Diana.

Holding the dog by the chain, the professor retorted sternly:

“But Pyrrhus of Epirus8 was suckled by a bitch. In any case, we are unlikely, alas, to witness Diana bathing naked during this particular exam.”

The academician stuck to his guns and somehow forced a connection between the Temple of Diana of Ephesus and the school of Oriental learning.

But the professor objected, saying that of all the seven wonders of the world, the school was more reminiscent of the gardens of Semiramis, on account of its rather shaky position.

The academician took it into his head to take offense and growled out something in an official tone about the Semiramis of the North,⁹ who had encouraged the pursuit of learning during her reign. And the position of the school that he was in charge of, far from being shaky, was quite safe, particularly with Russia’s political interests in mind.

At this point, the professor, instead of assuming an official tone, ending the argument, and handing the dog to the attendant, began to mouth something offensive about Semiramis and made a reference to her horses.

Having spotted Griboedov, the stooping academician abandoned the professor and rushed toward the diplomat.

He shook his hand and kept saying that he was flattered, and at the same time apprehensive that a diplomat of such learning, as one so rarely encountered, would be judging his young charges, who were endeavoring to follow in his footsteps, and he hoped that his judgment would not be too harsh.

Griboedov bowed very politely, while marveling at the academician’s longevity.

The academician held on to Griboedov’s hand with his own bony hands, as if forgetting to finish the handshake, while adding that his son, a young man who had studied Oriental languages and medicine abroad, was eager to make Griboedov’s acquaintance.

The young man himself surfaced at once, as if from nowhere. He was short, bald, bespectacled, and at least forty years old. He had a playful look. He offered his hand to Griboedov, and his face crinkled with unexpected geniality.

Griboedov wanted to tickle him, to rumple him, just to see him laugh.

They left Professor Senkovsky to his own devices.

This had an unexpectedly immediate effect. Without saying a word, he thrust his dog’s leash into the attendant’s hand and began taking off his coat, without which he looked absolutely extraordinary. The frock coat of a light bronze color with the mouse-eaten coattails, the waistcoat with shawl-like collar and stripy little necktie—all revealed a foreign traveler. The shortish woolen trousers, gray with fine black stripes, looked miserable, and the straw-colored boots sounded as sharp as journal polemics.

This was how he was dressed for the official examination.

He inclined his head sadly to one side and approached Griboedov.

Here he was, with his flighty mind. Here he was, the new luminary, the professor, writer, traveler, the newfangled wit who was coming to replace the old comics of the twenties, now summarily consigned to the archives in favor of this profound scholar with a propensity for causing scenes with his dog.

Griboedov shook his hand apprehensively.

The hand was cold; it was the hand of a new, unfamiliar generation.

And the examination began.

Rodofinikin, who was still off sick, had sent a short swarthy Italian, Negri, to say something on behalf of the Ministry.

The Italian rattled off a few quick words, making it abundantly clear that he was well trained and well aware that it would be discourteous to delay the exam with superfluous speechifying.

The professors sitting at the long table were a haphazard mixture of Europe and Asia. The doctor prone to laughter; the gray-haired and red-faced Frenchman, Charmoy; a Persian, Mirza Jafar; and one called Chorbahoglu, who was either a Tatar or a Turk.

The forty pupils under examination all wore the same distrustful, tired, and troubled expression. A great gulf stretched between them and the table of celebrities. Negri’s speech, followed by that of the academician replying to him and that of Charmoy, who jabbered out of turn, were, as far as they were concerned, nothing but torture before the execution.

The guests—dear honorary and eminent guests, as Charmoy had called them—were invited to begin the examination.

Griboedov gave them a wave to get on with it.

But Senkovsky got down to business at once and quickly developed a taste for it. He screeched out his questions to the pupils, who were each drawn to the table, as if by a magnet, by the inaudible summons of the headmaster’s voice.

“What would account for the excellence of the Bedouin poetry, in the opinion of the Bedouin poets themselves?”

A pupil suggested quietly, and almost as if offended by the question, that in the opinion of the Bedouin poets, their poetry was good because their verses were brief and easy to remember.

Senkovsky scoffed.

“That’s not it. The Bedouins offer as the main reason the fact that a Bedouin never has a running nose.”

The pupil looked nonplussed.

“What is synonymous with ‘happiness’ in Arabic poetry?”

The pupil couldn’t remember.

“Everything that is low-lying and humid,” shrieked Senkovsky, “is in their opinion happiness and fulfilment. Everything that is cold is admirable.”

Charmoy’s face fell—that was his pupil. Everyone, except Griboedov and the doctor, was displeased. To be so carping in the finals showed a lack of sensitivity. Griboedov was curious to see what would happen next. The doctor looked with interest at the distressed pupil.

“Whose verses are better—those of the settled and peaceful Arabs or of the bellicose nomads?” Senkovsky’s question was a loud screech, filling the air.

The pupil responded with decorum:

“Settled and peaceful.”

“Nomads! Robbers, down-and-outs, warriors. The Arabian poets despise the settled ones; they call them fat bellies, which in the language of a lean and wiry Bedouin means: coward, sluggard, piece of scum. And now let’s deal with the texts,” he squawked, having finished his rant.

Charmoy, the Tatar, and the Persian relaxed.

And all that Arabic gasping and the stifling aspirations of Persian vowels filled the Ministry’s dismal hall.

The poets of subtle speech, Al-Muhalhel, the runners al-Shanfari and Antarah from the tribe Al Azd and Amr ibn-Kulthum, came next.

“When the messengers of death pronounced the name, I cried out: ‘Does the earth not tremble yet? Do the mountains still stand firm on their foundations? Oh, my brother, who would inspire and lead horsemen into the greatest danger as you were wont! Under your command, the point of each horseman’s lance was stained with the blood of the enemy, as the fingers of young girls are painted with the pink juice of henna!’”

Senkovsky interrupted the muttering of the pupils and shrieked out, choking, the ancient lyrics.

He yelled out the words of al-Shanfari:

“ ‘Untie your camels, flee, do not wait for me! I will join the company of wild beasts that dwell in caves and on cliffs! Everything awaits your departure. The moonlight floods the desert. The camels are saddled. The girths are tightened. You can set off at once. You have nothing to wait for. I remain here, I stay on here alone!’”

He thumped his chest.

The professor’s face became more and more puffed up; his slimy eyes froze.

How strange! The palace, the parade seemed an infantile game, deliberately played out for no apparent reason, and here too, the multitribal gang of teachers and pupils who had also gathered for no apparent reason was filling the air with murder and the Orient. Camels roamed the ministerial hall.

Another pupil, a perkier specimen, read out Antarah’s work:

“ ‘My spear makes way to any …, rather, … to each brave heart. I am tossing aside the defeated enemy, like slaughtered lambs to be devoured by wild beasts …’”

“That’s enough. Read Lebid,” bellowed Senkovsky hoarsely. He was behaving like a true Oriental despot. Paying no attention to either Adelung or Charmoy, he called out each pupil, in that loud voice of his.

The pupil translated:

“ ‘The rain poured down from each morning and every nighttime cloud, brought by the south wind, and each cloud thundered, answering the other.’”

Senkovsky shrieked in despair:

“Wrong! You can’t translate Arab poets like that! The Arabs don’t like objects, and they leave it to the reader to guess what they are through their attributes.”

Old Adelung was dozing, while the young doctor was having great fun observing the unprecedented massacre.

Suddenly, Griboedov stretched out his hand and said with a smile:

“Could you please read from The Gulistan, story twenty-seven, the very end section.”

Senkovsky stopped, his mouth gaped. The pupil read: “ ‘Either honesty itself does not exist in this world or nobody cares to be honest in our time. Those who learned archery from me made a target of me in the end.’”

“Not bad at all,” said Griboedov, smiling.

Senkovsky shrank and squinted at Griboedov. He cried out abruptly:

“Could you read the poem from story seventeen in The Gulistan?”

“ ‘Do not approach the door of an emir, vizier, or sultan without an introduction. When a dog smells a stranger or a doorkeeper spots him, one seizes him by the trouser leg, the other by the scruff of the neck.’”

Senkovsky wheezed, overwrought:

“Could you convey it in better Russian?”

The pupil was silent. Senkovsky spoke pompously:

“In Russian, it has been rendered in these beautifully poetic lines, proverbial by now:

    My father taught me this:

Above all else, with no exception, be polite to everyone:

The boss for whom you have to work,

The landlord of your humble home,

The valet, footman, doorman, and to be right

The doorman’s dog—to lessen its bite.”

And the professor shrank into a miserable little ball.

Griboedov frowned and gave him an icy look.

And Senkovsky, who had shrunk into this defiant, wretched little ball, with his necktie bristling, his dismal tie pin—an enameled Cupid—angry, anxious, and isolated, suddenly seemed extremely amusing. Griboedov produced an open, almost beatific smile:

“Joseph Ivanovich, you are far too strict.”

The hodgepodge of professors smiled kindly. Senkovsky’s screams and despotic gestures were no longer appropriate. The academician came to his senses and also smiled.

“I confess I am at fault,” said Senkovsky mildly. “Apologies, Alexander Sergeyevich.”

He continued to attitudinize for a little bit longer.

And everything ended peacefully.

“Could you translate for me, please,” he said nasally, but extremely courteously, “from al-A’asha?”

He drawled out the name “A’asha” in a perfectly civil, almost feminine fashion.

“ ‘How blinding is the whiteness of her body,’” a pupil read in a high-pitched voice, “how long and thick is her hair, how sparkling her teeth. Slow and calm is her stride, like that of a horse, wounded in the leg. When she walks, she sways magnificently, like a cloud, which floats calmly in the sky. The tinkling of her jewelry is like the rattling of the ishrik seeds when they are shaken by the wind.’”

Senkovsky interrupted him wistfully:

“ ‘Her physique is so dainty that even a visit to her neighbor produces struggle and strain.’”

“ ‘Even a short spell with her friend makes her tremble,’” the pupil added apprehensively.

“ ‘Ah!’” sighed Senkovsky, “ ‘in fact, no sooner had I seen her, than I fell in love with her. But alas,’”—he shook his head—“ ‘she is on fire for another. Thus do we all share the common fate,’” he nodded sadly, “ ‘thus do we feel all the torments of love, and each of us’”—he raised his voice instructively and thrust his finger in the air—“or, to be precise, ‘any one of us gets caught in the nets which he employed to enmesh others.’”

“ ‘I am sick with love …’” the pupil began.

“ ‘ … to see,’” interrupted Senkovsky, “ ‘my beloved’s painted hands …’ Very well. You may sit down.”

In the Ministry hall in which the examination was taking place, the bellicose screeching had given place to the cooing of doves.

Professionally, Charmoy was tickled pink; the Persian and the Tatar were sitting quietly; the ancient academician’s mind was, most probably, a blank. The students stared; they couldn’t take their eyes off the easygoing individual who had unexpectedly come to their rescue. Griboedov listened airily to the raucous Senkovsky.

Outside the windows, an uncertain March. And A’asha’s words, which had been garbled by both professor and pupils, were wafting lightly by, swaying like the ishrik—whatever tree was that? The painted hands of the beloved, the pacing of the steed wounded in the leg.

9

Everyone in Petersburg had a runny nose. In St. Isaac’s Square, which they were crossing, the snow was dove-colored, spongy, and wet. The Baltic skies were like ash.

Scaffolding, clutter, rubble; sodden planks of wood, old and useless to the eye. Three generations had already seen the scaffolding around the church, which had never wanted to be built on the swamp. A column lay on the ground, covered with black canvas, like the corpse of a sea creature from the time of the Flood.

“They’ll be putting up the column tomorrow,” said the doctor, “to be followed by celebrations. The hospitals have been told to be ready. It is anticipated that a number of people will be crushed.”

“There is a structural flaw,” said Senkovsky. “The column looks like nothing in particular, but glance at it from the boulevard and the entire church is like a toy. In ancient Egypt, they built better, more crudely, but with greater understanding. Besides, the church is being built on piles, and in a hundred years will certainly sink into the earth.”

“Could that happen?”

“Without a doubt.”

Senkovsky spoke with relish.

“Entire states of antiquity were swept away, or burned down, or went under. Never to be seen again.”

“And yet we know ancient art and literature quite well, don’t we?”

“Nothing of the kind. For example, what is the most attractive feature of ancient Venuses?” asked Senkovsky languidly. “Their snow-white color. But the ancient Venuses were painted all over, as if with boot polish,” he said, visibly upset. “The paint chipped off later …”

He stamped his new boots, shaking off the mud. The dog was pulling the professor away.

“… under the influence of dampness in the atmosphere.”

“Do you study antiquities?” asked Griboedov.

“As well as geology and physics. Properly speaking, I am a musician.”

A church that had been built for decades, just to sink into the earth in a hundred years, infancy and infirmity, the black melting of the snow, the incompleteness of everything, a man strolling next to him, and his vast but unreliable knowledge. And those cumbersome and tiresome comparisons!

Senkovsky was a geologist, a physicist, a professor of Arabic literature—and it was not enough for him.

The dog was pulling him away.

“What kind of pianoforte do you have,” asked Griboedov, “a Pleyel, or one with double escapement?”10

“Can any pianoforte be good enough?” said Senkovsky in his nasal twang. “The pianoforte just bangs out. Its age is over; these days, more effective instruments are called for.”

“Why is that, exactly?”

“Because a greater sonority is required. I am working on an instrument of my own. It has eight keyboards. It is called a keyboard orchestra.”

“And how is your orchestra played?”

Senkovsky answered grudgingly:

“It is not yet finished.”

“And what are you going to play on it?”

Now he answered sullenly:

“Goodness gracious me, the same things as on the pianoforte, I should say.”

All of a sudden, he took Griboedov’s arm and spoke abruptly, grinning with his rotten teeth:

“I despise everybody in Petersburg—everybody but you. Let’s establish a journal; I wouldn’t mind working for you. A travel section, scholarly articles, foreign novels for fools. We … shall topple all the other journals. We … you …,” he ran out of breath, “you are …”

Griboedov shrugged.

“Joseph Ivanovich, journals are an unpleasant occupation. I have long retired, abandoned all writing. And who would want to conquer the Russian journals? What is there to be achieved?”

Professor Senkovsky was first pulled sharply forward, then pushed back, bumped into the dog, and stood still in front of Griboedov. He spoke slowly and coyly:

“I am sorry,” he said in an affected drawl, slightly raising his light-colored hat with a bright bow. “My best regards, Alexander Sergeyevich.”

And off he went, eagerly hauled by the dog, his fur coat trailing through the mud. He was quickly lost in the Petersburg fog.

Griboedov glanced at the doctor. The stocky little man stood there smiling through all the furrows of his little red face.

“Dear doctor,” said Griboedov, pleased, “I may soon have need of fine and cheerful fellows such as your good self. Would you agree to go with me to a nonexistent country?”

“Wherever you wish,” replied the doctor. “But I am not exactly a cheerful fellow.”

10

As the alluring scent of valerian attracts cats, so he attracted people. When he had tried to live a settled life, there had been no one around him. But when he had gone beyond literature, beyond life in a capital city, had reached out over the Caucasus and Persia, had worn out his light, childlike heart, people caught the sharp scent of destiny surrounding him. Only when this scent becomes overpowering do people fly to a person, willy-nilly, like the moth in Sa’di, which was flattered into the fire.

They crowded around him, without knowing what was to be done with him, eager as they were to relieve the unease he aroused in them: Senkovsky was offering journals; Faddei the quiet life; they took his joy in things, as groundless as any other man’s, for mysterious and meaningful success in some unknown affairs; they filled his silence with thoughts he never had, and when they bored him and when with helpless civility he hid himself in the next room, they exchanged knowing glances.

This was called fame.

The pale shadow of the nervous officer Napoleon Bonaparte had once been given substance by his subjects—he was their creation. Bonaparte fainted in the Council of Five Hundred. That was before he seized the secret: mathematics and a soldier’s levity. He also learned at the theater, and Talma was his teacher in the staccato, even inarticulate oratory that people thought stark and grand.

In the 1830s, virtuosos were itinerant all over Europe, the military masters of grand pianos fighting their loud but harmless battles. But their much too black tailcoats and much too white collars were uniforms covering bare flesh. All these geniuses had no shirt and no country to call their own. The battlefields were the grand pianos of Érard, Pleyel, or Babcock.

Griboedov had a country he could call his own.

How he loved these provincial Rostov and Suzdal faces; how he loathed those Petersburg ones, starched and ironed, or crumpled like collars. And yet he had spent his life not in the countryside, but on the highways and in windswept Persian palaces.

He was driven by the wind. And his white, refined nobleman’s shirts had become threadbare. They had been spun by his mama’s slaves, the very ones who had once rebelled.

He could agree neither to the journals nor to the quiet life.

11

And now too, when he returned to his hotel rooms, there were God knows how many people there. They had been waiting for him for a long time and had made themselves comfortable, chatting, smoking, as if he had already died and they did not have to stand on ceremony.

He shook everyone’s hand and chatted informally to each person.

When a young general who was distantly related to Paskevich addressed him as mon cousin, Griboedov addressed him in the same way. With a very youthful diplomat, he was polite in a fatherly fashion and advised him, should he ever take it into his head to travel to the East, not to trust its reputation as having a hot climate and by all means to take a fur coat, or otherwise, he would freeze to the bone. He promised an aspiring poet that he would certainly read his poems. And he treated the three strangers who simply gaped at him, quite amenably, like good furniture.

He suffered all of them because he was leaving soon, and even in his heart of hearts didn’t consign them to hell.

Still, he was glad when Sashka appeared and, without looking at the guests, announced that his mail was waiting for him in the study. It had been delivered an hour earlier.

He made a gesture that could have meant either: “Business, I’m afraid,” or “Make yourselves at home,” and went into the middle room.

There were a few letters—about four or five, maybe more.

A long, pink billet-doux with a lilac sealing wax stamp, from Katya:

My dear friend,

I burst into bitter tears after last night’s show. You should know that it’s awful to treat a woman like that! I don’t want to see you ever again! And even if you wanted to call on me, you wouldn’t succeed because I am busy every day continuously from 11 till 2 and I am at the theater from 7 onward. So, farewell! Forever! You are a terrible, terrible man!!

