The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar

The greatest misfortune is not to have a true friend.1

▶ Griboedov, letter to Bulgarin

Nothing was yet decided.

He stretched himself up on his arms and hands and leaned forward; his nose and lips protruded, gooselike, from the effort.

Strange thing! In his adolescent bed, certain old habits came back to him unconsciously. He used to stretch just like this in the mornings, listening to the sounds of his childhood home: Is Mama up? Is she nagging Papa yet? A preposterous thought flashed through his mind: would his uncle appear right now, leaning on his walking stick, coming to wake him, to get him out of bed, calling on him to join him on his round of visits?

Why had he made such a fuss with that walking stick of his?

He lowered his eyelashes slyly and pulled the blanket lightly over his nose.

Sure enough, he immediately came to his senses.

He stretched a yellowish hand toward the bedside table and settled the specs on his nose.

He had slept soundly: he could sleep well only in new places. Today, the new place happened to be his family home, so he had had a good night’s sleep, like one in a quiet inn, but now that morning had come, he felt as if he were being poisoned by the mysterious smells that for some reason permeate ancestral homes.

Alexei Fyodorovich Griboedov, the uncle with the stick, had died five years ago. He was buried here, in Moscow.

He could not possibly appear.

In due course, Papa had died too.

But the ancestral sounds could still be heard.

The clocks called to one another through the wooden walls like roosters crowing. In maman’s boudoir, the pendulum always swung like mad.

Then a rasping sound and the sound of someone spitting.

It took him a while to work out what the sound was.

Then suppressed giggling (undoubtedly female). The rasping stopped for a moment, then eventually resumed with greater vigor. Somebody hissed from behind a door, a cheap little bell gave a thin tinkle—issuing undoubtedly from the boudoir. And the meaning of the rasping and spitting became apparent, as well as that of the laughter: his man Alexander, or Sashka, was giving the boots a spit and polish, while playfully digging Mama’s chambermaid in the ribs.

By and large, on this latest visit Alexander had displayed astonishing impudence: he fell on his master’s house like a Persian thief, took it by storm; he referred to himself as “we,” his eyebrows arched, his nostrils flared, his whitish eyes silly. He looked almost majestic.

Since he had taken it into his head that Alexander Sergeyevich would not permit the brushing of boots and clothes in the menials’ room, he was now spending his nights upstairs and pawing the maid.

And yet Alexander Sergeyevich Griboedov couldn’t help smiling because he was so fond of Alexander. Sashka looked like a frog.

Mama rang the feeble little bell again to prevent Sashka from disturbing him, or so she thought; in fact it woke him up—how insufferable!

Then, impishly, as if to mimic the hateful din, he reached out and shook his bell too. The sound was every bit as unpleasant as Mama’s bell, but louder. He gave it another shake.

Alexander came slinking in, stealthily, like a snake, shuffling his feet. His gait was reminiscent of the dervish’s walk in The Ali’s Passions.2 He was carrying his master’s clothes in his outstretched arms, like a sacrifice to the gods. His quiff had already been curled and pomaded with kvas. An amazingly stupid smile appeared before Griboedov. He took some satisfaction in watching Alexander fold the thin black garments on the stool, and with a ceremonial gesture evenly arrange the foot straps on the trousers.

So they looked at each other admiringly, quietly, as was their way.

“Bring me some coffee, would you?”

“Kava, sir? Right away.” Sashka flaunted the Persian word as he arranged the long, pointed toes of the shoes in a row.

(Kafechi, good God! Who’s he showing off to, the fool?)

“Have you called a cab?”

“It’s waiting, sir.”

Alexander left the room, nodding in time with each step.

Griboedov stared at the black clothes. He had the hopeless look of a hunted beast.

He noticed a speck of dust near the lapel of his frock coat, flicked it off, and blushed. He did not want to dwell on the thought that soon a diamond star would be shining there, while he couldn’t help picturing it vividly on the exact spot from which he had just removed the speck of dust.

Coffee.

He dressed swiftly, gritted his teeth, went through to Mama’s boudoir, and knocked with a wooden finger on the wooden door.

“Entrez?”

