Sergey Dyachenko - Vita Nostra

Sasha left without replying. The snow in front of the building was covered with confetti, here and there the stubs of sparklers poked out of the melting piles. Sasha started jogging.

The windows were lit. Groups of happy drunks lingered on street corners. Empty champagne bottles lay on the snow. Sasha ran, listening to the crunch of the snow, feeling the bite of the frost on her moist nostrils, watching the cloud of her breath dissolve in the air. “That’s some willpower you have, Alexandra. I envy you…” Anybody would toughen up under these circumstances. And although the connection between Sasha’s twilight nightmare and a pre-coronary condition in a stranger was not obvious and could never be proven… But no, not really a stranger at that point. Something’s happened to Mom, something has changed, she’s still young, but she won’t always be…

So that’s that. While the connection cannot be proven, it exists. Sasha knows that for sure, and she is not allowed to make any mistakes. That’s how the first circle locks onto itself.

Sasha ran over her own footsteps. She aimed carefully, foot into each footstep, first subconsciously, then with interest. Circle after circle, step after step. She hasn’t seen Ivan’s grandfather with his mutt in a long time; cured of his insomnia? Or sick, and not allowed outside? Since their romantic morning rendezvous ended in such a cringingly vulgar manner, Sasha and Kon almost never spoke. They were civil to each other, reserved, indifferent. As if nothing had ever happened. The princess remained un-deciphered.

Sasha came to. Which circle was it, eighth, tenth? Her footsteps, repeated endlessly in the white powder, became large and deep, as if the Abominable Snowman ran by, wearing enormous boots.

The dark sky released a multitude of snowflakes. An ambulance drove by, sirens wailing. Not for us, Sasha thought with gloomy satisfaction. No need. Nothing can happen to us.

Relieving oneself in the freezing cold is a dubious pleasure. Sasha crept out of the bushes, buttoning her clothes, patting off the snow that fell from the branches. It would be so nice if no one else ever saw the goddamn coins. But it can’t be helped. The day before yesterday Mom saw that day’s “income” and asked what it was. Sasha lied, said it was brass, tokens for a game. No, of course it’s not casino, what are you talking about! It’s a game like checkers, everyone plays it at school.

Mom believed her. Sasha had never lied to her before. Well, almost never.

She came back home. The door to Mom’s room was shut. Heavy silence hung in the apartment, only snow swished outside, hitting the tin awnings.

Sasha went to the bathroom; she turned on the hot water and took a long time watching the running stream.

Then she vomited money. And, paradoxically, she immediately felt better.

The heap of coins grew. Sasha stuffed them into an old sock and kept it in the bottom desk drawer, under a pile of old essays. Who knew what Mom would say if she ever found this treasure, but lately Mom had a lot of other things on her mind.

A shaving kit was now comfortably placed on the bathroom shelf, an extra toothbrush poked out of a glass, and Sasha no longer dared to roam around the house in her underwear. The smell of men’s cologne overpowered all the other familiar smells. And Mom, who, as long as Sasha could remember, always belonged to her and her only, now shared her attention between her daughter and Valentin—and the latter, the new kid on the block, got the lion’s share.

It was obvious that Valentin intended to “establish close contact” with Sasha. He initiated long meaningful conversations at the dinner table, and Sasha’s upbringing prevented her from leaving right away. Waiting for her were numerous textbooks, many unread chapters and unfinished papers; then, on the border of night and day, there was her run, a humiliating trip to the bushes, and the clanking of coins hitting the bathroom sink. Valentin asked detailed questions regarding her life, her plans for the future, questioned her desire to become a philologist, inquired whether she’d ever considered literary translations from English, and spoke at length about some business colleges that offered stipends and all sorts of stimulus programs for students with a high grade point average. Sasha swallowed these conversations like spoonfuls of fish oil, then hid in her room and sat there at her writing desk, mindlessly doodling in her notebooks.

Valentin worked in the field of medical technology, something that had to do with research, or testing, or maybe sales, or perhaps all of the above. Sasha memorized nothing of his detailed stories about himself. He had two children, either two boys, or a boy and a girl, and he spoke of them at length and with gusto, stressing how much he loved them. Stunned by the hypocrisy, Sasha took her cooling tea into her room and sat there, leafing through the college brochures for prospective students. She struggled keeping her eyes open. In the heart of winter, when the days were short and dark, the lack of sleep felt like torture.

In the beginning of February a thaw has set in, and then—in one single night—everything was frozen again. Sasha went for a run, completed the ritual, and on the way home, right near the entrance to her building, she slipped, fell and broke her arm.

She sat quietly, enduring the pain, until Mom woke up. Mom saw Sasha’s forearm, panicked and called for an ambulance. Valentin emerged, volunteered to accompany Sasha, frowned, commiserated, babbled all sorts of nonsense, like “All things are difficult before they are easy,” and his stream of consciousness made Sasha feel five hundred times worse. The ambulance took her to the trauma center, where an old surgeon, gray from the sleepless night and cigarette smoke, silently rolled Sasha into a cast.

“Like apples from a tree,” he said to the nurse. “They just keep falling. We should expect more harvest today. And you,” he nodded to Sasha, “you need to make an appointment with your physician. And don’t worry, stuff happens. You young ones heal fast.”

Valentin took Sasha home in a taxi. The pain was almost gone. Valentin ruminated on how lucky it was that Sasha had broken her left arm, which meant that she could continue attending school and her college prep classes, and she could still take notes, because her right arm is just fine! Sasha felt as if her head ceased to be round, had turned into an aerodynamic tunnel, with Valentin’s words getting sucked into one ear and, whistling and roaring, and flying out of the other.

Mom called from the office, worried, asking how things were going. Deadly calm, Sasha assured her everything was fine; then she went into her room and lay down on the couch, neglecting to remove her sweater.

What was she going to do now? It was fourteen degrees outside. How was she supposed to pull her sleeve over the cast? How was she going to manage getting dressed and undressed by herself?

Three alarm clocks stood in a row. Two tick-tocked quietly, one winked electronic numbers. Every day, every day, and Sasha had two months in the cast…

“…People fall, break their bones, die under the wheels of a car…” But Sasha did everything, met all the conditions! Why did this have to happen to her?

Don’t worry, said the old surgeon. Stuff happens. And really, had Sasha been about seventy years old or so, then, yes, it would be truly terrible. And this, this was simply an inconvenience, an unpleasant accident, nothing tragic…

Unpleasant, but not tragic. If Valentin did not have his heart spasm on the beach, how would his relationship with Mom have developed? Would it have developed at all?

Sasha crept into the kitchen. She poured herself some of Mom’s valerian root drops, gulped it down—absolutely disgusting!—crawled under the blanket and fell asleep.