K. T.

Griboedov burst out laughing. What mystery! What terror! Like the junior classes of a drama school!

He looked at the pink note with the broken sealing wax and laid it on the desk. Every day from two until seven continuously would be quite enough for him.

Then he thought that he was actually terrified of seeing her. Women remained young for far too long; time didn’t wither them; he was bored already. He decided to behave like the perfect gentleman with Katya, and at the same time to tease her a bit. He was quite tickled by the thought.

A long letter from Lenochka was written in German. She was also saying her farewells and was also in tears. Griboedov felt sorry for her. He stuck the letter in his pocket. Lenochka was suffering for other people’s sins. She reminded him of somebody. Was it Murillo’s Madonna from the Hermitage?

And he glanced at the third seal.

It had a Persian flourish, the letter was contained in a crude envelope, and the inscription with fancy flourishes read:

TO HIS EXCELLENCY!

THE RUSSIAN SECRETARY!

MISTER!

ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH!

GRIBOEDOV!

The Russian Secretary frowned and broke the seal.

“Who delivered this letter?” he asked Sashka.

“The doctor left it.”

“What doctor?”

Sashka replied pompously:

“The English one.”

“Now listen to me,” said Griboedov slowly and with emphasis. “From now on, if you ever accept letters or anything else from the English doctor, you’ll be in trouble. Do you understand?”

“Fine,” answered Sashka indifferently, “from now on, nothing at all.”

Griboedov looked at him furiously:

“What a fool! A complete clodhopper!”

“Dear Sir,

Your Excellency:

Please read this letter in its entirety because I am going to give you a very important warning.

My homeland, my country of birth, is Russia. In that very homeland under the late Empress Catherine I was given a thousand lashes, and under His Majesty Emperor Paul I was run through the gauntlet and struck 2,500 times on account of absenting myself without leave, when I held the rank of sergeant-major in the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoons Regiment, in which I served prior to 1801.

Your Excellency, even though I am now advanced in years, I still wear the scars on my body! And would you tell me now, dear sir, was I treated well by my homeland? Because every soldier is also a man, and this is often forgotten!

I will forever be seeking revenge on my former homeland for the wife and children whom I lost. What else can an old soldier and sergeant-major do?

Mr. Secretary, at this point in time I am writing to you with the rank of a full general and a khan. From 1802, I have called Persia my motherland and I confess the Muslim faith, though I have not yet lost the habit of writing in Russian.

Ten years ago, you sent me out of the room in the presence of his Highness Abbas Mirza, under whom I now serve as full general, and at that time, I was a n’uker, which in Russian means simply a courtier. On the same occasion, you called me a canaille in the Persian language, which I know very well: a piece of scum, and so on. You also took away seventy-five of my men, young Cossack sarbazes, who were stupid enough to believe in what you promised and gave you their pledge of allegiance. They had been told that they would be forgiven, that they would be happy, that they would eat Russian bread, together with other promises. Where are they now, Your Excellency? Are they happy, Mr. Secretary? In which part of the country exactly lies their happiness? We all know where sarbaz Larin and sarbaz Vasilkov the ‘Marked’ are; we all know where their happiness is. I have a whole battalion of former Russians under my command right now, and they are soldiers who require a single word from me to be ready to blow anyone into pieces, because they consider their motherland to be Persia, not Russia.

Two years ago, my battalion suffered a minor defeat in a battle and we had to retreat from Khoi, in our motherland Persia, to the fortress Chekhri, on our border with the Turks. His Excellency General Velyaminov was hell-bent on putting an end to me and my people. But it was not our time to be lashed once again or to lose our heads on the executioner’s block, which would have delighted our enemies. Your Excellency, I might be a scoundrel and even a canaille, but General Velyaminov did not succeed!

Mr. Secretary, Your Excellency, do not imagine that I write with the intention of abusing you. My rank is full general, my name is Samson-Khan, and I cannot afford to indulge in name-calling.

Instead, I am asking you to convey to the Russian emperor Nicholas that there was an article in the peace treaty that you have had the honor to enter into with us in Turkmenchai, stipulating that all Russians must be returned from Persia. It goes without saying that you have a perfect right to do so with Russian prisoners, but not with the Persian subjects of the Islamic faith, even though they were originally Russian.

Our clause has been overlooked, and I am asking you to pass on to Emperor Nicholas that the clause concerning voluntary prisoners of war should be thought through; otherwise, our sabers are sharp and our hands are ready.

Sincerely yours,

Your Excellency,

Mr. Secretary,

Samson Makintsev, also known as Samson-Khan.”

And on one side there was a huge red seal, on which Griboedov read in Persian: “Samson, the star on earth.”

Samson Makintsev, sergeant-major of the Nizhny Novgorod dragoon regiment with his Russian battalion that had been fighting Russian troops, was a disgrace to both Paskevich and Nicholas. Those soldiers with long hair and beards, wearing Persian hats, Samson with his general’s epaulettes and quick dark eyes, were the nesting ground for a new Stepan Razin. As in the famous folk song,11 Stepan once again had got together with a Persian princess, only this time he donned a tall, conical Persian hat. Who would go against Samson-Khan? He had control over the entire Khoi region. The sarbazes would run away, and these robbers would bayonet themselves in the belly rather than fall into the hands of their former motherland, Russia.

Russian soldiers ran to join him in the hundreds. He already had more than three thousand men over there. They were the shah’s guards, bahaderan, which meant “heroes,” the grenadiers. And a mere sergeant-major was sending a petition to Tsar Nicholas himself …!

Griboedov paced the room. In the room next door, they smoked and chattered endlessly.

He remembered how Samson, in a hat with a diamond feather, had marched in front of his battalion on the Persian parade and sung together with his soldiers:

A soldier’s solace,

A soulful friend …

He never forgot that insult.

Samson Makintsev had always been polite to him. Only nine years ago, when he indeed in Abbas Mirza’s presence called him scum and scoundrel and told him to get out, Samson had given him a crooked grin, his teeth glittered, and he shook his head and spat, but he didn’t say a word and left the room at once, swaying on his dragoon’s bandy legs. That same night, he got drunk and sang underneath Griboedov’s windows:

“A soldier’s solace …,”

trying to tempt him to come out and speak.

Griboedov did not come out, nor did he enter into any talk.

He was young then, and far too proud. Now he no longer had any prejudices. And he had always avoided learning the fate of those eighty men whom he had taken out of Persia ten years earlier. How young he was then, how foolish! He had promised them a full pardon, had talked of the motherland and believed every word of it himself. And turned out to be a fool and a deceiver. And he remembered Vasilkov, the “Marked one,” Samson was alluding to, the soldier who had been run through the gauntlet in Russia and had been a wreck ever since; he had looked after that Vasilkov during their camps, rubbed his knees with rum, let him ride on top of the soft luggage; but one night Vasilkov jumped off the bullock cart and said he was leaving. And he remembered the soldier’s face—pockmarked, pale. Since then, he had heard nothing of his fate: for all he knew, the Persians could have killed him the very same night. And that might well have been for the better. How they were treated later on, in Tiflis! He’d been leading them to the land of milk and honey, and he’d harangued them with Napoleonic tirades.

He frowned and hurled away the package in disgust.

Really, the brazen impudence of this traitor!

And the last short note was from Nesselrode, who was arranging a meeting with him for tomorrow, before the ball. This note was the shortest.

And still his heart began to beat time like the copper pendulum on a grandfather clock. He suddenly buttoned up, recognizing that the time had come.

He opened the desk drawer like a thief and pulled out the package containing the project. He hacked the seals on his own project, like a spy, and stared fearfully at the blue sheets.

It would be too soon, as important things always were, but he could delay no more.

His project would be accepted. He would certainly outwit Nesselrode, and he understood the emperor well.

His project was immense, bigger than the Turkmenchai Peace Treaty. Everything had been calculated, and everything was irrefutable.

He wanted to be a king.

12

“Nowadays in Petersburg, one can make money pretty easily.”

“Ca-n one?”

“Nowadays, Petersburg is not like it was in the old days, there are many educated people here.”

“A-re there?”

“Nowadays, of course, your clothes and the way you dress are important.”

“A-re they?”

Sashka, who thought that Griboedov had left, was talking to the hotel servant in the adjoining room. In all that time, out of self-importance, Sashka would say only: “Can you?” or “Are they?” but then he was also coming out with “Re-ally?” out of genuine curiosity.

Griboedov sat with his coat on and listened. He had been just about to leave, but then returned quietly.

“These days, one needs to be on one’s toes. Important gentlemen are put up in this hotel.”

“A-re they?”

“Last year, they played cards in Room 10, and one of the gentlemen was clobbered on the noodle with a candlestick.”

“W-as he?”

This conversation calmed him down. It was impossible to go to Nesselrode right now and make grand speeches.

As soon as one starts to declaim, one’s case is lost.

He knew this from experience—no one was particularly interested in his declamatory poetry, in which he laid himself bare. That was how he had wanted to write his Woe initially, but then he spoiled it for the theater, put in some slapstick, and the public adored it. He should approach Nesselrode in the same way.

“ … And about two months ago, in Room 5, an American lady gave birth to a baby boy.”

“D-i-d she?”

13

A diplomat once said: all real evils are born out of fears of imaginary ones. And thus he defined his craft.

A secret brotherhood of diplomats had formed itself with a common sign—a smile. Brought together and cut off from ordinary people in extraterritorial palaces—that is, in plain words, residences far removed from their own countries—they had developed particular modes of behavior.

They pretended to be ordinary to spy out people’s weaknesses and to succeed in their machinations.

Everybody knew it: if Talleyrand was carousing wildly, giving one ball after another, with lots of ladies in attendance, it meant that France was just about to start its machinations. If Metternich was talking about retirement and how he was going to devote all his time to the philosophy of the law, Austria had machinations in mind.

Diplomats are extraterritorial, detached. That’s why every ordinary human action is turned into a particular ritual. A perfectly ordinary dinner attains the monstrous proportions of The Dinner.

Like the African aborigines who in the nineteenth century extracted the poison that they called “coca” and, intoxicated by it, walked in delirium along thin twigs that seemed to them like beams, so instead of port or madeira, diplomats raised in their glasses Prussia or Spain.

“Young man, a sad old age awaits you,” said Talleyrand to a young diplomat who was reluctant to play cards.

A short notice appeared in the Northern Bee on the very same day that Griboedov went to see Nesselrode:

Foreign News. France. Last Sunday, His Majesty played cards with Prince Leopold of Coburg and the Russian and Austrian envoys.

A pleasant old age awaited the young prince, and that night France was losing to Russia and Austria. That was an item of foreign—not high society—news. In that latter category, there was something completely different: “Gossip Column” signed F.B. That was about real card-playing and about a real dinner, and it had been attended by Faddei Bulgarin.

The short note from Nesselrode with the request to see him an hour before the ball was another machination.

Once in Nesselrode’s study, Griboedov assessed the terrain and the field and did not get down to military action right away.

The terrain was comfortable. Pale blue watercolors in slender frames hung on the walls like symmetrical lollipops. Informal portraits of emperors and diplomats at home, Nicholas’s little horse in a Gürner lithoprint, an engraving by Wright, where Nicholas was depicted on a plate with eagles, and Alexander, plump, with female flanks, against the backdrop of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Metternich’s chin was also visible.

The place was pleasant; the place was, innocent, snug.

It did not bode particularly well.

He preferred the massively spacious and almost empty office at the Ministry. He would have to talk about goods, factories, capital. It was impossible to imagine all these topics in this little room, in which the document would just be words on paper.

Nesselrode worshipped two words: “dispatch” and “memorandum.” An elegantly written memorandum could in many instances prevent war, blood, and brouhaha. Such was the influence of the office and the little watercolors. He kept making little jokes and raising his eyebrows, while seating Griboedov in a vastly oversized armchair.

Then.

Then came Rodofinikin, who had finally recovered from his ailment.

This could be either good or bad.

Rodofinikin was a wise, hard-bitten old bird. His hard, silver-haired little head was not accustomed to far-reaching thinking, but was used to sudden turnabouts. He had served since the time of Catherine the Great. Then, under Emperor Paul, he was the Secretary of the Chapter House of Orders, where he studied the human whirlwind that was politics. He had visited Austerlitz and even stayed there for two days. When he came across the words “the sun of Austerlitz,” he remembered the varnished floors at the castle, and if the day of Austerlitz was mentioned, he remembered the morning, the suitcases, the wagons, the market square; the day he fled Austerlitz, a small, horrible little hole. And for a long time afterward, he had traveled on official assignments all over Asia, was in Constantinople, got used to military affairs and sudden commotions that later turned out to be known as victories or defeats. But under Alexander, he had been in the shade, when Asian affairs were not in fashion, and now his time had finally come: there was this Asian brouhaha, and Nesselrode couldn’t do without him. Just as before, he had no far-reaching aspirations except for a secret one: to become a born and bred Russian nobleman, so that everyone would forget his Greek-sounding family name. He also wanted to increase his estate and be elected as a marshal of the nobility, albeit in a provincial town.

The times were uncertain; the balance of power had gone overboard. The East could and would be conquered. The project might succeed.

As soon as he sank into the armchair, the dwarf and the bandy-legged one proffered him some documents from both sides.

Nesselrode gave a little laugh.

Griboedov nodded to one man and then the other and skimmed the papers, which turned out to be Nesselrode’s and Rodofinikin’s letters to Paskevich. He feigned interest. The letters were about himself.

Nesselrode’s letter:

“Mr. Griboedov’s arrival and the evidence he brought of the peace concluded and the treaty signed, delighted everyone …”

Nesselrode preferred the sound of the word “evidence” to “peace.”

“Praise be to our Almighty God, praise be to His Majesty the Emperor, who has arranged everything so wisely … gratitude of the fatherland to our victorious troops …”

Get on with it!

“I have to tell Your Excellency with all forthrightness …”

Aha!

“… that the news of the peace has been received here at a most opportune moment. It will undoubtedly have a satisfactory effect on our external relations …”

Meaning: why was it delayed?

“Griboedov has been honored according to his merits, and I am confident that he will continue to be valuable in our Persian affairs …”

Not good at all.

He smiled, made a bow, and skimmed the second sheet, written by the Greek:

“I am struggling to find the right words to convey to Your Excellency the general delight which has seized the Petersburg public on the arrival of the most gracious Griboedov …”

A deep bow to the bandy-legged one.

“The tears of the enemy will also be copious … I am myself seized by illness … Heartfelt congratulations on the latest laurels … Griboedov was greeted by the emperor, and the following day, Karl Vasilyevich brought a decree from the palace confirming the decoration and the four thousand chervontsy, in accordance with your recommendation.”

Very good.

“… as soon as the business is finished, another assignment must be arranged …”

What assignment? That very assignment? Not good.

This is how he was showered with kindnesses.

Nesselrode looked at him, with his eyebrows raised, expecting gratitude. At last, he saw through him: this courier knew his worth and was demanding a greater remuneration. Nesselrode was not greedy. Griboedov was related to Paskevich—that had to be taken into account. Besides, he knew the Persian language and mores, while Nesselrode confused the rivers Aras and Arpa.

All three of them sat like this, smiling at one another.

Nesselrode began:

“Dear Mr. Griboedov, you look very well; you must have had a chance to rest.”

“Oh yes—after all your labors, you needed rest.”

They were raising his price themselves!

“And so Mr. Rodofinikin and I have been thinking,” the senior one said, “about an appointment worthy of your talents. I have to confess that so far we haven’t found one.”

You haven’t? That suits me fine!

“Does the location of my next appointment matter, dear Count? I have been honored beyond all measure. It is not this that preoccupies me. I am concerned, in the same way as you gentlemen are, with the question of our future. I would like to talk not of myself, but of the East.”

Griboedov pulled out his project. The blue package hit the diplomats in the eye.

The assault began. The diplomats quieted down. The package commanded their respect.

The Turkmenchai Treaty—memorandum—the Bucharest Treaty—package—Nesselrode took a guess: the package was the size of a memorandum with appendices. He indicated that Griboedov should begin reading and sank into the armchair: a fish gone into deep water.

Griboedov spoke quietly, courteously, and distinctly. He glanced in turn at Nesselrode and the Greek.

14

Sashka spent his days in a state of oblivion.

He treated Griboedov as an unavoidable evil (when he was at home), and he was pleased when his master went out in his carriage. Sashka enjoyed rocking on the coach box.

He had a remarkable propensity to sleep.

Sleep enveloped his entire being, caught him unawares on a chair, on a couch, in the carriage, and, less often, in bed. Then he yawned frightfully, as if deliberately. He opened his jaws, tensed his shoulders, and for a long time couldn’t manage to produce a successful yawn to its full extent. Then, relieved by his yawning, he would feel hazy throughout his entire body, as if he had been steamed at a sauna and his back and belly had been well rubbed with soapy foam.

Mirrors were his passion.

He looked into them for a long time, fixedly.

He also loved changing clothes, and in order to give himself an excuse for it, would begin to lay out and shake out his master’s wardrobe.

After Griboedov had left and the hotel servant had said everything he had to say, Sashka walked around in the rooms. He opened the wardrobe and took a piece of fluff off his master’s uniform. Then his fingers poked right inside the wardrobe and felt an article of clothing that he had long fancied. He took a Georgian chekmen12 out of the wardrobe and brushed it over.

Then, lazily, as if obliging somebody, he put it on. Griboedov was taller than Sashka, so the waistline was below his waist.

He began to admire himself in the mirror.

He didn’t like the fact that the chekmen had no gazyr¹³ and had a smooth chest. For some strange reason, Griboedov particularly treasured this piece of clothing and never allowed Sashka to clean it.

Here, by the mirror, a monstrous yawn took hold of Sashka.

Shaking his head and nodding, he sank onto the sofa and fell asleep, still wearing the chekmen.

In his sleep, he dreamed of ribbed bandoliers and an American lady; the lady was shouting at the hotel servant that he had lost her baby boy, whom she had borne in Room 5 and put in the chest of drawers. The servant was blaming Sashka.

