Vita Nostra (33 page)

***

“Just don’t tell me we should get married.”

Yegor blinked:

“Sasha… what the heck?”

“Weren’t you going to ask me to get married?”

“Yes, I was,” Yegor admitted softly. “But… why are you angry?”

“I am not angry,” Sasha said.

To herself she thought: I am going mad.

***

Kostya walked into the kitchen when she was pouring cold water on a freshly boiled egg. The kitchen was crowded, people were eating, having tea, washing the dishes, or just hanging out—however, Sasha knew right away that Kostya had come looking for her. And now here he was.

“You didn’t show up at Specialty today. What happened?”

“I am sick of explaining it to everyone,” Sasha used a dessert spoon to lift the egg out of the pan. “Pirtnov let me skip today’s class.”

“Portnov did?!”

“I don’t see anything weird about that. I’m the best student in the whole class; I can take an occasional break. Why shouldn’t I?”

She thumped the spoon violently on the top of the egg and peeled off the shell like an enemy’s scalp.

“What do they want from you?” Kostya asked gently. “What have they done to you now?”

Sasha raised her eyes. The radio was on at full volume, a warm spell was expected tomorrow, snow, gusty wind. Sasha thought how wonderful it must be—to have “tomorrow.” Listen to the weather forecast. Follow a schedule. Rip off pages of a calendar. Tons of people live this way—and none of them realize their own happiness.

“I’m in a loop,” she told Kostya, surprising herself. “This day keeps repeating. They did this…
he
did this to make me learn… to allow me to do this assignment for Sterkh. And I can’t.”

Kostya sat down as if his legs could no longer hold him.

“That’s why Portnov let me miss today’s class. Because for me it’s always today.”

Kostya was silent for a long time.

“But then,” he said finally, “if I go to class tomorrow… won’t you be there? Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like you can jump a day ahead, then come back and let me know what happens.”

The egg on her plate was getting cold. Sasha lowered her chin onto her interlaced palms.

“I am telling you all this because tomorrow… I mean, this morning… You won’t remember anything anyway.”

Kostya shook his head, as if refusing to accept such a possibility.

“That’s right. It all starts again. You will be surprised that I’m not in class. You might even ask me again. And I will think of some explanation. I don’t feel like explaining everything over and over again, to infinity…”

Kostya used both hands to ruffle his short hair, then rubbed his nose hard with his hand.

“What are you supposed to do for Sterkh?”

“It’s a long story. At first, he gave me a CD player and a CD with… tracks. That did not work. Then he gave me an album… with black pages. So now I’m fiddling with this album. It feels as if this
something
is knocking, knocking, trying to enter… and I’m not letting it in.”

“And this
something
wants to break the door,” Kostya added softly.

“You know what I mean?!”

Kostya looked around. The kitchen was noisy, filled with the smoke and laughter of the first years. There were no empty stools left.

“Let’s go someplace quiet.”

They set off for the very end of the corridor, hid behind the wide open door of the shower room and hopped onto the windowsill side by side.

“Sterkh gave me a printout,” Kostya said. “On this long roll of paper, like a parchment scroll. Told me to read vertically, by columns. I started to… and the same thing happened. As if something alien is trying to break in. I closed up. And this thing—bam!—broke my door. Or whatever is in there instead of a door. So that’s what happened. Then the disgusting sensation went away, I heard music, it was even kind of nice. Sterkh is pleased with me…” Kostya trailed off. “It’s all because I have weak willpower. And yours is strong. It cannot be broken easily.”

“He told me I was special,” Sasha murmured. “And later he said he made a mistake, and I was ordinary… Did he say anything like that to you?”

“No. You know his honey tongue… ‘Very good, Kostya, for tomorrow please do this column, I marked it in red…”

Kostya’s impression of Sterkh was excellent. Sasha smiled sadly.

“How can I help you?” Kostya asked.

“Come over tomorrow… I mean, today… just like you did. And ask me again how come I missed the class.”

Kostya turned to face her. By the expression on his face Sasha understood—he thought she was making fun of him.

“I am serious,” she looked down. “I… I have no one to talk to.”

“What about Yegor?”

