Sergey Dyachenko - Vita Nostra

In two weeks Sasha’s classmates will enter this assembly hall and never return to their previous lives.

She left before the concert ended. Among piles of coats and jackets in the coat room she found her own, with a hook torn off already. She got dressed and left, planning to get home and go to sleep, but the evening over Torpa was clear, quiet and not too chilly. Sasha decided to take a walk; she strolled down Sacco and Vanzetti away from the center of town, toward the outskirts.

Fireplaces and woodstoves had been lit. Smoke rose over the roofs, white in the moonlight, and went straight up in promise of good weather. Sasha’s back itched: she imagined how lovely it would be to fly in this transparent world between snowy roofs and the sky propped up by the silvery pillars of smoke.

The moist cobblestones made the pavement black. A car rode by—Sasha moved to the side. A holiday garland noiselessly blinked on the façade of a dark—closed—café, alternating red and yellow and blue and green flashes.

And nearby stood a man, so still that Sasha had not noticed him right away. Only when he said: “Yes, I understand that,” Sasha flinched and stopped.

The voice was familiar to her.

Kostya stood leaning over the pink brick wall, pressing a cell phone to his ear. He stared at the lights without blinking and did not see Sasha.

“I understand that as well. Yes, you are right, it does not matter. But is there anyone who is not afraid of that? I mean, anyone human?”

Pause. Sasha stepped back, about to leave.

“I got it. Yes. It’s a deal. Good. Goodbye, Dad.”

Sasha slipped and fell into a snow pile pushed over to the edge of the sidewalk by the street cleaners. Kostya turned sharply.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said. “I was just walking.”

Silently Kostya gave her his hand and helped her up.

“Did you know that I’m a pronoun?”

“You? No… I didn’t.”

The garland blinked. Kostya put the phone inside the pocket of his jacket.

“And you are a verb?”

“Yes.”

“I knew that. Guess whom I was just talking to.”

“I heard you say goodbye to him.”

“Of course. You were right: in his own way he’s a good father. Rational. Strict…”

“You remembered my stupid words?”

“Why, they were not stupid. I asked him once: how did he, not at all human, and not even close to a protein-based entity, manage to produce a son? I suspected something was off, but do you know what he said to me?”

“What?”

“Do you really think that controlling informational space of hypertext is easier than producing one effective sperm cell?”

They faced away from the blinking garland and walked back along Sacco and Vanzetti toward the humming, singing, celebrating New Year’s Eve Institute.

“What did he say to you?” Sasha took the risk of asking. “What were you talking about?”

Kostya exhaled a long cloud of smoke:

“I think he is trying to cheer me up before the exam. And the funniest thing is that he’s succeeding.”

“Really?”

“There is nothing impossible. When he says it I believe it. And then it turns out that only I am at fault for my grandmother’s death.”

“Kostya,” Sasha said softly. “Unlike words, people actually die…”

“I noticed,” he replied dryly. “What kind of verb are you?”

“Imperative mood.”

“No way!”

Kostya stopped for a second.

“That explains why they’ve spent so much effort on you lately, Portnov and Sterkh. A verb in the imperative mood… you don’t say! I’m a pronoun… a substitute. My place has not been chosen yet. Or perhaps, it’s the other way around, it’s been chosen in advance. Unlike words, people actually die, but Farit Kozhennikov is not a word! He’s a rule, a grammatical rule… When he— his external shell—becomes old and dies, I will become him …”

“Is that what he told you?!”

“No. It’s… forget it, I never said that.”

They continued walking in silence, passed the Institute and in about fifteen minutes they came out to a square where a fir tree market was open—exactly the sort that Sasha remembered from her childhood. A green fence, old pictures on plywood poster boards: decorated trees, gigantic bunnies, red and white Father Frosts. Hundred-watt light bulbs painted different colors and soldered into a single garland. Stomped-upon snow, red-cheeked customers, children with sleds—a small animated crowd.

“All of them are words,” Kostya said behind Sasha’s back. “All people have been manifested out loud some time ago. And they continue saying words, having no idea about their true meaning.”

Sasha thought that Kostya repeated almost identically what Farit Kozhennikov talked about before. But she did not say anything: somewhere in the depths of hypertext her unspoken words turned into gold coins with a round symbol on their faces.

“Should we buy a tree?” she thought out loud.

Kostya glanced at her—and marched determinedly towards the market.

An antlered fir tree with floppy wide branches touched the white ceiling; it rested in a pail in the corner, at the lowest point of the room. The tree had no decorations aside from a single gold garland. The tree appeared to be holding the gleaming train of a non-existing dress with its many hands.

Fire burned in the tiny fireplace.

Sasha and Kostya lay close, arms and legs intertwined. Kostya dozed off. Sasha watched the sparkly reflections of the fire dance on the gold tinsel.

Two weeks remained until the placement exam. If she were sorry about anything, it would be about words that lingered unspoken. And especially sorry about the others, the ones that flew off her tongue.

If somewhere, at some point in time, in a different text her words became human beings, they had a reason to reproach Sasha. But then they had a reason to thank her as well.

At least, that was what she wanted to believe.

In the morning she got up to make a fire in a cold room. Kostya was asleep. Sasha couldn’t go back to sleep; slipping a jacket over her nightgown, she sat at her bureau.

She opened Textual Module 8. As she was accustomed to. Without thinking.

“…when they suddenly saw earth and sea and sky, when they learned the grandeur of clouds and the power of winds, when they saw the sun and learned its grandeur and beauty and the power shown in his filling the sky with light and making day; when, again, night darkened the lands and they saw the whole sky picked out and adorned with stars… and the risings and settings of all these bodies, and their course settled and immutable to all eternity; when they saw those things, most certainly they would have judged both that…”

Noise. Rasping sounds. Similar to the breathing of air full of whistling and music, conversations, radio news, frequencies and waves, overflowing and dissolving.

The fire was flaring up and warmth filled the room.

A week before the examination Sasha stopped sleeping. Every day she thought that her fear and anxiety had reached it pinnacle, but one more sleepless night would pass, and Sasha would discover that her pre-exam fever jumped another two or even three degrees.

“Sasha, calm down,” Sterkh reassured her. “You are too emotional. In combination with certain peculiarities of your gift all this passion evolves into a rather explosive mixture. Calm down, relax, you will pass with an excellent grade.”

On January eleventh, second years were taking their Introduction to Applied Science exam. In the morning, around half past seven Sasha looked out of the window and saw Yegor sitting right on her porch, between the stone lions.