15

Before the ball, one had to stick to the cozily familial style, to jolly Nesselrode along with a joke and to drop a casual business remark to the Greek.

Griboedov began with a comparison.

“I am an author, and Your Excellency will forgive me the following digression, which may be rather remote from and foreign to the world of important affairs.”

Good. Nesselrode was uneasy about dealing with the package before the ball.

“During my time in Persia, I pursued the following policy: I was polite with the firewood merchants, sweet with the confectioners, but stern with the fruit sellers.”

Being an experienced jokester, Nesselrode raised his eyebrows and prepared himself to hear something amusing.

Surrounded by the little watercolors, Griboedov had had to start with sweet talk.

“… because firewood in Tabriz is precious, it is worth its weight in gold and is sold by the pound, fruit is available in abundance, and I am fond of sweets.”

“What fruit do they have?” Nesselrode asked inquisitively.

Griboedov shouldn’t have mentioned the fruit. Nesselrode was too interested in it.

“Long-shaped, seedless grapes called tebrizi, a superb variety, and a special sort of lemon.”

Nesselrode’s lips drew in. He could really picture that lemon.

The collegiate councillor glanced at him.

“But they are sugar-sweet and called limu, and there are also Pomeranian oranges.”

And, looking apprehensively at his sensitive superior, he added softly:

“Sour ones.”

He teased his superiors so cleverly, like a crafty but well-behaved boy, that the dwarf was quite entertained. Was it rudeness? Cunning? He was a splendid chap!

“And I came to the conclusion that my domestic policies were right and reflected our principles.”

“Our principles”—how cocky was that. This must have been a joke.

“I am joking,” the collegiate councillor said, “and ask you to indulge me in advance. I observed the East very carefully and did my best to follow closely Your Excellency’s judicious policies.”

Yes, he knew his place. An earnest and respectful man; facetiousness was not much of a vice in a young man, though, it went without saying—only to a certain degree.

“… because it is not only the fighting spirit which is vital for a state.”

And that too was true. Nesselrode nodded approvingly. This relative of Paskevich was … un peu idéologue, but he seemed to know his business and did not give himself airs.

“It is crucial for any state to know how to provide itself with food, to guarantee its revenue, and how to increase it as demands grow for the comforts and pleasures of life.”

Nesselrode was getting worried:

“Ah, the revenue! I’ve spoken to the finance minister, and he said that in the last few years, Russia has experienced a significant increase in territory and growth of population.”

Griboedov smiled courteously.

“I’m afraid that there is a certain partiality to the excess of material things and the means of their production. For some time now, we’ve been growing wheat in abundance—in this respect His Excellency the Minister of Finance is right—but we gain nothing from it.”

Nesselrode looked puzzled. These were financial matters. He was about to tell the collegiate councillor that he would, in essence, have to speak about his project to the financiers when Griboedov looked at him deferentially and all of a sudden stopped.

“Be under no impression, Your Excellency, that my intention is to bore you with these financial matters. This is directly related to Your Excellency’s enlightened policies.”

Nesselrode raised his eyebrows meaningfully. His domain was an abstract one, and when it turned out that it touched on finance, it was both pleasant and unsettling. The collegiate councillor continued:

“Education, manufacturing, and trade are already developed in the northern and central parts of our state.”

All was certainly well? A minor unpleasantness concerning wheat was of no consequence.

“We are no longer dependent on importing any produce from foreign countries with arctic and temperate zones.”

Well said! This needed to be mentioned to Metternich at some point, if he came up with his waspish remarks: “We are no longer dependent on exporting …” But was it true? And if we no longer need foreigners, what is the point of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

The collegiate councillor spoke icily.

“What we lack is the produce of the warm subtropical climates, and we are forced to purchase these from western and southern Europe and Central Asia.”

Aha, so something was lacking. That was better!

“The trade with Europe is still quite profitable for Russia …”

Of course, he’d always said this. One couldn’t do anything without Vienna. And it was not his fault that with everything that was going on …

“But the trade with Asia is not in our favor at all.”

Asia? Could be, he didn’t deny it. Generally speaking, Asian affairs were uncertain. The collegiate councillor was absolutely right. It was not worth it for all sorts of reasons to have begun the brouhaha. He had always felt this, instinctively. Now, as it turned out, from the point of view of trade too …

The collegiate councillor suddenly asked:

“And why?”

Why indeed? Nesselrode looked at him curiously.

“The reasons are obvious to both of Your Excellencies: the stringency of the new authorities …”

Nesselrode knitted his brow. What “new” authorities was he talking about? This had to be Paskevich, the newly coined count! Watch out!

“Rebellions caused by the introduction of the new order and general changes to which no peoples could submit voluntarily.”

Ah, those changes!

“What is required is taking stock, treading carefully, and keeping calm.”

Nesselrode sighed. Yes, calm was needed—much needed.

“The roar of guns does not make a country prosperous.”

These were his own thoughts, indeed. If only Griboedov didn’t voice them so abrasively. He was still young and inexperienced, though, essentially, he seemed a level-headed young man.

“Not a single factory has sprung up in Transcaucasia, and neither agriculture nor fruit growing has thrived so far.”

Ah, rather harsh, rather bitter!

“And meanwhile the Tiflis merchants travel to Leipzig for their goods and sell them profitably, both at home and in Persia.”

Nesselrode searched for Leipzig on the little watercolors. That was a wonderful city, very cozy, unlike Petersburg; he’d been there.

“You know,” he said suddenly, “it has a completely different climate …”

The collegiate councillor agreed:

“Climate is crucial, the root of the problem. The natural produce in Transcaucasia is varied and abundant. There are grapes, silk, cotton, dyer’s madder, cochineal; in ancient times, they even grew sugarcane …”

Sugarcane, yes. Zuckerrohr—Rohr—roseau …

The sugarcane made Nesselrode recall someone’s phrase, possibly one of Pascal’s pensées: un roseau pensant, the thinking reed, which only last week had been successfully quoted in the French chamber by le Comte … the official rubbed the bridge of his nose … by le Comte … what was his name again?

All of a sudden, the collegiate councillor said point-blank:

“The efforts of private individuals will remain fruitless. We ought to pool various investments with a view to create in Transcaucasia a single company of capitalist producers. Follow the British example—agriculture, manufacturing, and trade—the new Russian East India Company.”

Struck to the core, Nesselrode suddenly said:

“Fascinating.”

“And then, all European nations will vie with one another to do business in Mingrelia and Imereti, and Russia will be able to offer them the colonial produce that they are currently seeking in the other hemisphere.”

Silence in the room. The chief sat like a little gray mouse, chest puffed out. Here she was, Russia, already offering her produce, all this manufacturing, all these … what’s the word? … cottons. And then the Duke of Wellington might even …

“Could you tell me please,” he inquired rather slyly and cautiously, “whether all this might not affect our friendly … so far friendly relations with London?”

“Oh, not at all!” The collegiate councillor put his mind at rest. “This will be a peaceful commercial rivalry, nothing more than that.”

There were little watercolors. There was peace in the entire world. There was none of that fighting spirit. There was peaceful rivalry, extremely civilized. Russia would acquire the same significance as England, God damn it! And he would tell the Duke of Wellington: the peaceful development of our colonies … Dear God! How had he not seen it before: Transcaucasia was actually the colonies!

The little watercolors hung in their places; green seascapes commanded the chief’s attention.

Yes, but this is very … cumbersome … untried. This would not be a war as such, but might well cause a … brouhaha … Ice floes, ice floes, and … polar bears. And how to start? This blue package of his should probably be sent to the finance minister. After all, it had something to do with Paskevich. But what did Paskevich have to do with any of it? The chief’s eyes lingered on the picture of an Italian musician who was puffing out his cheeks. The cheeks were about to burst. The picture was blistering a little. Nesselrode asked warily:

“Have you spoken to Ivan Fyodorovich?”

The collegiate councillor didn’t turn a hair.

“Ivan Fyodorovich is familiar with the general outline of the project.”

“General outline” meant, in Sashka’s language, “nothing at all.”

Aha! So this was what he was like, this relative of Paskevich! Quite a pleasant fellow. And now he could submit the project to the emperor on behalf of the Ministry—and bypass Paskevich. Excellent idea. Projects were in fashion … But how would Paskevich feel about all this? And where was the proof … the guarantees … for this memorandum? And at this point, out of force of habit, he glanced inquisitively at Rodofinikin. The Greek looked rather offended.

He shook Griboedov’s hand with incredible vigor.

“What a talent, my dear Alexander Sergeyevich! I have always, always been saying so to our dear count.”

And his superior confirmed it with a nod.

And Griboedov said coldly, addressing Nesselrode:

“In my project, I have tried to adhere to the way of thinking of the honorable Konstantin Konstantinovich. And everything that he has to say, I accept with great satisfaction and humility: his experience is great and mine is often insufficient.”

“Ah, no, no, Alexander Sergeyevich,” Rodofinikin shook his head, “you’ve done all this on your own: I can take no credit for it.”

Griboedov answered:

“When Paskevich learned that you were ill, Your Excellency, what he said was: ‘Rodofinikin is sick with the European fever, and a bout of the Asian illness would do him a world of good.’ But your illness has prevented me from …”

They were not to be allowed to forget that he was related to Paskevich.

The chief smiled. Rodofinikin chortled in a low voice:

“Hee-hee-hee …”

His superior rubbed his tiny hands. A pleasant conversation—no advancement of troops, no complications with cabinets, no dispatches, the project of reforms as interesting as reading a novel, and requiring no immediate action.

Except that the project was too cumbersome. The person in charge should be…. Perhaps a committee should be created? His wife’s nephew had been knocking about without a job; he could be entrusted with setting up such a committee and appointing its staff. This would be a good appointment. The previous day, his wife had demanded the post of a secretary for him, but the nephew was a madcap and a gambler; a committee would be a different matter.

“Gentlemen, shall we proceed to the dance hall?”

Rodofinikin put the blue package in his briefcase.

16

The ball. Nesselrode’s mustachioed wife. Various fruits on silver platters. A recently arrived foreign virtuoso, playing with extraordinary dexterity. The envoys—French, German, Sardinian—applauding. Their various wives, some lively and courteous, others reserved.

A gambling table in the room next door.

“Young man, do not shy away from the cards; a sad old age awaits you.”

He did not shy away; he played.

And in the corner, an impassive, silent shadow: Dr. McNeill. Shaved to the bone, invited as a foreign visitor.

The extraterritorial colony was raising in its wineglasses not port and madeira, but Germany and Spain.

Everyone was drinking to the health of the vice chancellor.

What was the vice chancellor?

What were his responsibilities?

The vice chancellor was like a fish in water with foreign ambassadors. This was not France, Germany, or Sardinia: these people were friends of his, drinking his health. These were his friends with their wives.

He was about to make an amusing speech, and France, Germany, Sardinia would gape and clap their hands. He was good at humor, the dwarf, Karl Vasilyevich, count, vice chancellor, a courteous Russian.

The bandy-legged Greek sat there modestly, not to be seen. The French lady next to him was bored.

From time to time, he would give a deep but quiet chuckle:

“Hee-hee.”

Memoranda, dispatches, and projects were in the briefcases.

Only after the dinner was over would the French ambassador crack a joke and subtly steer the conversation to the Turks.

The ladies would liven up, form their own capricious circle, complete with secrets, and wag their fingers jokingly at the diplomats.

Then everything would quiet down. The diplomats would lead off to the nightly slaughter their now lively and courteous, now reserved wives.

The last to leave would be the inconspicuous doctor, who had had a fascinating conversation with the vice chancellor about the East India’s interests.

Only in the middle of the night, having stumbled shortsightedly into the card table, with the scores scribbled out in chalk, would the dwarf remember that he was a member of the Privy Council, and that on the next day, he was expected to express his opinion on:

1. What we expected;

2. How things really stand;

3. What is positive about the present situation; and

4. What requires immediate attention.

It was assumed that he knew how things stood and what was positive about the present situation. His strength lay in not having a clue.

It would be good now to fall asleep and not have to listen to his wife.

In the middle of the night, the dwarf would wake up and remember the strange project of the extraordinary collegiate councillor’s.

The only precisely remembered details from the project would be the sugarcane, le roseau pensant, the warning from the English doctor, and some vague thoughts about the Duke of Wellington and General Paskevich, whom it would be nice to …

“It would be nice to do what?”

What was the vice chancellor; what were his responsibilities?

He would turn over on his other side, and the sight of his wife’s formidable nose would make him sick at heart.

And he would fall asleep.

This was what was expected. This was how things stood. This was what was positive at present.

17

Sashka lay asleep on the sofa wearing the Georgian chekmen.

Griboedov lit all the candles and pulled him off by the feet.

He looked into his vacant eyes, burst out laughing, and suddenly gave him a hug.

“Sashka, old friend.”

He jostled and tickled him. Then he said:

“Dance, now, you silly pooch.”

Sashka stood there swaying.

“Dance, I say!”

Then Sashka waved his hand, stamped his feet on the spot, gave a single twirl, and woke up.

“Call the English doctor from the room next door.”

When the doctor came, a row of bottles was arranged on the table, and Sashka, still wearing the Georgian chekmen, which Griboedov wouldn’t allow him to take off, was bustling about with a napkin in his hand. The hotel servant was helping him.

“So you are saying that Alaiar-Khan will tear me apart, are you?” said Griboedov.

The Englishman shrugged. Griboedov clinked his glass.

“Let’s drink to the health of the chivalrous khan.”

The doctor laughed, snapped his fingers, drank, and with perfect confidence looked at the bespectacled man.

“So, you are saying that Malta in the Mediterranean, antagonistic to the British, was a great project of the late Emperor Paul?”

The Englishman nodded in response to that.

“Let’s drink to Emperor Paul’s soul resting in peace.”

And the Englishman drank to the late emperor.

“How’s my friend Samson-Khan doing?”

The doctor shrugged again and glanced at Sashka in his long chekmen.

“Many thanks. He seems to be doing just fine. Though I don’t really know.”

They drank to Samson’s health.

They had one drink after another in pretty quick succession. It was almost morning.

“And now, my dear doctor, to your East India Company. In your opinion, can there be another East India?”

The doctor put his glass on the table.

“I’ve had too much to drink, my friend! I appreciate your hospitality.”

He got up and left the room.

“Dance, Sashka …”

He slipped the hotel servant a gold coin.

“Your services, my dear chap, are no longer required.”

“Sashka, you devil, you stupid pooch, come on, dance!”

18

And gradually, drunk, with bedraggled hair, in a cold bed, it became clear to him whom he ought to pray to.

He ought to pray to that little girl with the heavy-lidded eyes, who lived in the Caucasus and might be thinking of him at this very moment.

Not just thinking. Even though a mere girl, she understood him.

There was no Lenochka Bulgarina. And Katya Teleshova was just a dream—in a huge theater that was supposed to be applauding him, the author, and applauded Acis instead.

There had been no betrayals: he had not betrayed Ermolov, hadn’t gone over Paskevich’s head; he was honest and kind, a good, straightforward child.

He was asking forgiveness for his faults, for his thwarted life that was falling apart, for his cheating to achieve his goals, and for the fact that his black uniform fitted him too neatly and he allowed the uniform to control him.

And also for his coldness to her, for his strange fear.

Forgiveness for departing from the dreams of his youth.

And for his crimes.

He couldn’t come to her like a stranger begging for shelter.

All would be forgotten if she comforted him, if only she could tell him that all was well.

There would be a land, with which he would make his peace; he would return to the dreams of his youth, even though it would now be old age.

There would be his country, his second homeland, his work.

So much had been ruined and wasted in his youth.

Old age was approaching, and he had to save his soul.

19

He was at Katya’s. Katya sighed.

She sighed so blatantly, with her entire bosom, that only a total idiot could fail to understand her.

Griboedov sat there courteously and did not understand a thing.

“You know, Katerina Alexandrovna, your elevation has developed considerably of late.”

Katya stopped sighing. After all, she was an actress and smiled at Griboedov as at a critic.

“You think so?”

“Well, you are pretty much catching up with Istomina now. A touch more, and I daresay you will be her equal. As far as pirouettes are concerned.”

All this stated slowly, in the voice of a connoisseur.

“You think so?”

Drawling, flat-voiced, and now without a smile.

And Katya gave a sigh.

“You wouldn’t recognize her now. Poor Istomina … She has aged …” And Katya placed her hands well away from each side of her hips, “ … has let herself go.”

Griboedov politely agreed:

“Well, yes, but her elevation is pretty much unfathomable. Pushkin is right—‘she flies like down on the breath of Aeolus.’”

“Nowadays, she doesn’t exactly fly, but it’s true that she used to be pretty fit—there’s no denying that, of course.”

Katya spoke with some dignity. Griboedov nodded.

“But what is not good are the old habits of this double snipe, Didelot. One has the feeling that he stands in the wings and claps: one-two-three.”

But Katya too was Didelot’s pupil.

“Ah, no, no, no,” she said, “I disagree, Alexander Sergeyevich. There are those who upbraid him now, and indeed if a pupil is talentless, it is pretty obvious, but I always say: his was a very good school.”

Silence.

“These days, Novitskaya is very much to the fore.” Katya was being conciliatory and whispered, “His Majesty …”

“Why don’t you, Katerina Alexandrovna, have a go at comedy?” asked Griboedov.

Katya gaped, bewildered.

“And what on earth would I do in comedy?”

“Well, you know,” Griboedov answered evasively, “aren’t you a bit sick of dancing all the time? The parts in comedy are more diverse.”

“Am I too old to dance?”

Two tears.

She wiped them away with her handkerchief, a simple gesture. Then she thought for a moment and glanced at Griboedov. He was serious; all attention.

“I’ll think about it. You might be right. I should have a stab at comedy.”

She hid her handkerchief.

“How terribly unkind to me you’ve become. Ah, I don’t recognize you, Alexander. Sasha.”

“I am too old, Katerina Alexandrovna.”

A kiss on the hand, perfectly frigid.

“Would you like to go for a walk? It’s a festival day. Could be amusing?”

“I am busy,’ said Katya, “but I daresay … I daresay, I could do with a stroll. I can afford to be a little late.”

20

Within a few days, a rickety boardwalk town had grown up on the Admiralty Boulevard.

