Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

Now the most interesting part: anti-Soviet agitator Ostapchuk ended up on Solovki in early 1932. Might we have met? Theoretically yes, if Ostapchuk had been sent to the Laboratory for Absolute Zero and Regeneration in the USSR. But they did not send him there and our fates drifted apart again. He returned to Leningrad in 1935 and got work at his good old Pulkovo Observatory, where he worked right up until his death, which followed in 1958.

Yashin learned all that from Ostapchuk’s personal dossier, which was preserved in the materials of the Pulkovo Observatory. In those same papers, he found an indication of Ivan Mikhailovich’s cemetery plot, too: Serafimov Cemetery. Appreciating the employee’s dedication during his life, the observatory did not forsake him after his death, either. According to Yashin, the institution’s financial reports preserve not only the bill for constructing a memorial stone, but also bills for wreaths and flowers for the deceased’s grave. Receipts every five years for buying ‘silver-tone’ paint figure into things, too, evidencing regular touchups to the fencing. In the upper right-hand corner of the stone is chiseled an inscription, in Latin unknown to Ostapchuk: Per aspera ad astra . [11] Through hardships to the stars (Lat.).

[GEIGER]

Today I spoke with Nastya. I explained everything to her. Rather, I explained everything that I could because I myself understand little.

I won’t write here about the medical side of things. I’ve been describing that in the medical records these past few days so repeating it now would be stupid somehow. Especially stupid since my description contains only questions.

Nastya sensed that and panicked. She grabbed my arm right away. She was in hysterics.

It’s good it’s that way. It would be worse if the emotions were internalized. It’s much more difficult to come out of that state.

I’m in a foul mood. A doctor shouldn’t become attached to a patient. That’s worse for both.

It’s just that Innokenty isn’t a patient to me. After I successfully pulled him alive out of the liquid nitrogen, he’s become something like a son to me. It sounds pompous but that’s how it is. Especially since I don’t have a son. Or a daughter.

I wonder if Nastya will inform Innokenty about what’s happening with his brain. I didn’t forbid her anything. Even I don’t know whether to inform him or not.

And if he asks? Well, if he asks, then… I don’t know that, either. I seem to have studied him well, but I can’t size up his reaction. If he’s to be informed, it would probably be better if Nastya did it.

I’m looking at my arm now: there’s a bruise – she grabbed me for real. And she’s for real, too. Despite all that silly giddiness in her head.

THURSDAY [NASTYA]

There was a conversation with Geiger. I’d been expecting that. I already knew not to expect good news. It’s hard for me to reproduce what Geiger said in detail but the essence of it is devastating. The cells in Platosha’s brain have begun a mass ‘die off.’ In speaking of ‘dying off,’ Geiger had in mind not their full death but a sharp weakening of function. Beyond that, a lot of cells are dying and only a very small number of them are being regenerated. In his opinion, what speaks to regeneration is the fact that Platosha has stopped limping on his right leg. At the same time, his overall condition is worsening and fairly quickly. Geiger will begin examining Platosha’s spinal cord in the coming days: he sees problems there, too.

I’m reporting everything intelligibly now, but I was like a crazy woman when I heard what Geiger had to say. Now I’m ashamed. He was already wary of me (could I really not see?) and now he’ll completely avoid me. I didn’t ask Geiger if it’s right to tell Platosha all this but now I realize it’s up to me to decide. On the one hand, it’s horrific to hang that sort of weight on someone who’s ill, but on the other, he’ll soon realize people are hiding something from him, and then his situation will be even worse. I thought and thought but didn’t come up with any-thing. Then I saw him in the evening, started bawling, and told him everything. Not everything, of course. Only as much as I’d been planning to if I decided to tell him. And it turned out I decided to.

He heard it all out calmly. He said that it could only have been expected. That the decades spent in liquid nitrogen had to manifest themselves somehow.

When we were lying in bed, I said:

‘We’ll pull through it all. We just can’t lose hope.’

He hugged me. Pressed his lips to the bridge of my nose. He whispered:

‘Of course. I’ve been working on that all my life.’

[INNOKENTY]

Nastya told me the results of the MRI. It’s better to pronounce all three of those words – magnetic resonance imaging – because the abbreviation sounds a little scary. As, by the way, do the test results.

I went to Serafimov Cemetery today. I knew from the description in the archives that Ostapchuk’s grave is right alongside the cemetery church. I found it without difficulty: the inscription Per aspera ad astra catches the eye from a distance. It was recently refreshed on the browned stone with the same paint they used on the fence. It’s interesting that – in the masses of everything Ostapchuk talked about on that notable day – the conversation, as it happens, did not turn to the stars. The day we met, which became the day we parted.

Even at this time, it did occur to me that I would never see him again. And that turned out to be enough for me to commit the meeting to memory. It’s not that my contact with Ostapchuk made a huge impression on me: the thought that we were parting forever was huge. I just could not fathom that, and it was scary because the loss of any person and any thing is a part of death. Which is the loss of everything.

Here at Serafimov Cemetery, I unexpectedly see Ostapchuk in the flesh, pouring homebrew into mugs. Woven of contradictions, his nose puckers from the impure scent, welcoming it joyfully at the same time. Ostapchuk is bare-chested: he has taken off his high-collared jacket because he’s being careful with it and doesn’t want to wear it out for no reason. He’s sitting on the curb of his grave and partakes of the drink, covering his nose with his fingers (this is a strong drink) and lifting his chin. I follow the movement of Ostapchuk’s Adam’s apple.

Now it’s my turn: I take out the vodka I brought with me and pour it into silver shot glasses brought from home – we didn’t have luxuries like this in 1921, but all the safer for both of us. We drink because it befits the place (we’re not going to knock together display boards here) and, truth be told, I have long felt like having a drink with Ostapchuk. He’s two meters away from me now – maybe not alongside me and maybe underground – but he is here. I think this time he’s wearing a high-collared jacket or even something solemn if, of course, he did not have last-minute regrets about putting it on because everything could be horribly ruined in the ground.

It isn’t so scary to be in Ostapchuk’s presence. Unlike him, after all, I – with my ghastly MRI – am alive and will possibly still live for some time. I am capable of moving around and, for example, riding a tram down Savushkin Street to the cemetery gates or buying vodka and odds and ends, but the main thing is that I can leave here, leave this cemetery alive. Unlike our Ostapchuk, who lies under that beautiful inscription day and night. At night he’s in the cold light of the stars, to which, if one believes the inscription, he so strove, due to his place of employment.

SATURDAY [NASTYA]

Platosha came home drunk yesterday. I asked: