Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

MONDAY

Today I went alone to see Anastasia: Nastya was studying for her last exam of the term. I telephoned for a taxi and went. It has become impossible to ride the metro: the glasses don’t rescue me because people recognize me perfectly well in glasses, too. The taxi driver also recognized me. He looked at me for a long time in the rear-view mirror and then asked:

‘Forgive me, but did you feel anything there, in the ice? Were there any, you know, desires?’

‘There was the desire to be thawed.’

A pause.

‘That’s very understandable.’

Anastasia greeted me with silence and said nothing that day. Her arm (yellow spots on skin) hung off the bed. I sat on a chair by the bed and took her hand in mine. It seemed that her hand responded, squeezing slightly. Maybe this is how any hand responds when you take it. A simple contraction of muscles.

I bent toward Anastasia’s ear and asked if she remembered our hands touching? In that previous life – did she remember? Her eyelids quivered but did not open. I began telling her about how we decorated a Christmas tree. How I took the ornaments from the box and unwrapped them, the paper they were wrapped in rustling. After finding and straightening each thread, I gave the ornaments to Anastasia. I touched her fingers with my fingers, in everyone’s sight, by the way. Anastasia’s and my work offered that opportunity.

That was in the evening. But the tree turned out to be completely different when I went into the Voronins’ room in the morning. The tree (tinsel, ornaments) sparkled in the dim December sun. The vent window was open and the garlands were clinking, barely audibly. There do exist, I whispered as I held Anastasia’s hand, sounds that are rare and resemble nothing else. The sound of garlands in a draft, for example: it is all so glassy, so inexpressibly fragile, does Anastasia remember it? I love that sound very much and recall it often.

I reminded Anastasia in a whisper about other dear things, too. About how, for example, she once took my hand, saying she wanted to see my fate. She drew her fingertip along the tangle of lines and said something; it gave me chills. I did not hear her words because my ears were not working. Of all my body parts, there existed only the palm along which Anastasia’s finger was gliding. It investigated every mount, every line. The longest turned out to be the life line. I wonder if it took the frozen time into account in my case?

THURSDAY

I came to at the infirmary. Not in the same rotten barrack where I had ended up before but in a clean, lighted room. Everything – floor, ceiling, table, chairs, bed – was white and so somehow I calmly thought I had gone straight to Paradise after being beaten on Sekirka.

This was not Paradise, though: there were not things like these there. There was a bentwood chair painted with generous white strokes and the paint had frozen in rivulets on the iron bed knobs; they would not have painted like that in Paradise. The room was white but earthly. Leaning out of bed, I finally spotted non-white objects, too: a light-blue pail with a reddish rag. On the pail, dripping red letters read ‘LAZARUS.’

All the rest was essentially non-white, too. The floor, for example. Indeed, it turned out to be light brown. I lay there and was surprised that the floor could have seemed different to me a minute ago. Not only colors were returning but smells, too. The room smelled pronouncedly of medicines, and bleach wafted from the pail with the mysterious inscription. I do not think there’s any need for either of those things in Paradise.

A medical nurse entered the room and I squeezed my eyes shut. This is a camp habit: pretending you are not there. Go still if you hear someone moving. Merge with the darkness. See nothing and be unseen.

After wiping the floor, the nurse took the pail with the rag and left. Male footsteps sounded. Through my eyelashes, I saw shoes crossing a floor that was still wet. I could not remember when I had last seen shoes at the camp. Folds of trouser legs rested on the shoes. The whiteness of a lab coat replaced the trousers’ stern blackness. The man who had entered leaned over the bed and called my name.

His arrival reminded me of Geiger’s first appearance, though it could be that everything was reversed and it was Geiger who later reminded me of the man who had entered. As is known, one can pass through time in both directions. What is important: I opened my eyes. The stranger looked at me, silent. A professorial little beard, glasses. I was silent, too, because it was he who should speak. And he began speaking:

‘Your first task, Innokenty Petrovich, is to recover.’

That seemingly assumed a question about a second task, but I did not ask it. Remembering the pail, I asked:

‘Is LAZARUS a nickname for the infirmary?’

‘It’s a special nickname, shortened.’ He smiled. ‘Laboratory for Absolute Zero and Regeneration in the USSR, only it’s doubtful you have heard of it.’

Heard? Well, yes and no. There existed several laboratories on Solovki about which nothing was precisely known: neither their type of activity nor even their names. But people from one of them – from this one, as I was beginning to understand – were called Lazaruses at the camp. One time I even asked someone why they were called Lazaruses but received no answer.

I had seen the Lazaruses several times at the dock. They were disembarking from a boat and made the impression of people who were doing well by camp standards: well-fed, dressed properly, and (I had learned to determine this flawlessly) not beaten. Unlike my conversation partner, the Lazaruses did not wear shoes, but even their boots were a sign of prosperity. I also recalled that the Lazaruses on Big Solovetsky Island arrived from the island of Anzer. And departed for it.

‘Are we on Anzer now?’ I asked.

His gaze was surprised.

‘Yes, we are on Anzer.’

SATURDAY

The day began with an early call from Nastya. Very early: six in the morning. They had just reported to her from the hospital (my heart fell for an instant) that Anastasia had come to. Nastya intended to stop by for me in a taxi and asked me to be waiting for her at the front door in twenty minutes. I went down ten minutes later. There were almost no pedestrians on Bolshoy Prospect yet. Cars seldom drove by, either. The sun rising behind Peter and Paul Fortress reflected yellow off the upper stories. Of course I had already seen that.

Early one summer morning, in around 1911, we are waiting for a carriage to the train station. There are upper stories and sun and a cool morning breeze. I am wearing short pants (straps crossed); there are goose bumps on my knees. I’m jumping to warm up, though, to tell the truth, I’m not really very cold. More likely: anxious. I am worried the carriage won’t show up… and we won’t go to Alushta. My sandals slap resonantly on the paving stones. That sound is gradually drowned out by the clip-clopping of hoofs. I whisper: Happiness, happiness! The carriage has arrived.

The taxi has arrived. I sit with Nastya in the back seat. Birzhevoy and Dvortsovy Bridges, then Senatskaya Square, Moskovsky Prospect. Our travel may not be to Alushta but it seems southerly overall: it is becoming warmer in the car. I roll down the glass and place my elbow on the window. My arm lacks will and my fingers move like underwater plants – listlessly and melancholically – from the wind’s power. What will I tell Anastasia? What will she tell me?

A nurse stopped us right by the room. When she regained consciousness, Anastasia requested that a priest be called, and he was now taking her confession. The priest came out around ten minutes later, carrying the Holy Gifts on extended hands. Then the nurse was in the room for a short while. When she came out, she said we had only five minutes: Anastasia lacked the strength for more. I looked at Nastya and she nodded. She felt my fear. Lightly, she pushed me forward right by the door. I opened it.