Sergey Dyachenko - Vita Nostra

Torpa was invisible far below, and only the rooftops swam over the cotton-wool surface of the fog.

“Sasha, we think very highly of you, your capacity for work, and your ethics. We understand how difficult it is for you. You won’t give us a reason… to be disappointed, will you?”

Sasha opened her wings as wide as she could. For a second she became the town of Torpa—a sleepy town under a blanket of haze, floating in the clouds…

“I w-will try.”

“Mom, hello. I am here.”

“Goodness, Sasha! Are you at the station?”

“No.”

“Where are you?”

Sasha laughed.

“I’m downstairs, calling from the phone booth.”

“Are you kidding?!”

“Dead serious. I’ll be up in a minute.”

“You are unbelievable!”

When the elevator doors opened, Mom stood at the landing, happy, fresh, wearing a summer frock:

“You are insane! Completely out of the blue! Like a terrorist!”

And Mom hugged Sasha for the first time in six months. Sasha closed her eyes. Behind her the elevator doors closed and opened again, hitting the handle of her suitcase. And closed again. Sasha and her mother stood embracing a while longer, then Sasha reluctantly turned and picked up her suitcase.

The elevator doors snapped shut with an aggravated clunking.

“Listen,” Mom said greedily drinking her in. “You look… wonderful. Completely grown up.”

They entered the apartment, and Mom pulled Sasha into the kitchen, sat her down without letting go of her hand. The steam whirled over the pot, eggs hopped in the boiling water; Mom looked into Sasha’s eyes, smiled and shook her head:

“So big… so grown up. How wonderful that you came… You’re just wonderful. Why don’t you use your cell phone?”

“It’s a bit expensive,” Sasha made a point to smile. “It’s really for emergencies only.”

“I called you a couple of times, but there was no connection.”

“Yes, that happens in Torpa,” Sasha’s smile became even wider. “Is the baby asleep?”

“He just conked out, right before you arrived. We had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, received tons of compliments,” Mom was smiling. “It’s so curious. Usually they try to scare you, refer you to specialists… And here we have a baby with the ideal weight, and ideal development, and he kept smiling at everyone… At this age babies are scared of strangers, but little Valentin is such a sunny baby. When he sees someone, he greets them. He sleeps like a bear. Eats like a piglet. And he’s so beautiful! You’ll see.”

She finally remembered her pot, took the boiled eggs off the stove and settled them under a stream of cold water.

“Valentin is working. He has so much work right now. But it does bring more money, you cannot imagine how expensive everything is these days… Sasha, have you got a boyfriend?”

“What makes you say that?”

Mom sat across from Sasha and touched her hand:

“I just think so. You’ve changed.”

“We just haven’t seen each other in a long time.”

“Tell me,” Mom asked. “While the baby is asleep… we have some time. Tell me: how are you? Do you have friends? Boys are probably after you in herds—you’re so beautiful.”

“I study day and night. Not so much with the herds of boys.”

“But still. You must like someone! What kind of boys are there in that Torpa, I can’t even imagine. Are they nice?”

“They are nice, sure. Different… just like everywhere else. You say it like Torpa is some hole in the middle of nowhere!”

“It’s not a hole,” Mom caressed her hand. “I fell in love during my second year, I remember… purely platonically. I could not stop thinking about him. It was like an illness, it rolled over me and left just as quickly. But times are different now, aren’t they?”

“At this point I have absolutely no personal life,” Sasha confessed honestly. “The workload is too heavy.”

Mom shook her head with a hint of distrust:

“You are a workaholic… and it’s already the end of the second year.”

“And I got straight ‘A’s.”

“Straight ‘A’s… Sasha, let’s start getting you out of there. It’s the best time right now, after the second year. I made some inquiries—our university will accept you with open arms.”

“Mom…” Sasha took away her hand.

Mom shook her head stubbornly.

“Sasha. Let’s forget the past. You lived through… You did not accept Valentin. I mean, you accepted him to be polite, but inside… back then you were still a girl, a teenager. Now you are an adult, I can see it. And we can say all of those things, unspoken before, out loud. You can see—we are happy. The only thing missing is you, Sasha. Because you are also our daughter, you are a part of this family, and nothing and no one can replace you. Come home. Please.”

Sasha’s mouth was suddenly dry. Mom watched her from across the table and smiled.

“I have come back,” Sasha muttered. “I… you’re right, now I’ve come back for real.”

Mom got up nearly toppling over her stool and embraced Sasha, pressing her face to Sasha’s shoulder:

“Your bedroom is still yours, make yourself comfortable. Put your things away. Valentin are I are comfortable in our bedroom, and it’s easier for us to get up with the baby right there. But he sleeps through the night now. He’s such a sunny baby, calm and happy. You’ll see. People used to live in communal apartments, three, four people in tiny rooms, and we do have our own apartment. Tomorrow we’ll go to the university… or maybe you want to go by yourself? And then we’d have to go back to Torpa to get your documents. And pick up your things, you probably left some stuff there?”

“Uh-huh,” Sasha said. “We can decide that later.”

“Don’t wait too long. Oh, the sink is clogged. I wanted to make sorrel soup, it’s almost ready. I just need to add the sorrel. Want to do it? It is so cool when sorrel changes its color in the hot broth… Or do you want to take a shower first? Or put away your clothes? A whole night on the train, you’re tired… Do you want to take a nap? In your room?”

“I’d rather help you,” Sasha said. “Let me cut up the sorrel.”

She spent the previous night in a blissful half-dream. Lying on the soft berth of a compartment coach, she listened to the rattle of the wheels and slowly, by sly degrees, she appropriated the train.

Her head was a diesel locomotive. The wheels spun along her stomach, sonorous and confident. The tracks turned out to be smooth and cool by touch, like marble. In the morning they were covered by dewdrops. Sasha felt the tiny particles fly all over, vaporize and condensate again, felt the fog slink away from her face, felt the wind dash behind her back, wagging like the tail of a dog. Green semaphores rose over the horizon like stars.

She finished her second year and completed the so-called “internship”—almost an entire month of renovating the dorm. She liked working with the paint roller, liked the whitewash spray, and enjoyed walking around in work clothes stained with paint and chalk. She liked coming from the dorm back to her loft, taking a shower and sprawling on her bed with a book.

She read nearly a hundred books that month. She read with a remarkable speed, read everything—classics, memoirs, travel logs, harlequin novels and mysteries. She had gone through the entire collection of the Torpa regional library with a fine sieve. The textual module, the conceptual activator, the exercise sets—all the Specialty books had been taken away from her by Portnov and Sterkh.

Sasha would read until she couldn’t discern the letters any longer. Then she would brew some tea and sit on the windowsill without turning on the lights.