Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

‘I’m liking that journalist woman Zhabchenko more than anybody. Her invitation was specifically for one person: her. And you know what she did? Do you know?’

‘No, we don’t,’ we answered in chorus.

‘She gave the invitation to her husband and showed up herself a half-hour later and said she was on the list. Showed her passport, too. The guards checked her and the lists, and, naturally, let her in.’

‘And is her husband Zhabchenko, too?’ asked Platosha.

‘Well, there’s the whole trick. Who would look at the initials with a surname like that? The little bitch! Forgive me…’

Vadim smiled charmingly. A minute later he was already talking with somebody else. They brought us champagne. I jokingly asked Platosha if the champagne would impede his performance. He smiled and slapped himself on his jacket pocket. That’s where he had the printout of his toast, provided to us by the very same Vadim. In that toast, the person who had been freed from icy captivity was to raise his glass to the health of the Savchenko couple – Vitaly and Lyudmila – who wage war with ice near the North Pole itself. Everybody knew that the couple waged war with ice without leaving Nevsky Prospect, but a statement of that sort was considered admissible as poetic license.

Platosha looked rather tired at the palace. Yes, he was smiling – that smile does look good on him! – but it came out kind of forced. Of course he drank quite a bit, too much, I’d say, but his tiredness wasn’t because of that. It had engulfed him in the first minutes after we arrived at the banquet.

The serving of the dishes, for example, displeased him: about two dozen waiters carried roast piglet around the hall on a platter and, behind it, also on a platter, sturgeon and lots of things I didn’t even know the names of. I asked Platosha if he was sick but he said he was only feeling a light indisposition.

A retired admiral was sitting at the table with us, a kindly fellow who was making sure not one toast went by without drinking a shot. A half-hour later Platosha asked our neighbor if it was true that he had as much free time as a retired admiral. The admiral answered that it was the absolute truth. He smiled, displaying the whiteness of his false teeth. Platosha soon repeated that question again and then again, but the admiral answered just as kindly as the first time.

It’s too bad the promised toast wasn’t at the beginning of the evening: then the effect would have corresponded better to what the gasmen had planned. But since the toast was conceived as a culmination, it came closer to the end. It didn’t evoke much protest from the hall when Platosha proposed drinking to the Zhabchenko couple who wage war with the ice. I’m not even sure everybody heard his toast. It’s interesting that the Zhabchenko couple, who were sitting in the far end of the hall and yelling louder than everybody, heard it. After the scene to get into the banquet, it didn’t surprise them that a toast was being proposed in their honor. Even their declared war with the ice didn’t surprise them. They stood and bowed.

And we received the fee anyway.

[INNOKENTY]

Here in my old apartment, I sometimes feel as if I’m on an island, in the middle of the sea of someone else’s life. Poor Robinson Crusoe.

[GEIGER]

Innokenty worries me more now.

His movement is increasingly less confident. Sometimes I see him veering slightly when he walks.

If you don’t look closely, you won’t notice. But I look closely. I want to figure out the course of this thing, to grasp how it will develop further.

The problems aren’t only with motor functions, though. It seems like his working memory is starting to break down. He frequently loses his train of thought if he’s suddenly distracted while he’s speaking.

I don’t want to talk about this yet with either him or Nastya. I don’t want to scare them. I keep hoping it’s temporary.

And that corporate event with the gasmen. I understand that alcohol was the reason for the mix-up. Even so, I don’t like this incident. How can you forget what you studied all evening the night before?

And the corporate event itself, that was Nastya’s escapade. No matter how much they both convince me she had nothing to do with it, I can smell it: Nastya came up with it.

I want to let her have it in the head but am refraining. She’s amusing.

SUNDAY [INNOKENTY]

Today we went for a walk around the cemetery at Alexander Nevsky Monastery. I really love walking around cemeteries. Nastya does not, though. One time during a walk, she said she’s tormented by the thought that our happiness will end someday. I answered that it will indeed end someday, perhaps even soon: after all, anything under the sun can happen. I said that and regretted it: Nastya began crying. Somehow, that was not really like her.

It was very nice, though: diffused September sun, leaves on the ground in individual yellow spots, not yet a complete cover. Nastya walked, holding me by the arm, pressing her cheek to my shoulder, which slowed our motion. We examined inscriptions on gravestones. Old gravestones are very beautiful, more beautiful than even today’s expensive ones. And the inscriptions were simply wonderful because their old orthography cannot compare with the new: it has a soul. Our literature’s Golden Age is tied to that orthography as well.

Even my childhood and youth are tied to the orthography, too, though I am not part of the Golden Age. Platonov (a gaze over a pince-nez), when is the letter yat written in the roots of words? My memory has lost her face, figure, and voice, but that gaze over the pince-nez has remained. Although why, in fact, ‘she,’ when it could be a man? Yes, it was definitely a man: a ribbon from the pince-nez in the frock-coat pocket. The letter yat, I answer, is written in a series of words of age-old Russian origin…

Something familiar revealed itself on a granite gravestone that had risen up in front of us, but I still didn’t understand what. No, I understood. I understood: the name, of course. Terenty Osipovich Dobrosklonov, 1835–1916. And the phrase, ‘Go intrepidly!’ Actually, it’s not written there, but of course not everything under the sun is written.

Go intrepidly into the Kingdom of Heaven, Terenty Osipovich. The taxidermied bear by the door, my running through the enfilade of rooms, and the triumphal recitation of a verse. Theoretically, this could be another Terenty Osipovich, but I feel in my heart that it’s the same one. As it happens, he died a year before everything began. A year before, meaning Terenty Osipovich was lucky. He died peacefully, in full ignorance regarding the imminent changes, and was among – one would like to believe – a circle of people close to him, hoping for their carefree lives.

Eighty-three years have passed since 1916 and one must suppose that little is left of Terenty Osipovich: skeleton, wedding ring, the buttons of his luxurious full dress uniform (and maybe the uniform itself!) and, of course, the two tails of his beard. Yes, a small part of him, next to nothing, but it is part of him, the very same Terenty Osipovich who cheered me at a difficult moment during the sixth year of my life. And there he was, lying under the ground, two meters from me…

‘If this grave were dug up,’ I said to Nastya, ‘we could see a person I met for the last time in 1905.’

Nastya’s long drawn-out gaze at me. Expressively keeping silent. It seemed she did not want to dig up Terenty Osipovich.

‘Simply put, he is one of the witnesses of my childhood,’ I explained. ‘My father called him by his full name to me and I remembered it. That happens. It was one of the first names that lodged in my memory. And I suddenly stumble on him here, can you imagine?’