Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

‘No meeting is more surprising.’

Nastya pressed even harder against my shoulder. She saw that nobody was planning to dig up Terenty Osipovich.

[NASTYA]

A strange stroll: that’s what I’d call a story about today. We walked around the Nikolsky Cemetery at Alexander Nevsky Monastery. This was not, by the way, the first time we were taking a stroll at a cemetery: Platonov has – how to put this? – a certain weakness for these strolls. They don’t exactly weigh on me but on the other hand, I can’t say they improve my mood much; they’re not exactly Disneyland. Though I do need to walk, because of the baby.

And so we’re strolling and strolling, when suddenly Platosha is standing still by one grave. Terenty Osipovich Dobrosklonov is lying there: it would be a sin not to remember a name like that. Terenty Osipovich coined the phrase ‘Go intrepidly,’ allegedly uttered to my future husband during his childhood. I can’t argue: the phrase is a good one – no worse than Terenty Osipovich’s name – but the impression this grave made on Platosha is beyond description.

He told me, in detail, everything connected with that phrase and then even said that if Terenty Osipovich were dug up, there’d be nothing to reveal but a skeleton and a full dress uniform. Well, yes, I agreed, there’s no reason to labor under delusions here. And he thought a bit and then said the beard, too, would probably be revealed. Metal items of some sort, as well. And I was suddenly feeling like he was somehow saying that for real, all businesslike. That a little more and he’d dig up that grave and reveal all. We stood by the grave for almost an hour.

The saddest part of our stroll is that Platosha’s leg twisted again when we entered the monastery grounds. He said it was because the road by the gate is paved with cobblestones and he’s already become used to asphalt. I nodded but – under the pretext of surging emotions – I grasped him firmly by the arm. And I laid my head on his shoulder to totally reduce the distance between us. He wasn’t walking very confidently at all. I don’t know, should I tell Geiger about that? He’s over-cautious and will start dragging his patient in for testing, and hospital things are already getting under Platosha’s skin. I’ll wait for now.

TUESDAY [INNOKENTY]

Much depended on what seat you took in the lecture hall. It was most interesting to sit at a point with a well-defined line of sight. For example, steeply below and with a three-quarters rotation, which is the most interesting view on Michelangelo’s Dying Slave. His head is thrown back a lot already and if you take a seat in the first three rows, the lower part of the chin – which is always unseen – is revealed, along with the nostrils. The eye slips below the nose and the forehead isn’t visible at all. Those who had the power to build a complex form according to the laws of perspective, as well as to see and maintain proportions, aspired to sit in those spots.

And, by the way, Marx is Alexander Vasilyevich Pospolitaki. I figured that out through a book about the Academy of Arts. I recognized the professors in a group photograph and found his surname in the caption. He died at the White Sea–Baltic Canal. I think his appearance was too colorful. What fit with the 1910s fell into complete disuse in the 1930s. Alexander Vasilyevich turned out not to be sensitive to the change of styles.

[GEIGER]

I’ve been reading everything Innokenty wrote all these months, so it’s as if I’ve come to appreciate his view.

Sometimes I see things exactly as he does. As if I’m listening with his ears.

The clanking of instruments tossed on a tray.

The crackle of a bandage torn off.

The smell after washing floors: lemon, sometimes strawberry. It lifts the mood if it’s not cloying.

This is the smell of changes. Only sensing that did I grasp how radically life has changed. It used to smell of bleach: I did catch that time.

During my internship, I earned extra money as an orderly and washed the floors with bleachy water. It’s supposedly a disgusting smell but it does connect me with my youth. My heart beats faster when I sense it.

It turns out that you can even warm to something disgusting and then sigh about it some time later. And then there is the beautiful.

My time hasn’t been interrupted, but here I am, capable of grieving for the past.

And then there’s Innokenty: he has two lives that are like two shores of a large river. He’s looking from the present shore to the past shore.

He didn’t swim across that river: there wasn’t even a river. He simply regained consciousness and the water was behind him. What had been his road became the riverbed. And he didn’t walk that road.

He once told me he yearns for the years unlived.

THURSDAY [INNOKENTY]

I have been reading Bakhtin. From time to time Geiger brings me books that, according to him, an educated person should know, at least through an initial reading. He brings the best that appeared in various fields during my icy slumber. As I was reading, I thought: Robinson was tossed on an island for his sins and deprived of his native realm. And I was deprived of my native time, and that was for my sins, too. If not for Nastya…

By the way, it turns out she’s read Bakhtin. She called those deprived of a time and space the chronotopless. Geiger laughed hard; he appreciates Nastya despite his difficulty relating to her. But I didn’t laugh. I suddenly thought about those deprived both of their time and the space they inhabited: they are, after all, the dead. It works out that Robinson and I are half-dead. And perhaps even dead, at least for those who knew us in a previous time and previously inhabited space.

SATURDAY [GEIGER]

I called Innokenty and Nastya came to the phone. She said Platosha had headed for Smolensky Cemetery. That she’d gone with him several times but frequent strolls around cemeteries (breathing loudly in the phone) had become rough for her.

‘Strolls around cemeteries?’

‘Yes, around cemeteries. It’s his new hobby.’ Nastya went silent. ‘He’s searching for previous acquaintances.’

I went to Smolensky Cemetery. I remembered where his mother’s grave was and went in that direction. I saw Innokenty a couple of minutes later at the end of a tree-lined walkway. Wearing, at my suggestion, dark glasses so he wouldn’t be recognized. People recognize him anyway.

He walked, limping from time to time. He had a newspaper-wrapped bundle in his hands. The Evening Paper. The bundle was strange and initially distracted me from the limping.

After greeting him, I asked Innokenty what might be carried to the cemetery in a bundle. Innokenty blushed. He muttered something unintelligible. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known my question would agitate him so much.

‘You don’t have to tell me…’ I smiled.

‘I have nothing to hide.’

Innokenty unfolded the newspaper. In it lay the statue of Themis. Well, how about that. Why, one might ask, does he need that at the cemetery? What kind of justice was he restoring here?

This began to seem funny but I held back. Why, why… He was carrying it, supposedly, to his mother; he didn’t go to see Anastasia. There was apparently some story connected with Themis. But there really was nothing to blush about…

We slowly moved toward the exit along the tree-lined alley. I walked with my head down. As if I was contemplating something. I was watching his feet.

He truly was limping.

We’ll get down to serious testing in the coming days. I didn’t say anything to him about that.

[NASTYA]

Plastosha has infected us with plain old bare description. He keeps repeating: describe more! I catch myself thinking over how best to describe this or that. Even Geiger, I heard, is attempting to express something. And really, why not Geiger, too? On what grounds do I deny him artistic capabilities? In German, by the way, ‘Geiger’ means ‘violinist.’