Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

I’ve weighed all this again now: well, yes, of course it was autumn. And I did not plan to buy seedlings: this happened in autumn so they were not for sale. The month we met was October. And the meeting at the cemetery took place in November: I remember that we hardly knew each other then. On the way back, we met either a pauper or a holy fool at the cemetery gates. He presented a yellow leaf to each of us and called us a bride and groom. Anastasia blushed. I gave him about ten thousand. Or a hundred, I don’t remember: money cost nothing then. I kept my leaf for a long time.

WEDNESDAY

‘What do you think, why did the October Coup happen?’ Geiger asked me. ‘After all, you saw everything.’

That was unexpected. You never know, later it could emerge that Geiger writes historical novels.

‘A lot of malice had accumulated in people…’ I was choosing the words for my answer. ‘An outlet needed be found for that.’

‘How very curious. Curious… So then you’re not connecting the coup to the social situation, with the historical preconditions and other matters?’

‘But is widespread befuddlement really not a historical precondition?’

Geiger placed a chair in front of my bed and sat, straddling it.

‘But it’s thought that the disarray of 1917 had its own reasons: you know, a war, impoverishment of the people, I don’t know what else…’

‘There were times far worse, and with no disarray, nothing.’

Geiger put his arms on the back of the chair and his chin on his arms. His chin was covered in wrinkles and shrank in size.

‘Your reasoning is interesting. Somehow even unhistorical…’ Geiger looked at me, without embarrassment, as someone looks when contemplating. He pulled a little at his ear lobe. He has big ears but that isn’t noticeable until he pulls at them: there are many redundant gestures in the world.

After he left, I watched television, what they call, using English, a talk show. Everybody interrupts each other. Their intonations are scrappy and rather unrefined; it’s unbearably vulgar. Are these really my new contemporaries?

THURSDAY

My nighttime conversations with Anastasia continued. We would sit on stools, sometimes opposite one another but most often side by side, leaning against the wall or cabinet. When we were sitting next to one another, our arms came in contact and I sensed her warmth. Something more than warmth: electricity. We both felt it. I was afraid that sparks would begin to jump between us.

Below, outside, there were sounds of late carriages; their quiet motion was calming. I had learned to distinguish those proceeding straight along the avenue from those passing through and turning on Zverinskaya. From time to time, the rattle of automobiles burst into the night’s calm and we feared it would awaken sleepers in the apartment. And it did. The sleepers would shuffle, making their way to the toilet. After flushing the water with a rumble, they would stop in the kitchen doorway and scrutinize us, their sight dim. They said nothing.

One time Anastasia stayed at home by herself when she had influenza. Everybody went out about their business, everybody but me because there was no business more important to me than being with Anastasia. I stood by her door and could hear my heart beating. I knocked and entered. Anastasia was lying in bed. When I approached, I saw that her nose and eyelids were puffy and red. As if she had been crying.

‘Don’t come closer,’ she said, sounding congested. ‘It’s contagious.’

I came closer. I cautiously sat on the edge of the bed.

And that’s wonderful. It’s always nicer to be sick with someone.’

‘There’s nothing nice about it,’ she said and nodded at a book lying on top of the blanket. ‘I can’t even read.’

She wanted to sit up but I restrained her: I placed my hand on her shoulder. Four fingers settled on her nightshirt and the fifth, the deftest, ended up beyond the border of her collar. The pinkie. It was touching her skin. All my sensory organs shifted into it, and I became one continuous pinkie.

‘You rest…’ I found the strength within to pull my hand away. ‘Would you like me to read to you? They always read to me when I was little and took ill.’

Anastasia looked at me with curiosity. She was breathing through her mouth. She set her book aside.

‘Then read to me what they read to you.’

I went to my room and brought what they read to me. As I read, I felt Anastasia’s fingers on the blanket. I did not take my eyes off the book. I asked:

‘May I hold your hand? I will pull your illness out through it.’

I felt a light squeeze in response. I began reading again. As I read through phrase after phrase, it struck me that I had never read aloud to anyone. At the description of Robinson’s fear of becoming ill, I glanced at Anastasia. She was lying, eyes closed, and it was unclear if she was still listening to me or sleeping.

She was listening. She stroked my hand and said:

‘It’s uncomfortable to sit: the back weakens. Lie down next to me on top of the blanket.’

And after a silence:

‘Please…’

That please nearly crushed me. A lump formed in my throat and I lost my voice. The bed began squeaking when I threw off my slippers and lay down – my stiffened joints might have squeaked the same way. And then my voice returned and I began reading again. After moving a little closer, Anastasia laid her hand on my chest. I felt her feverish breathing on my neck. I looked at her after her breathing became rhythmic: she was asleep. Now I felt joyful and calm. I lay alongside her for a long time and rose only when I heard the turn of a key in the door. I kissed Anastasia on her feverish forehead and left.

I took ill a couple of days later, too. I felt happiness as I sensed the inflammation creeping along my throat with every passing hour. Anastasia and I had one illness for two people. Now Anastasia came to my room and read aloud to me, lying next to me. We understood that what was happening between us went slightly beyond the bounds of taking care of the ill, but we never spoke of that and made no attempt to call it anything. If you call it something, you will frighten it off. If you define it, you ruin it. And we wanted to preserve it.

FRIDAY

One autumn, about two years before graduating from grammar school, Seva came to see me in the Petersburg (which was then already Petrograd) Side. His face was enigmatic. The thing is, he was born with a very expressive face. It was rapt, crafty, understanding, or sad at various times, but this time it was not even a face, it was a mystery. Seva went into my room right away, without saying a word. After asking if there was anyone else in the apartment (there was not), he locked the door behind him with a key anyway. That key had been sticking out of the lock for many years and nobody ever used it. I would not have been surprised if it hadn’t turned, thanks to its inherent pointlessness (it had grown into the door, crumbled) or simply because that bungler Seva was turning it. But the key turned.

Seva tilted his head and leaned theatrically against the wall. The sides of the small traveling bag he was pressing to his stomach moved in time with his quickened breath. After restoring his breathing, Seva opened the bag and took out a sheaf of papers.

‘Here…’

He gave me the entire sheaf, though the contents of all the sheets were identical. They turned out to be news-sheets. The news-sheets called for an immediate change in political power.

‘Where did you get these?’

A man approached me when I was on my way to the grammar school. A stranger. He asked me to distribute them to students.’

And what did you say?’

‘I said I’d distribute them. This concerns saving the Fatherland, you do understand. And in circumstances like that, of course, I…’