The puzzlement was false, the raised pitch of the question a third higher than it ought to have been; maman’s voice was particularly syrupy on this visit, a honey-sweet dolce.

He lowered his long, submissive eyelashes and breathed in various smells as he passed through the room: sulfur pills, juniper powder, tresses scented with eau de cologne.

Mama sat in the chair, her thin locks, not gray but colorless, fluffed up at the temples.

She was scrutinizing Alexander through a lorgnette, her eyes squinting. The stare was almost carnivorous. Alexander had been promised the rank of state councillor.

“Did you sleep well, my son? For two mornings in a row, your Sashka has woken the whole household.”

For two mornings in a row, he had been longing to get away from the house.

This time he had made up his mind, and it looked like he would have to make himself clear. He was fleeing to Petersburg, or rather not so much running away as taking the Turkmenchai Treaty to Petersburg, and he could stop off in Moscow for only two days. But the previous day, Mama had turned sulky when he’d said that he would be leaving the following morning—surely he could stay for another day? He had stayed. Now she was looking at her son in a particular way.

Nastasya Fyodorovna had squandered her fortune.

Was she a spendthrift? She was grasping. And yet the money ran through her fingers, poured out like sand, the corners cracked, and little by little the house crumbled; ruin was in the air; everything was in its place, and yet the house felt empty.

Nastasya Fyodorovna, mother, mistress of the house, was no fool—so where did the money go? The very air of the Griboedov establishment seemed to eat it up. Their peasants had already been sucked dry to the last possible drop. Five years ago, they had rebelled, and the mutiny had to be crushed—put down by force. Yet, in spite of the victory, the governor of the province paid her a visit, had tea with her, and said that it would be better to have no more revolts.

Alexander was well aware of the significance of the voice and lorgnette. The honey-sweet legato invited a discussion, which he began. He listened to himself speaking, disgusted by his own excess of expressiveness; he seemed to be infected with her manner of speaking.

All this, of course, was meant to end in a scene with tempers lost; both mother and son knew that and were dragging it out.

Mother had no idea what it was that he wanted. He could stay in Moscow, join the diplomatic service in Petersburg, or even obtain a post back in Persia. Surely the world was his oyster: he had shown himself to be a great diplomat. Mother had already written to Paskevich, who was married to her niece and under whose command Alexander had served. Paskevich, inclined to surround himself with indebted relatives, had advanced Alexander’s career. He advised Nastasya Fyodorovna to opt for Persia.

So they were making decisions about his life behind his back, as if he were a little boy; worst of all was the fact that he knew about it. The mother sensed as much: as soon as she mentioned Persia, Alexander would start to oppose her, even though it might have been exactly what he wanted.

Persia was a plum. There was the money, and the rank, and Paskevich’s patronage; Moscow, and even more so Petersburg, were an entirely different kettle of fish and a different sort of game. Neither Persia nor Petersburg meant anything to Nastasya Fyodorovna—these were the places where her son had simply vanished off the face of the earth for years at a time, as if he’d gone to the office and come back not four hours, but four years later. As a matter of fact, she would not even say “Alexander is in Persia” or “in the Caucasus,” but “Sasha’s at the mission.” The mission was the office, which sounded quieter and more stable. Moscow was actually all she could understand, and yet she didn’t want Sasha to stay there.

“Are you eating at home tonight?”

“No, maman, I have a dinner invitation.”

There was no invitation, but he could not bring himself to dine at home. Their dinners were admittedly pretty poor.

Nastasya Fyodorovna glanced archly through the lorgnette.

“Actresses again, and all that backstage stuff?”

He hated to hear his mother talking about his amorous affairs.

“I have things to see to, mother dearest. You still think of me as if I were twenty.”

“I see you’re in no great hurry to go to Petersburg, are you?”

“On the contrary, I am leaving tomorrow morning.”

She was doting on him through the lorgnette.

“Where is your Lion and your Sun?”

Alexander chuckled.

“The order of the Lion and the Sun, mother dearest, has been with a pawnbroker’s in Tiflis for quite some time now. A matter of debt. God save us from being in debt to a colleague.”

She lowered the lorgnette.

