Sergey Dyachenko - Vita Nostra

Darkness came early now. The tops of the linden trees on Sacco and Vanzetti, just yesterday so thick and opaque, now let through the shine of the distant streetlights. The unseasonable warmth did not allow one to believe in the yellow leaves underfoot, or the upcoming winter. Sasha stood for a while, taking deep breaths and watching the stars over the tiled roofs of the town of Torpa. She had two choices: walk through the school building, or through the narrow alleyway that led directly to the dorm. Having considered both options, Sasha decided to take the shortcut.

“…Why are you playing hard-to-get?”

The whisper occasionally grew into a low male voice.

“Why are you acting like a virgin? On Friday… in Vlad’s room… that wasn’t you, was it, huh?”

“Leave me alone,” Sasha recognized Lisa Pavlenko’s voice.

“C’mon, kitten…”

“Go to hell, you moron!”

Sasha stumbled on an empty bottle. The bottle clinked on the pavement; the voices ceased.

“Who’s there?” the man asked.

Sasha could not answer. She turned around and, staggering on the rocks, exited the alley.

The key for Room 21 hung on the board downstairs. Sasha jogged up to the second floor, made a short visit to the bathroom, quickly brushed her teeth and climbed into bed.

Oksana was the first to return. She rustled her plastic bags (where did she get all this crackling plastic?!), then settled in with great big sighs, turned a few pages of her textbook, clicked off the lamp and went to sleep. Sasha lay in the dark, listening to anonymous laughing, shrieking, singing in the kitchen, the banging of the dishes; Oksana slept undisturbed—Sasha could not close her eyes.

“A word spoken by the sunlight…” Why did Sasha feel so happy when a meaningful sentence swam, all of its own accord, out of a sequence of letters? These words were familiar and grammatically correct, but an actual meaning was still missing… Sunlight does not speak. Sunlight is a stream of photons characterized by a wave-particle duality…

One cannot imagine it anyway. It’s the same thing as seeing a closed door from both sides simultaneously. By being both on the inside and the outside. It’s so incredibly stuffy in this room…

She tossed and turned, and then finally got up, opened the window, and gulped some fresh air. A streetlight burned outside, and its bright artificial rays poured over the windowsill with its many layers of white paint. A makeshift ashtray—a mayonnaise jar—stood in the corner of the window, and somebody’s philosophy textbook lay forgotten.

Almost without thinking, Sasha opened the book in the middle. The first page she came across stated: “ According to Nominalism, universals are names of names, but not of absolute reality or notion …”

This phrase, too, has no meaning, Sasha thought in disappointment. And really, if one repeats the same word over and over again—“meaning, meaning, meaning”—it disintegrates into sounds, and becomes just as informative as the tinkling of water in a fountain, and…

She held her head. Something is happening to me, she admitted. Perhaps I am losing my mind. After all, second and third years look pretty much insane. All their idiosyncrasies… and occasional physical deformities…the way they come to a standstill, staring at some invisible point in space, or the way they overshoot for the door when they enter the kitchen, or how they “get stuck” in the middle of a simple movement, like rusty old machines…

Sometimes, of course, they seem fairly intelligent; they demonstrate a sharp sense of humor, occasionally they even sing fairly well…

“ Nominalism dates back to antiquity. Its first representatives in early antiquity are Antisthenes of Athens and Diogenes of Sinope, both of whom opposed Plato’s theory of ‘the world of ideas …’”

Heavy steps sounded in the hall; before Sasha had a chance to jump into her bed, the door opened.

The light was on in the corridor, and their room was dark, so Sasha saw only a black cut-out silhouette of a disheveled, ruffled girl. And Lisa—Sasha knew that—Lisa saw a ghost in a flannel nightgown, awkwardly frozen in the middle of the room on the way to her bed.

“You are not asleep,” Lisa stated.

Sasha could not speak, and did not want to. She snuck into bed and put a wall of blankets between herself and Lisa. She heard the door shut. Oksana sniffled in her sleep, but did not wake up.

The key turned in the lock. Taking tentative steps, Lisa walked over to the window. Sasha heard the click of a lighter.

“You know,” said Lisa thoughtfully, “I don’t really care what you think of me. What sort of thoughts swim in that tiny head of yours. I was in a dance troupe… Then he came… showed me a coin. Said: remember this sign, not the zero, the other one. When a stranger approaches you and shows you a coin like that, you must come with him without any questions, and do everything he asks. Also without any questions. He said, I never ask for the impossible. And the next day my boyfriend, Lyosha, was arrested for an alleged homicide. He didn’t even know that guy, he’s never even seen him, and they did a ballistics evidence test, and they had witnesses… Lyosha bought that gun illegally. He always said, a girl like me had to be protected. And then this dude comes to me, forty years old, and pokes that sign at me. And I went with him, like a sheep. Next morning I threw up money. And two more days later Lyosha was released. I don’t know if his parents bribed someone, or maybe something else happened, but the witnesses and the gun—they all disappeared. Must have been a nice bribe. I know he never used that gun for shooting, maybe only shot a few bottles in the woods for practice. But those guys… they came to me every month. They stuck their signs under my nose. I spread my legs for all of them, and every morning I threw up money, and Lyosha was there, and he could feel something…. I quit dancing; there was no way I could still dance. Lyosha left me. And he … he says: I never ask for the impossible…”

For a long time now Sasha’s nose was above the blanket. The room was filled with the smells of hangover breath and cigarettes. Oksana slept (or pretended to sleep), a sharp ray of light still lay on the windowsill, highlighting half of the pale face of the girl sitting on its edge.

The red end of a cigarette darted in the dark. It made loops in the air.

“Are you still speechless? Whatever… Is it written on my forehead? Why do they stick to me, and leave you alone?”

Sasha was silent.

“I suppose I loved him,” Lisa’s voice was unexpectedly sober, harsh. “I suppose I did, if I did it for his sake… Well, it does not matter anymore. I have a little brother. I have a grandma, she’s old. There is a hook I can be caught with. Everyone has a hook… But why did he say: I don’t ask for the impossible? I see this sign in my sleep now,” the cigarette twitched, making circles in the air. “I began avoiding men, all of them. Lyosha went away, and did not leave me his number… And he says: “I don’t ask for the impossible!” Ah, to hell with all of this!”

And suddenly, jerking the window open, Lisa tumbled over the windowsill and disappeared beneath.

A wet and sticky pile of leaves lay along the front garden, and reached about five feet at its peak. Shaking the leaves off her jeans, Lisa emerged out of the rustling pile and inspected her palms. She massaged her lower back.

Sasha was silent. She ran outside in her nightgown, barely getting a chance to stick her feet into sneakers.

Half of the windows were lit, half were dark. Two stereo systems were blaring at the same time. Someone was dancing on a table, and shadows streaked behind closed curtains. Girls flying out of windows or running around the dark streets in their nightgowns did not shock or interest anyone.