Solovyov and Larionov

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He was born by the train station bearing the unprepossessing name Kilometer 715. The station was not very big, despite the three-digit numeral. There was no movie theater, no post office, not even a school. Nothing but six wooden houses stood along the railroad bed. He left that station shortly after his sixteenth birthday. He went to Petersburg, was accepted at the university, and began studying history. This was to be expected, considering the surname—Solovyov, just like the famous historian—with which he had been born.

Solovyov’s advisor at the university, Professor Nikolsky, called Solovyov a typical self-made man, who had come to the capital with a string of sledges bearing fish, but of course that was a joke. Petersburg had ceased being the capital long before Solovyov’s arrival in 1991, and no fish was ever to be found at Kilometer 715. To the adolescent Solovyov’s great regret, there was neither a river nor even a pond there. Reading one book after another about maritime journeys, the future historian cursed his landlocked existence and decided to spend the remainder of his days—a rather considerable number at the time—at the place where land and sea met. The attraction of large bodies of water, along with his thirst for knowledge, settled his choice in favor of Petersburg. In other words, the comment about the fish sledges would have remained a joke if not for its emphasis on overcoming one’s initial circumstances; something elegantly stated in the English expression. Say what you will, but the historian Solovyov was a most genuine self-made man.

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