“So soon?”

The matter of the pawnbroker gave her the advantage. The direction of conversation was now inevitable.

“Haven’t you packed too soon?”

She fussiily fluffed up the locks on the left side of her face.

“Not at all. As a matter of fact, I can’t put it off a day longer. I’m late as it is. It’s no light matter.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about what you are going to do next.”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked down at his feet.

“I really haven’t given it much thought yet.”

And he gave her the glance of a sudden stranger—not the face of Sasha, but of one no longer young, with hair thinning at the sides and with piercing eyes.

“It all depends upon a project …”

Anxiously, she shook the flimsy little curls over her forehead and lowered her voice, whispering like a coconspirator. “What project, my son?”

“… of which, maman, it is too early to speak …”

He seemed to have won. But nothing of the sort; the histrionics, worst of all, had yet to come.

“Alexandre, I beg you to consider that we are on the edge of the abyss …”

She clasped her hands, her eyes reddened and her voice trembled, and she failed to complete her sentence.

Then she dabbed her reddened eyes with a tiny handkerchief and blew her nose.

“Jean has written to me that you should go to Persia,” she said quite calmly, referring to Paskevich. “Persia, and nowhere else.”

She spoke the last few words with conviction.

“I don’t know though, Sasha: have you perhaps decided to scratch for the literary magazines over here?”

She was speaking amicably enough, but, my God, that legato!

Jean, Persia, all this silly drivel; he didn’t want to go to Persia, and he would not be going to Persia.

“I have told Ivan Fyodorovich that it is only the financial reward that interests me. I’ve taken care of it all, Mama.”

And he looked at her again, this time as a diplomat, a state councillor, or as some minor Oriental ruler.

“As a matter of fact, I am more disposed to the office life. But we’ll see about that …”

He got up with an air of complete self-reliance:

“I’d better go. I’ll be home late tonight.”

On the very threshold of salvation, Nastasya Fyodorovna stopped him, narrowing her eyes:

“Are you taking the carriage?”

He was prepared to travel in absolutely anything: a droshky, or a merchant’s foppish chaise, but not the family carriage. He resorted to a lie:

“Stepan Nikitich Begichev has sent a carriage to pick me up.”

“Oh.”

And he made his escape toward the front door, through the large, light turquoise lounge and the drawing room, which was blue, Nastasya Fyodorovna’s favorite colors. Between the windows, there were mirrors and side tables with bronze candelabra and very fine (and therefore eternally dusty) china, but seen even with the naked eye, it was evident that the chandeliers were paper, fashioned to look like bronze. The flimsy furniture was draped with the same covers that had been there for as long as Alexander could remember. He hesitated in the sitting room. He was stopped in his tracks by a trellis entwined with ivy on both sides of a settee and two cabinets à la Pompadour.

It was hard to imagine anything sillier and more novel than these, the newest acquisitions of the destitute Nastasya Fyodorovna.

And a Carcel lamp on one of the tables, made of pure bronze.

He stood for a moment in the corner by the door, in front of a mahogany column shaped like a twisted rope, curved on top in the shape of a hook, which held a lantern with painted glass.

Everything here was failed Asia, ruin and deception.

All that was missing was for the walls and ceiling to be encrusted with multicolored pieces of mirror, just as in Persia, which would have been even more garish.

This was his home, his Heim, his childhood. And how he loved it, all of it.

He rushed to the vestibule, threw on his raincoat, ran out of the house, and fell into the cab.

Looking around with a certain curiosity, he felt that life here was going round in circles, and to no purpose.

The same muzhiks ambled along the pavement—back and forth.

A dandy dashed past in a droshky from Novinskaya Square, and immediately the exact same one rushed in the opposite direction. He understood what was happening: both dandies were wearing round Erivan hats.

Erivan had scarcely been conquered, and the Moscow patriots were already expressing their worldliness by wearing Erivan hats.

No, it hadn’t been worth fighting in Transcaucasia for the sake of Moscow, for the sake of the dear fatherland, or to have turned the Caucasus into a boneyard or a coaching inn.

The carriage crossed Tverskaya Street and drove along Sadovaya. The alleys that ran into the main streets looked treacherously dirty and narrow. The carriage turned the corner. Exactly as in Tabriz, where next to the main street there was prehistoric filth and urchins searched each other for lice. Belfries pierced the skies. They looked like minarets.

He caught himself making these comparisons with Asia; it was a kind of mental inertia.

All those days that he had, round the clock, in some sort of a fever of acquisition, haggled with the Persians over every patch of land in the treaty; when he had hurried over here with that treaty, which had already acquired its name, Turkmenchai, in order to get it to Petersburg right away, without delay; when he had swung about in all directions, lavished courtesies, ducked and dived, used cunning, been cagey and clever and hadn’t stopped to think twice about any of it—had gone along with it.

And now, so close to Petersburg, he had quieted down; Moscow had suddenly swallowed him up and seemed to have forgotten him. These last two days, he had started to brood, worrying that the peace treaty would not reach Petersburg—a fear that was infantile and unfounded.

It was the miserable month of March. The Moscow snow, the sudden sun followed by dullness, his boredom after two days at home, and, even worse, boredom outside those walls blocked his concentration. It was like staring at the arabesques on those sleepless nights during the negotiations in Abbas Abad, when he followed the line of patterns with his eye until it stumbled on an obstacle and he got muddled. How acutely fine or foul weather affected him: in the sun, he felt like a boy; when it was overcast, he felt like an old man.

It was frightening to think that indifference and distraction had affected even his own project; he was no longer confident about it. On the contrary, the project would undoubtedly founder … A passing dandy slipped, sprawled about waving his arms wildly for a few moments, and then looked around to see if people were laughing at him.

These days, he would drive out with that craving in him, that secret intention: to seek out the decision somewhere in the streets.

He had wasted years of his life along the highways; he had trekked endlessly, and now he was trying to recapture his youth in the alleyways.

In this way Moscow wore him out.

On this last day of his stay, he decided to pay a few visits. He found no solution in the streets. It was the usual March: sunny one moment, overcast the next, endless Russian muzhiks streaming past, jostling each other. All the faces were the same, no matter which way they went—the same that drifted in one direction hurried back again. Russian urchins chased each other with hale and hearty and gratuitous howls.

Carriages and droshkies doddered one after another. Even if one picked up speed and made a dash for it, the whole procession went at a snail’s pace. One of the horses in the chain raised its head.

An ugly phrase flashed through his mind: “The horses over here are like black mules.” A phrase worthy of an Asian Olearius.

Nobody paid any attention to him.

Regretfully, he admitted to himself that this actually hurt him. He knew very well that the main meeting was still ahead, in Petersburg, and in Moscow too, he had already had a ceremonial greeting. And yet he was irked that having traveled for a month, having carried among his papers the illustrious, the infamous Turkmenchai Peace Treaty, he felt somewhat left out today in Moscow.

That was childish.

Dandies wearing short coats and capes and with Erivan hats on their heads, ethereal like butterflies, were creatures from a world of their own. These days in Moscow, everything was infected with frivolity and glibness. Everyone was suddenly dashing. And unreliable. That droshky with the dandy passing by would now fly through the air, leaving behind the beggar woman and that muzhik carrying a barrel of herrings on his head and swinging his arm like a heavy pendulum.

But the horses’ muzzles jostled the dandy who had just found his feet, and the very same muzhik kept on emerging out of the crowd doggedly, his body and arm swinging with mechanical grace.

On his head he was carrying a barrel, balancing like a ballerina.

In the two years that he had been away from Moscow, even the muzhiks had lost their bearishness, even the beggar women were more mobile; the same ones went to and fro.

So it seemed to him. He was short-sighted.

A muzhik bobbed toward him, dreamlike, indifferent, theatrical, an out-of-season sleigh traveler. He drove along Sadovaya as he would drive about his village.

He was floating along, with his mouth open, without thought or feeling, gazing ahead with vacant concentration.

Alongside, in a droshky, rode McNeill.

He was startled by the randomness with which he spotted Dr. McNeill next to the muzhik.

Everything was happening inconsequentially and yet easily: a muzhik was driving down the street, and practically next to him was an Englishman, the chief physician of the Tabriz Mission, McNeill.