There were huge booths with new streets between them, and the steam went up from the pastry and sweets shops in the lanes; the hucksters yelled in the distance; the small booths drew in customers from the bigger ones. The town was still growing—nails were being hammered in hastily, white wooden boards stood out in the mud, the little stalls were being knocked into shape.

The poor folk, wearing their new knee-high boots, strolled slowly, carefully along the boardwalk streets and lanes. By evening, the bottle-shaped boots had softened and slid down the legs, but still they strolled on, chewing sunflower seeds with grave, expressionless faces.

In the evening, in the boardwalk town’s taverns, they warmed themselves with vodka and, looking at each other, reluctantly, as if obliged, bawled out their songs beneath colorful pictures of bear hunting, with the line of fire shown in red, or of Turkish nights, complete with green moons.

Griboedov and Katya stopped by a big booth. Katya was jostled, and she shoved back, using her little elbows with amazing precision, but it was cold and she had already pleaded a few times:

“Alexandre …”

Yet she too was intrigued.

The thing was that as soon as they approached the booth, a huge red fist popped up from behind the curtains and loomed there for a while. The man it belonged to was not in view.

The crowd said respectfully:

“Rappo …”

The fact that just one fist was visible and was known by its name made Griboedov and Katya stop in their tracks. Then the second fist popped out, while the first one withdrew. It then reappeared, holding an iron rod. The hands tied the rod in a knot, threw the metal lump on the stage, and were gone. The curtains drew apart, and instead of Rappo, an old peasant came on with a flaxen beard and a tall hat.

The old man took off his hat, turned it over, showed the inside of it to the spectators, and asked:

“Is the hat empty?”

The volunteers yelled: “Empty.” Indeed, there was nothing in the hat.

“Just you wait,” the old man said; he put the hat on the railings and went behind the curtains.

Griboedov and Katya stared at the hat. It was a tall hat, made of lambswool.

Five minutes passed.

“You’ll see,” a merchant said, “he’ll pull out a gold fob watch on a chain.”

One smart aleck climbed onto the rails and shook the hat, running the risk of falling off. The hat was empty.

Katya no longer asked Griboedov to leave; instead she stared fixedly at the hat. She had the same expression she’d worn when she waited for her cue to go onstage at the theater.

A quarter of an hour passed. The old man was not to be seen.

Katya was freezing and shivering and asked again:

“Alexandre …”

The curious spectators pushed forward to be closer. The hat stood tall on the railings.

Another five minutes, and the old man came out. There was nothing in his hands. He took the hat, examined the bottom, then the top. There was silence. The merchant wiped the sweat from his forehead.

The old man showed the hat to the crowd:

“Nothing in the hat, correct?”

Everyone responded in concert:

“Nothing.”

The old man looked inside the hat.

“And? …” somebody choked on his impatience.

The old man looked inside the hat and said quite calmly:

“Quite right, not a solitary thing!”

He stuck his tongue out, looked at everybody mischievously, made a bow, and went back behind the curtains.

Thunderous laughter, the likes of which Griboedov had never heard in the theater.

The little old man was shaking his head. A young chap stood gaping and laughing and roaring his head off: “Ha-a-a.”

Katya was laughing. Griboedov too felt the sudden silly laughter caught deep in his throat.

“Ha-a-a.”

“He had us on!” squeaked the little old man, short of breath.

And the crowd immediately swept away from the booth. There was some jostling. Walking away, the merchant was saying quietly:

“Italian magicians, they always pull out a fob watch on a chain. That’s a hard trick.”

The crowd was particularly dense around the swings. The flying skirts and wild female shrieks made them all laugh.

An Italian, Ciarini, had set up his tightrope near the swings. He had brought it over from the Bolshoi Theater. Every half hour, he would walk along the tightrope, and the boys would eagerly await the moment when he’d lose his balance and come tumbling down.

The Nevsky Prospect was also crowded. Griboedov and Katya went whirling on the merry-go-round and then on the swings. Katya looked ruefully at her feet. They were stained all over with yellow clay. Her dress flew up, and somebody laughed down below. She was cross with Griboedov.

“Alexander,” she said sternly, “we are the only ones here. Look, there is nobody else but us.”

Human words sometimes have a strange meaning—one can say about a thousand-strong crowd: nobody’s here. And indeed, nobody was there. Upper-class people were put off by the mud because that’s what it was, while the poor called it dampness. No carriages were to be seen.

Griboedov supported Katya by the elbow like any shopkeeper and was also disgruntled.

They were laughing at Katya, as if she were one of them. The poor folk knew: no matter how well you dance, a woman is still a woman, and an actress’s skirts fly up just like a chambermaid’s.

But Griboedov was just being studied and observed. The indifference of the stares troubled him. So far as they were concerned, he was simply a clown, in his coat and hat, up on the swings.

His clothes spoke volumes.

But what would he look like in a folk costume, with knee-high, bottle-shaped boots? And it wouldn’t have been genuine folk dress anyway, distorted by foreigners and their own Russian masters. The armyaks14 worn by peasants were considerably nobler, reminiscent of the boyars’ clothes. Try putting an armyak on … Nesselrode, for example!

Russian dress was a confounded stumbling block. The Georgian chekmen was so much better.

“Katenka, Katya,” said Griboedov tenderly, and kissed her.

“Dear God! You couldn’t find a better place to kiss, could you?”

Katya was burning with delighted embarrassment, like a shopkeeper’s bride.

The swings were moving faster and faster.

“Alexander! Alexander!” called a desperate voice from above.

Griboedov stretched back his head and stared upward but couldn’t see anyone. The voice belonged to Faddei.

Faddei was about to jump out of the seat and stretched his arms down toward them, straining his body.

“Be careful, Faddei, don’t fall,” Griboedov cried out anxiously.

Faddei was already below them.

“I’m studying the folk mores,” gurgled Faddei somewhere in midair.

It felt good that both Faddei and Katya were here …

“Silly girl, Katya,” he kept saying, stroking her hand.

You couldn’t find a better woman. Young, uncomplicated, and amusing; he even enjoyed her drama-school tricks. And her adulteries were committed out of … the kindness of her heart.

All the same, the thought was unpleasant, and he removed his hand.

Then they went out for a stroll.

Suddenly, somebody cried out “Help!” and the crowd swirled inward in a funnel-like movement; a purse was being forced out of the tightly clenched fist of a short little man and suddenly, as if by command, three or four fists came down on his capped head.

A district constable took the petty thief by the scruff of his neck and prodded him deliberately in the back with his short sword. Griboedov forgot about Katya and Faddei.

He pushed his way through the crowd, and the gaping faces let him pass in silence.

So he found himself right in the vortex.

Two stallmen, red in the face, were thrashing the petty thief wordlessly about the head, and he, without so much as a cheep, was collapsing as if on purpose, and he would have sunk into the mud if the constable hadn’t held him up by the scruff of the neck. The officer held him with his right hand, and with the left one gave him the occasional blow on the back with the sword.

The lower part of the pickpocket’s face was a wet, red splodge. He sank apathetically into the mud. Griboedov spoke quietly:

“Hands off, you idiots!”

The stallmen continued beating him.

“I said, hands off, you fools!”

Griboedov spoke with a particular composure that he always felt in the street, in a crowd. The stallmen looked at him with contempt.

Their fists kept raining down on the thief’s head.

Then, calmly, Griboedov stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a pistol. He raised the long, thin muzzle.

As one, the whole crowd shivered and shrank back. A woman shrieked, either from the swings or in the crowd.

Griboedov spoke curtly to the constable.

“Put down your sword, you blockhead.”

The constable had already put the sword down and saluted him with his left hand.

“Take him away,” said Griboedov.

The crowd was silent. Now it stared stonily at Griboedov, unawed. It expanded and the ring widened, but it did not allow the policeman and the petty thief to pass through.

As always, it was those who stood safely at the back who decided to speak their piece.

A scraggly little runt cried out in a shrill, womanish voice:

“And who the hell is this bloke?”

A venomous old codger, a pencil-pushers by the look of him, had to have his say:

“Who does his lordship think he is?”

And the ring narrowed again around Griboedov and the constable. The petty thief was reeling.

Griboedov knew what would come next: somebody would shout out from behind—“Let him have it!”

And then it would turn ugly.

He said nothing, simply waited. He had only seconds and was reluctant to act prematurely. Things were being decided not in those offices with the little watercolors, but right out here in the runny mud, here in the street.

To the crowd’s surprise, he slowly pointed the muzzle at one of the stallmen.

“Arrest those two who accosted him,” he said to the constable.

And the stallman slowly retreated. He stood still inside the ring for a second and then suddenly plunged into the thick of the crowd. Everybody was quiet.

The little old man, the clerk, suddenly yelled:

“Hold him! He’s the one who did the beating!”

“Hold him!” everybody yelled. The stallman was grabbed and dragged away; he went quietly, showing little resistance.

Griboedov stuck the pistol into his pocket.

The constable led off the pilferer, holding him tightly by the scruff of his neck, limp though he was. The two stallmen walked glumly ahead of him. The crowd parted before them.

The little gray old man, the pencil-pushers, made his way toward Griboedov and said:

“I can testify, Your Excellency: only one of them attacked him, the other did not. Write it down.”

Griboedov looked at him, uncomprehendingly.

When he went through the crowd, like a sharpened knife through black bread, the pale Faddei was standing on the corner supporting Katya. She saw him and suddenly burst out crying into her handkerchief. Faddei hailed a cab.

Griboedov was drenched in sweat; his lips were trembling.

He looked very carefully at Katya and spoke quietly to Faddei:

“Take her home. Calm her down. I need to change my boots.”

His boots were smeared with the thick yellow clay, right up to his knees.

21

Rodofinikin shook Griboedov’s hand warmly. He had a congenial expression.

“I have read your project, Alexander Sergeyevich, not only with pleasure but also with amazement. Cigar?” He pointed to the cigars. “Tea?” he asked cordially, and suddenly resembled an attentive Küchenmeister.

He rang a little silver bell. A lanky, poker-faced lackey came in.

“Bring the tea,” he ordered imperiously.

The lackey served tea with biscuits in paper lace and some candied fruit. Rodofinikin chewed on the fruit and kept glancing at Griboedov.

“I can only say, er, that your plans are quite ingenious. Help yourself to the dates, please. I’m fond of them, probably on account of my last name.15 What can I say? My grandfather was a Greek.”

No smile from Griboedov. Rodofinikin eyed him with suspicion, a pucker on his forehead.

“Hee-hee.”

A platitudinous piece of wordplay worthy of a clerk: Rodofinikin as “Rhodes-Phoenix-kin.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Rodofinikin, as if rounding up, “your proposals, my dear Alexander Sergeyevich, have astounded me. Frankly: you have opened up a new world for me.”

He opened the file. The sheets in it were underlined here and there with blurry, blue-ink lines and crosses, and red checkmarks appeared in the margins.

Rodofinikin skimmed it with his eyes and hands and finally jabbed a finger.

“ ‘Until now, a Russian visiting official has dreamed only about promotion and has cared nothing about what came before him or what will happen afterward in the region, as if it were not conquered for his own benefit.’”

He rubbed his smooth, yellowish hands and shook his head:

“You have made a good point: not many people have any real interest in their work; their only aim is preferment. A very judicious remark.”

Griboedov looked intently at his superior. He said slowly:

“But over there, all small fry are Russian-born, the ‘Caucasus majors.’ There’s an entire cemetery of them, full up already, not far from Tiflis. They implant immorality, take bribes, and do pretty well, by the way. They are called the ‘civil bloodsuckers.’ If things continue like this in future, expect not minor mutinies but gazavat.”

Take that, you pickled date, thought Griboedov.

“Gazavat?”

“Indeed. A holy war.”

Rodofinikin swallowed a date.

“Gazavat?”

“An indigenous uprising.”

Then Rodofinikin asked, as a trader asks suspiciously about promissory notes offered in lieu of payment:

“And you are saying that the Company …”

“… will involve all the natives, including the traders who at the moment do not benefit the treasury and even the farmers who have been left landless.”

“Landless?”

“As you know, Konstantin Konstantinovich, they intend to transfer ten thousand of these petty traders from Persia—Armenians from Georgia, mostly—and settle them on the Tatars’ lands. Which means banishing the Tatars.”

Take that too …

Rodofinikin was seriously puzzled. He was counting on his fingers and seemed oblivious of Griboedov. Then he licked his lips and gave a sigh.

“The more I enter into the details of your project, Alexander Sergeyevich, the more I become convinced of the importance of the idea. It is true that we cannot act by arms alone. It might end up in … gazavat.”

He poked the air twice with his flat finger, as if with a blunt broadsword, and began to enumerate:

“Agriculture, seafaring, manufacturing … And tell me,” he added, “erm, are there any … mmm … profitable … manufacturing enterprises … even without any companies?”

“Of course,” drawled Griboedov, “the silk plantations. As Your Excellency may know, Castellas has built an entire silk town near Tiflis.”

“So, you see, Castellas has succeeded even without any companies, on his own,” said the Greek, and squinted craftily.

“Castellas is the only one,” Griboedov said flatly, “but he is on the verge of ruin and about to sell his assets for a song. And this town of his exists mostly on paper.”

Rodofinikin’s eyes narrowed, became as thin as slits, black as coal. He was breathing fast.

“You’re saying … for a song? I haven’t been informed yet.”

“Yes,” said Griboedov, “but …”

“But …?”

“But every private owner faces the same challenges. The main reason is that they lack the skill to unwind silk.”

The Greek drummed his fingers.

“And with your Company?” he asked, both with curiosity and with some trepidation, his mouth opening wider.

“The Company would attract skilled workers and experienced craftsmen from foreign parts; silk-winders, spinners …”

Rodofinikin paid no attention to him.

“But what kind of management shall we choose … will you choose, my dear Alexander Sergeyevich, for the Company?”

“First of all, His Majesty will issue an edict, in accordance with the law, concerning privileges for commercial enterprises, for colonizing the farmers, for the setting up of the factories, for …”

Rodofinikin nodded respectfully:

“That goes without saying.”

“Then the investments are pulled together.”

Rodofinikin put the palms of his hands together.

“The workers and craftsmen are recruited from foreign parts …”

Rodofinikin spread his palms wide and repeated:

“Craftsmen.”

“There will be continuous turnover of capital …”

Rodofinikin clapped his hands:

“Continuous turnover.”

“And when the privileges end, long-term privileges …” said Griboedov, speaking emphatically.

“Oh yes,” asked Rodofinikin eagerly, “long term, but what will happen when they end?”

“Each member of the Company will acquire his right independently.”

“But this is … this is, this is like the American States,” smiled Rodofinikin. “But if, as you say, the capital …”

He gulped. Griboedov answered casually:

“More like the East India Company.”

“Mmm,” hummed Rodofinikin absentmindedly and looked at Griboedov in agreement.

All of a sudden, he came out of his reverie and fidgeted.

“But the government of it, after all, there will be a governing body—can you tell me on what foundations …”

“Foundations?” asked Griboedov and sat up in his chair.

“Yes, foundations.”

Rodofinikin choked on the word.

Should he equivocate? Consider his position? Griboedov had only seconds left to decide.

He said simply, without lowering his voice:

“There will have to be a board of governors.”

Rodofinikin bowed his head.

“A board?”

“And a director of the board.”

They kept silent.

“And … the director’s … remit?” asked Rodofinikin quietly.

“You mean, his powers?”

“Em-m-m,” murmured Rodofinikin.

“The right to build fortresses,” said Griboedov.

“Certainly,” nodded Rodofinikin.

“Establishing diplomatic relations with neighboring states.”

Rodofinikin moved his fingers. Griboedov suddenly raised his voice and breathed very evenly:

“The right to declare war and to mobilize troops …”

Rodofinikin bowed his head. He was thinking. His eyes were shifting. How easy it all turned out to be in a frank business conversation. In a stifling office with bleak mahogany bookcases. What would Nesselrode say? But he would say what the Greek would say. The emperor … The emperor would stick his chest out, as he did when declaring wars that he was afraid of and secretly wondering why he was waging them at all. Paskevich would be a member of the Company. Rodofinikin asked hoarsely:

“Will His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief Paskevich sit on the board?”

“He will be a member,” responded Griboedov.

Rodofinikin looked down again. Perhaps it was good that he would not be the director. In which case Paskevich … that would be the end of Paskevich … fine. The director? Rodofinikin did not ask who would be the director. He merely frowned at Griboedov.

“All this is quite novel,” he said.

He got up. So did Griboedov. And all of a sudden, Rodofinikin did not quite pat, oh no, but touched the side of Griboedov’s frock coat, gently, patronizingly.

“I will talk to Karl Vasilyevich Nesselrode,” he said gravely, and then frowned again. “And when exactly did Castellas’s bankruptcy become clear?”

“It was clear to me, Konstantin Konstantinovich, from the outset.”

And Griboedov took his leave.

Half an hour later, a haughty lackey knocked on Rodofinikin’s door. He gave him a visiting card. The card was an Englishman’s, that of Dr. McNeill, a member of the English mission in Tabriz. Rodofinikin said absentmindedly:

“Ask him in.”

22

Beware of quiet people gripped by anger and of melancholy people overcome by good fortune. Here is one such man, driven in a light cab; here he is, hurried on by the hired horses. Joy, almost like contempt, flares his nostrils. His is the smile of self-satisfaction.

The sudden initial rapture is not the issue: it is not even clear as yet whether there will be success or failure—it is simply the joy of the one who acts.

But when important business is coming to a successful end, it is as if the business ceases to exist. It is hard to suppress strength in a trim body, and the mouth is too thin-lipped for such a smile. It’s the smile of self-satisfaction. It makes a man vulnerable.

Like a tickling sensation, his body still remembers the deep, slow bow to the old Greek.

After the negotiations with Abbas Mirza himself, that was easy.

He had conquered new lands with no help from the glorious Russian troops.

Good fortune was smiling on him. That day he was dining at some general’s.

These days he was a welcome guest.

Everything was going swimmingly.

23

Let’s surrender ourselves to fate.

Only in the New World can we find a safe haven.

