Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

‘Do you want to go for a car ride?’

Did I want to? After sitting in my room for so many weeks? I broke into a foolish smile. The last time I had smiled at a proposal like that was as a child, when every trip seemed like a holiday. Even now, though, a trip was no common matter. What lay ahead for me was not a ride in an automobile familiar from my youth but in one of the streamlined apparatuses I had thus far seen only on television. The important thing was that my forced seclusion was ending and I was dipping into a new life.

Dipping is the exact word here. Just take a dip, my parents would tell me at the beach, fearing a cold. But don’t swim. I won’t, fine, I won’t, taking a dip is something fun, too. Fearful that my weakened body would yield to its very first infection, Geiger did not let me out of the automobile. He stopped from time to time and allowed me to lower the window. I would press the button on the door, the window would slide down with a barely audible drone. You can get lost in that…

And so we sat for a while in front of the Hermitage, the Bronze Horseman, and St Isaac’s Cathedral. I detected no substantial changes in comparison with my time. Well, perhaps asphalt instead of paving stones. Electric poles were made of something different, not wood. We went to Vasilevsky Island; things were generally in order there, too. We set off for the Petrograd Side.

We stopped at the corner of Bolshoy Prospect and Zverinskaya Street (we parked, barked Geiger). We got out of the automobile. There is now something unbookish in what was formerly the ‘Life’ bookstore. Something more likely gastronomical. And the building on the opposite side of Bolshoy Prospect had been two stories smaller. I remember this well because I often looked out the window at it: that building’s entire life had seemed to be in plain sight. And they had built it higher.

We headed toward that building. Geiger pressed three fingers on the buttons by the handle and the door opened. We began walking upstairs, not hurrying. The staircase was covered in gobs of spit and cigarette ends: the gobs were the usual but I had never seen cigarette ends like this. They had a very unusual look. Geiger jingled keys by one of the doors.

‘This is my friends’ apartment,’ he said, whispering for some reason. ‘There’s an excellent view of your house from here.’

We entered. Everything was unusual: floors, furniture, and lamps. That is to say everything was recognizable and it was clear what each item was intended for, but it was surprising at the same time.

The windows faced in two directions: Bolshoy Prospect and the courtyard. Geiger led me to the window that looked out on Bolshoy Prospect. I kept my surprise to myself: it was winter in the city but there were no double windows, these were a special kind, thin. And it was warm in the apartment.

Looking at the windows of my former building, I remembered how Anastasia and I had winterized them. Using a knife edge, we pushed cotton wool into the crevices in the frames and glued strips of paper over it. We boiled paste. Later, my mood always improved at the smell of paste. I recalled the feeling of autumn coziness. It was windy and cold outside but it would be warm at our house. When I took a smeared strip from Anastasia, I felt a curl of her hair on my cheek. I kissed her fingers – she pulled back her hand. You’re crazy, they’re covered in paste. She licked the paste from my lips.

Geiger pulled binoculars from his briefcase and gave them to me. Aha, exactly, there I am standing with her, it is all visible now. She smears and hands the strips to me, I glue them on. I carefully smooth each strip along the frame. The paper is wet and slippery, and there are lumps under it. Sometimes the paper tears noiselessly and I neatly connect the torn ends. I press them, not smoothing. It is intricate work. This is what should have saved us in the winter but did not save us. The warmth left the apartment anyway.

THURSDAY

My formal you and Anastasia now seem somehow excessive, comical even, to me. At the time, though, they were nearly a pledge of her – Anastasia’s – inviolability. They were to some degree a symbol of my askesis, something akin to a cassock in which a monk would probably find it easier to resist temptations. Or, to the contrary, more complex.

The sensual basis of our relations was certainly present but this was a particular kind of sensuality. It went no further than a glance, an intonation, or a chance touch, and that lent it an incredible acuteness. Lying in bed at night, I would recall our afternoon discussions. Her words and mine. Gestures. I interpreted and reinterpreted them.

Even in the dark, the bent nails gleamed on the boarded-up door by which my bed stood. I would run a finger along them. I thought about how her bed was on the other side of the door. Sometimes I heard a muffled squeak. It was as if we were sleeping in the same bed, divided by a partition. Divided for now, it seemed.

What we were hiding so painstakingly from everybody was, of course, no secret to anyone in the apartment. There are things that are impossible to hide when living under the same roof. Even the professorially absent-minded Voronin doubtless had a hunch about something. He had begun looking at me, one might say, with new attention, and that attention was benevolent. The professor would either slap me on the back encouragingly or smile for no reason. One time he came up to Anastasia and me and embraced us. That embrace was equivalent to a blessing.

Friendship with Anastasia and her father brightened the following months for me. We gathered in their room and drank tea nearly every evening. Properly speaking, this was not tea (one could not obtain tea then) but dried herbs and berries that preserved the aroma of summer. Anastasia had gathered them. Every now and then – after insistent persuasion – my mother would come. She was shy. She considered it very important to maintain a distance when sharing a common area. Her consideration seemed correct to me.

Sometimes, yes, Averyanov, the same one I recalled recently, would sit with us, too, his head inclined on his shoulder, the lenses of his glasses thick. When he came, he would sit in an armchair and sink into it. He spoke little. He smiled but he laughed more frequently. He laughed loudly, as if from excess sincerity. He was Voronin’s fellow employee at the Theological Academy, also a professor. Just now I saw him in the chair (a cricket from a coloring book) and recalled everything about him. As Geiger would say, neural contact was restored. When Voronin was arrested that winter, Averyanov provided the primary evidence – of counterrevolutionary activity – against him. They arrested Voronin based on Zaretsky’s denunciation but built the case on Averyanov’s evidence. Zaretsky could not have articulated the word counterrevolutionary.

SATURDAY

Yesterday we went to Siverskaya. I wanted to go by train but Geiger objected. He said there are viruses on trains and my body’s resistance is weakened. I think he was exaggerating. My body resisted so much back in its day that a train trip would be a mere trifle for it. But Geiger makes the decisions, not I.

We went by car. As before, Geiger was at the wheel and I was in the seat next to him. Strapped in by a seatbelt. A contemporary automobile (better to say car, Geiger advised me) gathers unbelievable speed. That’s not so noticeable on city streets but it takes your breath away when you leave the city. When we began passing other cars, I felt my hands grasping at the armrests on the seat. Geiger noticed that, too, and reduced the speed. And what Russian is there (he smiled) who doesn’t love fast driving… I smiled, too. I thought about how if we crashed into something at that speed, my body would be smashed to pieces, regardless of resistance. And Geiger’s body, too.