Sergey Dyachenko - Vita Nostra

“Sasha, you must at least pass the somersault. But put away your cell phone, didn’t I ask not to bring the cell phones to the gym?”

Sasha hesitated but then took the pink cord off her neck. She put the phone into the pocket of her sweatshirt and zipped it up. Dima Dimych looked almost annoyed:

“Is somebody going to steal it? Can’t you put it down for a second?”

Sasha’s stare was grim enough to make the young gym teacher shrink in embarrassment.

At three forty Zhenya Toporko exited the auditorium thirty-eight. She threw a haughty glance at Sasha and, without saying hello, sailed away down the corridor.

“Ah, it’s you,” Portnov greeted Sasha.

She murmured a curt hello and sat down at her table in front of the teacher’s desk—just a regular student. She pulled out the conceptual activator. Then the textual module. She stared at her hands.

The phone on the pink cord touched the edge of the table, a pink spot in her peripheral vision.

“At first I thought you were simply the kind of student who crams day and night,” Portnov muttered. “Then I suspected you had a talent… Then I realized you are a verb. It happened when you regained your speech. When I made you silent, and you found the right word in a matter of only few days. Remember?”

Sasha nodded.

“Then everything seemed to hang by a thread, and I thought I had made a mistake… and so did Nikolay Valerievich… and then you transformed in a single leap. It became obvious you were a verb, and I strongly suspected,” Portnov leaned forward maintaining an eye contact with Sasha, “that you were a verb in the imperative mood. You are an imperative, Sasha, you are a command.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will,” Portnov squinted. “It’s the nature of our specialty: nothing can be explained. One can only achieve understanding on one’s own. You are a command, a part of the Speech of Creation…. A load-bearing structure. I told you once you were a projection. Remember? Here it is: you are a projection of the Word that is destined to reverberate . And every day you get closer to the original. You are a foundation upon which an entire universe can be built. And this cannot be explained, Sasha, it can only be understood.”

Sasha shut her eyes.

For a second she ceased thinking in words. Her thoughts seemed to be living creatures that resembled multi-colored amoebas lit up from the inside.

“You understand everything,” Portnov said. “You are lacking experience and knowledge. Second year… you have just started studying Speech… but already you are a Word, Sasha, a Word, not a human being. A command, an imperative. You have colossal value as a future specialist. We will study in May, June, and part-time in July—every day, and quite seriously.”

Sasha glanced at the pink phone.

“Under professional supervision!” Portnov raised his voice.

He slapped his pocket in search of a cigarette, then said in a different tone, very business-like:

“Get your pencil and paper. Open the activator. Let’s begin with the minor stuff.”

She felt like a balloon straining to go up. Her small pink phone pulled her down like an anchor, preventing her from breaking loose; like this, “at the edge of rupture,” she lived through a long day, perhaps the happiest day of her life.

She left Portnov’s auditorium filled with the picture of the world, brilliant, spellbinding and terrifying. She carried that image until late at night, trying not to spill it.

Enlightenment surged over her like a tide and departed again. When Sasha perceived herself as Word, she felt serene like never before in her life. It was the tranquility of a dandelion blossoming for the first time on green pastures. It was a happy moment without wind, without future and, of course, without death.

Then again she would feel human. She would remember the existence of Farit Kozhennikov, remember the phone hanging from her neck. She would grit her teeth and wait for the word-sensation to sweep over her again, and having reached that point, she would freeze in warm numbness…

In the evening she had a really tough time. Having finished the module, she went to bed and turned off the light. She closed her eyes—and immediately a magnificent anthill of meanings unfolded under her eyelids.

Conformities and associations. Projections and reflections. Sasha turned onto her other side, then one more time, and one more. She rumpled the sheets. She sat up: the clock tick-tocked in the darkness. Streetlights burned along Sacco and Vanzetti. The accursed pink phone lay on the bureau. And all around her the accursed eide soared, whirled, and teased her: Sasha disliked the expression, but she could not find another word for the spinning colorful amoebas.

All one needed to do was to manifest . Everything already existed in the world. Everything that was the best and the most suitable. And happiness. The simplest thing—to grab this golden amoeba by its tail and manifest it accurately and clearly, without any distortions. Happiness is what Sasha felt when she perceived herself as Word. Happiness is what a man feels when he matches up his destiny. What would prevent Sasha from doing it? Because she could!

The human shell aggravated her like a too-tight suit. She longed to—had to—escape, but the pink phone lay on the table, and Sasha got up and went over to the window.

She opened a small windowpane. It wasn’t enough: she unlocked the entire window frame. The spring night was fairly cool, a raw wind chased the clouds, in turn exposing the stars and then covering them up again. Sasha kneeled in the windowsill breathing deeply and feeling the wind creeping under her nightgown. The cold was fabulous, it sobered her up. Sasha was a human being.

“I am a human being. But I am a verb,” she said out loud.

It was impossible to explain. Sasha, a second-year student who lived through a disintegration and reconstruction, who had been forced to alter and who has been transformed, accepted her new status not with her mind, and not even with her intuition.

She was. She continued. She resided in space and time. She was getting ready to reverberate.

To be realized.

The pink phone lay on the table. Sasha wanted to turn it off. Better yet, to throw it down, on the cobblestones. Let it break. Let the battery fall out. Let the display flicker out forever.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I must not. I must not.”

A dark whirlwind flew over the ragged cloudy sky. Sasha recoiled; across from her a shadow nestled on the slope of the tiled roof, shielding the stars like a storm cloud.

“Sasha, why are you not asleep at this late hour?”

She gripped the windowsill with both hands.

“Let’s take it easy. And keep away from the streetlights; we have no need for sensationalism. We have forty minutes, let’s not waste any time on warm-ups.”

The cold wind impeded breathing. Below lay springtime Torpa, fog flowed over the streets as if over rivers, and the lights of the street lanterns became hazier.

“Follow me… don’t rush. Keep calm. And don’t forget to breathe; you are not diving into the water.”

They landed on the roof of a seven-story building. The fog flooded over the first floor and was creeping up to the second.

“Are you cold?”

“N-no.”

“Sasha, I want you to know: this is not so much academic work, but more of a… um, process of adapting to the given situation. As our mutual friend would put it, we cannot ask for the impossible, and you, in your current state, you require a certain relief, materialization. But as your professor, I emphatically forbid you to do the same when you are alone. And that restriction remains in full force and effect!”