Sasha was thoughtful for a while. She wasn’t thinking about Yegor. Right now, on this cold windowsill in the draughty corridor, she realized for the first time that no one but she would remember this rough draft of a day… aside, perhaps, from Sterkh and Portnov, but they were not here right now, and they did not care about Sasha’s personal life. This meant that she could tell Kostya anything she wanted. Everything would be erased. All would be deleted. Tomorrow morning Kostya will be surprised and anxious about Sasha missing Specialty.

“If you had a day that would never count for you, that would never be recorded anywhere, what would you have done?”

‘I’d rob a bank,” Kostya murmured. “There was this movie…”

“Yes, I remember… Mom brought the tape home. And we watched it, just the two of us. Before Valentin. Back then I had no idea… Would never have thought it would happen to me…”

Anna Bochkova shuffled by and stopped at the entrance of the shower room:

“Sasha, aren’t you afraid of Portnov? Why didn’t you come to Specialty?”

“They let me skip it, because I’m the best student,” Sasha glanced at Kostya.

Anya clucked disapprovingly, proceeded into the shower room and closed the door.

“She’ll tell Zhenya,” Sasha said.

Kostya bristled:

“Tell her what?”

“She’ll think of something. But it does not matter, because tomorrow everything will start anew, and all of this will play yet again. Listen, you say I have strong willpower. But I can’t seem to take any action. Walk around the Institute naked, scare the English professor with a live rat, or drown myself in an ice hole… Those are the sort of stupid thoughts I’ve been having. And none of them can be realized. Because I must continually deliver new fragments to Sterkh. He says: “There is a tiny bit of progress.” Three hundred sixty-five identical days, and a “tiny bit of a progress” will turn into a “small progress.” Ten repeated years—and I might be allowed to take the first test.”

“Sasha,” Kostya said quietly. “I owe you. Let me help you.”

“How?”

Water rustled in the shower room.

“Forgive me for saying all that stuff back then,” Sasha said. “I was… I was wrong.”

Kostya did not respond.

Sasha hopped off the windowsill clumsily.

“Anyway, thanks for your sympathy, but if I don’t go back to work right now, tomorrow, I mean today…”

“Hold on,” Kostya said. “Show me what you are doing for Sterkh.”

***

At half past nine she remembered her promise to Yegor to stop by at nine. She thought about it and decided it was not worth worrying about. In the morning Yegor will not remember that she never showed up. They will perch on the pile of mats at the gym, and Yegor will say again: “Let’s get married.”

Why did this sentence bother her more and more every time?

Sasha and Kostya sat in Sasha’s room, three white dots in the middle of a black page rushed at her like the headlights of a moving train, then shifted back like a constellation on the opaque sky. Sasha attempted to work on Fragment twenty-four, but every time her concentration broke when she counted to seventy.

“I don’t understand what is going on,” Kostya admitted. “It’s like a musical introduction that keeps repeating, but the song itself is not there. Maybe I should try it myself… maybe if I look at this fragment, I’ll have some thoughts? An idea, a hint on how to help you?”

“No,” Sasha said quickly. “We shouldn’t. It’s not your exercise. Sterkh will kill both of us.”

“I can talk to him,” Kostya offered. “To Sterkh.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but tomorrow may be too late.” Kostya pulled lightly on his hair. “Have you thought of going back to those tracks on the CD, to the player?”

Sasha shuddered in revulsion.

“I think Sterkh was wrong when he gave you the album,” Kostya said.

“You think so? Are you taking over his teaching position?”

“Don’t laugh. He was wrong in the psychological sense. He decided the problem was the disk, and the problem is you! If he gives you a printout like mine, or a notebook like Zhenya’s… it won’t work anyway, because you do not want it to.”

“But you see how much I want it to! I’m climbing the walls here!”

Kostya shook his head stubbornly.

“You are resisting. You are fighting for yourself.”

“Sterkh said the same thing,” Sasha remembered. “You are fighting for your own conventional image, two arms, two legs…”

“Yes. And you are right. I could not fight it myself.”

“Yes, but you have a normal life, and I…”

“I have a
normal
life?”

His words made them very quiet, and the silence continued for fifteen long minutes. Sasha did not dare to speak: Kostya, son of his father, grandson of his dead grandmother, husband of Zhenya Toporko who refused to take his last name to avoid being Zhenya Kozhennikov… Kostya, second-year student of the Torpa Institute of Special Technologies…

“Forgive me,” Sasha said.