▶ Christopher Columbus

From the moment of his arrival, he had been entertained by generals and senators, and Nastasya Fyodorovna could rest content: the Petersburg life did not cost Alexander a penny: he lived like a bird, by God’s grace.

He was a particular favorite of General Sukhozanet, the artillery commander of the Guards Corps. He constantly sent him little notes, friendly if illiterate, had paid him a visit at his hotel and had now invited him to dinner.

His new acquaintances sat at the big table: Count Chernyshev, Levashov, Prince Dolgorukov, Prince Beloselsky-Belozersky—the host’s father-in-law, Golenishchev-Kutuzov, the new Petersburg military governor-general, Count Opperman, and Alexander Khristoforovich Benckendorff, pink and smiling.

Whom were they honoring? Whom were they treating to dinner?

Was the answer to this question obvious? Could it even be asked? It had something to do with subtle signs and hints: they followed the flow—first, a pleased smile appeared on a certain face, and Alexander Khristoforovich Benckendorff noticed how the smile showed up at the mention of the celebrated name of Griboedov. Either the name seemed amusing16 or the Famous Face had remembered the Father Commander, Paskevich, but the smile transmitted itself to Alexander Khristoforovich, a feminine, understanding smile, and dimples appeared on his pink cheeks. In the corridor, Count Chernyshev, the deputy chief of staff, caught sight of these dimples and made a note of them. His mustaches bristled, his spurs tinkled melodiously, and the tinkling reached the ears of General Sukhozanet.

The smile widened, it played on the dinner table silver, on the fruit, on the red wine bottles.

And so—Collegiate Councillor Griboedov was dining at General-Adjutant Sukhozanet’s.

His new friends ate and drank with a genuine enjoyment that the lean Nesselrode and those subtle diplomats cannot experience. Almost all of them were army people, people with barking voices and hearty physicality. That’s why their rest was genuine relaxation, as was their laughter. No subtlety, no scheming; they praised him to the skies.

And so did the civilians. Dolgorukov, for example, Prince Vasily, the equerry with the sleek hair, held up his glass for a long time and narrowed his eyes before clinking it with the collegiate councillor’s. Then he spoke simply and affectionately, as if drawn with his entire being toward Griboedov:

“You won’t believe, Alexander Sergeyevich, how I have played on the glory of our Count Erivansky (in this he was referring to Paskevich). I requested a decoration for Beklemishev, had asked for it over and over again, and they would not offer it to him. So in a letter to Prince Pyotr Mikhailovich I wrote: ‘Beklemishev, an old friend of Count Ivan Fyodorovich,’ and just imagine, the next day they granted the petition.”

He laughed gleefully at his cunning move.

Well, yes, he lied, but he lied as a nobleman and as a courtier, and the very nobility of the lies made Griboedov laugh.

He was not familiar with this Beklemishev of whom the equerry was speaking, but he felt the taste of his contentment, the complacency, and gave way to it. It was surprising how easily a court smile could become real.

The military men loved Griboedov as one of their own—simply, spontaneously, in a no-nonsense fashion.

“I’ve known Count Ivan Fyodorovich for a long time,” said General Opperman, the old German from the Engineering Corps. “He is a remarkably capable engineer. I remember him from our days at the military school.”

“Alexander Sergeyevich, could you remind Count Erivansky,” said Sukhozanet, touching the side of his tailcoat, “to keep in more frequent touch with his old friends? I dropped him a line, but he never replied. I myself have been in the field, and I know how busy he is. And yet can’t he manage to scribble a couple of words?”

The host, Sukhozanet, kept jumping up from his place in order to see that things ran smoothly.

Around Golenishchev-Kutuzov, roars of laughter rose loudly, with modulations, in a small chorus of voices. Golenishchev chortled too.

“Tell us, tell us, Pavel Vasilyevich, tell everybody,” Levashov waved his hand at him. “There are no ladies here.”

It was a bachelor dinner. Sukhozanet’s wife was in Moscow at the moment. Golenishchev kept spreading his hands and, still chuckling, bowed with his entire torso.

“Why not, gentlemen? But please don’t tell on me. I have nothing to do with it. I heard it from somebody, that’s all; I wasn’t there.”

He smoothed down his beaver sideburns, and his eyes darted left and right.

“Alexander Sergeyevich shouldn’t blame me. And please, don’t tell the count.”

The drunken Chernyshev urged him:

“Come on! On with the story!”

Golenishchev began: “Well, they say about Count Ivan Fyodorovich,” and his eyes darted again. Those who already knew the joke burst into more laughter, and Golenishchev gave a chortle too.

“They say,” he said, calming down a bit, “that after the city of Erivan had been conquered, they were stationed in Tierhols. That’s the name of the village: Tierhols. And allegedly”—he cast a sideway look at Griboedov—“the count once proposed a toast: to the health of the beautiful ladies of Erivan and of Theirholes!”17

The uproarious laughter was universal—that was the high point of the entire dinner; the hilarity could rise no higher.

And everybody went to clink glasses with Griboedov, as if it were his joke, though the joke reeked of the barracks and even Paskevich was unlikely to have said this.

All of them understood that perfectly well, but everyone laughed heartily because the joke signified military glory. When a general became famous, his jokes had to be relayed. If there were none, they were made up, or old ones were used, and even though everyone knew this, they accepted the jokes as genuine because to do otherwise would constitute a failure to recognize his fame. So it used to be with Ermolov, and so it was now with Paskevich.

And Griboedov too laughed with the army people, even though he did not care for the joke.

And then, still smiling, they looked at each other.

The difference between the old engineer Opperman and Golenishchev with the beaverlike sideburns became clear. It turned out that Alexander Khristoforovich Benckendorff was listening rather condescendingly to what the pockmarked Sukhozanet was saying to him. A sense of rank became apparent.

Griboedov spotted in front of him an old man with a red face and thick gray mustaches whom he hadn’t noticed before. That was General Depreradovich.

The general must have been looking at him for a while, and Griboedov found it disconcerting. When the old man noticed that Griboedov was looking at him, he raised his glass impassively, nodded slightly to Griboedov, and barely touched the wine.

He was not smiling.

There was some confusion at the table; the men began to rise in order to go through to the drawing room for a smoke, and the general came up to Griboedov.

“Did you see Alexei Petrovich Ermolov in Moscow?” he asked directly.

“I did,” said Griboedov, watching the people passing through to the parlor and thus indicating that they had to go too, and that it was less than convenient to carry on talking where they were.

Paying no attention, the general asked him softly:

“You haven’t come across my son, have you?”

Depreradovich, the 1812 general, was Serbian. His son had been involved in the mutiny, but more as a matter of words than of action. Now he lived in exile in the Caucasus. The old man had managed to pull some strings to save him.

Griboedov had not come across him.

“Send my regards to His Excellency.”

The general passed through to the parlor. His expression was impassive, without a trace of disdain or conceit.

In the parlor, they sat completely relaxed and smoked their pipes; Chernyshev and Levashov had unbuttoned their uniforms.

Little Levashov, with a bulging waistcoat and a happy face, spoke of their host. Meanwhile, Sukhozanet beckoned his father-in-law into the corner and spread his arms, justifying himself. The fat old prince was listening to him under obvious duress and glanced distractedly at the sofa where the older men, Opperman and Depreradovich were seated.

Levashov eyed everyone meaningfully:

“Our host is growing young; he has remembered the old ways. And tonight’s dinner is the proof: sans dames.”

Laughter. Sukhozanet was an upstart married to Princess Beloselsky-Belozersky, instrumental in his promotion. They whispered this and that about him in society, mostly on account of the strange habits of his youth.

But with some sixth sense, Sukhozanet felt that the laughter had another meaning, so he left the old prince in peace and rejoined the company.

The old man sat down in an armchair and chewed his lips. In the corner, an argument was taking place between Depreradovich and the elderly Opperman. Opperman was amazed at Paskevich’s military luck.

“To defeat an entire army with six thousand infantry, two thousand cavalry, and a few cannon—say what you will, that’s not too bad at all.”

Depreradovich spoke loudly, as deaf people do, so that the entire parlor heard him:

“But before that, near Elisavetpol, Madatov defeated the entire vanguard, that is, ten thousand of Abbas Mirza’s men, and with not a single casualty.”

Benckendorff looked at the general through narrowed eyes:

“General Madatov was unlikely to have had any impact on that victory.”

“It was the artillery, the artillery was decisive!” shouted Sukhozanet in their direction.

At this point, Beloselsky asked Chernyshev coolly:

“Have you come into possession of your estate yet, Count?”

Chernyshev turned purple. He had implicated his cousin in the mutiny, was in charge of his trial, and had had him sentenced to hard labor in order to get hold of the enormous ancestral estate, but somehow the affairs became muddled; the cousin was sent to Siberia, but the property was now proving hard to get hold of.

There was a moment’s silence.

Some very odd people surrounded Griboedov. Tonight, he was having dinner with and smiling at a bunch of very strange characters.

The fidgety host, Sukhozanet, was a Lithuanian, a commoner. His glum and pockmarked appearance was reminiscent of gray warehouses, provincial military parades, and drills. More than two and a half years ago, during the uprising on December 14, he was in command of the artillery in the Senate Square, and on December 14 he found himself general-adjutant.

Levashov, Chernyshev, and Benckendorff were the judges. They interrogated and tried the rebels. Two years ago, in the dreary General Staff building, Levashov had handed the interrogation sheet to the arrested Collegiate Councillor Griboedov—to be signed. Collegiate Councillor Griboedov might well have been a member of the secret society. Levashov had been pale then, and his mouth fastidious; now that mouth was wet with wine and smiling. He and Griboedov sat next to each other. And opposite them was Pavel Vasilyevich Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a simple and hardy man, his sideburns as stiff and thick as if they’d come out of a furrier’s shop. He was telling crude but funny jokes. One summer more than two and a half years ago, on the ramparts of the Peter and Paul Fortress, he had been in charge of hanging five rebels, three of whom were very well known to Collegiate Councillor Griboedov. One of the men had fallen from the gallows and bloodied his nose, but Pavel Vasilyevich did not lose his head and shouted the order:

“Hang him again, damn it!”

Because he was a military man, a man who meant business, uncouth but straightforward: a resourceful man.

Suddenly, Vasily Dolgorukov looked askance at Griboedov and asked:

“Is the rumor true that the count’s character has changed completely?”

Everyone’s eyes turned to Griboedov.

Old Beloselsky gave Chernyshev and Levashov a meaningful look and remarked:

“Greatness can make your head spin.”

Levashov reassured him courteously:

“Not at all. I know Ivan Fyodorovich well. He is an impulsive character; he might even be short-tempered, but when they say that he treats people like beasts, I’ll tell you this: I cannot agree. I don’t accept it.”

They were sniping at him gently, and were rather saying to Griboedov: write to the count—tell him we praise him and love him, we sing hallelujahs to him, but he shouldn’t think too highly of himself, or else … we too …

Golenishchev-Kutuzov spoke in his defense.

“Rubbish!” he growled. “I know from personal experience how hard it is to deal with this and that. Whether you want to or not, you may see red on occasion …”

Pah! He is Skalozub all right, but who is Molchalin here?18

Well, a clear thing, a simple matter: Griboedov himself was playing the part of Molchalin.

Griboedov looked at Golenishchev’s white hands and red face and reverently and softly pronounced the phrase that he had heard somewhere, repeating it exactly as he’d heard it:

“It is true that Ivan Fyodorovich is impulsive by nature, and it can’t be helped. Mais grandi, comme il est, de pouvoir et de réputation, il est bien loin d’avoir adopté les vices d’un parvenu.”¹⁹

Parvenu: this was the word that had been missing in the conversation.

The word was hanging in the air; it had nearly leaped off the old prince’s lips; and Golenishchev’s sideburns, Chernyshev’s dyed mustaches, Levashov’s bulging waistcoat, and Benckendorff’s ruddy cheeks were now all the more obvious.

There was a gulf between the young man in the black tailcoat and the middle-aged people dressed in military pelisses and frock coats: that was the word parvenu.

They were parvenu; they had popped up all of a sudden and appeared all at once on the historical stage and had been greedily rooting around for more than two years on the memorable square where the mutiny had taken place in order to gain one last iota of influence and once again etch their name into that momentous day.

This was what they grounded their reputation on, and they vied with each other, ruthlessly demanding approval.

Not that they thought about this at all—they simply had their vision and version of it. Golenishchev and Levashov agreed with him.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying,” nodded Golenishchev approvingly. And Levashov nodded quickly too.

Benckendorff saw Chernyshev as an upstart; Chernyshev thought the upstart was Golenishchev; for Golenishchev it was Levashov; and for all of them, it was the taciturn relative of Paskevich. Only the old prince moved his dull eyes from all of them to Griboedov. He did not say a word. So far as he was concerned, all of them were upstarts, and he had married off his overripe daughter to one of them.

Benckendorff got up and took Griboedov aside with all the ease of a man of the world and the emperor’s minion.

Looking point-blank into the dimples on his cheeks, Griboedov immediately became discreet and unassuming.

“I am a patriot,” said Benckendorff, smiling, “and that’s why I won’t say a word about the count’s merits. I’d like to talk about my brother.”

Benckendorff’s brother, a general, had found Paskevich difficult to deal with.

“One cannot find a nobler man in the world than Konstantin Khristoforovich,” said Griboedov courteously.

Benckendorff nodded.

“Thank you. I am not going into the reasons, though I am aware of them. But they say that the count publicly expressed his delight at my brother’s departure.”

“Believe me, this is the gossip of ill-wishers, nothing more.”

Benckendorff was pleased.

“You have a private audience with His Majesty tomorrow.”

He hesitated.

“One more request, quite small though,” he said and touched the button of Griboedov’s tailcoat with his fingertips (as a matter of fact, there hadn’t been any request so far). “My brother is very eager to receive the Order of the Lion and the Sun. I hope that the count might see his way to making the recommendation.”

He smiled as though he’d just spoken of a female prank. The famous dimples played on his cheeks like two funnels. And Griboedov smiled too, knowingly.

And so Griboedov circulated in the realms of glory.

And became a man of consequence.

24

A furious tinkling of spurs in the rooms of his hotel. When he came in, he saw an officer who was dashing about the room like a hyena pacing its cage. Seeing him come in, the officer stopped abruptly. Then, without paying any attention to Griboedov, he resumed his rushing about the room.

“I am waiting for Mr. Griboedov,” he said. His face was an unhealthy olive color; his eyes darted about.

“I am at your service.”

The officer looked at him suspiciously.

He returned Griboedov to the reality of hotel rooms.

The officer stood at attention and introduced himself:

“Lieutenant Vishnyakov of the Preobrazhensky Regiment of the Life-Guards.”

And he fell into the armchair.

“How can I …”

“Let’s not stand on ceremony. You see an unhappy man in front of you. I’ve come to you because I am staying in the room next door and because I’ve heard about you.”

His right leg started to twitch as he sat in the armchair.

“I am on the verge of destruction. Save me.”

Must have lost at cards and will be asking for money.

“I’m all ears.”

The officer pulled a little pill from behind his sleeve and swallowed it.

“Opium,” he explained. “Forgive me, I’m an addict.”

He calmed down a little.

“The other day you could have mistaken me for a madman. Apologies.”

“Permit me, however, to ask you …”

“Ask away. I am begging you for one thing only: everything I tell you must remain between us. If you want me to, I’ll stay. If not, I’ll be gone for good.”

“As you please.”

“I am in extremis. Oh, no,” the officer raised his hand, even though Griboedov had not made a single movement. “It’s not about money. I’ve just come back from the Indian frontier.”

The officer whispered emphatically:

“I was sent on a secret mission. The English discovered it. I came back here. On the way, I found out that an English official is here, and he is entrusted with petitioning the Ministry to demote me. I know the Ministry well; if they renounce me—and they will renounce me—for a year of hardship and fever …”

The officer thumped his chest.

“I’ve become a wild man,” he said hoarsely, and added, quite calmly: “and my reward for a yearlong mission will be—utter ruin.”

He began to rub his forehead with his hand distractedly, seeming to have no interest in Griboedov’s response.

“Do you know which English official is specifically assigned to deal with you?”

“I don’t know,” gasped the officer. “There has been interaction between the East India Board of Governors and their mission in Persia.”

Griboedov thought for a moment. Dr. McNeill was killing two birds with one stone in Petersburg. One bird was sitting here, gasping, and the other one …”

He touched the officer’s ice-cold hand like a man of authority.

“Entrust yourself to me, entirely, do nothing desperate. Sit tight.”

When the lieutenant left, Griboedov told Sashka to go to the English doctor and ask if he would see him.

Sashka came back and reported that the doctor had left the previous day and, according to the hotel servant, “the biggest-ever Italian artist” was staying in his room.

25

From the paternal golden throne

you shoot at sultans beyond the lands.

▶ The Song of Igor’s Campaign

And further, and higher, and here he is dashing to a private audience with the Famous Face.

What is there to talk about during a private audience with the Famous Face? About anything he asks you. If the Face says: “Speak frankly, as you would talk to your own father,” you must take these words at their face value because one might not enjoy full frankness with and trust in one’s own father. What it actually means is that one is granted permission, instead of simply repeating “Votre Majesté,” to address the emperor as “Sire.”

How do you speak to him?

The answer is well known: genially.

The ruler of the seventh part of the planet has the right to shorten the space between himself and the diplomatic courier. For example, they can both sit on the sofa. And in such a way, not one-seventh of the world, but only flowery damask, will be between them, a little upholstery. This is called the talk en ami. The other type of conversation is en diplomate.

And so? They were sitting on the sofa.

“Talk to me frankly, as if you were talking to your own father.”

Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich was beardless, mustacheless, and a year-and-a-half younger than Griboedov. There was cotton-wool padding on his chest. He was slim. His arms were too long, with large hands, and they hung as if made of cardboard. He was slightly hunched.

“I have honored all of Ivan Fyodorovich’s recommendations. I know that he would not recommend an award without good reason. But I am afraid I will have to disappoint him. He has suggested promoting to officer’s rank some soldier, called Pushchin … one of my friends … mes amis de quatorze20 … I think it’s too soon. Let him serve a little longer. I have granted him the rank of a noncommissioned officer.”

