Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

‘Maybe she didn’t register that “I” as this I; something like that is possible at the age of ninety-three, is it not?’

‘Her memory really does seem on and off…’ Geiger begins muttering again. ‘But I think she registered everything about you.’

Then I especially do not understand. What is this? Shyness? But one can be shy after twenty years or, well, after thirty, though not after sixty or more. A meeting like this is almost posthumous and how you look makes no difference here. And even then, it basically seems to me that at that age it makes little difference if you’re a woman or a man. But what do you know: it doesn’t seem that way to Anastasia.

WEDNESDAY

I know she’s somewhere nearby but I cannot see her. How am I supposed to live with that? How long must I wait? I cannot even do something to distract myself from thoughts about her. I used to read a lot and watch television, studying, as they say, the new reality. But now I think only about Anastasia; moreover, I am not just recalling her, I am attempting to imagine what she’s like now. I am attempting and I am afraid. It’s not me I am scared for, it’s Anastasia. I am afraid of her fear of startling me.

I remember how she said she never wanted to die – and she has not died yet. She did not want to age, either, so maybe she has also not aged? Doubtful… I am purposely not asking Geiger anything about her appearance. What is she like now? Bald? Toothless? Bald is not certain but toothless probably is.

Her hair was soft, like… silk. I did not want to describe it that way since it has somehow become a common expression; everybody uses it. But truly, like silk. Like her silk nightgown that I sometimes touched during our late conversations. Silk has the attribute of draping. Maybe even cascading. My hair is coarser: it can curl, gather in locks, stand on end, but not cascade – it cannot. Because it is not silk. I would bury my face in Anastasia’s hair and ask in a whisper, how is it like this? What is the nature of this wheaten flow that is quiet, fresh, and spill on her shoulders? I would ask: does this belong to me, is it now my attribute, too? Of course, she answered, how could it not since the attributes of each of us are becoming common attributes, ours. I placed my hand under that flow and drew it to my hair. And might one think, I would ask, that this is my hair? That, she answered, is the only possible way to think.

She is at Hospital Number 87. Where, I wonder, is that hospital?

THURSDAY

Today Geiger told me how her life turned out. I had not asked him about that: I knew the information was not likely to gladden me, but I did not think of interrupting him.

Anastasia waited for me a fairly long time, until 1932, then she married Pozdeev, the chief design engineer at the Baltic Factory. In 1933, their son Innokenty (Geiger give me a significant look) was born, which makes it clear she was thinking about me even then. But was no longer waiting for me.

In 1938, Pozdeev was accused of collaborating with foreign spies and sentenced to the firing squad. Innokenty died during the first winter of the blockade. As Anastasia said later, her two main losses were associated with that name. After Innokenty’s death, she had no desire to even live, let alone fight, and she lay down alongside the little boy, to die. They found her in an empty apartment, brought her to the hospital, and then evacuated her to Kazan.

After the war, Anastasia married a professor and entomologist, Osipov. Despite the birth of their son Sergei (it was her father’s name this time) in 1946, the marriage did not end up lasting. Anastasia stated, with disappointment, that Osipov (in accordance with the object of his studies) turned out to be a small person. In the end, Anastasia left him, taking her son with her.

By all appearances, the abyss stretching between the former spouses was so vast that the boy even received his mother’s surname, Voronin. Or maybe this was not related so much to the abyss as to Anastasia’s selfless love for her father. Sergei Voronin saw his father two or three times when he was a child and remembered that vaguely. And when the boy grew up, his father was no longer alive: Osipov died unexpectedly on one of his Central Asian expeditions.

To a certain extent, Sergei Voronin’s fate repeated the fate of a father unknown to him. Oddly enough (or perhaps not, given the odds?) he also became an entomologist. Late marriage and early divorce awaited him, too. There were some differences, however, compared to his father’s life. The first was that Sergei Voronin had a daughter (1980) whom he named, obviously, Anastasia. The second and most substantial difference was that this researcher did not die in Central Asia: due to the type of insects he studied, he did not even go there.

During perestroika, he went off to a university in the United States of America and remained there. His former wife continued living in Petersburg but her daughter preferred not to remain with her. At the age of fourteen (after yet another argument with her mother) she moved in with her grandmother, and the two Anastasias began living together. Three weeks ago, the elder Anastasia ended up in the hospital.

The elder Anastasia. She was seventeen and I was twenty-three when we parted. She is now ninety-three and I am around thirty; that is my biological age, if Geiger is to be believed. I was lying in liquid nitrogen and she was maturing, blossoming, fading, and growing decrepit. Apparently her character changed for the worse: she quarreled with colleagues at work (what was her profession? I wonder) and called her husband an insect. She probably did call him that, her entomologist husband. How could she not?

Somehow, it is a relief for me that she remained Voronina.

Do I want to see her?

FRIDAY

Very much.

I very much want to see her.

SATURDAY

I rose early in the morning, had some coffee. I found the number for City Hospital Number 87 in the telephone directory. I called. As I had expected, the hospital is far away, on the outskirts – I cannot reach it on my own. I ordered a taxi. I sensed that I would go to see her today but told Geiger nothing. I needed to go there alone.

I got in the car and we headed south. It was nice to ride through the old part of the city, but my soul began pining when we reached Kupchino. It is not a Petersburg-like district. We stopped at the hospital: it is squalid, befitting the district. Dilapidated. Cracks in the windows are stuck together with strips of paper; there is plywood in some places instead of glass. Old buildings are not as dispiriting as this, even in the same condition: even those not cared for have a dignity. The new ones are flimsy and inauthentic; it is immediately visible that they are shams.

Two people in white lab coats were smoking under the canopy, spitting thickly on the ground. Two camels. I walked past them to the information window. There was an old woman there with her glasses on a cord.

‘What room is Anastasia Sergeyevna Voronina in?’

She put on her glasses. Wetting her finger with saliva, she paged through something. I had forgotten to ask on the telephone when visiting hours are here. And about indoor shoes and about a gown.

‘Fourth floor, room 407.’

‘When are visiting hours?’

‘Visit when you like,’ she said, not looking up.

She didn’t open her lips.

‘So how does she look now?’

‘Who?’

‘Voronina.’

She didn’t answer. It would have been better for me to ask about a gown. Or about the shoes.

‘By the way, there are two camels standing out there.’ I pointed at the entrance. ‘You should look at the entrance, not at me.’

I walked up the stairs (the elevator wasn’t working) and only every other light was lit. I nearly fell into artificial plants in the half-darkness. I had run into these mass-produced objects several times already in my new life, primarily in government-run institutions. Their beauty is dubious for my taste, though they don’t require light. They most likely require the opposite: the less light, the better they look. It is strange that I was capable of thinking about them in this condition. It was from excitement.