Читать книгу The Ball. Volume#1. “Kuluangwa” - Michael Ouzikov - Страница 7

The traffic jam seemed endless. Even considering that it was in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, in the capital of Italian and world fashion, sitting in the car in this sticky, hot, polluted air did not bring much pleasure.

The melodic song playing from the broken car radio, performed by a hoarse-voiced man and a bevy of beauties, did not brighten the trip either. Choking in the old Fiat of God knows what colour and year, with coffee and red wine stains as well as something unknown and repulsive on the formerly-velvet backseat, Rodion Karlovich Teichrib concluded that he was going to be late for his flight. Even in the best-case scenario, if at the behest of all the sleeping saints in Milan the highway to Malpensa Airport will immediately clear up, he still would not make it for Alitalia flight 560 to Moscow. This meant that his colleague, translator and assistant, Sergei Tikholapov, who had left to the airport two hours ago, will have to fly to Moscow alone.

The Twenty-Ninth Symposium of the European Society of Historians, held as always under the patronage of the Royal Historical Society of the United Kingdom, was traditionally held in the old European cities like London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Lisbon. In late spring of 1991, that city was Milan.

Not yet an old man at fifty-four years of age and part of the so-called «new wave» of the perestroika era, Professor Rodion Karlovich Teichrib had early-grizzled curly hair and large eyes under similarly large and thick horn-rimmed spectacles. Among the students of the Moscow State University’s Faculty of History he went by the respectable nickname of «Doctor Zhivago.» The Faculty of History of the Moscow State University was the leader of the subject area in the Soviet Union, known for exhaustingly covering both geographical and chronological historical reality, and in fact – all human history. A dozen departments and a few hundred faculty members, including Rodion Karlovich, taught history in a fundamental way, with its own school and traditions. Even the study of the history of the Communist Party introduced in the thirties did not affect the quality of education. Repression of the professorial staff in these years only partially affected the university. The school remained a School.

Rodion Karlovich taught in two departments – history and art of archeology and ethnology as well as ancient fine arts. His «Doctor Zhivago» persona was complemented by the fact that he carried all his documents, books, and notebooks in an old doctor’s bag, which he inherited from his grandfather through his father. Such was the professorial dynasty of the «bag-carriers.»

The «Vesnin Brothers,» responsible for producing this daily necessity of a doctor as well as other suitcases and attributes for wealthy travelers in the early nineteenth century, did not spare the finest pigskins in the creation of their products, being such a benign manufacturer. The brown sides of the bag, obliterated by a century of wear and tear, had about a dozen small holes covered by bronze studs. So, with tight enclosure and long-term storage, the contents of the travelling bag did not dampen or suffocate. The lock made by «Vesnin Brothers» was so strong and shrewd that it would be envied by any modern travel lock. However, its key came only in one copy. The professor once tried to order a duplicate – as if it were possible! Upon seeing the manufacturer brand, no master took the task. «Hold on to it like the apple of an eye, but if you lose it, the sides of the bag will have to be cut open, ruining such a fine product!» But even this would be hard to do because the sides of the doctor’s travelling bag were reinforced with whalebone. That’s why Rodion Karlovich only took the key with him when he went on business trips, which had been recently becoming more often. Even when handing his bag over at check-in counters, he did not bother to have it wrapped around by plastic to protect it from the baggage handlers of Sheremetyevo Airport that were known for their autopsies of expensive suitcases arriving from capitalist countries. Firstly, this type of travelling bag did not look as polished as most of his fellow travelers’, and secondly, breaking it open would need too much force. The rest of the time, during lectures and hours spent in the dilapidated Lenin library, the key awaited the professor in the bachelor two-bedroom apartment that he shared with his mother, not far from the Kropotkinskaya metro station.

Smiling and showing large teeth, the lenses of his glasses gleaming, Rodion Karlovich talked in a quiet, but firm, tone of voice, forcing the audience to stop whispering and carefully delve into his lectures. As a relatively young, extremely well-read, and «new» -thinking teacher, he did not suffer from a lack of attention from his students. Many of them idolized him and sometimes even escaped from other classes to listen to the «advanced» lectures of Dr. Zhivago.

In the midst of perestroika, a new wave of contacts was made with foreign universities interested in promoting «progressive thinking» in the USSR, which became increasingly popular in the West (from matryoshka dolls and Paul McCartney’s «Back in the USSR» to nuclear technology), opening more doors to the young professors of the land of the Soviets. This allowed Rodion Karlovich to visit six countries in the past three years alone. Previously, one could only dream of such trips, not to mention the expenses covered by host nations.

And here he was, sitting in the Milanese taxi on the road to the airport, with a wandering smile, recalling a conversation about him in a small pizzeria on Via Cappellini with his young colleague and translator, Sergei Tikholapov. Rodion Karlovich caught himself thinking that he was continuing to test his knowledge of the amazing object that he acquired for ten lire. Actually, it only cost him a payment for a bus ride with a half-blind Italian rag-picker, whom he named «Giuseppe Blue-nose» in his mind.

Here is what happened. Having successfully broken away from the «tourist group» (or rather, from the delegation of professors and lecturers from the countries of the former socialist bloc and the elderly guide, a Jewish immigrant, who seemingly spoke in all the languages of the world), and chuckling to himself that this whole episode crudely reminded him of a scene from the 1960s Soviet comedy The Diamond Arm, professor Rodion Karlovich slipped into the shadows of the small and prosperous Via Plinio. A couple of times, he covered his tracks by entering small souvenir shops, sorting in his pockets for coins given to him as subsistence by the Committee of Assistance to Eastern European Nations. Finally, he found himself at the corner of that same Via Plinio and Piazza Lima.

It’d be nice to study the outskirts of Milan too, as not only do its palaces make Milan beautiful, but its people too, thought Rodion Karlovich, looking around and squinting at the bright sun-lit street, or else I might as well spend my whole trip in classrooms and at conferences. It was at this moment that he felt some sort of hollow ringing in his head, which after a moment turned into a dull ache in the left brow. He stopped and firmly pressed the palm of his hand to his brow, then rubbed his temple. However, the pain was not only not gone, but it intensified. He even put his head in his hands, remembering how Heinrich Muller taught Stirlitz5 to deal with migraines in the classic film Seventeen Moments of Spring.

What the hell? Removing his glasses, he gave a tired and bewildered look at the suddenly deserted street. At a bus stop not far away, sat a lonely old man in a plaid flannel shirt, a blue velvet waistcoat and a worn-out cap, with his tanned hands peacefully resting on his knees.

Rodion Karlovich slowly approached this elderly man of small stature and a narrow face with a long, bluish nose, and without even thinking how to explain himself he knocked on his own forehead with two fingers and, wincing, asked: «Pharmacy, where is farmacia? Analgene… head – testa… testa boo-boo very much – testa malate! Devil may break a leg of this damn Italian!» The old man, as if expecting this question, got up from the plastic bench and promptly waved his dry blotchy hand, inviting Rodion Karlovich into a shabby, impossibly dusty city bus that pulled to the curb out of nowhere.

Ostensibly hypnotized, the professor entered the empty salon and collapsed next to the old man in the seat behind the driver. Bus no. 64W immediately started moving, grunting out exhaust with displeasure. The driver turned to the old man, looked into his eyes, and shook his head – «This one?» Blue-nose nodded his head.