Sergey Dyachenko - Vita Nostra

A week passed. Then another. Every day she had to read sections, memorize, cram, and grind at snippets of nonsensical, unpleasant text. Sasha herself did not understand why this gobbledygook caused more and more revulsion with each passing day. Reading the barbaric combinations of half-familiar and alien words, she felt something brewing inside her: within her cranium, a wasp nest was waking up, and it droned and hummed in distress, searching in vain for an exit.

People started playing hooky in the second week of school. Andrey Korotkov stopped attending Math, claiming he used to work on problems like this in ninth grade. Lisa Pavlenko occasionally skipped History, Philosophy, English—without any explanation. Some boys skipped gym, but the girls attended Dima Dimych’s class diligently and cheerfully. Adorable, gorgeous, sweet Dima did not torture anyone with back-breaking training; instead, he dedicated most of the time to games. He gave long lectures on the human body with the goal of making the training more effective. Naively, he demonstrated the location of tendons, the structure of muscles—first on an educational poster, then on a live model. The live models requested more details and explanations. Dima blushed and explained again and again: here is the knee joint, here is the ankle joint, and these here are very tender ligaments, which are frequently pulled and can even tear…

Sasha liked watching the young teacher from a distance, somewhere atop a stack of gym mats. The boldness of her classmates, their audacity and cheekiness surprised and embarrassed her, but also made her a bit envious.

Specialty was meticulously attended by all nineteen students of Group A. And everyone of them studied the textual sections. Portnov knew how to coerce. Moreover, coercing seemed to be his sole and master teaching skill.

“Why do we need these lectures? To learn how to read?” bristled Laura Onishenko, a tall busty girl who carried a plastic bag with her knitting everywhere.

“It’s not education,” Kostya said. “It’s obedience training, in the best case scenario. In the worst possible case scenario, it is brainwashing. How’s your head, does it feel normal after one-on-one sessions?”

To a certain degree, one-on-one sessions were even worse than the lectures. Fifteen minutes twice a week. According to Portnov, he controlled their knowledge, although from Sasha’s point of view, they learned nothing, and his method of control smacked of Shamanism: Portnov’s ring blinded her, made her thoughts scramble, time made a dizzying leap, and meanwhile Portnov managed to find out everything she had learned, did not quite learn, or did not learn well.

“You did not finish Section Five. Tomorrow you will do Section Six, and again Section Five.”

“I won’t be able to!”

“I am not interested.”

It appeared as if Group B was experiencing the same: rosy-cheeked Oksana looked pale and drawn, and spent all her free time at her desk. Lisa continued to smoke in the room, one cigarette after another. Sasha thought she was doing it on purpose; she seemed to enjoy watching Sasha cough and squint from the tobacco smoke.

Two weeks of classes passed by. Once, during lunch break, when everyone went to the dining hall, Sasha returned to the dorm, found a stash of cigarettes (several packs) among Lisa’s belongings, and flushed everything into the toilet.

Lisa said nothing. The next day the entire contents of Sasha’s makeup bag—powder, eye shadow, lip gloss, and an expensive lipstick, a birthday gift used rarely, only on important holidays—all of it ended up in the trash, broken, crushed and smeared over the rusty metal sides of the garbage can.

Sasha discovered the debacle later in the morning, when Lisa had already left the room. Blind with rage, Sasha dashed to the lecture hall, intending to rip the witch’s hair out. She was too late: the first block, Specialty, had started, and a new dose of the sickening gibberish cooled down Sasha’s wrath faster than a bucket of icy water.

…After all, she’d started it. She threw out Lisa’s cigarettes. But what else could she do if that witch ignored all her requests! Nothing: as far as Sasha knew, Pavlenko was supposed to find a rental apartment and move relatively soon. And then Sasha could breathe easier. Oksana would never be a problem.

Five minutes remained until the end of the class. Sasha finished reading the section and wiped her moist forehead with a wet, weak palm.

“Samokhina, come over here.”

Sasha jumped. Portnov stared at her directly over his glasses.

“I said, come over here.”

Kostya threw her a worried glance. Awkwardly, Sasha climbed from behind her desk, stepping over her bag.

“Everyone, look at Samokhina.”

Eighteen pairs of eyes—indifferent, sympathetic, some even gloating—stared at her in anticipation. Sasha couldn’t stand it: she looked down.

“At this point, this girl has achieved the highest academic success. Not because of her talent—her abilities are fairly average. Some of you are significantly more talented. Yes, Pavlenko, that goes for you as well. Samokhina is ahead of your entire group because she works hard, while the rest of you are wearing out the seat of your pants.”

Sasha was silent, her face burning. Some people’s faces reddened as well. Lisa Pavlenko was the color of a ripe tomato. Kostya went pale.

Portnov held a long, weighty pause.

“Having demonstrated an excellent result, Samokhina gets a personal hands-on assignment. Speech is silver… all of your words are trash, garbage, nor worth the air spent in speaking. Silence… Silence is what, Samokhina?”

“Golden,” Sasha squeezed out.

“Golden. From this point on, Samokhina, you are to be silent. This exercise is intended to speed up certain processes, which are beginning to emerge, but are way too slow at this moment. You are not to speak a single word, neither here, nor outside. Nowhere at all. I forbid you.”

Sasha looked up in astonishment. The bell rang in the hall.

“Class dismissed,” Portnov said. “For tomorrow, Section Twelve, close reading, red text is to be memorized. Samokhina, that goes for you too. Study. Work hard.”

That day Sasha missed her first gym class. She simply could not remain among the crowds, even at the gym, even with such a lovely teacher as Dima Dimych.

Besides, Group A needed some time without her. They needed to discuss her in her absence. She understood perfectly well.

She went back to the dorm. Halfway there, she turned around. An empty smoke-filled room, the remains of her favorite makeup in the garbage can—chances are, all this would hardly cheer her up. Sasha followed Sacco and Vanzetti toward the town center, passed the post office and thought of Mom. How was she supposed to call her now?

She never considered violating Portnov’s taboo. Her lips, tongue and larynx ceased to obey. Forty minutes after the end of the last block she could not open her tightly clenched teeth.

Her teeth unlocked when she purchased a bottle of mineral water at a grocery store, having to resort to gestures to explain to the salesperson what exactly she wanted. Only then her teeth unclenched and chattered on the glass lip of the bottle. Sasha drank the entire bottle greedily. Her stomach rumbled; she had to sit down in front of the post office.

She’d called Mom last Sunday. Mom said that Valentin came back from Moscow, but their wedding had been postponed again. Despite everything, Mom sounded cheerful and unconcerned. They are happy without me, Sasha thought.

She went into the post office, gestured for one of the telegram slips, and wrote the following: “Everything fine will not be calling telephone broken.” She gave the slip to the surprised woman behind the counter, paid for the telegram and walked out again.