Pushkin Hills Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘Your name?’ And I say, ‘Dick on a stick.’
    “I got me fifteen days in the clink, without smokes, without nothing… Like I give a shit… Just kicking back… Lizka wrote to the prosecutor, something about puttin’ me away or I’ll kill ’er… But what’s the point in that?”
    “You won’t hear the end of it,” agreed Tolik. And added:
    “Let’s get going! Or they’ll close the shop…”
    And the friends set off for the housing development, resilient, repulsive and aggressive, like weeds.
    I stayed in the library till closing.
    It took me three days to prepare for the tour. Galina introduced me to the two guides she thought were the best. I covered the Preserve with them, paying attention and taking a few notes.
    The Preserve consisted of three memorial sites: Pushkin’s house and estate in Mikhailovskoye; Trigorskoye, where the poet’s friends lived and where he visited nearly every day; and finally the monastery with the Pushkin-Hannibal burial plot.
    The tour of Mikhailovskoye was made up of several parts. The history of the estate. The poet’s second exile. Arina Rodionovna, his nanny. The Pushkin family. Friends who visited the poet in exile.The Decembrist uprising.* And Pushkin’s study, with a brief overview of his work.
    I found the curator of the museum and introduced myself. Victoria Albertovna looked about forty. A long flouncy skirt, bleached locks, an intaglio and an umbrella – a pretentious painting byBenois.* This style of the dwindling provincial nobility was visibly and deliberately cultivated here. Its characteristic details manifested themselves in each of the museum’slocal historians. One would wrap herself tightly in a fantastically oversized gypsy shawl. Another had an exquisite straw hat dangling at the back. And the third got stuck with a silly fan made of feathers.
    Victoria Albertovna chatted with me, smiling distrustfully. I started to get used to that. Everyone in service of the Pushkin cult was surprisingly begrudging. Pushkin was their collective property, their adored lover, their tenderly revered child. Any encroachment on this personal deity irritated them. They were hasty to prove my ignorance, cynicism and greed.
    “Why have you come here?” asked the curator.
    “For the rich pickings,” I said.
    Victoria Albertovna nearly fainted.
    “I’m sorry, I was joking.”
    “Your jokes here are entirely inappropriate.”
    “I agree. May I ask you one question? Which of the museum’s objects are authentic?”
    “Is that important?”
    “I think so, yes. After all, it’s a museum, not the theatre.”
    “Everything here is authentic. The river, the hills, the trees – they are all Pushkin’s contemporaries, his companions and friends. The wondrous nature of these parts…”
    “I was asking about objects in the museum,” I interrupted. “The guidebook is evasive about most of them: ‘China discovered on the estate…’”
    “What specifically are you interested in? What would you like to see?”
    “I don’t know, personal effects, if such exist…”
    “To whom are you addressing your grievances?”
    “What grievances?! And certainly not to you! I was only asking…”
    “Pushkin’s personal effects? The museum was created decades after his death…”
    “And that,” I said, “is how it always happens. First they drive the man into the ground and then begin looking for his personal effects. That’s how it was with Dostoevsky, that’s how it was withYesenin, and that’s how it’ll be with Pasternak.* When they come to their senses, they’ll start looking forSolzhenitsyn’s* personal effects…”
    “But we are trying to recreate the colour, the atmosphere,” said the curator.
    “I see. The bookcase, is it real?”
    “At the very least it’s from that period.”
    “And the portrait of Byron?”
    “That’s real,” beamed Victoria Albertovna. “It was given to the Vulfs… There is an inscription… By the by, you’re quite