Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

It was a strange sight. Anastasia was a part of ordinary life when she was lying in the overcrowded stinking room. She was floating, as it were, in the stream of a daily routine that was doleful but natural. Now she was no longer part of something larger. She was juxtaposed against something larger, like any object pulled from life. The monument in the center of a public square, the coffin in the middle of a church. And Anastasia was also already apart from the realm of bodily discharges. When Nastya took out fresh towels, they told her she need not wash her grandmother any longer; they said they would wash her themselves.

Grandmother.

WEDNESDAY

It was sunny when I woke up. I opened the window: warm weather. Nastya called at around eleven and proposed we meet at metro stop Sportivnaya in an hour. It turns out that metro stop is right near my building, by St Prince Vladimir’s Cathedral. Nastya was already standing there when I came out. With a gray canvas bag and a sweater tossed over the bag. Her shoulders uncovered. Her hair was down, as Anastasia’s was when she would go out to the kitchen in the middle of the night nearly a century ago. I (a gentleman) took Nastya’s bag; a pink streak remained on her shoulder. There were barely discernible freckles around the stripe. Maybe Anastasia had those, too; I had not seen her shoulders. Although no, I had seen them, the day before yesterday.

We went into the metro and Nastya bought tokens.

‘I’ve never ridden on the metro before.’

‘You haven’t missed much.’

We rode down a moving staircase, boarded an underground train, exited it, boarded another train, and this was all for the first time. It seems that I truly hadn’t missed much. It particularly annoys me that there are speakers on all around, for advertising. You can turn away from posters but how can you get away from the sound? I pressed my ears; Nastya laughed.

After leaving the metro, we ended up on a walkway made of concrete squares. I was walking this leg of the journey for the first time. To the left there stretched a row of unpainted garages, to the right a wasteland with stunted birch trees planted in a line. In the midst of dried-out mud with tire tracks, these birches were not nice to look at. Their life was torture. Their squalid flirtatiousness was bleaker than the garages’ rust, which at least had no pretenses. We were walking through a Petersburg that I did not yet know. The hospital arose in front of us about twenty minutes later.

Anastasia was nicely dressed but unresponsive, as before. Sometimes she opened her eyes and it seemed she would begin speaking at any moment. But she did not speak. Only labored breathing escaped from her sunken lips. A nurse was keeping house in the room for the first several minutes (the glassy-metallic clinking of a tray), but then she went out. We sat on chairs to Anastasia’s left. I took her by the hand and pressed lightly. Anastasia opened her eyes. And closed them. Her hand remained in mine. My fingers cautiously drew her fingers apart – we had loved doing that at one time.

When I was convinced that everyone had left the apartment in the mornings, I would go to her room and sit next to the bed. Of course she heard me coming in and taking the chair – I did see her eyelids quivering. We both knew she was not sleeping but that moment when her blue eyes opened was dear to us. We both wanted me to be the first person she saw. I would bend and kiss her eyes, feeling her lashes with my lips. Anastasia would take a hand out from under the blanket and slowly, as if only half-awake, move it toward me. The hand was thin, with dark blue veins, like a special bed snake. Our fingers would join and press against each other, sometimes until it was painful, until something cracked, and only my thumb would remain free and with that – in spite of the pain, or maybe even because of it – I would stroke Anastasia’s hand.

‘My grandmother once said the reason for the catastrophe was some Zaretsky,’ Nastya quietly uttered. ‘That all the troubles began with his denunciation.’

‘One could put it that way…’

I felt her gaze.

‘Or could it be otherwise?’

‘I cannot rule out that everything began even earlier. It’s just unclear exactly when.’

Nastya took me by the arm on the way to the metro. And that was nice.

THURSDAY

Nastya and I met at Sportivnaya again and went to the hospital. I forgot to put on my glasses and people recognized me in the metro. They asked for my autograph, even several at once. We got out at the next station and I rooted around in my bag for a long time: the glasses were found after all. There were television crews at the hospital when we arrived; Nastya noticed them from a distance. I took off my glasses so as not to reveal my alternate image. We walked through a formation of journalists and I didn’t utter a single word. Once we had entered the hospital, a dark-haired young woman with a microphone moved to greet me. I could have walked past her, too, but I stopped. Something about her face won me over.

‘Do you love her like before?’ she asked.

Yes, a nice face. Only someone with a face like that can ask questions of that sort. Those who had been standing on the street came into the admissions area, too, and surrounded us.

‘I love her.’

Like before?

FRIDAY

Even as I was waking up, I realized I was taking ill. Nagging pain in my joints, aching cheekbones. Watery eyes. I called Geiger and said I seemed to have influenza. The flu, agreed Geiger. He ordered me not to leave the house. He came over about forty minutes later, bringing medicines.

‘It was obvious,’ he said, ‘that riding the metro would end up this way because you don’t have immunity to today’s infections. But this is something you have to go through, too. It’s just important not to go to the hospital for now: it’s dangerous for both you and Anastasia. It’s probably even more dangerous for her.’

I don’t have immunity yet; however, she apparently does. After Geiger left, I attempted to call Nastya but didn’t catch her at home. At the appointed time, I went out to the chapel by the metro. Nastya was standing there and I approached her uncertainly, even somehow sideways, covering my mouth with my hand. She noticed me walking from afar and followed my approach with slight surprise. She moved a lock of hair behind her ear with her thumb (a gesture of uncertainty). Remaining two or three steps away, I explained to her what happened. She understood everything and we agreed to call each other.

Solitariness awaited me at home. Geiger’s morning visit didn’t count: it is his doctorly duty to care for me. Yes, he fulfills his duty responsibly to the highest degree, even in a friendly manner, but that just doesn’t compare with how I once sat by Anastasia’s bed when she was ill. Even lay there. Read Robinson Crusoe to her while she held my hand. And now, after meeting an eternity later, our hands had touched again. As then, Anastasia was lying in bed and was again sick. It is true the illness (illness?) is different now, but Anastasia is different, too. She has changed a lot.

Nevertheless, the fact that she is here makes everything easier. Her existence on earth is evidence that my previous life was not just a dream. After lying down in bed, I can close my eyes and think that Anastasia will walk over to me now, take me by the hand, and share her coolness. This can still be imagined, too: she will rise from her hospital bed, come here, and take me by the hand. Nothing is impossible during a person’s life: impossibility sets in only with death. And even that is not necessarily the case.

SUNDAY

I spent all day yesterday in a drowse. Geiger is uneasy: he had not expected that the flu would be so severe.