Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

I thought about Lazarus as I drifted off. His fate was my only hope. If it was possible to resurrect a man dead for four days who was already giving off a stench, then what could be impossible about resurrecting a person frozen according to all the rules? I understood that finding me alive upon defrosting was out of the question but I did not want to depart with a feeling of desperation. The Lord had resurrected Lazarus four days later. When would they resurrect me? And would they? I wanted to believe that they would.

Thinking now about my thawing, I – in light of the number of years that passed – ask myself: did my thawing become the resurrection of an entire generation? After all, any detail that I can now recall automatically becomes a detail of the time. And perhaps this is not a matter of detail but the whole? Maybe I really was resurrected in order that all of us grasp once again what happened to us in those terrifying years when I lived. I am sharing this with Nastya. And what if, I tell her, everything truly was schemed up for me to attest to? I did, after all, see everything and remember everything. And now I am describing it.

THURSDAY [NASTYA]

My overall state hasn’t exactly been luxurious in recent days. I’m nauseous, don’t feel like doing anything, and could just lie around without getting up. But no, there’s tons of various things to do, the main one being that I have to cook so Platosha can eat. He’s not fussy at all, he’d get by with a heel of bread, but this does mobilize me. He tells me:

‘I’m already having dreams about frozen vegetables from the ads. Can we really not use that money to hire a housekeeper?’

We can. It’s just that I, for example, don’t want there to be someone other than us two hanging around the apartment. It’s easier for me to make lunch myself. It’s more than ‘easier,’ it’s very enjoyable for me to cook for him. And he needs that so much: Platosha isn’t just some husband off the street: he’s special, the same age as the century. He requires care.

I’m laughing here, but there’s some kind of frailty in him. Yesterday he slipped and fell in the bathroom. It’s good the bathtub is plastic not iron; he didn’t hurt himself badly, just scared me. I flew in, with one leap, and saw him lying in the bathtub. Smiling.

‘I lifted one foot,’ he said, ‘over the side of the bathtub but the other one came out from under me.’

Mamma mia! ‘I lifted one foot over the side’ really is something an old man might say, not a man in the prime of life! Who is, yes, a full ninety-nine, though that doesn’t hinder him, hmm, as a husband, not the teensiest bit. I told Geiger about that fall and he scowled. He asked me to keep a more careful watch on Platosha. How much more careful could I be…?

Oh, and Geiger went through the hassle of getting official rehabilitation for award-winner Platonov; he says that could be important. He’s surprised the document arrived so quickly and thinks that is because of Platosha’s fame. The hero himself is maintaining his indifference, which is a bit strange. I understand that for the most part he doesn’t need anybody’s rehabilitation and this scrawling isn’t worth a thousandth of his sufferings, but there’s nothing offensive about it. He looks at Geiger almost angrily.

FRIDAY [INNOKENTY]

It seems stupid somehow, but I collapsed in the bathroom the other day. With a crash. Nastya came running in, anxious, and I pretended everything was fine, though I actually did hurt myself. I told her my foot went out from under me on a slippery spot, but slippery had nothing to do with it. My leg simply buckled and I fell. The most unpleasant thing is that this was not even the first time. Last week I caught my foot on a curb when I was running across the road and nearly fell. A day later, I went out for milk and did fall then, on the steps to the store.

It’s somehow especially shameful when a young person falls, arms flapping, with instant fear in the eyes. That’s not such a big thing for an old man, but for someone young – ugh! – despite the fact that I’m already a hundred. And everybody helps you get up, everybody sympathizes: how very revolting to be the center of attention! This aversion of mine apparently comes from my father. And it’s very strange: for some reason, I thought of him when I was lying on the steps at the store, thought about him lying silently outside Varshavsky Station.

My falls are beginning to worry me, and there was that glass at the Kremlin, too. I don’t know if it’s worth speaking to Geiger about this; he fusses over me as it is and if I tell him, it’s farewell, quiet life, and hello to tests, and things being banned.

Maybe it just seems this way to me, but everything began after the statuette of Themis returned to our apartment. She reminds me about my fiasco with art and the sorrowful events that took place before my arrest. I am not ruling out that this is all a matter of the psyche. As it happens, Geiger did tell me that half of all illnesses originate in the psyche. Just as, by the way, recoveries do. It’s important to find the right mindset. I will try to handle that myself.

[NASTYA]

The award-winner has a new fantasy. He wants to fill in the gap in time that came about after he was frozen. He and I are now gathering books and films from the 1930s through to the 1980s. It’s really mostly movies: despite the Soviet drivel in them, they show the way of life very precisely. And the fashion: wide trousers and rolled-up shirt sleeves in the 1950s. Cigarette trousers and pointy-toed shoes in the 1960s. Platosha pokes me in the side:

‘Just look at their faces: the faces are completely different and half a century hasn’t even gone by.’

‘Well, yes, well, a little different but not that much… So what are faces like now?’ I ask him.

‘Do you really not see? Nervous in some way, mean, a “Don’t touch me!” expression. Not everybody’s, of course, but a lot.’

‘So you like Soviet good looks more?’ I nip cautiously at his ear.

He shrugs his shoulders. It appears he doesn’t like it.

MONDAY [GEIGER]

Innokenty’s watching old films and newsreels now. He says there’s a hole in time for him so he’s filling it in.

I watched a fifties newsreel with them yesterday. It’s remarkable. Like being on another planet.

He stopped the video player when they were showing a Komsomol woman close up. Yes, the face was expressive. I noticed, by the way, that the epoch is reflected more vividly on female faces than male. Maybe because female faces are more animated.

‘There were still millions in the camps but there’s unfeigned happiness on her face. Unfeigned!’ Innokenty walked right up to the screen. ‘Why is she so happy, huh? Despite everything.’

Nastya grimaced. Yes, female faces are phenomenally animated.

‘And why doesn’t a drug addict sense the reek in a drug den?’ I said. ‘Why do people prefer utopia to reality?’

‘I, by the way, did not prefer it.’ Innokenty took the remote and switched from the video player to the television. Channels flashed by. ‘So now everybody’s supposedly free, but what a sour look they have! I was sure joy would come with freedom.’

‘It turns out,’ Nastya said, ‘that it’s better to be in utopia and be happy than to be free but sorrowful.’

Innokenty threw up his hands. The remote fell with a crash.

I didn’t initially want to write this: Innokenty worries me. Some sort of trouble with his health. Problems with his motor functions. And I can’t yet understand what the exact issue is.

Nastya told me about Platosha’s fall in the bathroom. I myself saw the smashed glass in the Kremlin. Of course it could be accidental to fall and to drop the glass and the remote, but something in all this puts me on my guard.