Mikhail Pushchin, his “friend of the 14th December,” relegated to a soldier’s rank, had commanded a platoon of sappers and distinguished himself during the capture of Erivan. The Shirvan Regiment went up Azbekiiuk Mountain. The mountain was wooded, and for forty-eight hours under enemy fire, Pushchin with the trailblazers felled the trees and constructed a road. He was an experienced engineer with nothing left to lose.

Griboedov had recommended him to Paskevich, and Paskevich, not too sure of victory at the start of the campaign, valued such men. In fact, this particular soldier had been fulfilling an officer’s duties all through the campaign. Griboedov had petitioned Paskevich about promoting him to the rank of officer. Paskevich signed the paper.

Griboedov gave the emperor an understanding smile.

There was a considerable gap between this Pushchin whom, by the way, Griboedov knew very well, and the colorful sofa on which he was sitting.

“I realize how hard it is for Your Majesty to make such decisions.”

“And besides, I hear, Ivan Fyodorovich has instructed some Colonel Burtsov to write the history of the wars in the Caucasus. Or someone else out of those … out of …”

And he made a short gesture with his index finger upward and toward the window. Behind the window was the Neva, behind the Neva was the Peter and Paul Fortress, and in the Peter and Paul Fortress were incarcerated—those men. He had grown accustomed to the gesture, and everyone understood it: he was pointing to the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Burtsov too was a “friend of 14th December,” exiled to the Caucasus after a term in the fortress.

What faith the emperor had in him, to discuss such matters!

Nicholas cast a quick sharp glance at Griboedov.

“I have received a few letters that I do not entirely trust. They say that allegedly Ivan Fyodorovich has grown irritable and conceited beyond all measure.”

“He is impulsive, Your Majesty, you know that. Mais grandi, comme il est, de pouvoir et de réputation, il est bien loin d’avoir adopté les vices d’un parvenu.”

Nicholas, who had fought for the throne and had been occupying it while the lawful heir, his brother, was still alive, was somewhat of an upstart himself. He inspected Griboedov carefully, took in all of him at one go; his eyes slid up and down and lingered on Griboedov’s spectacles. The glance was abstract, almost embarrassed, fleeting, and, as people whispered, was reminiscent of Peter the Great’s. Griboedov had passed his examination. The emperor nodded and said pompously:

“Now I would like to hear from you about your business. I have complete trust in you.”

Griboedov bowed his head and noticed Nicholas’s highly polished boots.

The emperor added:

“I have long been concerned about something that I consider important. Ivan Fyodorovich offers no news about it.”

He repeated what Prince Pyotr Volkonsky had talked about three days earlier, which was why he had summoned Griboedov, but spoke of it as if it were his own idea.

“Twenty-five thousand troops are engaged in Persia. Three provinces”—he forgot their names—“have been conquered. This is to get a foot in the door. Ivan Fyodorovich needs the troops in Turkey. It is impossible to fight on two fronts, sur deux faces, so to speak. Has Ivan Fyodorovich discussed this with you?”

Being a capable-enough frontline general, he had a poor understanding of the general strategies of the campaign. Every breakdown and delay seemed to him insurmountable, and he rejoiced in victories as if they were fortuitous. For the last two years, he had been working on making his voice sound more authoritative and was afraid that people might doubt his judgment. He acted like this with the war minister and was terrified that old Volkonsky might see through him. That’s why he took a liking to sudden decisions, although he was actually a little afraid of them. He would start a conversation with a guardsman’s familiarity, and by the end of it would repulse with complete coldness, freezing people out. Or the other way round. Like a woman, he was accustomed to wondering what they said or thought about him, and his manner was therefore unmanly. He changed his uniform five or six times a day.

“Please assure Ivan Fyodorovich that he has my full support. His moral health, after the victory over the Persians, will soon be restored. He can treat his physical ailments after the victory over the Turks. We will soon find an appointment for you. I have already spoken to Karl Vasilyevich.”

He spoke quickly and abruptly, phrase after phrase. It is easy to shorten the distance from one-seventh of the planet to the sofa, but then one needs a particular, mechanistic facility of speech, or else the distance will shrink too much. One needs a certain ambiguity of expression. The collegiate councillor had to be made to think that the emperor had thought of everything himself, that he was confident of the victory over the Turks and had trust in the collegiate councillor.

And all of a sudden Griboedov asked, quite simply:

“You have spoken to Karl Vasilyevich about what, Your Majesty?”

But the emperor’s gaze was already quite vague. He was not sure whether the question was appropriate, and by force of habit, he assumed a preoccupied expression: he had to finish the audience; he had to make a point, to place a full stop. That point had to demonstrate the distance between the two of them while ending on an amiable note. It was necessary to demonstrate trust and at the same time show who was in charge.

Nicholas emerged from his contemplation.

“I have to admit it, entre nous deux soit dit,21” he said and smiled. “I had my fears during our negotiations with the Persians.”

“Fear of failure, Your Majesty?”

“Oh, on the contrary,” and Nicholas looked above Griboedov’s head, “on the contrary, I was afraid of too much success.”

Lowering his eyes to the level of the collegiate councillor, he was pleased to see his surprise.

“There could have been a mutiny of the mob in Persia,” he raised his eyebrow coldly, “and I recognize only lawful rulers. The Qajar dynasty must continue to rule.”

He looked away somewhere through the window, above Griboedov’s head, as if now there were nobody in front of him.

Ermolov had developed the Persian plan of war against Russia. Nicholas was afraid that the shah could be overthrown.

“The Qajars are unpopular in Persia,” the collegiate councillor said and caught himself just in time.

Nicholas did not reply, did not look at him, and gave a barely perceptible nod. The audience was over.

A pair of long-toed shoes scraped a second, clicked together, and strolled lightly over the parquet.

The perfect thighs in the white breeches remained on the flowery damask.

26

Everything is going swimmingly, isn’t it?

It is April, and he is on the cusp of a major success. The man has almost forgotten that he is by nature untrusting; he has forgiven the mistress who was unfaithful, he thinks of another, still a girl. The world is his oyster. He has stayed faithful to himself, hasn’t he? He has become even more cheerful, has he not?

It’s true that considerable power awaits him, but he is the same, is he not?

Who was saying that he has grown grander, self-important, and even put on some weight? Was it Pushkin who said it in some salon, or Senkovsky perhaps?

That he has become more puffed up, upright, and even taller?

Who said it, and why?

It might well be that no one did.

Perhaps he has simply become more shortsighted, which makes him seem more aloof.

Has he?

He is still the same.

And now is the time for important affairs, and he has no time to look closely at the details, the soft, tender, unripe details.

Everything is going swimmingly. He has no premonitions, has he?

He has taken to sharing a bottle of wine in the evenings with the green-faced, weary officer who got into trouble in India.

He forestalled that misfortune—dropped a word to Nesselrode, and the latter made a joke.

It’s good to know that he has saved a man. This is more pleasing than giving alms to a pauper in the street. And he attaches no importance to it.

The officer takes a seat and with shaky fingers pours himself a glass of wine. He is terrified. He is in trouble.

It is pleasant not to drink and to watch the other person drinking instead.

The officer sings softly a senseless ditty:

I set off …

Where to?

To Baku …

And what for …?

And he chuckles.

When the officer gets drunk and hazy, Griboedov tells him quietly, but so he can hear:

“I will soon be off to the Caucasus. You have to stay here,” he raises his voice, “or go to the country.”

The officer agrees.

27

He went to the Ministry.

He spent just a couple of minutes in the big reception room.

Then the door of the office swung wide open, and Lieutenant Vishnyakov, green-faced and somehow shrunken, ran out, holding his saber in place on his hip.

He ran with head thrust forward, on tiptoe, in long, soundless strides, as if leaping over puddles.

Griboedov hailed him softly:

“Lieutenant …”

Then the lieutenant stopped and looked at Griboedov. His teeth were chattering.

“Hmm. To whom do I have the honor of speaking?”

And either having forgotten or not recognizing Griboedov at all, and without paying the slightest attention to him, he turned around, jumped over the last puddle, and disappeared behind the door. Griboedov heard the rattle of his saber.

The door flew open again. An official came out and asked Griboedov to come in.

Nesselrode stood by the desk, without his spectacles. His face was gray, unsmiling, and the watery, bulging eyes flickered everywhere. He was in a temper. Rodofinikin was seated in the armchair. Then Nesselrode put his spectacles on and smiled at Griboedov.

A strange conversation began.

“We owe you a debt of gratitude for the fact that the treaty was signed only after the Persians had paid the first … sums of … the kurors.”

Nesselrode waved his tiny hand.

“I hear, dear Alexander Sergeyevich, that Paskevich, our Count of Erivan, has been awarded a million.”

Rodofinikin said something quite superfluous.

Both their eyes and their words expressed some discomposure. His superiors did not expect an answer and addressed the air, as if waiting for something or someone. Nesselrode’s eyes finally stopped their darting.

“His Majesty has spoken to me about you.”

He rubbed his cold, tiny hands and looked at Rodofinikin.

“We have finally found a post worthy of you.”

Griboedov pouted his lips, goose-fashion. He sat leaning forward, his feet tucked under the chair, his eyes unblinking.

“It’s an important post, quite exclusive.” Nesselrode sighed: “The post of our chargé d’affaires in Persia.”

He raised his finger meaningfully.

Not a word about the Caucasus, about the Transcaucasian Manufacturing Company. And he had come here in order to hear from them about the project which …

He glanced at Rodofinikin—gray-haired, respectable, urbane. He ought to lose his temper immediately, right away, to thump his fist on the desk and to be through with the Ministry of External (and extremely strange) Affairs.

But he couldn’t.

The man who sat in his place, wearing his official uniform, replied in his voice, rather dryly:

“A Russian chargé d’affaires is not what we need in Persia at the moment.”

Nesselrode and Rodofinikin looked at him, waiting to hear more. And he remembered another government office, and the court-martial commission, where Levashov and Chernyshev had sat in session; they had stared at him in the same way, waiting for him to lose control.

“The English have an ambassador in Persia, and our entire strategy in Persia is based on exerting an influence equal to that of Britain.”

The superiors exchanged glances.

“His Majesty ought to have there an ambassador plenipotentiary, not a chargé d’affaires.”

Griboedov heard himself speak and did not much like the sound of his voice. It lacked expression.

“I cannot be appointed to this post because of my low rank. And besides, I am an author and musician. Consequently, I need my readers and my audience. And how likely am I to find these in Persia?”

And disdainfully, as if he were proud of his low rank, he sat back in his chair and crossed his legs.

He was unassailable—the rank of collegiate councillor kept him safe, while music and writing were ludicrous occupations in the eyes of the authorities and he mentioned them on purpose, to spite them.

Then Nesselrode suddenly narrowed his eyes and puckered his tiny face.

“On the contrary, solitude perfects genius, as I recall was once said by …”

By whom?

Nesselrode smiled.

He was smiling as if he had suddenly solved an enigma, had cracked a charade, had finally understood what was positive about the present situation and what required immediate attention. He did not look again at Rodofinikin.

He said blithely:

“In the meantime, we wish to introduce to you a man who is quite worthy of becoming your secretary, on the understanding that you are happy with the arrangement.”

And he rang the little bell. A duty officer came in, was given a sign, and left; a minute later, a young man in spectacles came in. He was thin-lipped and pale.

His name was Maltsov, Ivan Sergeyevich, a man of letters, as he introduced himself, and probably an admirer.

In the aftermath of the uprising, the Chernyshev commission in their interrogations must have brought one suspect to confront another in just this sort of way.

The unpleasant thing was that the man, this Maltsov, bore a strange resemblance to Griboedov himself. An overgloomy smirk was playing on his lips. Young people imitated either Pushkin’s sideburns or Griboedov’s spectacles and side parting.

Without saying a single word to Maltsov, Griboedov took his leave. His superiors shook his hand with polite indifference.

Not a word about the project. A demotion in rank had taken place here.

He went slowly down the stairs, against which the lieutenant’s crazy saber had so recently rattled.

28

Only outside did he draw a deep breath for the first time in a long time, freely and fully.

Those who have not suffered great failure have no idea just what it means to breathe freely and fully. All the weights fall off the scales, and the scales with the man on them fly upward—easy and free.

Easy and free.

He looked around and saw so much more than he’d seen earlier that morning on his way to see Nesselrode. That was because now he was walking slowly, on foot.

It turned out that the snow had melted completely; the roadside paving slabs were warm, and the women passing by twittered like birds.

He didn’t have to take a droshky or to join the dandies dashing by. There was no hurry to get back to his hotel, and he could now have lunch opposite the General Staff Headquarters, at Loredo’s café. He used to eat there, at the old Italian’s, with his old friend, Küchelbecker, and they would discuss poetry and the theater, or he would bring along some amenable girls.

The strange thing was: he wondered whom he could drop in on right now, but he couldn’t think of a single friend. There was no one.

There was Faddei, there was Senkovsky, there were others, but today they were all too far away. The generals had perished in the Kingdom of Far-Far-Away.

But there was Lenochka, and there was Katya. He would see them tonight.

Strictly speaking, he needed to go back to the hotel and inquire about the lieutenant, but the lieutenant would remind him of Nesselrode and what had happened today, which suddenly felt so far away.

His own project appeared repugnant and unnecessary to him. But he soon forgave himself and simply strolled along the roadside. When he was jostled, the people said sorry; when he accidentally brushed against someone, he likewise apologized and smiled. During one of his illnesses, he had learned not to do what he liked most: not to read favorite books, not to write poetry. Because when he recovered, he found that he no longer got any pleasure from the books and the poems that had absorbed him when he was sick. He wouldn’t even touch them. The project had fallen through for now, with not a word more on the subject. They had got him just where they wanted him! Well, from now on, you won’t trap me with any more of your blandishments.

The slabs were warm today, ladies’ hats were of the latest fashion, and the street looked new. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. A blind beggar with a pink bald patch sat on the corner of Bolshaya Morskaya in the sun. He threw a coin into the beggar’s soft hat. The pink bald patch was enjoying the warmth.

The shop windows, the clinking spurs, the ladies’ hats, and even the recent misfortune, all were like a culminating joy, a complete liberation. And probably success would have been a disaster. He would have been taking a cab instead of strolling along the street; he wouldn’t have seen that pink bald patch; he would have had dinner with the generals. And now he could have lunch at Loredo’s.

29

Afterward he went to see Lenochka, found Faddei at home, and enjoyed acting as referee for their latest quarrel.

Faddei had come into some money, and Lenochka was saying that it was big money, and that he had hidden it from her. Strangely enough, Faddei was not a particularly free man in his own household—the arrangement was that he had to hand over all cash to Lenochka. And, in fact, he couldn’t be relied on. Lenochka, the Hermitage Madonna, was an iron lady. Usually, it was tante who refereed their fights, and this was torture for Faddei.

That was why Faddei was even more delighted than usual to see Griboedov. It seemed that Lenochka held Griboedov in high regard, and not a single rude word such as canaille or Wüstling was said, although Lenochka was mad as hell and stamped her little foot.

After all, Faddei was Griboedov’s friend, and apart from that, he had no wife and spent his money freely. This fact put Faddei in a stronger position, and he kept stretching out his hands toward Griboedov.

Lenochka calmed down within a few minutes. She was a lady, a woman, she was Murillo’s Madonna. And she sat in front of Griboedov like the Madonna in the picture. She parted her lips a little and smiled and waved Faddei away. And Griboedov, pleased that he had refereed their fight fairly, patted Faddei on the shoulder and kissed Lenochka’s hands.

Having kissed both in a friendly fashion, he went to Katya. It was already evening, and she was alone. He stayed at Katya’s until midnight, by which time she no longer said that he was so frightfully ungracious.

He could have stayed longer—he could have stayed with her forever, the simple, porcelain-skinned Katya who stroked his hair as young milkmaids stroke their tireless companions somewhere in a hayloft under a leaking roof.

But when he realized that he could indeed stay with her like that forever and he heard the dripping of the thawing icicles outside, quite close, it frightened him, and he jumped to his feet, gave the quieted Katya one more kiss, and drove back to his hotel.

Serious trouble awaited him there.

30

Lieutenant Vishnyakov had blown his brains out.

Having come back to his hotel room, the lieutenant at first had kept himself to himself, paced the room and the corridor as if expecting somebody, but by evening had gone quite mad. He smashed empty bottles to smithereens, swung his saber around and jabbed it into the floor.

The valet de chambre testified that he was in no hurry to enter the room, and half an hour later, everything went quiet. But as the guest was a questionable one, the servant knocked on the door. There was no response, so he stuck his head through the door. The servant testified that the lieutenant was standing there stark naked. Two torn epaulettes lay on the floor by the door, while the lieutenant stood by the window and spat at the epaulettes from a distance. The man claimed that as he poked his head through the door, he got a gob right in his eye. Then the lieutenant attacked him crazily, thrust him out of the room, and locked the door. A minute later, a shot rang out, and he ran to fetch the police.

The police constable sat at the desk in the lieutenant’s hotel room, taking it all down.

The servant’s only lie was that the spit had got him in the eye and that the shot came a minute later. He said so just to impress, and because it was his one big moment: “Swear to God,” he said and pointed to his right eye. His version of events was not entirely accurate. When he had seen the lieutenant naked, he’d gone to tell Sashka, who said “I-i-s he-e?” but couldn’t care less. Then they told the chambermaid, and she shrieked with laughter. The shot came half an hour later at the earliest.

But indisputably the lieutenant was now both naked and dead.

He lay on the floor, without a stitch on, and the police constable gave orders that the body should not be moved.

“For the court,” he said, “so that the correct procedures are followed and all the circumstances …”

The police constable bowed to Griboedov but did not get up. He was now questioning Sashka. Sashka was lying with such zest that Griboedov was itching to give him a good slap on the forehead.

“The late lieutenant,” he said calmly, “was well educated, so he was. He’d come from that Indian China place with a letter from their emperor to ours. He was a sort of Russian governor in China, don’t you know, and he’d got himself into money troubles. He was a top-notcher, and top secret too, and he always had cash on him, and plenty of it. Whenever he came to see my master, he’d give me half a ruble when he left, and once he even gave me two.”

