Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

FRIDAY

Today after the hospital, Nastya invited me to her place. Rather, to Anastasia’s place, to an old, roomy apartment not far from where Znamenskaya Church had stood. Which, to my surprise, no longer exists. The metro is there: the underground world triumphed over the celestial world.

It turned out that Nastya had prepared lunch for my visit. First borsch, then pork braised in wine, unbelievably tasty. I, of course, have eaten well all these months – on Geiger’s orders, meals were brought to me in a dinner pail – but a meal in a dinner pail is one thing and a meal from Nastya’s warm hands is another. One is government-funded, the other is homey… I even feel awkward for writing so specifically about food.

‘You didn’t really cook this all specially for me?’ I asked.

How silly my formal ‘you’ sounded. She smiled: that’s exactly how she cooked it. Specially. Her leg touched my thigh as she was clearing dishes from the table. There was not the same intensity in our formal ‘you’ that there had once been with Anastasia. Times had probably changed: what was cherished then now seems ceremonious and absurd. Nastya and I needed to somehow begin speaking on informal terms. But how?

While looking at books on the shelves, I saw… Themis. The statuette of my childhood with the broken-off scales. The shelf with Themis cast off from the remaining shelves and began sailing around the room. I had just been eating Nastya’s borsch, spoon by spoon, and it turns out Themis was standing behind my back. I extended a hand to her and then withdrew it right away. Nastya noticed the gesture.

‘My grandmother’s statuette. One of the few things remaining from the old time. And do you recognize this?’

My photograph stood alongside Themis. Anastasia must have ended up being my mother’s heir. Who else could my mother have left all that to? My father took the photograph not long before his death.

Siverskaya, 1917, I am standing, leaning against the railing of the small bridge. Arms crossed on chest, gazing (at my father’s request) into the distance. The rapid flow of the Oredezh under me, underwater plants coiling in its current. If you watch them for a long time, they seem to be river snakes (is there such a thing?) swimming upstream. The smell of water and pine trees, a muted cuckoo’s call from the forest’s depths.

‘Why look into the distance?’ I say to my father. ‘It’s so unnatural, it’s as if I’m not noticing you with the camera.’

‘No,’ answers my father, vanishing behind the tripod, ‘it’s a gaze into eternity because a photographic portrait includes your present and past and maybe the future, too. Irony, of course, is therapeutic, but sometimes –’ and here he straightens up and looks at me pensively ‘– there is no need to be ashamed of pathos because laughter has its own confines and is incapable of reflecting the sublime.’

My father then adjusts the camera so I can snap him and he stands on the bridge the same way and looks into the distance. There is undoubtedly more eternity in his gaze than in mine. Several weeks remain until my father crosses into eternity. Overall, everything is already prepared at Varshavsky Station.

SATURDAY

My crossing into eternity was supposed to be implemented on Solovki. From my conversations with Muromtsev, I understood that I had no chance of surviving after freezing. He was unfailingly good-natured during our walks, though it is unlikely he was experiencing a personal interest in me: more likely he wanted to form a general sense for himself about who would be frozen this time.

After finding out I was a religious believer, the academician told me that my agreeing to be frozen was not suicide on my part. He thought a decision to return to Sekirka would have been suicide to a far greater degree.

‘You have only two paths,’ Muromtsev uttered in a monotone, ‘and both appear to lead to death.’

At least he was honest. I shrugged my shoulders:

All paths lead to death.’

‘If you decide to become a Lazarus, you’ll live two or three months in complete comfort. To my taste, it’s better to die sated and doing well. In any case, the choice is yours.’

And I made it. I became a Lazarus.

SUNDAY

Anastasia died. I am leaving for the hospital, where Nastya will wait for me.

Anastasia died.

MONDAY

Today we worked on funeral preparations and that distracted us from her death. Anastasia was not exactly alive but was not quite dead as Nastya and I were ordering things and making arrangements. She was a silent participant in the discussions, if only because they revolved around her.

Yesterday another event took place that is inextricably connected with Anastasia. After leaving the hospital (we did not arrive in time to see Anastasia’s body in the room), we went to my place. Nastya had offered to see me home because my condition worried her. I truly could not handle myself. Anastasia’s death, which was natural and expected, evoked a lucid sadness in Nastya but affected me completely differently.

It shook me. I was speaking loudly and incoherently; my voice was not minding me, and every now and then it cracked. I seemed to calm down after we left the hospital grounds but I fell apart again in the taxi and shouted at the driver. Most surprising is that I remember everything down to the most minor details: even that when I was quarrelling with the driver, I was thinking that I would be ashamed of myself for that later.

At home, I sat in an armchair and began to weep. The last thread that linked me with my time had broken with Anastasia. Nastya sat down on the armrest. I felt her hand on my head. I took her hand in mine and kissed it. I kissed it several times. Nastya cautiously retracted her hand:

‘Don’t do that. It’s really just her you need, isn’t it?’

I was gripped with fear that I would lose Nastya too.

‘I want for you to be her.’

That was our first night. As I entered Nastya, I knew that she would certainly conceive today. This knowledge of mine uncovered feelings and made them unbearably acute: it pierced me, cut me to pieces, spilled into her, and I called out. At that moment, I truly no longer understood if this was Nastya or Anastasia. And she and I never again used the formal ‘you.’

FRIDAY [GEIGER]

Innokenty announced to me the other day that he hasn’t been keeping his journal for a couple weeks now. He just kind of announced that, by the by.

I did already know he’s not keeping it. Only it hasn’t been a couple of weeks, but almost a month, although (as the saying goes) who’s counting?

I didn’t hold back and clarified anyway about it being a month. He responded by calling me a German, ha. Then he smiled and said that, for him, that’s praise. And I smiled, as if, abgemacht. [2] Agreed (Germ.). I responded that it’s praise for me, too.

And the important thing: I took advantage of that conversation and convinced him to continue the journal. True, to do that I had to promise Nastya would do the same. And even I. Otherwise, according to Innokenty, he’ll feel like a lab rat. So there you go…

So we’ll all write, each at our own computers. Then we’ll merge everything.

I have observed that, for some reason, writing is pleasurable for Innokenty. A sort of replacement for drawing, which somehow went wrong for him. He’s not writing these days because life is now more important to him than creating something.

I’m a different case. I speak poorly. I write poorly. There’s neither life nor creating, just science. Everything that I need to write about Innokenty would basically fit in a logbook.

Or maybe not everything?

FRIDAY [NASTYA]