He looked eagerly in that direction, but there was no McNeill—instead, there was a stout colonel with sideburns like a dog’s whiskers.

But how did he come to be here? If McNeill had arrived in Russia, he ought to have known about that. The doctor might have acted directly through Paskevich, of course. But then Paskevich ought to have apprised him of such an event.

But why did it matter to him?

And maybe it wasn’t McNeill at all?

He shrugged his shoulders in irritation. He had grown so weary of the Englishman’s face in Tabriz that he might well have mistaken him for his own mother. He took off his glasses and wiped them angrily with a lace handkerchief. Without the glasses, his eyes looked in different directions.

The coachman stopped the carriage in Prechistenka, at the fire station.

The house itself was striking in appearance. It seemed to be thrusting itself into the garden. The main building appeared to be somewhat squat, the windows dimly dark, the front door heavy and low. The retired Ermolov now lived in it.

The door was a sullen customer; it was stiff and gave way reluctantly, ready to shove each guest back out with a good hard thump.

Especially him.

That courteous, deferential Ermolov, who under Emperor Alexander I had owned the Caucasus, plotted wars, written exhortations to the emperor, and ruffled Nesselrode, now no longer existed, or at least was not supposed to. What was he like now, in this house of his?

His relations with Ermolov in the last two years had been painful. To be precise, there had been none. They had avoided each other.

After Nicholas had seized the palace, he felt like an orphan, an upstart, a parvenu. Then they started to sift through conversations and to take note of whispers. Among other things, it turned out that a shaggy monster was seated in the Caucasus, the Proconsul, who wheezed, harangued, and so forth. He seemed to be eager to gain independence, to break off from the empire, to establish an Eastern state. It was expected that after December, he would march on Petersburg. He had surrounded himself with some truly dubious characters. He had pursued his own policy in the East and had to be removed.

Soon the war with Persia started. The old man tried snarling something churlish at Petersburg, which had interfered with his military affairs. But his day was done, as were his deeds.

The empire no longer required strong generals and witty poets.

Paskevich was assigned as his usher, to keep an eye on him.

Paskevich was the master of subservience and liked those who liked subservience.

Patiently he denounced Ermolov and explained to Nicholas that it would be best to remove the man and to appoint him as commander-in-chief.

Persian affairs took a turn for the worse. The Persians had a hotheaded military leader, Abbas Mirza. The Russian military leaders were taken up with squabbling among themselves.

Soon afterward, they appointed a superior for each of them. Diebitsch was an even more diminutive figure—red-haired, slovenly, eager.

Ermolov regarded him sullenly; Paskevich ate him up with his eyes; Diebitsch’s eyes squinted downward.

He was afraid he was being made fun of.

Diebitsch reported to the emperor that both the old man and the young one should be removed from office, and a middle-aged man appointed.

He gained nothing from it personally and was sent back home. Paskevich was the one who gained. Ermolov was sacked in the same way as the twenties had already been sacked wholesale.

After the war, all his aides were also removed and sent into retirement, and an “Ermolov Party” of a sort was formed of the disgruntled generals.

Rattling their sabers or, if they were already retired, simply shrugging their shoulders, they growled around the overthrown monument.

They would gather at Ermolov’s Moscow place in Prechistenka, like the Knights Templar or the early Christians in the catacombs. And the monument would give them his blessing.

Thrown off the axis on which he had operated for the thirty-eight years of his military service, he seemed to have taken root, deep in the ground. He could demonstrate Napoleon’s superiority over Hannibal with a single example from military tactics, and confound the cockiness of Nicholas’s self-important upstarts with a single Russian word. Quaking silently, the spun gold of their epaulettes swaying in sympathy, the shambling generals passed before him, leaning on their sticks as retired men do.

The war was over; Abbas Mirza, the greatest of the Asian military leaders and diplomats, had been completely defeated. Petersburg was awaiting the Turkmenchai Treaty.

The generals were well aware that the victory had been inept; Paskevich had never even been seen in action—everything had been done by Velyaminov and Madatov, and he had only attached his name to their glory. And later he even denounced them, presented them in a false light and got rid of both of them. In the next century, the generals’ position would be called defeatist.