“What the hell are you saying, you lying canaille!” shouted Griboedov, astonished.

The police constable glanced at him keenly. But Griboedov touched his shoulder and invited him to come through to his own rooms.

They spent a couple of minutes there.

Upon leaving the room, the police constable immediately cleared the room and the corridor of the chambermaids who, embarrassed and covering their eyes with aprons, nevertheless stared at the dead man, all agog. He ordered the smashed door to be put back on its hinges and showed his fist to the hotel servant.

“If any of you says a word, you’ll go straight to Siberia,” he said, frightening himself, and hurried away, holding his saber in place on his hip.

A quarter of an hour later, a closed carriage arrived, and the lieutenant was wrapped in white sheets and taken away.

The police constable once again showed his fist to the hotel servant and jerked his head at Sashka, like an old nag.

When Griboedov sat down in the chair, without taking his coat off, Sashka handed him a crumpled envelope, flared his nostrils, raised his eyebrows, and lowered them again.

“From hisself, sir.”

“From whom?”

“From the deceased, sir.”

Griboedov read the scrap:

“You go to the country. To hell with the whole lot of you!

Private Vishnyakov”

31

A chain of oppressive posts

fetters us inexorably.

▶ Griboedov

A man sits in his armchair drinking wine or tea, and he is a success. A few hours later, the furniture, wine, and tea are the same, but he is a failure.

When Griboedov left Rodofinikin on that memorable day, the day he’d gone to dine with the generals, he had given little thought to what the old official was going to do.

And when Griboedov left, Rodofinikin sighed heavily and whistled through his nose. He looked grave and was seriously preoccupied.

The capital that had brought no returns, that had been scattered throughout various accounts, his own precious Greek money, could now be pulled into a single fist and be invested in the Caucasus. He clenched his fist.

Griboedov couldn’t have known this.

If the old man had made this gesture in Griboedov’s presence, he might not have talked about Castellas’s plantations, wouldn’t even have mentioned his name. But the gesture came after Griboedov was well out of sight.

Then the old man narrowed his eyes, wondering who the director of the board might be, and decided that he would seek the post himself.

So his train of thought brought him to Griboedov. What, in essence, was this man really after?

Pretty obvious: the power of board director.

Having reached Griboedov in his chain of thought, Rodofinikin began to count on his fingers. Diplomatic relations with the neighboring states, the building of fortresses, the right to declare war and to mobilize troops …

Rodofinikin sat right up in his chair: what kind of director was this, God damn it, this was no director, this was a dictator! Dictator! Viceroy!

A king!

That was the moment of truth, when he looked around, got up from the chair, and stared at the inkwell in the shape of a naked Grace: through lawful channels, the collegiate councillor was presenting a paper in which he was requesting the powers of a king.

But since the paper did not actually spell it out, Rodofinikin calmed down.

He hid the package in the desk and locked it away, as if it were a list of conspirators which included his own name.

Then he rubbed his brow and called his secretary, a crafty old chap. He gave strict instructions: that he should immediately leave for Tiflis to make inquiries on the quiet. Some gentleman called Castellas owned some silk plantations over there and was eager to sell them. He assured the secretary that he would present him for an award.

Shortly afterward, an Englishman, Dr. McNeill, stuck his head into his office. He had called to offer him for a song a few shares in some East India enterprises, which Rodofinikin bought from him on the spot. Among other things that cropped up in the conversation was the name of Lieutenant Vishnyakov. They also spoke of the East India interests in general.

Then he went to see Nesselrode.

Since his superior was rather absentminded into the evenings, the old man told him that they’d better send Griboedov to Persia sooner rather than later, and that they had to reprimand harshly a certain lieutenant, an agent who had been exposed by the English and who could ruin their entire relations with London.

Nesselrode agreed in principle, but he said that it seemed they hadn’t confirmed this yet with Griboedov. In his opinion, Griboedov had alternative plans.

The Greek responded that it was precisely because of this that they ought to reach an agreement—that this matter was quite an urgent one and that as far as he understood it, Griboedov’s present plan would be impracticable, if not impossible, and that Griboedov too was a somewhat difficult man and quite possibly not to be trusted.

The superior did not argue with that.

He reprimanded Vishnyakov, swore he’d reduce him to the rank of private, and introduced Griboedov to Maltsov, whose mother, an old beauty, was friendly with his wife and had petitioned for her son.

Generally speaking, he was snowed under with business affairs.

Griboedov knew little of all that, and it did not really matter; it changed nothing at all.

32

And so he had unfolded threadbare sheets of paper of various sizes. This was neither the project nor a brief; this was his tragedy.

He had covered those sheets during the Persian nights when he was negotiating with Abbas Mirza. Under those pale skies, looking at the desert, at the troops, at the colored glass windows, the Russian words had lain down in a row like foreign ones, and there was not a single superfluous word among them. In the mornings, this innocent bliss, known only to him, gave him bodily strength and refinement in his conversation. He was an author, a temporary and a chance man in terms of the figures and towns listed in the Turkmenchai Treaty. He was always flexible and elusive in thought and conversation because he did not take any of it seriously, merely played the trade and geography game, an entirely different affair from authorship. So his real work gave him a sense of superiority.

But as soon as he became addicted to gambling with maps, everything was different; all began to spin. The oppressive post of his own invention fettered him inexorably. His very body lost its youthful strength and much became unclear.

Nesselrode and Rodofinikin had inadvertently set him free.

Now he was unfolding the sheets of paper with some trepidation; he had forgotten much of what he had written. He read his own lines, remembered when he had written them, and the circumstances suddenly seemed so far away.

Faddei interrupted his work.

Seeing Griboedov busy with the sheets, Faddei put his hands reverently behind his back.

“A comedy?” he nodded nervously. “A new one?”

“A tragedy,” Griboedov replied. “A new one.”

“Tragedy!” exclaimed Faddei. “Well! Why didn’t you tell me before? Tragedy! Easier said than …”

He was almost in awe.

“Alexander, you must give a reading. Tragedy! Everybody has been expecting a tragedy.”

“Who has been expecting? From whom?”

“The theaters expect it, and everybody else. They don’t write tragedies these days. The public expect it of you.”

Now it was Griboedov who felt something like fear. He shifted in the chair.

“What do you mean—expecting? Why do they expect a tragedy from me?”

“Not a tragedy in particular, but expecting in general. They keep pestering me: what new things have you written? Everybody is wondering.”

“Who’s everybody? And what do you tell them?”

“I tell them that you’ve written many new things. To tell you the truth, I felt it already, that you had. Pushkin asked, and then … well, yes, so did Krylov.”

Griboedov winced.

“Good Lord, why are you always in such a hurry, my friend? Lots of new things—and here I am with nothing but drafts.”

“That’s fine,” said Faddei, suddenly inspired. “It’s fine. Drafts are everything these days, works in progress. And everyone is wondering. I’ll arrange a reading for you. Where do you want it? At my place?”

“I should say not,” said Griboedov, and Faddei looked hurt.

“As you like. It can be at somebody else’s … At Gretsch’s, or at Svinin,” he said glumly.

“I daresay at Gretsch’s,” Griboedov said, as if conceding, “but please not a reading, just a dinner.”

“It goes without saying, a dinner,” said Faddei, now deeply offended. “Do you think I don’t understand that it must be a dinner? I’d better buy the wine myself, or else Gretsch and his wife will only offer up some rubbish.”

Griboedov looked at him:

“On the other hand, I daresay you could arrange it at your place. But don’t invite the whole world. Invite Pushkin, won’t you?”

Faddei smiled. The raspberry-colored bald patch began to beam.

“I don’t mind,” he spread his arms, “exactly as you please. I’ll call Krylov and Pushkin, then. No matter. Whatever suits you.”

And with a whole new purpose to his existence, Faddei headed out of the hotel suite, quite taken up, and already forgetting his grievance.

33

The dead face of Lieutenant Vishnyakov brought him sufficiently to his senses. To travel so far in order to spit on his epaulettes, already spat on by others? His strength had always been in his ability to forget and to make wise choices. That was his forte; it’s the little people who tread a single path and knock their heads against a brick wall.

He no longer thought about the project. All around him, people vegetated. He couldn’t help but look down on them, like a man who has traveled much and has a lot to forget. They had nothing to forget.

So the first thing he started with was to take a closer look at the hotel rooms, and found that they did not appeal to him.

When the candles were lit, the rooms seemed grand enough, but in the morning, they looked dusty and dismal.

And besides, they were beyond his means. He’d be ruined if he stayed on here.

He sent Sashka out to inquire about apartments, and the very next day he moved to the Kosikovsky tenement on Nevsky Prospect. The apartment was on the top floor, very simple and rather spartan. The only luxury in it was the grand piano, which had been left by the previous tenant; it was a really splendid one, with double escapement.

34

He remembered the literary battles quite well.

But now there was nothing to fight for—nowadays, they mostly had dinners. New literary undertakings were arranged during those dinners, and for the most part, they came to nothing. Former enemies got together, irreconcilable in their opinions. Nowadays, literary feuds were not really forgotten, but for a while at least, people put them behind them. It was a time of literary undertakings.

That was why the dinner at Faddei’s was a success.

Pushkin caught up with Griboedov at the door.

In the vestibule, the lean little figure of Maltsov was thrusting a heavy greatcoat at the valet. Pushkin threw him a quick glance and said:

“You see, you have your imitators now.”

Afraid that the remark was directed at him, Maltsov made his way timidly to the drawing room.

“One of the Archive youths22—they are all so clever these days …”

He looked at Griboedov and suddenly smiled like a coconspirator:

“St. Anna?” He had spotted the evidence of the Order on Griboedov’s frock coat. And then, in a different tone of voice: “Everybody’s saying you’ve been writing a southern tragedy?”

“Anna, that’s right. And how is your long military poem coming along?”

Pushkin frowned.

“The Battle of Poltava. About Peter the Great. I’d rather not talk about it. The poem is a bit of a tattoo.”

He looked at Griboedov frankly and wretchedly, like a boy.

“One has to throw them a bone.”

Like everybody else, Griboedov had read Pushkin’s “Stances,” in which Pushkin looked ahead fearlessly, anticipating glory and clemency. Nicholas was forgiven the executions as Peter had been forgiven. It would soon be the anniversary of Poltava, and the Turkish campaign (although nothing like the Swedish one) would soon end, would it not? Everything was clear. Pushkin had not gained a single friend with that poem, but how many new enemies he’d made! Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a subtle diplomat. How many pitfalls he had avoided, with the ease of a dancer. But life is simpler and cruder and takes hold of a man. Pushkin did not want to fall behind the standard-bearers—he was throwing them a bone. Nobody dared speak about it so openly; only Pushkin did. Griboedov frowned.

They were late for the dinner, as usual, and everyone was already at the table.

It was an event for the memoirists, that dinner.

The most eminent heads of the era, later to appear on commemorative plaques, were examining the so-far-empty plates.

Here, there was a hierarchy all its own, and Faddei kept an eye on the small fry lest they should jump ahead of the bigger beasts. Krylov, bloated, pallid, and puffy, took the place of honor.

His unbrushed, yellowish-gray curls were sprinkled with dandruff; his sideburns were trimmed. Inclining his ear to his neighbor, he either could not or had no desire to turn his head.

Then there was, strictly speaking, a drop in the ranking: the familiar young people and the run-of-the-mill types, though they too were necessary.

Gretsch spoke into Krylov’s ear softly, garrulously.

He leaned toward him over the empty plates and cutlery—vacant seats had been left on both sides of Krylov’s place.

The guests sat in a row: Pyotr Karatygin, tall and discerning, red-faced, the Bolshoi Theater actor and jack of all trades; a young musician, Glinka, next to a shaggy and sharp-nosed Italian; the brothers Polevoi, wearing their merchant-style frock coats and light-colored neckties with big tiepins.

The ladies were represented by the affectedly grimacing Varvara Danilovna Gretsch, or “Gretschess” as Faddei called her; the pockmarked little Dyurova, Pyotr Karatygin’s wife—a French woman whom Faddei nicknamed “Froggy”; and, of course, Lenochka in a stunning outfit.

When Griboedov and Pushkin showed up, everyone rose to their feet. Thank goodness, at least the musicians did not start banging on the drums. Faddei was capable of anything.

Krylov cast quick glances this way and that and pretended to prepare to get up—which took him the exact amount of time he would have spent had he actually got up.

Dinner had commenced. The food was being served.

Pushkin, now polite and sprightly, spoke left, right, and center.

Faddei bustled like a majordomo; the wines were superb.

Gretsch got up.

“Alexander Sergeyevich,” he addressed Griboedov, “and Alexander Sergeyevich,” he addressed Pushkin …

Then he spoke about the equal talents of both, about Byron and Goethe, about what they might yet achieve, and concluded:

“…you, Alexander Sergeyevich, and you, Alexander Sergeyevich.”

Everyone clapped their hands. Dyurova was clapping, and so were Karatygin and Lenochka.

Griboedov stoodt up, as yellow as wax.

“These days when talking about Goethe and Byron, nobody dares say that they have fully understood Goethe, and no one admits that they haven’t understood Byron. Let me remind you of Sterne’s words: ‘I would walk thirty miles,’ he quoted in English, ‘to see a man who enjoys what he likes without asking anyone how and why.’ It is unclear how to measure completely different talents. Two things can be good, though not at all similar. Your health, Nikolai Ivanovich”—he proffered his wineglass to Gretsch—“and to the health of Faddei Venediktovich.”

And he sat down.

He had spoken simply, dispassionately, and they again applauded.

And then the wine conversation began. It seemed to have started with Dyurova or with Varvara Danilovna Gretsch, or “Gretschess,” something about men in general. Then the actor Pyotr Karatygin, young and robust, said something about women in general.

“Women never follow the stress when they read poems—they always mangle the meter, have you noticed?” asked Pushkin. “They have no understanding of poetry; they only pretend to.”

“I don’t like female attitudinizing and affectation,” responded Griboedov. “The Asians allow nothing of that sort: women bear children and nothing else.”

Lenochka blushed:

“Ah!”

Gretsch came out with a preprepared piece of wordplay on “Persian” in French:

“Monsieur, vous êtes trop perçant.”23

“Affectation …”

“Attitudinizing …”

And Petya Karatygin complained that in the latest stage play, he had to use a strange expression: “wouldn’t’ve’b’been?”

“What on earth is ‘wouldn’t’ve’b’been?’” asked Varvara Danilovna, the Gretschess, contemptuously.

“Wouldn’t’ve’b’been?”

“You mean, ‘wouldn’t’ve been?’”

“No, ‘wouldn’t’ve’b’been.’”

Krylov latched onto the conversation. He tore himself from his plate:

“ ‘Wouldn’t’ve’b’been,’ huh?” he said, chewing with a straight face. “One can even go as far as to say ‘wouldn’t’ve’b’being been,’” he said between the mouthfuls, “except a man would require a stiff drink to enunciate-iat-ize that!”

Pushkin glanced at him affectionately.

Krylov continued to eat.

The dinner was coming to an end, and tea was served.

Awkwardly but swiftly, Griboedov went over to the grand piano. He began to play softly.

The musicians came up one after another, Glinka and the shaggy Italian. Griboedov nodded and continued to play.

“What is it?” asked Glinka, and the black tuft on his head lifted up a little.

“A Georgian melody,” responded Griboedov.

“What is it?” Pushkin shouted from his seat.

Griboedov kept playing and half-turned to Pushkin:

“Imagine a night in Georgia and the moonlight. A rider mounts his horse; he is setting off to go into battle.”

He continued playing.

“A girl is singing; a dog is barking.”

He laughed and left the grand piano.

At this point, he was asked to recite. He had no manuscripts with him, to ensure that his delivery would sound spontaneous and relaxed.

His tragedy was entitled The Georgian Night. He described briefly what it was about and recited a few snippets. The second edition of The Captive of the Caucasus was about to appear. In Griboedov’s tragedy, the Caucasus would be barren and bare, not as in the usual pictures of it. On the contrary, it was rugged, primitive, and poor. It went without saying that he never mentioned The Captive.

Strangely, he felt constrained by Pushkin. As he recited, he sensed that he might have written it quite differently had Pushkin been present at the time.

It all went cold on him.

The evil spirits in his tragedy rather embarrassed him now. Maybe he could have done without them?

But there are none, not one! And why would I desire

Those marvels or those idle incantations,

There is no friend on earth or in the skies,

No help from God, nor for the wretches hell!

He knew it was brilliant.

And looked around.

Pyotr Karatygin sat gaping, with an expression of astonished ecstasy on his face. He had doubtless charged himself up in advance.

The Polevoi brothers were scribbling something down. He suddenly understood. They had come to see a miracle on display, and the miracle man had merely given a reading.

Faddei was exhausted.

“High, high tragedy, Alexander,” he said speaking almost plaintively, out of his semioblivion.

Pushkin was silent for a while. He took stock, weighed it up. Then he nodded:

“It has an almost biblical simplicity. I envy you. What a line: ‘There is no friend on earth or in the skies.’”

Griboedov raised his eyes to Krylov.

Krylov was silent, asleep, his bloated head sunk on his chest.

35

Military dinners, literary dinners, balls. He went to the Nobles’ Club, danced cotillions with all the young ladies, scribbled madrigals on their fans, as was the habit in Petersburg. Their mamas were ecstatic; he was l’homme du jour,24 so they vied with each other to ask for the pleasure of his company. The ballrooms everywhere were polished and sparkled magnificently. It was explained to him: that winter, they had rubbed down the walls and ceilings with soft bread, Moscow style. The bread was then given away to the poor. Thank God, he wasn’t starving.

He had a strange authorial destiny. Everybody wrote and got published, but in his case, everything happened the other way around: some youthful rubbish that ought to have been burned in the stove had been published, while the real gems, which had become proverbial, were in drafts and fragments. Faddei said that it would be impossible to have Woe published right now.

He would finish and publish the tragedy come what may. But was it any good? It needed to be revised.

The apartment was empty and cold. Sashka had not lit the fires.

He ordered him to light one, waited until he stopped his loud fussing about with the logs and flint, and sat down to work.

