Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

Treshnikov told us that Zaretsky’s trousers had been unfastened and that there was a string around his waist. The end descended into his drawers.

‘Do you know what the string was for?’ he asked.

We knew very well that it was for sausage but for some reason we said:

‘We don’t know.’

Treshnikov suspected that Zaretsky was a maniacal criminal and had attempted to rape someone. And gotten it for that. We objected, saying we had not observed women coming to see him at all. The latter seemed suspicious to Treshnikov.

‘That,’ he sighed, ‘is a bad sign, when women don’t come to see them.’

Later, as a representative of our apartment, I went to the morgue to identify him. I did this without difficulty. It truly was Zaretsky lying on the marble table: small, completely naked, lividity on his face. What he had termed his peepee turned out to be surprisingly small. Looking at it was enough to throw off any thoughts of rape.

I noticed no visible injuries to Zaretsky’s head: his skull had been struck from behind. Since the murder weapon had not been found, Treshnikov surmised that Zaretsky had been pushed and hit his head on a rock: there were many sharp rocks on the shore. Treshnikov also allowed that it could have been a strike from behind. In that case, it was unlikely that Zaretsky had attacked someone; in fact, the opposite was likely. If not for the deceased’s unfastened trousers, Treshnikov would possibly have leaned toward that scenario.

Of course I could have told the investigator that the deceased brought sausage out of the factory in his drawers. After exiting the guardhouse – he himself described this when he was drunk – he would walk down to the steep riverbank, which was deserted. He would unfasten his trousers, untie his sausage, and carry it the rest of the way in his hands. This is all very understandable: it is uncomfortable to walk around with a sausage in your trousers. If I had told him that, Treshnikov would have come to the simple conclusion that Zaretsky had ended up not being the only sausage lover in that deserted place. That a sausage-factory worker had fallen prey to someone’s love for that product in our hungry time. After all, the fact that the sausage was not found on the waist string spoke to it having been taken away.

However, I did not even consider telling Treshnikov that, deciding: let him think of Zaretsky as he wishes. Was that my revenge on the deceased? I don’t know. I cannot say I especially pitied him. In parting, for some reason Treshnikov asked if Zaretsky had snitched to the GPU. My sixth sense determined that it was better not to lie, so I said he snitched. What did that question mean? Was it a hint that we, too, had motives for murder and that he knew that? The criminal case was closed soon after.

They buried Zaretsky next to his mother, at Smolensky Cemetery, where we ran into him once with the bottle of vodka in his pocket. The sausage factory arranged a funeral at its own expense: it was without particular luxury but, more important, it was said to lack people. It’s possible the factory’s chiefs decided not to interrupt the sausage-making process and didn’t excuse anyone from work. Or maybe there was not a single person among the factory employees who was at all close to Zaretsky. Of course the latter is likeliest. Anastasia and I did not go to the funeral, either. That is obvious.

SATURDAY

Here is something that surfaced from the depths of my consciousness: academic drawing presumes a foundation based on a knowledge and understanding of form, and so drawing based on an impression are alien to academic drawing. Also: form must be introduced into the dimensions so that form does not float and so that drab places do not arise on the periphery of the drawing.

Here is what’s interesting: do things like this only turn up in artists’ heads? Or everybody’s? Geiger’s, for example?

MONDAY

Today Geiger showed up accompanied by a boy who was around seven years old. Rather, Geiger stopped by for some of Valentina’s papers (they were lying on the windowsill) and the boy looked through the crack in the door: I saw him. When I asked Geiger what happened to Valentina, the door opened all the way.

‘She has morning sickness,’ said the boy. ‘Papa and I came for her things.’

A dark-skinned character with short hair and a bag in his hands came into sight behind him – Valentina’s husband, one might presume. Shorter than her. He moved the boy away from the door and slammed it shut. Geiger tossed up his hands.

‘Valentina’s pregnant again and I – can you believe – am not involved.’

Judging by the slamming door, Valentina’s husband was not so sure about that.

‘And I’m not involved, either,’ I joked.

‘Does that upset you?’ Geiger asked this seriously.

I went quiet. Geiger’s lack of involvement gladdened me.

As a chronicler of lives, I am inclined to believe him.

TUESDAY

Geiger told me it will not be long until I go out into society. I asked what that means, though I understand everything perfectly well. After all, I do watch television and read newspapers. Once Geiger had sat down in his preferred position – backwards on the chair -he explained that I will enter the public eye in the near future. In the capacity of, if I may be so bold, a newsmaker (this word exists in the world, too). This was bound to happen sooner or later.

‘An experiment,’ said Geiger, ‘requires money, and public interest is money.’

I was silent, pondering this pretty phrase. Its author was silent, too. The sun was shining outside and melted drops were knocking, staccato, on the windowsill. The snow’s thawing was taking place under Geiger’s engaged observation but without his participation. Approximately the same as my thawing. Geiger admitted in recent days that he still has not grasped exactly what sort of solution had been injected into my blood vessels. An ordinary saline fluid that does not ensure preservation of cells during freezing was found in them. Undoubtedly there was some other sort of chemical additive that simply evaporated during the years of my icy sleep. One must presume that I would not have thawed out so easily if not for that.

After discovering the saline fluid in my vessels, Geiger replaced it during thawing with my blood type; according to him, that process was not particularly complex. The composition of the initial solution was the brilliant discovery of whomever froze me, but for various reasons the formula for that discovery was not preserved. I did not even begin to question Geiger about the reasons, since that was not especially interesting. Knowing the peculiarities of our country, it is simpler to be surprised that anything is preserved at all.

What consoles me and Geiger in this story is that I was preserved. We consider that an indisputable achievement.

WEDNESDAY

I recalled something it is impossible not to blush about. But it is also impossible not to begin laughing. How Seva and I went to a prostitute – that could be the title for this story. Both that we went – since that’s how things concluded – and that it was one prostitute, since there was one for the two of us.

It was Seva’s idea. Not even his idea but his dream. He had told me more than once that if we saved up money we could, for example, go to a brothel. The little phrase for example remained, inalterably, in those pronouncements and that made me laugh. One could, for example, go to the circus or the movie house, but in my view, going, for example, to see prostitutes was somehow strange. More than likely, Seva thought that little phrase defused the situation. Made the proposal less, perhaps, unusual. Judging by how often he returned to this, the topic agitated him considerably.