“I’m sorry too,” Kostya slumped. “I want to help you, but I don’t have enough anger in me. I’d beat you up,” he gave her a crooked smile, “but I can’t hit you. I guess,
he
is right.”

“Who?” Sasha asked, already aware of the answer.

“
He
,” Kostya repeated. “He has a very low opinion of me, you know. I tried to get my mother to open up… to talk about him. How did it even happen that he is my father?” Kostya slapped the windowsill in frustration. “How did I manage to be his son? Who is he, anyway?”

“What did your mom say?”

“Nothing. She does not want to talk about him at all. She starts crying hysterically—after all these years!”

“Then how did she allow you go to Torpa?”

“How did your mother allow you to go? I am sure she had her reasons. My mother, as far back as I remember, has always been paranoid about the army. I think a gypsy told her that if I were drafted, I’d certainly be killed. Whenever she saw me playing with a wooden pistol, all hell would break loose!” Kostya sighed.

“He used her fear,” Sasha said.

Kostya looked up at her:

“He uses everyone’s fear. Yours. Mine.”

Sasha did not answer. They sat next to each other, their heads hanging low and almost touching.

“Someday, Sasha, I would love to get up—and realize that I’m not afraid of anything. I am tired.”

“Of being afraid?”

“Yes. Every second…”

“Even now?”

“I feel afraid even now.”

“What are you afraid of now?”

“Of going to class tomorrow. What’s the first block, English? And you wouldn’t be there. You wouldn’t exist at all, because you stayed…”

Kostya did not finish. With an almost maternal instinct, Sasha placed her hand on his shoulder:

“Don’t be afraid. I will try. Tomorrow you will come to class, and I will thank you…”

Steps rang out in the corridor, and the door flew open. It was not Vika, and not Lena—Zhenya stood at the threshold, red as a tomato, wearing a bathrobe, eyes white with hatred.

***

The town of Torpa was dusted with snow. Buildings were covered with light-colored hoods pulled down low onto the tin awnings; the air was moist and warm. Sasha remembered that a warm spell was expected tomorrow. Warm spell and gusty winds.

She bought some batteries at a kiosk near the post-office. All the batteries they had. A hundred of them; the salesperson had to run down to the storeroom to get more, and Sasha spent every single coin she had left after the last stipend.

She went back to her room. Put on the headphones. Placed the pack of batteries under her bed. Pulled out the dusty envelop with the golden disk, clicked shut the CD player, started the first track.

Then the second track.

Eighteen tracks of different lengths. Eighteen fragments of unfamiliar silence. Oppressing. Indifferent. Detached. Eighteen varieties of quiet, a musical score of complete silence.

Dead batteries fell on the floor. Sasha replaced them with new ones; the silence was growing denser. Her ears popped. Sasha stared into the darkness.

In the middle of the night she was convinced she now had three arms. The third one grew somewhere around her sternum. Her body lost its outline; it distended and was now barely contained by the bed; her body tried to escape its frame as rising dough escapes from the bowl. She endured it, grinding her teeth; the sequence of eighteen tracks repeated over and over, hours had passed…

She was not aware of falling asleep. She slept deeply and serenely, still wearing her headphones.

***

Sunlight beat into the curtain-less window and fell onto the dusty linoleum floor. The sheet looked like an old sail made out of tiny squares of intertwined threads. The blanket slipped, the square opening of the duvet made it look like an ace of diamonds. Sasha was surprised at how much she could observe at the same time.

She turned her head. Her neck felt stiff. The room twitched slightly like a reflection in the water caused by a light wind. Her roommates’ beds were empty, blankets thrown over haphazardly. First block was English.

What time was it? What day was it?!

Time, units of time, symbols. On her nightstand was an old notepad; it contained important information, binary code, time of day, four symbols one after another… Individual session with Portnov in the evening….

Because today was Tuesday.

Sasha turned on her side, moved toward the nightstand—and saw her arm.

She screamed. She managed a croak rather than a scream. Something in her throat was making her wheeze. Sasha sat up in bed; something cracked audibly. Both her arms resembled mechanical prosthetic devices made out of ivory and semi-transparent, dazzling-white skin. She lifted her right palm to her face and squeezed it into a fist: gears turned, ripped through the skin and stuck out in jagged shards. There was no pain.