Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

‘I’m afraid I do not deserve the comparison with Gagarin,’ Innokenty said dolefully, ‘because my courage was forced. It is probably more akin to the courage of Belka and Strelka, who also had no other choice. So it would be better to compare me with them.’

There was applause in the hall and the president smiled uncertainly. He joined the general applause. He obviously had not expected anything about Belka and Strelka.

Innokenty just put on both medals. I see them on his chest through bottles of mineral water. They suit him.

FRIDAY [INNOKENTY]

Geiger and I returned from Moscow yesterday. An unusual trip. As I walked through the Kremlin, I thought: if I had found myself here in the twenties or thirties, I could have met one of those who…

All our hopes and all our hatred rose like steam, to the top of the world, right here. They warmed themselves in that here, inhaled it. And if one truly could have ended up at the Kremlin during those years, then told them to their face about all the thoughts we had about our life… Of course it’s funny: you can’t even manage to open your mouth, nothing, not one word; you do well if you simply manage to cast a glance. Just to catch a passing glimpse of them: that’s something in itself already. To die from heartbreak but catch a glimpse.

But I looked at the current one: my heart did not break. It did not even beat faster. And not because he’s this way or that way but simply because this is not my time, it isn’t native to me: I sense that, so cannot become close to this time. I experience nothing but an abstract interest in what’s happening. It’s just the same as if I had been presented to the president of, let’s say, Zimbabwe: yes, it’s the president, yes, it’s captivating, but nothing responds inside. And you can tell him everything you want, but… that doesn’t tempt you. It isn’t interesting.

After the ceremony, they invited us for a glass of champagne. I drank the Kremlin champagne and suddenly thought to myself that this is the drink of power. I am always having ideas like that. I imagined power and the ability to conquer being poured down my throat along with the champagne, and, most importantly, with these attributes, a certain special responsibility for the country that transforms a bureaucrat into a ruler so that the country’s business becomes his personal business and the country itself becomes a part of his own ‘I.’

I shared my reflections about the beverage with Geiger but he didn’t approve of my line of thinking:

‘Where there’s a good bureaucrat, there’s no need for a ruler.’ Wonderful. A European view. I lifted my glass to Geiger’s glass. ‘And where have you seen a good bureaucrat in Russia?’ We clinked and the glass slipped from my hand. I watched as it flew, as if in slow motion, and knew that in an instant it would spray champagne and shards in all directions, and it kept flying and, there, it finally fell and the spray flew all over, just exactly as I imagined it. I had become a witness to some sort of strange time phenomenon: not real time and even more so not the past – maybe the future? After all, I saw that picture for an entire eternity before the glass smashed. Several staff members ran over, suggesting I not worry. Essentially, I wasn’t worrying anyway.

SATURDAY [GEIGER]

I keep recalling my trip with Innokenty.

Especially the conversation over champagne, which he likened to a beverage of power. What a strange fantasy! That drink, he says, transforms a bureaucrat into a ruler.

I don’t know what the current president drinks (I’m afraid it’s something else) but he hasn’t worked out to be one or the other… Innokenty, however, astounds me. A person who lived through the harshest of tyranny and utters the word ‘ruler’ so lightly! Unglaublich… [9] Unbelievable (Germ.).

There’s a reason the glass fell from his hand.

SUNDAY [INNOKENTY]

There’s a word-processing program on the computer that automatically corrects mistakes. I have the strange impression that sometimes the editor in there gets too involved and corrects a great deal more than necessary: adds something or, vice versa, erases something. It is my profound belief that the editor is too intrusive. Thanks to that program, I have the constant feeling of an outside presence… I reported this to Geiger: he laughed and said he hasn’t paid attention to these things for a long time. The usual computer insolence, he says.

MONDAY [NASTYA]

Just the other day, Geiger brought me a packet of papers. Platosha’s journal from the first half-year of his new life: the notes from the notebooks have been entered on the computer and printed out. According to Geiger, he brought them so I can understand my husband better. I do, by the way, understand him pretty well already. But what genuinely struck me in those notes is how minutely he describes all kinds of details, the older they are, the more lovingly! I told him about that and he answered that he’s writing a blueprint for the impending universal restoration of the world. My sweetie is joking.

I wonder if in a blueprint like that Platosha’s recollections would be of equal value to the recollections of other people’s – for example, mine? Although who needs my ancient history? By historical standards, ugh, it’s not even the past, it’s still the present. What could I describe that’s so special?

For example, lining up in the morning at kindergarten, like in prison or the army. Breakfast filled with sorrow. The urge to vomit from lumps in the semolina porridge; a bleach smell from the washroom blowing in when a draft gusts. Sitting over the porridge, I carefully pick out the lumps with a spoon, but sometimes they get missed and I’m forced to push them away with my tongue. And that’s when I vomit.

I have no love for those details and who would? But someone must come to love and describe them, too, otherwise the world will remain incomplete. Maybe I should be frozen, too, so I can appreciate them in a hundred years and present them to my descendants?

MONDAY [GEIGER]

The document regarding Innokenty’s rehabilitation arrived.

It is stated that rehabilitation is ‘due to the absence of elements of crime.’ Meaning that he wasn’t part of a counterrevolutionary plot and didn’t kill Zaretsky. Nobody had any doubts about that as it was.

It’s important to have the paper anyway. In a bureaucratic country like Russia, you always have to be ready to prove you’re not a camel. In our case, it’s all crystal clear: the government is guilty, meaning it should acknowledge that.

Innokenty wasn’t even moved by the paper. I even thought I saw displeasure flash in his gaze. Does he really disdain the government so much that he doesn’t need rehabilitation? No, I haven’t noticed anything like that in him.

Maybe it seems to him that a paper like that is too cheap for all his sufferings?

I asked him:

‘Do you recognize the government’s right to declare you guiltless? If you don’t recognize it, that’s understandable, too.’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Only the Lord God can declare me guiltless. What the government does isn’t as important.’

Well, that’s one way to look at it.

TUESDAY [INNOKENTY]

There came a moment in the life of each Lazarus when he was injected with a sedative and sent off for freezing. The injection was a final and secret kindness toward the person being experimented on and it was shown by Academician Muromtsev. The high-level authorities believed that people should be frozen not only while they were living but while they were awake. The academician, though – justifiably considering sleep a form of life – deviated from that instruction, and the Lazaruses were grateful to him for it. Without doubt, it is easier to plunge into the kingdom of absolute zero while sleeping. In the time before their injections, the Lazaruses frequently recalled the Russian saying that sleep does not hinder death. These words sounded cynical if applied to Muromtsev’s goals, but in a strange way they must have strengthened the academician in his decision to inject the sedative.