He received several letters from Lisa immediately after her departure from Kazan and returned them without printing them out. He didn't want to know more about her - now it was his turn to return her unopened letters. She dumped him, and she was fine! True, it happened to him for the first time in his life, "but maybe - he thought with coldness, which was (he knew it) comforting, pretend - will happen again and again. But not with coldness, but with rage he asked himself: what made him rush to Petrograd in the midst of urgent matters? Insulted self-love? Yes, maybe. After all, Lisa tried to prove that she was happy with Dmitry, and he, Karnovsky, can do as he pleases - go or stay in his dirty Kazan.
But if so, what happened in Petrograd? What changed that day, the hour he saw Lisa? What happened was that he barely recognized her. So it was she - confident beauty, acutely and cheerfully aware of the power of his charm? So she was the one who kept so free, so bravely at Gorins, in the rich professor's house in St. Petersburg? An inconspicuous student from Kazan, in an ironed but badly worn form, was sitting in the living room, without interfering in a subtle conversation about the "chromatic scale of light", in which he did not understand anything and, of course, laughed, now confessed to it.
... What he had been vindictively thinking about before he left happened and couldn't but happen, because she loved him and not Dmitry. But there was also the fact that, once again, without a memory, he fell in love with her, he allowed a strange opportunity that always seemed incredible to him - and not only allowed it, and without looking back believed in this opportunity. Didn't he write to her and tell her about "co-habitation," as he ironically called family life?
Lisa chose - family life did not take place. So why was he so offended by her unexpected escape? What made him return one of her letters from Simbirsk, another from Petrograd? Wasn't he in his heart pleased that now everything would go back the way it had been before, without excitement and anxiety, without the surprises that hindered his life, his science?
He was not yet twenty-eight years old when he was elected professor of the Polytechnic Institute. He took a vacation, went to Yadrin to reflect on his course, and here, in silence, he again became relentless, with remorse, with bitterness to think about Lisa.
He started looking for her long ago, in the fall of the seventeenth year. The old lady Kaufman, with whom he stayed in Petrograd, said that Lisa spent the summer with her ("not with the Gorins" - is now acutely responded to in the shower), and in September returned to Yalta, after pneumonia. He wrote to her in Yalta at the old address, at Meerovskaya. The letter returned "for not finding the addressee". He wrote to Shura, who lived with her husband in Simbirsk. Yes, Shura received a postcard from Lisa, but long ago, in the fall of 1917. Then everything was fine, but "health does not allow me to leave the Crimea - wrote Lisa - although lungs seem to be okay lately. I became fat, pink, and again there was a thirst for life and an appetite for adventure.
Suddenly he suffocated and read this phrase...
He wrote again in Yalta, the carriage master, whose Lisa lived in his first visit, in the spring of 1914.
When he had already lost all hope, when the civil war was in full swing and the correspondence between north and south stopped, he received a letter from her, which, like a knife, cut off everything he lived the day, hour, minute ago.
20.05.1918. Yalta.
Kostenka, dear, where are you? I can't find a place for myself thinking about you. Many times I wrote to you, but in return - not a word. And now the message with the north has completely come to an end. I am sending this letter with those going to Riga, maybe it will get to you. We live here in humiliation, in disgrace. The Germans came (May 2, 2009). Even Sevastopol surrendered without a fight. There has come the external calmness bought by the expensive price. I was sick in the first days, and now I am still morally ill, although I try to pull myself together. Magnificent spring does not soften the grief, on its blossoming background even more clearly drawn German helmets. I shiver at the sight. The Germans are self-satisfied, proud of their correctness and do not doubt their superiority. I walk with my eyes down. I am afraid to suffocate with hatred.
Well, full! You have to hold on. German helmet helmets will not forever flicker against the background of wisteria! For some reason, there are especially many of them around my old favorite sycamore tree on the waterfront. He looks at them from above with majestic contempt. So should we.
If you knew how I curse myself for not coming back north in the fall! But it wasn't just my illness, which was exacerbated by pneumonia, that stopped me. I stayed because, for the first time in my life, I clearly felt that I had a firm hand in my hands and knew (or at least guess) what and how I wanted to write. I had the invaluable help of an old artist from the Itinerants (in the distant past), but a very special one - I will tell you about him again. He didn't want to leave and couldn't, because he's Armenian, and he's working on painting an Armenian cathedral.
He's here at home, and I'm in a mouse trap. We are alone in this city of the dead.
To be continued...