He took the sheaf of papers and began looking through them. His tragedy was wonderful.

It was meant to cut through the trifling St. Petersburg literary scene with words that were both meaningful and merciless. The sounds were deliberately harsh. What did it have to do with Faddei’s drawing room, tea, or Pyotr Karatygin? It was meant to be read in the fresh air, on the road, even in the mountains. But then what kind of tragedy was it, and what kind of literature? He reread his verses in an undertone, in complete solitude, in the firelight.

At that point, he noticed that Sashka was standing there, listening.

“Are you listening, dandy?” asked Griboedov. “Is it to your liking?”

“The old lady is a grump,” said Sashka, “and her curses are great fun.”

In his tragedy, there were terrible laments by the mother, a serf whose son had been taken from her, an old woman, a sort of Shakespearean Fury.

Griboedov thought a little.

“And have you been reading recently?” he asked Sashka.

“I have,” responded Sashka.

He pulled out of his pocket something resembling a worn songbook. Sashka read a few lines and chuckled.

An enchantress ’mid embraces,

Handed me a talisman.25

“Do you fancy it?”

“I do.”

“Any idea what a talisman is?”

Sashka did not dignify that with an answer.

“Of course … Nowadays everybody knows that.”

“And the poem that I read?”

“What you read was not a poem, Alexander Sergeyevich,” said Sashka instructively. “A poem is a song, and yours is about an old hag.”

“Get out of here, out!” Griboedov hissed at him. “Honest to God, I’ve had enough of your idle chatter.”

36

A rustling sound started up in the apartment, scurrying and tinkling. A mouse must have crawled inside the grand piano.

The apartment remained unlived in; in spite of Sashka’s laziness, its cleanliness and tidiness reminded its occupier that he would not be staying here long.

In the end, his tragedy would not suit the theater, and his poetry would be passed on by word of mouth, unprintable on the pages of the journals. Besides, while he’d been losing time with Abbas Mirza, it seems that poetry might have turned into something altogether different.

Senkovsky came in like a crow to the carrion.

“Alexander Sergeyevich,” he grinned with his rotten teeth, “congratulate me: it looks like I’m going soon on a trip to the East.”

“Would you like to go to Persia?” Griboedov asked him. “Do you know that we are getting Sheikh Safi-ad-din’s library as part of the reparations? There is nobody else besides you to sort it out.”

“Except you, Alexander Sergeyevich. No, thank you, Persia is not for me. I am on my way to the Egyptian pyramids.”

Griboedov showed him his collection—inscriptions on the banners captured from the Persians: “We promised Mohammad a glorious victory”; “In the name of Allah, mercy, and compassion”; “Sultan, the son of Sultan, Fat’h-Ali, the shah of the Qajar dynasty”; “Victory is ours. The Sixth Regiment.”; “Allah will give you the blessing you are craving, his mighty protection and imminent victory. Bring this news to the faithful …”

“One shouldn’t ever promise too much, or to too many,” said Senkovsky, “for all these ultimately fall into the hands of the enemy.”

The situation had reversed—now he was leaving, Griboedov was staying. Traveling gives a man an advantage. He no longer called on him to collaborate on the journals.

Griboedov looked at the learned Pole.

It suddenly struck him.

Fame waits for no man.

Should he stay where he was, the tide would soon turn. Not immediately, of course. They would expect extraordinary deeds from him, unheard words, stinging witticisms. They would make impertinent demands, asking him openly to reward their curiosity, their groveling.

Then they would get used to him. They would begin to laugh quietly at his slow progress; they would withdraw, but they would not forgive him their groveling.

In time, they would be calling him “the author of the famous comedy” or “the author of the unpublished comedy.” He would stoop a little. His black tailcoat would grow threadbare. He would develop a quirky little cough and the caustic wit of old age, and in the evening, he would do battle with Sashka over the dust. In other words, he would become a crank.

He would appear in the drawing rooms, already embittered, an unfulfilled man: the author of the infamous comedy and of the famous project.

He would lose his hair like Chaadaev—he had already lost some on the sides of his head. He would curse Petersburg and its drawing rooms. And when he spoke of the East, they would all exchange glances: they’d heard all that before, and some sharp Maltsov would pat him on the shoulder: “Do you remember, Alexander Sergeyevich, how we once nearly left together for the East, away from Russia, for good …?”

“Why are you so eager to travel?” he asked Senkovsky sternly. “After all, you have your journals, don’t you?”

“To hell with them, these Russian journals! Everything in Russia is too unstable, too green, and already it’s as old as the hills.” Senkovsky spoke scornfully. Essentially, he was repeating Griboedov’s own words. Griboedov suddenly turned pale:

“Dear sir,” he got up, “you seem to forget that I am Russian too, and I consider it unacceptable to insult her name.”

Senkovsky vanished.

He took himself off abruptly and slipped away, stung.

Griboedov stayed.

He looked at the yellowed sheets of paper and tossed them roughly into the desk drawer. His tragedy was second rate.

“Sashka, my coat. I’m going out.”

37

No one could be bored the way he could.

He leafed through Mozart, his favorite silver-tongued sonatas, played a few snatches, examined his nails, polished them, lounged in his colorful, Asian dressing-gown, slouched about from corner to corner, and counted: twenty steps. He was imagining some unparalleled love for the girl from the Caucasus with the round eyes. But no love could alleviate his boredom.

Outside, it was bright and chilly, and the buildings were full of strangers. He loved the drying up of the earth, warmth, ground covered in reddish and yellow shoots—he did not know their precise names. Some remote forebear was coming alive in him—an alien, a wanderer, a provincial. He had absolutely nothing to do here in Petersburg.

He would have been secretly glad if Nesselrode had sent word to him right now and said: “Alexander Sergeyevich, would you like to be the head clerk in the city of Tiflis?” Only not Persia, for the love of God, not Persia!

He feared Persia with the fear that one feels only about another human being.

So he slouched on until, reaching the fireplace, he stumbled into his decision: he would go to Tiflis, submit the project to Paskevich, and suggest to him that Paskevich himself should be the director of the Company.

It was amusing to imagine the dashing, curly-mustachioed Ivan Fyodorovich as the director of the manufacturing company. He would stare obtusely at the papers, throw a tantrum, and pass them over to Griboedov:

“Alexander Sergeyevich, could you, please, make sense of this?”

And Alexander Sergeyevich would then sort it out for him.

“You and I will travel yet, Sashka. Aren’t you sick of it here?”

And Sashka replied unexpectedly to the point:

“The weather is very good, Alexander Sergeyevich. It must be really warm in the Caucasus right now, unless it’s raining.”

38

And so, one fine day, he received a letter from Nastasya Fyodorovna, his dear mother.

“My dear son,

I am lost for words to thank you enough. You, my friend, are your mother’s only helper. You have obliged me so much by sending the four thousand in gold so promptly, otherwise as you can imagine, I don’t know how I would have coped with all these creditors. They say that Ivan Fyodorovich got a million. What joy! I’ve sent my congratulations to Eliza. Letters take so long. I haven’t received a reply as yet.

Do not fall out of touch with Ivan Fyodorovich, my dear friend. He is a huge support for us in our presently straitened circumstances. I have also heard of the honors bestowed on you, my dear son, and a mother’s heart fills up with joy from far away.

I have also heard about some of your literary exploits, but what is the use of talking about the vagaries of youth! The very same week I used the four thousand to pay off the debt to Nikita Ivanovich, or I would have missed the deadline on the mortgage and your mother would have been left without a roof over her head! I rely only on God and on you, my precious son.

A. G.”

P.S. Here in Moscow, everyone is surprised at not having heard yet about your new appointment. Remember, my dear son, that we are as poor as church mice.”

Griboedov looked around the bare room.

“Waster,” he said quietly and clenched his teeth.

And in order not to admit that he had said this about his mother, he began to rummage through Sashka’s receipts.

He screamed at Sashka:

“Sashka, you waster. You’ll ruin me. Are you aware of how much you’ve spent during the move to this apartment, you dog, you bloody fop!”

He was yelling exactly like Nastasya Fyodorovna.

39

The next day, completely out of the blue, a note from Nesselrode arrived, brief and extremely polite.

Griboedov made himself ready to see him very slowly and sluggishly. He sat in an armchair in his shirtsleeves, sipped tea, and spoke amicably to Sashka:

“Alexander, what do you think, could we find an apartment on a lower floor, on the second floor, for example?”

“We could.”

“A cheaper one, perhaps?”

“We can get a cheaper one.”

“Both your elbows are out.”

“So they are, sir.”

“Why don’t you get yourself another caftan?”

“You haven’t given me any money, sir.”

“And why didn’t you tell me? Here’s some money and keep the change.”

“Much obliged.”

“Do you have any friends here?”

Sashka suspected a trap.

“I don’t, sir. Not a single bit of fluff.”

“Do you not? That’s bad, Alexander. Make some friends.”

“I have some on the second floor.”

“Bring me my tailcoat. And the Anna, if you please.”

He spent a long time in front of the mirror fixing the gold pin into the black cloth.

“Is it crooked?” he asked Sashka.

“Straight enough, sir.”

“Fine. I’d better go. I won’t be back soon, so lock up the apartment after lunch, and from then on, your time is your own.”

“Yes, sir. Should I be back by dinnertime?”

“Dinnertime or earlier. As you will, Alexander.”

He spoke to his servant meekly and politely, as if he were not Sashka, but his old friend Begichev.

He spoke in exactly the same way later, with Nesselrode.

“I received your note, Count. Am I too early? I am not holding you back, am I?”

“On the contrary, on the contrary, my dear Mr. Griboedov, you’re even a little bit late.”

Nesselrode was festive today, transparent and shining like a crystal icon-lamp.

“I was thinking only yesterday of that extremely fine point of yours.”

Griboedov’s ears pricked up.

“Indeed, there can be no chargé d’affaires in Persia right now, there can only be a minister plenipotentiary. You are absolutely right, and the idea has met with His Majesty’s approval.”

Griboedov smiled broadly.

“You shouldn’t think this point so fine a one, Count.”

But the dwarf burst into laughter and nodded his head, like a conspirator. Then he rubbed his hands together and raised himself from the chair. His eyebrows shot up. Suddenly, he stuck out his gray little hand to Griboedov.

“Congratulations, Mr. Griboedov, you are awarded the rank of state councillor.”

And quickly and briskly, he shook Griboedov’s cold hand.

He handed Griboedov the imperial decree, not yet signed. Collegiate Councillor Griboedov was promoted to the rank of state councillor and appointed as minister plenipotentiary in Persia, with an annual living allowance of …

Griboedov put the document down on the desk and posed an abrupt and rather rude question:

“And what if I don’t go?”

Nesselrode was incredulous.

“Are you intending to decline the emperor’s graciousness?”

The appointment was a lawful pretext for a lawful departure in a postchaise, perhaps even with the diplomatic courier’s horses, and the route to Persia went through the Caucasus. Which meant that he would go back there, would see Paskevich, and inevitably would be looking into those heavy-lidded, almost adolescent eyes. But it was not about the Caucasus or Transcaucasia, nor about the Company; this was about Persia.

“Then I’d better be frank with you,” the dwarf said. He pursed his lips and his eyes were fixed. “We need to take twenty-five thousand troops out of Khoi and send them to Turkey. But to achieve that, we need to receive the indemnity, the kurors. We are looking for the man who can accomplish that. You are that man.”

He took fright at his own words and shrank back down into a desperately unhappy little lump.

Karl Vasilyevich Nesselrode, count, vice chancellor of the empire, had let the cat out of the bag.

They were sending him to be eaten up.

Griboedov suddenly snapped his fingers, which made Nesselrode jump.

“Apologies,” he chuckled, “I accept the appointment with gratitude.”

Nesselrode was nonplussed. This was how one had to behave with this man … back to front. Before he had let the cat out of the bag, Griboedov had been evasive. And when, out of sheer carelessness, he had let slip the war minister’s very phrase, as yet top secret, the man, just like that, snapped his fingers and agreed. What a dangerous business is diplomacy! But he hadn’t really let the cat out of the bag; he knew who he was talking to; he realized from the very beginning that with this man, just as in the entire ill-fated world of Asian politics in general, he had to act the wrong way round … and only then expect an unexpectedly good result. And he would tell the new Persian ambassador: “We will not take from you …” what are they called? … “tumens, tomans?”—and at once would talk about the … kurors.

Nesselrode sighed, gave the state councillor an affectionate smile, and said:

“Minister, I will be delighted to provide a briefing in a few days’ time.”

The state councillor spoke to him on a completely equal footing:

“You know what, Count, I shall make up the brief myself.”

Nesselrode froze. How quickly had he taken on a new part, one that was now setting the entire tone!

“But, Mr. Griboedov …”

“Count,” said Griboedov, rising, “I shall draft the brief, and it will be in your power to approve or disapprove, to accept or reject.”

Nesselrode was unfamiliar with the Russian tradition that a recruit who had been conscripted out of turn, in someone else’s stead, was expected to swagger. But he guessed as much.

All right. Let him draft the brief if that’s what he wants.

“I assume,” he said almost pleadingly, “you’ll have nothing against the appointment of Maltsov as first secretary.” He added hastily, “This is His Majesty’s will. And we shall immediately take care of finding the second secretary.”

Griboedov took time to think and suddenly smiled.

“I would like to request, Count, that you appoint as second secretary a man versed in the Eastern languages … and in medicine too. I am not sure of Mr. Maltsov’s expertise in these areas.”

“But why in … medicine?”

“Because physicians are vital in the East. They gain access to the harems and enjoy the shah’s and the princes’ trust. I need a man who can counteract the English doctor, Mr. McNeill, the one who introduced himself to Your Excellency.”

The vice chancellor’s face became glazed.

“But I am afraid that we shall have to abandon this idea,” he smiled in commiseration, “because such a rare combination—a medical doctor and a man who is well versed in the Eastern languages—would scarcely seem to exist.”

The minister plenipotentiary returned the smile, with as much commiseration:

“Oh, on the contrary, Count, such a combination does exist. I know the very man. Dr. Adelung, Karl Fyodorovich. I take the liberty of recommending him to Your Excellency.”

The name of the jovial doctor who had agreed to go to any nonexistent country confounded the minister.

“Very well, very well,” he retorted, slightly taken aback, “do as you please, if such a man, as you say, is a combination of …”

He saw Griboedov out of the office and stood alone for a moment.

“Oh, what joy,” he said, looking at his parquet, “what joy that this man is finally leaving!”

40

Wrong has arisen in the ranks of Dazhbog’s grandson; in the guise of a maiden wrong has invaded Troyan’s land; clapped her swan’s wings on the blue sea …26

▶ The Song of Igor’s Campaign.

Wrong has arisen.

From Nesselrode, from the mouse state, from the bandy-legged Greek, from the idol of Tmutorokan,²⁷ with his perfect thighs on the sofa—wrong has arisen.

Wrong has arisen in the ranks of the grandson of Dazhbog.

From the charmed and quick-witted Pushkin, from the silent Krylov, that swollen statue, from his own pathetic, yellowed sheets of paper that would never live again—wrong has arisen.

Wrong has arisen among the ranks of Dazhbog’s grandson; in the guise of a maiden, wrong has invaded Troyan’s land.

From his unrequited love for Katya, from Murillo’s Madonna, the sweet and money-loving Lenochka, from the fact that he treated women like his own poetry—beginning and then abandoning them, and could do no differently—wrong has arisen.

In the guise of a faraway maiden with the heavy-lidded eyes of a child, it has invaded Troyan’s land.

Wrong has arisen in the ranks of Dazhbog’s grandchild; has invaded Troyan’s land in a maiden’s guise. From the land, his homeland, on which the Dutch soldier and engineer, Peter by name, had heaped up a pile of stones and called it Petersburg, from the alien Finnish land that had long been thought to be Russian and inhabited by the blonde-haired Baltic people—wrong has arisen.

Wrong has arisen in the ranks of Dazhbog’s grandchild, invaded Troyan’s land in the guise of a maiden, clapped her swan’s wings on the blue sea.

She clapped her swan’s wings on the blue sea, the southern sea, which they had not granted him for his labor, his sweat, other folks’ labor, and other folks’ sweat; for his eyes, for his heart, she clapped her swan’s wings on the blue sea.

“Sashka, sing ‘Down the mother Volga!’”

“Sing, Sashka, dance!”

Stenka Razin’s brave lads put out on the light current, go down the Akhtuba, along the Buzan River, brave the open sea, take tribute from the seaside towns and settlements, showing no mercy, neither on the gray hairs of age nor the swan’s down of sweet breasts.

“Sing, Stenka!”

“I mean Sashka,” says Griboedov suddenly, amazed at himself, “sing, Sashka.”

Sashka sings about the Volga.

Alexander Sergeyevich Griboedov listens and then speaks to Sashka in a dry voice, as if to a stranger:

“What I meant to say is that we are not going to Persia, we are going to the Caucasus. In the Caucasus, we will spend some time with Ivan Fyodorovich. You seem to be under the impression that we are going to Persia.”

Who is Alexander Sergeyevich Griboedov talking to? To Alexander Gribov—is this Sashka’s name? Alexander Dmitriyevich Gribov.

But Griboedov stands and stamps his foot and tells Sashka, Stenka, and all the devils to sing about the Volga.

But he is oblivious to Sashka. Persia, not the Caucasus, is on his mind. He realizes that the German fool, Nesselrode, has hoodwinked him. Griboedov will not spend long in the Caucasus, because Ivan Fyodorovich Paskevich … Ivan Fyodorovich Paskevich is also a fool.

And he stamps his slender foot and stares with dry eyes, which behind those spectacles seem huge to Sashka:

“Dance!”

Because wrong has arisen.

Wrong has arisen, invaded the earth in the guise of a maiden—and here she is, clapping her swan’s wings.

Here she is clapping her swan’s wings on the blue sea.

The spears sing in the yellow country called Persia.

“Enough,” says Griboedov to Sashka, “are you mad? Get ready. We are going to the Caucasus, do you hear: the Cau-ca-sus. We are going to Tiflis, you fool. You can stop singing now. Don’t bother with warm clothes. Persia was freezing. It’s warm in the Caucasus.”