Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

Professor’s Corner was located a half-hour’s walk from the post station. You could ride there in a droshky but we almost never used droshkies. We walked to the station: this was our evening stroll. We walked past cypresses, olives, and juniper bushes, inhaling the damp, strongly scented air. Petersburg air is damp, too, but its dampness is cold and unpleasant; I would say it is unfriendly. I could not express then what I am writing about now, though I felt it very well.

The beach. I loved the beach beyond belief. The sound of the surf, festive and thick, like basses in an orchestra pit. Rolling wet on the sand in order to go into the water again later. And then falling on the sand for good, ears full of water. Near me: hitting at a ball and shouting. The sounds make waves in the water inside my ears but don’t pierce through it and I hear all that as if at a distance. If you roll on your side, the watery cork comes out in an invisible stream that flows through the ear. The sharpness of sounds returns. The sun is in the middle of the sky. You look at it through loosely joined fingers and there it is, looking like it will burn through them now. Incidentally, the edges of your fingers are already pink.

Castle construction. Wet sand slides off the middle finger and freezes in the shape of a tower. Walls facing the sea are reinforced by pebbles. Waves – their edge, their froth – roll up lazily. The walls do not withstand the waves for long before needing to be fortified, and made the moat in front of them deeper. Basically, owning a castle is exacting work.

There are two owners: Mitya Dorn, who’s the son of a famous Moscow surgeon, and me. We reinforced the castle against possible barbarian invasion, something that is expected (naturally) to come by sea. The barbarians are fierce and their speech is guttural and unalluring. They are cannibals. They arrive in canoes, eating everyone in their path. But Mitya and I are doing well and are safe on our little green island. Cypress branches are growing from the tops of the watchtowers; they rustle beautifully in the wind.

A strong wave rolls up from time to time. As it makes its way along our reinforcements, it does not so much ruin as erode, smoothing contours. It makes the castle several hundred years older, akin to the Alushta Fortress, which is hidden in the greenery not far from here. I pronounce the word ‘Alushta’ to myself and discover its completely new qualities. What a wet and shiny word, like a watermelon in the sun. Alushta… Mitya Dorn observes as my lips move but does not ask a thing.

And so we walk from the beach in shirts and short pants, with bucket hats on our heads. We’re ashamed to be wearing children’s hats but Mitya’s father explains that… But I don’t hear the doctor’s words: there’s a beachy fog and tiredness in my head. I observe the movements of his hairy arms with bulging little bones at the wrists. Long fingers, almost made for a scalpel – he cuts with them, cuts, cuts human flesh. The hair on the phalanges of his fingers is faded, it’s only visible when wet.

The sea salt is beginning to make itself felt under our clothes, tightening the skin. The sun falls on my neck when I bend it. Its heat is pleasant after swimming and I walk with my head lowered. Under my feet are cypress twigs, gravel, and, every now and then, beetles and caterpillars. I take them in my palm and they pretend they’re dying. I know they’re being sneaky but, for my part, I pretend to believe them: I carefully place them in the grass. How many times later did I feel like playing dead so I could be placed on the grass just like that and no longer be touched? They did not believe it and waited for their actual death.

SATURDAY

I’ve been watching television for several weeks now, how the Americans are bombing the Serbs. Why? For what? I decided to ask Geiger when he came but then forgot because Geiger told me that Valentina has quit her job for good. Her husband wants her to concentrate on their future child. And not on Geiger, I add for my part.

‘But what about her dissertation?’ I ask. ‘And why did she never tell me about her family?’

‘Are you jealous?’

No, I’m not jealous. It pains me when people leave my life. All my contemporaries left and now Valentina, too.

Oh, and Geiger also announced that he’s gathering documents for my rehabilitation. I apparently reacted a bit listlessly because he launched into detailed explanations. Rehabilitation is required, so he says, for expunging a conviction, though he, Geiger, understands that I personally have no need for rehabilitation. In reality, though, do I need it?

MONDAY

Today they took me to the television station. It’s located on the Petrograd Side, not far from Kamennoostrovsky Prospect: it turns out that’s where that magical emanation comes from. It’s so strange that an enigma has a city address… As we were driving along Kamennoostrovsky, I recognized several buildings from the beginning of the century. I stopped by one of them not long before my arrest; I needed to return books that Professor Voronin had borrowed to read. It’s so strange: the person is already gone but, yes, a book continues to live.

At the television station, they first put makeup on me, powdering my face and applying hairspray from a metal can. In my time this was called an atomizer, but now it’s called spray. ‘Spray,’ of course, is shorter. There are many little words like this in English that are small and resonant, like a ping-pong ball: they’re basically convenient and economical. The thing is that people did not economize on speech before.

They fitted me with a microphone at the studio. They said the conversation would be aired as a recording, rather than live (I utter those terms without faltering!), so I won’t be nervous. But I was not, as a matter of fact, nervous: if it’s recorded, fine, it’s recorded. You get nervous when there are a lot of people around looking at you, or encouraging you, or, let’s say, interrupting – but what was there here? Quiet. Complete calm. The host was cordial; she sat, legs crossed. I’ve seen her on the screen many times and she always sits like that. The ballpoint pen in her hand seemed to spin on its own axis. It gleamed under the floodlights. Her fingers were long, with rings. It’s obvious that twirling a pen in fingers like that is a winning pursuit.

‘Do you recall something new every day?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘What did you recall today?’

Her skirt was short, her knees visible. I try not to look below the waist as I answer.

‘A building on Kamennoostrovsky. We were driving and I recognized it. You know, the railings there are interesting… Curlicued. And its wrought-iron lilies have an unearthly beauty. Not long before my arrest, I walked up those stairs and touched the wood with my hand. That smoothness stayed with me for some reason: my fingers still feel it. I was going to one of the apartments, to deliver books.

And so I rang the bell. The lock clanked. It didn’t scrape or squeak but clanked: those were the sounds of solid locks that covered half the door. You enter and there’s a distinct smell of an apartment where there are many books. A limping girl opened the door; somehow I grasped immediately that she was limping… Or maybe I knew that? Her face was narrow, with deeply set eyes – there’s a Petersburg type like that. A shawl on her shoulders. She went ahead of me, not shy about her limp. And there truly were books everywhere and I had brought another four or five. Thank you, I say. Here, I say, they asked me to give you these. I’m probably telling too much…’

‘No, what do you mean, this is all terribly interesting…’ The pen twirled even faster in her fingers. ‘What impressions of the October Coup have stayed you?’