Sergey Dyachenko - Vita Nostra

The pink phone fell onto the bed. Mom sat down next to it and went limp like a snow pile in the spring:

“The baby got hold of my sleeping pills. They are so brightly colored, you know, those pills… He tried to pluck them out, one after another. And then he put them in his mouth, but Valentin caught him. He did not know how many of the pills were in the jar, and he called the ambulance right away… The baby just didn’t have enough time to swallow any. Simply not enough time. It was sheer luck. I’m leaving, Sasha, leaving right now.”

Sasha bought a compartment carriage ticket and refused to take money from Mom.

At the station cafeteria they bought hot dogs, two portions of cabbage salad and a couple of pies that were still hot and smelled really good. Mom called home a couple more times using Sasha’s phone. Baby Valentin was doing great. The ambulance team reprimanded his father for being absent-minded and confirmed that the baby was just fine. “Shaken but unhurt,” Valentin made an attempt at light-hearted comments.

Sasha and her mother came out of the waiting room toward the platform and sat down on a bench. The night was warm, filled with a cool wind and the scent of grass and moisture—an autumn and at the same time summer night.

“How are you getting home? It’s so late…”

“Cars go back and forth here,” Sasha said with as much confidence as she could master.

“It must be expensive…”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll be fine. Trust me, I’m all grown up!”

Sasha made a feeble attempt at smiling.

She was still shaking, and she tried to conceal the tremor. The fear refused to back down; everything was fine, Mom repeated every ten minutes, but the phone was still there, hanging from her neck, and the little stylized globe rotated on its display.

The fear suspended over the universe. It’s impossible to live in the world where you exist. It is impossible to live in the world when I do not exist… Although it’s hard to resign oneself to my existence, I understand that.

Crickets sang.

A freight train rolled by drowning out all the sounds, but as soon as the roaring subsided, the crickets started up again.

“You were right,” Mom said. “They need me. It is as if you knew. ‘Who knows what could happen while they are at home by themselves…’”

Sasha looked down.

“It looks like I jinxed them.”

“Nonsense.”

“But everything is fine now, right?” Sasha nervously touched the phone on her neck.

“Everything is fine.”

Forty minutes remained until the train’s departure. Mom spoke in short declarative sentences:

“It is a very nice town. I didn’t expect it to be so old. It is strange that no one really knows about Torpa. Although there is a tourist center. I saw it, there is a tourist center, and the little shop sells landscape photos…”

A local train arrived. The doors opened and women with large checkered bags came out, then an old man with a sheathed scythe. The train started and melted into the dark.

The semaphore went green.

Three bright lights came on in the darkness: the long-distance train was approaching the station.

“Mommy,” Sasha whispered. “Don’t leave them alone for long. Don’t leave them alone at all. Stay with them, I will be fine. I… I will come and visit during the break.”

The train stopped. The locks slid open with a grating sound, the doors opened one after another, and the train attendants stepped down onto the platform, pushing back the curious passengers:

“Standing for five minutes! This stop is five minutes only! Don’t let children get off the train! Don’t go too far!”

A man in sweatpants and a wife-beater looked around, inhaled deeply, murmured “Such air!” and immediately lit up a cigarette.

Mom handed her ticket to a fat uniformed train attendant, who nodded: “Come in… Seat number fifteen.”

Sasha stepped inside with Mom. For one minute she dove into the smell, the life, the temporary nature of the train—but this time the train was somebody else’s, it was transitory, this ghostly, dream-like way of life was about to take off, and Sasha would remain here…

They went back onto the platform and stopped not knowing what else to say.

“Departing in one minute,” the train attendant rushed them. “Take your places.”

Then Sasha hugged Mom’s neck just like she did when she was a little girl:

“Mommy, I really, really love you.”

The cursed pink phone, stuck between them, cut into Sasha’s chest.

“The train is departing! Go back on the train!”

They did not let go of each other’s hands. They could not let go.

“Ma’am! The train is leaving.”

“I love you,” Sasha whispered choking on her tears. “I love you… Good bye…”

The train started moving. Sasha ran alongside it, waving, and for a long time she kept up with the train. Mom waved out of the open window in the corridor, and Sasha saw her hair flowing in the wind. The train gathered speed, Sasha ran faster, Mom leaned further out of the window, and kept waving, and shouted: “Good bye!”

And then the platform ended.

The windows of the moving train merged with the faces. The roaring was replaced by a distant noise. Sasha watched the train until she could no longer see the last of its lights.

Then she walked over, moving her aching feet and sat down on the tracks.

“Sasha?”

The moon was high up in the sky. Farit Kozhennikov stood over Sasha.

“It’s late. You have classes tomorrow. Shall we?”

“Please, Farit… Leave me alone.”

“You need to control yourself. You have to get back to town somehow, it’s very late and very cold. Let’s go.”

He spoke so calmly and with such authority that Sasha could not resist. She got up and followed Farit, dragging her feet slightly. The heels of her shoes broke, the heel taps were lost. The shoes would have to be thrown away. No matter.

Kozhennikov opened the door of his white Nissan for her. Sasha shrunk on the seat as usual.

“Are you cold?”

“Why, Farit? What did I do wrong? Did I break any rules? Why?”

“You could not solve the problem on your own. I agree, it is not your fault, or at least not entirely. But remember, the baby did not swallow the pills, he only played with them. It’s only fear, Sasha. Fear the General. Fear the Emperor that shapes the reality. You should buckle up.”

The car rode onto the highway surrounded on both sides by the forest. The road signs flashed in the lights and rushed backwards, like smeared spots of white fire.

“Fear is a projection of danger, genuine or imagined. The thing you wear around your neck is a phantom fear, the kind you get used to… kind of like a familiar sprain. Nothing happened. But you believe in trouble, and that is why you lived through these minutes as if through a real tragedy.”

“You taught me to be afraid,” Sasha gripped the phone.

“No. You knew how to be afraid without me. Everyone knows that. I simply directed your fear, like an arrow toward the target.”

“And you have achieved your goal?”

“Yes.”

Sasha turned her head. Kozhennikov watched the road, the speedometer arrow inching toward one hundred and twenty.

“The first years,” Sasha said slowly. “Do you select them somehow?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you feel sorry for them?”

“No. They are Words, they must realize their preordained purpose.”

“And other people? They…”

“They are different. Prepositions, conjunctions, interjections… expletives,” Kozhennikov smiled. “Every man carries a shadow of a word, but only Word in its entirety, firmly imprinted into the fabric of the material world, can return to its beginning and grow from a pale projection to an original entity.”