But Griboedov—why had he attached his name to Paskevich?

That was the beginning of the gray area.

It was suspicious how Paskevich’s style of writing suddenly began to sparkle (given that Paskevich was uneducated). Even in his personal correspondence, he began to display polish, precision, and elegance instead of his usual illiterate gibberish. He was obviously getting some help. Could it in fact have been Griboedov?

But was it not Griboedov who, upon first hearing of the arrival of the ‘usher’, said to the generals:

“Look at my lackey! How could this man, whom I know so well, triumph over our general! Trust me, our man will outwit him, and the one who has come bustling in will exit in disgrace.”

Griboedov was the old general’s nursling. But the nursling didn’t turn a hair when the old soldier was sacked; he himself remained intact and unharmed, and even climbed up the career ladder.

And was it a mere detail that he was distantly related to Paskevich?

One of the generals gave a sigh and said:

“He has been swamped by the demon of ambition. Gentlemen, he is thirty-two. According to Dante, it’s the middle of one’s life or something like that. The age when a man is unsure which path to take.”

Ermolov glanced at the general, but his face stayed blank, dispassionate.

An old servant greeted the visitor impassively in the vestibule and led him upstairs to the master’s study.

The study was smallish, with dark-green furniture. Napoleon hung on the walls in various poses: the knitted brow, the cross-armed chest, the cocked hat, and the cape and foil were everywhere.

The servant invited Griboedov to sit down before departing calmly.

“His Excellency is busy in the bindery. I shall inform him of your arrival.”

What on earth was the bindery?

He had a long wait. Not that it worried him—the master was busy. Napoleon surrounded him. The emperor’s gray frock coat was as cloudy as the foul Moscow weather, his face as regular as Latin prose.

Russia had not yet achieved this kind of prose.

The old man’s nickname was “Caesar,” but that too was a mistake: he looked more like Pompey, in height, stature, and that curious irresolution. He would never emulate Caesar’s prose, nor Napoleon’s abrupt rhetoric.

A discarded handkerchief lay in the master’s armchair. Probably it had been a mistake to call on him.

He heard some very quiet steps, shuffling shoes, creaking floorboards.

Ermolov showed up in the doorway. He was wearing a light-gray frock coat of the sort that is worn only in summer by merchants, and a yellowish waistcoat. The wide trousers, also yellow, narrowed at the ankles, bulged at the knees.

He wore neither military coat, nor saber, nor even a simple red collar propping up his neck. This was a masked-ball costume, unbecoming of him. The old man had been brought low.

Griboedov stepped toward him with a hesitant smile. The old man paused.

“Don’t you recognize me, Alexei Petrovich?”

Ermolov answered simply: “I do recognize you,” and instead of an embrace, stuck out a red, rough hand. The hand was still damp, recently washed.

Then, without ceremony, having simply walked around his guest, he sat down at his desk, leaned over it, slightly bent, with the look of an attentive listener.

Griboedov sat in the armchair and crossed his legs. Scrutinizing Ermolov too closely, as one examines the dead, he said:

“I am leaving soon, and for a long time. You, Alexei Petrovich, have shown me so many kindnesses that I could do no less than to call in on my way in order to say goodbye.”

Ermolov said not a word.

“You may think of me as you wish. I am not entirely sure of myself, and I fear you suspect me of some sort of ulterior motive. In case you think I am asking for a favor, I am begging you to understand, Alexei Petrovich, that I’ve only come to say goodbye.”

Ermolov drew a three-fingered pinch of yellowish tobacco from his pouch and unceremoniously shoved it up his nostrils. The tobacco spilled down his chin and waistcoat and over the desk.

“I paid you no kindnesses, Alexander Sergeyevich. The word is not even in my vocabulary; it must have been someone else who paid you kindnesses. I merely saw that you ‘liked the service, it was the servility that made you sick’—as you wrote in your comedy, and I like men of that stamp.”

Ermolov spoke freely. There was nothing forced about his manner.

