Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

I wanted to stand the same way, surrounded by assistants and slowly bring a cigarette to my lips while gazing into the distance. To adjust slightly the protruding ends of a mustache that same way. To fasten the helmet strap under my chin with one hand before starting off toward the aeroplane. Unhurriedly don aviation goggles resembling canning jars. But that was not even where the most important delight lay. The very word mesmerized me: aviator. Its sound united within itself the beauty of flight and the roar of a motor: freedom and might. It was a wonderful word. Later another word -which a poet apparently thought up – came into being, ‘flyingman.’ It’s a decent word, but somehow it comes up short: there is something sparrow-like to it. But an aviator is a large, beautiful bird. I wanted to be a bird like that, too.

Aviator Platonov. That did not exactly become a nickname but people called me that every now and then. And I liked it.

TUESDAY

And I truly am thinking unhistorically here after all: Geiger is probably correct about this. A historical view makes everyone into hostages of great societal events. I see things differently, though: exactly the opposite. Great events grow in each separate individual. Great upheavals in particular.

It is all very simple. There is crap in every person. When your crap comes into resonance with others’ crap, revolutions, wars, fascism, and communism start… And that resonance is not tied to a standard of living or form of rule. Or rather it may be tied to it, but not directly. What is notable: the good in others’ souls does not respond at the same speed as the crap.

WEDNESDAY

I hadn’t written for an entire week. I felt ill. Valentina thinks I was too cold during an outing; she advises me to dress warmer. Geiger disagrees with her. In his opinion, I described Anastasia’s and my illness so diligently that I myself took ill. Geiger is not far from the truth.

It was not exactly that I could not write: I didn’t want to, I wasn’t in the mood. No mood for it at all. Geiger said that’s natural. That I had held on those first weeks, through tension with shock-induced composure, and then fell apart when life began settling into a routine. Yes, I agree, I fell apart. As it happens, though, I don’t like my routine. Somehow it’s uneven and intermittent – where did it meander all those years? And, most important, where does it lead now? To that strange life I see on television? That life does not yet captivate me. Or Geiger either, it turns out.

Regarding the journal, though, he said I need not worry: after all, nobody is forcing me to write in it every day. Nobody is forcing me; well, thank you for that. So I won’t. Actually, I like Geiger more and more. He’s sparing with his emotions, even a bit cold, but there’s a sense of genuine goodwill that comes through all that coldness.

The opposite is worse, when there is something rat-like hiding behind outward cheerfulness. I had an acquaintance, Alexei Konstantinovich Averyanov. Small and balding, with a large head, a complete toadstool. And he apparently reproduced through spores because how could anyone imagine someone like him with a woman? Although, no, he did have some women, apparently just as small as he himself. Should you converse with him for an hour or two, he’s all heart: mild, obliging, and well-wishing without excesses. He laughs with abandon, with a loud, distinct ha-ha-ha, head tilted to the side. And then one fine day it emerges that he is not mild and is not well-wishing but a pathological envier who says these things behind your back…

Who was he, that Averyanov? What did he do, how did I know him? I don’t remember anything. Though his mushroom-like quality, that worm-eatenness, remained in my memory. Yes, the bulging lenses in his glasses, which made his eyes seem to bulge, too, stayed with me. How did this conversation suddenly shift to him? Oh, yes, Geiger: he’s not like that.

‘A certain Averyanov just came back to me,’ I told him, ‘his character and height, even his glasses. But try as I might, I cannot remember what he meant in my life. Why are recollections constructed that way? And what is a recollection from a scientific standpoint?’

A recollection is a certain combination of neurons, of brain cells. When neurons come in contact with each other, another recollection presents itself to you.’

‘In other words I do not have enough neurons to imagine Averyanov in full? Somehow that’s very mechanistic.’

‘Well, don’t you worry, maybe Averyanov will still come to you in all his splendor. Maybe you won’t even be glad. Anyway,’ Geiger buttoned the upper button on my robe, ‘it would be boring if recollections reflected life like a mirror. They only do that selectively, which brings them closer to art.’

Strictly speaking, I don’t need Averyanov anyway. What I recalled about him is more than plenty.

THURSDAY

Here is what astounds me about people on television: they’re always playing something there. Guessing words and tunes, and also, I read, planning to send someone away to survive on an uninhabited island. They’re all cheerful, resourceful, and fairly, I would say, wretched. It works out that they didn’t have any islands in their life where they were forced to survive. Is this what their lives are lacking or something?

SATURDAY

I keep thinking about the nature of recollections. Can it really be that what my memory stores is only a combination of neurons in my head? The smell of a Christmas tree, the glassy ringing of garlands in a draft of air, is that neurons? Paper strips crackling on a window frame when it is opened in April and the apartment fills with spring air. Fills with subdued conversation from the street. The evening clicking of heels along the sidewalk, the drone of nocturnal insects in the dome of a lamp. And Anastasia’s and my timid feelings, which I remember gratefully and will remember until the end of my life – are those neurons, too? Her whisper, which slips into speaking out loud thanks to her laughter; the aroma of her hair when she’s lying alongside me.

After those days of illness, we would often lie alongside one another. Usually during the afternoon, when nobody was in the apartment. We would lie there, embracing. Sometimes not touching one another. Talking. Silent. In one of those minutes, I whispered right into her ear:

‘I want you to become my wife.’

Anastasia always laughed easily and I was afraid she would burst out laughing. But she did not. She answered briefly:

‘I want that, too.’

Also in my ear. I felt her warm lips.

She and I had not begun speaking with the informal ‘you.’ It seemed to me that the chastity of our relations should not be subject to any ordeals, even such trifles as the familiar form of ‘you.’ There was less than a year before Anastasia would come of age, and I had vowed to myself to wait for her coming of age.

‘It must be difficult for you…’ Anastasia once said. ‘Without a woman.’

‘I have a woman. You.’

She blushed.

‘Then I shall be a woman… in all ways.’

I kissed her on the forehead.

‘I don’t want to do that before we are wed.’

The most acute feeling is one left unfulfilled and I experienced that completely. Never before had my formal ‘you’ been so sensual. I still sense its heat on my lips. A most genuine heat. It is difficult to believe that this is achieved through a combination of neurons.

MONDAY

A person is not a cat and cannot land on four paws wherever thrown. A person is placed in a certain historical time for some reason. What happens when someone loses that?

TUESDAY

Today was an unusual day: I found myself in the city for the first time. After my morning procedures, Geiger asked: