Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

I ran into her granddaughter as I approached the door to the hospital room. I had noticed her on the stairs and realized who she was. I walked two paces behind her, my heart pounding like yesterday. Before I had got a good look at her I already knew there was a resemblance: the hair, the gait, it was all like Anastasia’s. I probably expected that, perhaps even hoped for it, it is just that she truly did resemble her when she turned around. By the door. After noticing me.

Are you Innokenty?’

I nodded. I was afraid my voice would fail me.

And I’m Anastasia, too, but I go by Nastya.’ She offered her hand to me. ‘As soon as I saw you on television, I knew right away that you’d come.’

She smiled. I realised I was still holding her hand. A cool hand. Thin, each bone making itself felt.

‘My doctor told me about Anastasia…’

‘I know. I’m the one who told your doctor.’ Her hand slipped out of mine. ‘I thought it would be important for you.’

Important… Her smile is like Anastasia’s. They say children become like their grandmothers and grandfathers, not their parents.

The stench in the room no longer hit the nose like yesterday. It had not lessened, it simply stopped making itself felt. As before, Anastasia was unconscious but even so, it seemed to me that she was better today than yesterday. Her eyes were open. There was no focus in her gaze – it moved aimlessly around the room – but it moved.

Nastya and I washed Anastasia’s hair. To begin, we took away the pillows and wrapped a towel around her neck so the water wouldn’t trickle. Then I brought a basin with warm water. We carefully placed it where the pillows had been and began washing. I held Anastasia’s head and Nastya squeezed shampoo on her hand and lathered the hair with massaging motions. Anastasia’s hair was short, almost like a buzz cut. This, along with the unblinking gaze, lent her a look of complete madness. When I poured water from the pitcher to wash off the rest of the shampoo, Anastasia blinked a few times but nothing in her gaze changed.

‘I remember her hair long,’ I said to Nastya for some reason.

‘They cut it at the hospital so it would be easier to wash.’

Then we washed her body with a sponge, placing the oilcloth and towels under her. Nastya cut her nails. Anastasia neither resisted nor participated.

‘My grandmother was basically fine just a few days ago,’ said Nastya. ‘Even here at the hospital. She managed to refuse to see you. But now, you can see yourself how…’

Nastya and I ran across some journalists as we left the room. I squinted from the many camera flashes.

‘What did you feel when you saw your sweetheart after so many decades?’

I squeezed my eyelids even tighter and did not unsqueeze them. That’s what I sometimes did as a child; that saved me from a lot. That is how I saw myself on the evening news.

TUESDAY

It rained this morning. The rain pelted against the panes, as if someone were pounding them with a directed stream. My apartment is on the corner and the wind came from one side, then the other. Lying in bed, I watched as the water flowed along the glass in thin, translucent waves. I rose out of curiosity when the waves began blinking in many colors. Down below were a police car and an accident. Right then I recalled another accident: two truck drivers, on this very spot, also in the rain. And I was standing by the window just like this – what year was that? Everything on this earth has already happened… I pressed my forehead to the glass. Two cars had bumped into each other. Not exactly hard: only the headlights were knocked out. And there were two people standing in the rain: wearing suits and neckties, all in one piece after the accident, cursing away to one another. Like the truck drivers, incidentally.

Geiger stopped by briefly, brought money. This was not the first time he brought me money and I keep not asking where it comes from. I would like to hope it is from the government, by way of compensation, or from the Duma there, from the president. I wonder, do they have a budget for thawing out the population? And the banknotes are just hilarious, small by comparison with before. Of course I will need to ask where they are from.

Nurse Angela came over: she washed the floors and gave me an injection. At my request, she no longer comes over every day, so it was good timing with the floors. The injection, though (so it seems to me), was made from pure meanness, because what is the sense of injections that are not made regularly? She simply jabbed me in the rear so I won’t get too arrogant. In the beginning, after all, I preferred that she not spend the nights here and then I asked that she come by less often: needless to say, she is offended. In what capacity did Geiger bring her to me? I wonder. She irritates me tremendously.

At one in the afternoon I called for a taxi. Nastya and I had agreed to meet at the hospital entrance today. At two, right after her classes end at the university. Nastya is a student in the economics department. In my view, that’s an unusual choice for a young woman, but life has changed, completely changed. How much do I know about this life to speak of what is unusual?

I was at the hospital at 1.30.I walked around the building, attempting to guess which windows are Anastasia’s. I remember that the glass in her room had cracks stuck together with strips of paper. But the hospital windows abounded with those strips, they were all over the place – how could you guess? Of course Andersen’s story and the chalk crosses surfaced in my memory. My grandmother read it to me before bed. The reading lost its intonation and then its sound, too, as she read further into the story. Of the two of us, my grandmother would fall asleep first.

Nastya came at exactly two: now that’s precision. She was fragrant with some unfamiliar aromas, delicate and almost imperceptible. Women smelled different in previous times: how could I not recall Anastasia’s hair here? Maybe I’m old-fashioned but that wave of freshness that… I seem to be confused.

What I mean is this. When we sat down on the bench to put on our shoe covers, Nastya leaned back slightly and my face ended up at the back of her head as she was straightening that strange footwear over her sandals: the smell of Anastasia’s hair had broken through Nastya’s delicate perfume! I involuntarily moved closer to her and she turned around right then, as if she sensed everything with the back of her head and caught me in my motion. I blushed: she had sensed and caught me. And might be interpreting everything incorrectly.

A surprise awaited Nastya and me: Anastasia had been transferred to a private room. The hospital’s chief physician came down to greet us in the lobby in order to take us there. He’s a large figure, thickset, with a big head. He is not bowlegged, however, I noted. A white lab coat was thrown over his three-piece suit. There was a stethoscope on his neck: who does he listen to in his office? I wonder.

‘I’m the chief physician of this hospital,’ he said and touched a badge on his lab coat: ‘Chief Physician.’

He smelled of coffee so it was obvious what he had been torn away from. He smelled of a cigarette, too. I had to think he had hurriedly stubbed it out in an ashtray when they’d called him from downstairs. And why, one might ask, did they call? Why did they transfer her to a private room? Had they interpreted my closed eyes as an expression of horror, as my full lack of acceptance of living conditions at the hospital?

‘Even under our complex conditions, we decided to provide Voronina with her own room. The decision was natural, if you consider…’

He was primarily addressing me and only rarely Nastya. I nodded but was not listening, entranced by the rhythm of all the doors flying past us. One of the doors opened and we saw Anastasia. On some sort of technically advanced bed, not even a bed but a vehicle with numerous handles, buttons, and wheels. In snow-white linens. In the center of the room.