“Now the times are changed, and people changed with them. And you are a different person. But in the old days, you were who you were, and I have more affection and respect for the old days, so for you too I still have some affection and respect.”

Griboedov gave him a sudden grin.

“Your praise is not particularly deserved or, in any case, it is premature, Alexei Petrovich. I loved you like my own soul, and at least in this I remain unchanged.”

Ermolov was just about to lift the kerchief to his nose.

“Then you didn’t love your soul either.”

He blew his nose in a single salvo.

“And it turns out that you look into your soul only while en route from Pashkevich to Nesselrode.”

The old man was being rude, purposely mispronouncing “Paskevich.” He drummed the desk with his fingers.

“How many kurors3 have you screwed out of the Persians?” he asked with some disdain, but not without curiosity.

“Fifteen.”

“That’s a lot. One mustn’t entirely ruin a conquered nation.”

Griboedov gave him a smile.

“Wasn’t it you, Alexei Petrovich, who used to say that we should bite them harder? You know these Persians—ask them for five kurors, and they’ll pay nothing at all.”

“Biting is one thing: ‘war or cash’ is another. ‘Your money or your life’.”

‘War or cash’ was Paskevich’s motto.

Ermolov fell silent.

“Abbas Mirza is a fool,” he said then. “If he’d invited me to become his commander, things would have been different. Just the same, here I am accused of treason, while he, idiot that he is, could have had the advantage.”

Griboedov eyed him again as if he were dead.

The old man narrowed his eyes:

“I’m not joking; I’ve worked out a plan of the Russian campaign, better than Abbas could have come up with, never mind Pashkevich.”

Griboedov asked almost in a whisper:

“And what’s the plan?”

The old man opened a file and pulled out a map. It was covered with markings.

He beckoned Griboedov:

“Look here, this is Persia, right? Tabriz is very similar to Moscow, a big village, except made of clay. And ravaged. If I had been in Abbas’s shoes, I would have opened the road to Tabriz, sent messengers to Pashkevich from the people to complain they were not satisfied with the governors, and for fear of retribution asked Pashkevich to liberate them as soon as possible…. Right? … Pashkevich would have lapped it up…. Right? And I”—he flicked the map with his finger—“would have attacked him on the Aras crossing, destroyed it and got onto the army’s tail….”

Griboedov was staring at the familiar map. The Aras had been marked with red ink in a lightning stroke.

Ermolov continued, champing his lips:

“ … Onto the army’s tail, rear attack, plundered their transports, pillaged the food supplies.”

And he drew a rough finger across the map:

“In Azerbaijan, I would do away with all means of subsistence, wreck the transports, lure them into a trap, and cut them off …”

He drew his breath. He was commanding the Persian army from his desk. Griboedov did not stir.

“And at a single stroke, Pashkevich would turn into Napoleon in Moscow, except without a brain. And Diebitsch would run to Petersburg, to Nesselrode …”

His head sank into his shoulders; his right hand began to shove more tobacco up his nose, spilling it again over waistcoat, chest, and desk.

Then his eyes closed; he seemed to heave up all over and suddenly deflate: nose, lips, shoulders, belly. Ermolov was asleep. Griboedov gaped, horrified, at the red neck overgrown with hair, like a sort of moss, like a rodent’s pelt. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes in confusion. His lips trembled.

A minute passed, two minutes.

It had never happened before … Within a year of retirement …

Ermolov suddenly concluded, as if nothing had happened:

“… and Diebitsch would write … denouncing letters about him in his usual vein. Because Pashkevich’s style is not his own these days. Our Pashkevich is not particularly literate. They say, my dear Griboedov, that you polish up his writing?”

A frontal attack.

Griboedov drew himself up and spoke slowly:

“Alexei Petrovich, I have no respect for people: their masquerades and vanities exasperate me, so what the devil do I care about their opinion? And yet, if you name the gossipmonger, I will duel with that man even though I do not care for such foolery. As for you, in my opinion, you are untouchable, and not only on account of your old age.”

Ermolov gave him a peeved grin.

“Many thanks. I don’t believe that myself. But if that’s how things are, God bless you. Go.”

His eyes darted over Griboedov, then he rose and offered him his hand.