Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

Well, they didn’t.

THURSDAY

I left the hospital. That had to happen sooner or later: Geiger thought further life in the hospital’s hothouse conditions would not be helpful. We worked on my move all this week so there was no opportunity at all to write. Speaking of opportunity, it isn’t so much the spare time I have in mind as something else.

What this all means is that the actual place I moved into is my old apartment! I am now living there again, on the corner of Bolshoy and Zverinskaya. It turns out that – at the doctors’ insistence (read: Geiger’s) – the city’s powers-that-be bought up my former communal apartment, renovated it, and lodged me there. They allotted the room where my mother and I lived at one time to the medical staff attending to me (Angela, for the most part), settled me in the parlor, and left Zaretsky’s room for Geiger, in case he visits. All this was done so that I could accustom myself to my new environment as quickly as possible.

I spent my first day in the new apartment alone. As I understand it, this was how they showed tact regarding my recollections, and I was grateful for that. I walked from room to room. Everything was completely different: floors, doors, and windows. Even the old furniture was different, specially purchased prior to my move. I opened the kitchen tap and the water sounded completely different. In the 1920s it drummed sonorously on the tin sink but now it no longer drummed. And the sink was not tin. Only the size of the rooms remained the same, though I’m not even sure about that. As they told me, neighboring apartments changed their living space so many times during the years gone by and were subjected to so many new floor plans that it was simply pointless to seek out a resemblance with the past.

But it was there anyway. That resemblance manifested itself in its own way in the freshly renovated apartment with new old furniture. In how, for example, I knew for certain the number of paces from the window to the door. In how I could imagine, eyes closed, what was visible from each window. But here is the main thing: each time I closed my eyes, I seemed to hear the voices of those who had lived here at some point. For the first time, I grasped in all clarity that I had lost them – the living – forever.

I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. I felt like disappearing, not being, and freezing again without ever thawing. I fell into a dream that was murky and swampy. The dream pulled me ever deeper and more hopelessly, and I no longer understood if I was dreaming of shadows in the apartment or if they were wandering all around while I was awake. I knew that in cases like this one needs the will to awaken, the effort, but it was exactly this that I could not resolve to accomplish because I no longer knew which was scarier: dreaming or being awake. I experienced this feeling at one time on the island.

The doorbell woke me up. It was Geiger: how glad I was to see him! If not for him, I would never have woken up. He came to check in on me and brought a bottle of cognac. The cognac and Geiger’s quiet voice calmed me. I no longer felt like sleeping: I felt like sitting and talking.

Among other things, I asked Geiger if I could go out to walk around on my own. He responded that indeed this was necessary. He took a wallet from his pocket and gave it to me. He explained for a long time about the value of the banknotes, how to pay for what, and so on. I retained very little. We talked until about two in the morning and then Geiger called home and said he was spending the night at my place. I thought about how I know nothing about him, either his family or what he does outside work. What was this sitting here with me today? Part of his work or outside it?

Geiger has gone to bed in Zaretsky’s room, which was prepared for him, but I still don’t want to sleep: I slept plenty in the afternoon. I’m sitting and writing. From time to time I hear bedsprings squeaking on the other side of the wall. It’s good it’s Geiger, not Zaretsky.

FRIDAY

Whence shall I begin to weep over the deeds of my cursed life?

SATURDAY

I was standing by the window this evening. I noticed the cognac that Geiger left (open, by the way) on the windowsill. At first I looked down at the moving cars, then at the sky. In the sky were flying machines that looked very little like aeroplanes. I, Aviator Platonov, was drinking Geiger’s cognac and recalling Commandant’s Aerodrome, which, as it turns out, is now gone. But how can it be gone? How can an entire world – an entire life with its joys, tragedies, discoveries, waiting at some times, tedium at some times, the pounding of rain on empty benches, or swirls of dust on an abandoned airfield – leave the face of the earth?

Where, one might ask, is that world? Where are the women in the smart dresses who give bouquets to aviators? Where are the men in service caps that slide down to their noses? With canes and with cigarettes in their teeth – where are those men? Where are all of us who’d been standing at the edge of the field? And what sort of Atlantis were we taking to the ocean floor? Where, finally, is the giant inscription, ‘Russian Society of Aeronautics,’ that decorated the hangar from which the aeroplanes rolled?

I knew all those machines like my own five fingers. I could distinguish them with my eyes closed from the sound of the motors. A Bleriot monoplane from, say, a Voisin or Farman biplane. I knew the aviators’ faces: Pégoud, Poiré, Garros, Nesterov, and Matseevich. It’s not that I had seen them all personally, it’s just that their portraits hung at home. Where are those portraits?

They are gone now, which is why, really, I was drinking the cognac. And why I am finishing it right now as I scribble out these lines. In recent days I was asked, ‘What made you want, so wholeheartedly, to become an aviator? Was it dreaming of the sky?’ Oh my, oh why! This was not just because of the sky but from all the wonderful accoutrements too: helmet and goggles and mustache. And, once again, expensive cigarettes. Leather jacket and trousers, with fur lining. You have to understand that aviators were genuine idols, the elite.

Those idols had their weak points, too, though. For example, aviators smelled of castor oil that was used to lubricate the motor. Especially those who flew in fur coats. And many did fly that way: it is very cold there, up high. They still needed to get up there, however. I saw how one aviator drove down the field but could not take off. He drove down the field again with the same result. Everyone laughing, champagne spraying. After the fourth attempt, they waved the flag and sent him to the hangar.

And so: a dream. Well, of course, there was also a dream of the sky. By comparison with that (sky), all of us at the aerodrome were so small:

All of us here seem pressed down, that’s the thing. But in the sky… everything there is different.

SUNDAY

Today I went outside on my own for the first time. I set off along Bolshoy Prospect in the direction of Tuchkov Bridge. I crossed Alexandrovsky Prospect (formerly Alexandrovsky, now Dobrolyubov) using an underground crosswalk. Dobrolyubov, by the way, began as a decent person, studying ancient Russian literature… It was windy on the bridge and my raincoat (given to me by Geiger) began fluttering. I stopped in the middle of the bridge and walked up to the parapet. The water was black and churned around the bridge support, just as it did more than seven decades ago. I came to look at this water then, after the death of Chebotarevskaya, Sologub’s wife; it was terrifying. Many came.