Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

I do know why he’s writing, though! Good Lord, there’s no secret there. He thinks he won’t live until she’s born.

One time in Siverskaya I saw an aeroplane taking off from a poorly mown field. As it sped up along the runway, the aviator drove around potholes, bounced on hillocks, and – oh, joy! – suddenly ended up in the air. Watching that machine move spasmodically around the field, frankly, nobody expected flight. But the aviator took off. There was no more hillocky field for him and no more laughing spectators underneath his wings: there appeared a sky with sprawling clouds and the colorful earth like a patchwork.

For some time, I have seen that picture as a symbol of a fitting course for life. It seems to me that accomplished people have a defining trait: they depend little on those around them. Independence, of course, is not the goal but it helps achieve the goal. There you are running through life with the weak hope of taking off and people are looking at you with pity or, at best, with incomprehension. But you take off and from up high they all seem like dots. That’s not because they have instantly diminished but because the view from above (lectures on the basics of drawing) makes them into dots, into a hundred dot-faces oriented toward you. With open mouths, it would appear. And you’re flying in the direction you chose and tracing, in the ether, figures that are dear to you. Those standing below delight in them (perhaps envying a little bit) but lack the power to change anything because everything in those spheres depends solely on the flyer’s skill. On an aviator splendid in his solitude.

[ ]

Platosha told me about some aviator’s flight in Siverskaya. Based on the tone of the story, I understood immediately this was not so much about the aviator as about Platosha: he has differing manners when talking about others and himself. He talked and talked, then suddenly pondered.

‘What are you thinking about?’ I asked.

‘What pothole did I trip in, anyway? Why didn’t I take off? What ruined my artistic abilities?’

At first I tried persuading him that his abilities couldn’t have just left him, that they’ll certainly come back. That’s not simply consolation: I myself firmly believe it. The comparison with the aviator is, of course, lovely, but it’s lame if applied to Platosha. He hugged me and said he’s already lame. Then we sat, silently, for a long time. Rocking slightly.

Innokenty decided to write for his daughter. To describe his life.

He also appealed to Nastya and me with an unusual request: help him write.

‘How?’ I asked. ‘How can someone be helped in describing his own life?’

‘Not the life itself but what’s on its fringes. I’m simply afraid I won’t have time for everything on my own.’

And so Innokenty will tell us what to describe.

This will be about specific things, not general things. About what everybody perceives identically.

Mosquitoes in Siverskaya, for example.

What else did he already allude to? Visiting the barbershop, a bicycle on a wet path…

As I understand it, he’s painting some sort of big, important canvas. At the same time, he’s recruiting helpers to sketch the background. They’ll draw the secondary figures along his contours…

‘I’m not refusing to help,’ I said, ‘but I’m a poor helper. Writing isn’t my calling.’

‘To the contrary, Geiger, I value you because you’re succinct and write simply.’

‘And me,’ Nastya said, ‘what do you value me for?’

Innokenty thought for a bit.

‘For the exact opposite qualities.’

I understand it’s impossible to refuse. But I don’t understand how to regard this endeavor. As his vital necessity? As an eccentricity? As a progressing illness?

The latter would be the easiest of all, but I’m not in any hurry to see that.

Something strange. Platosha asked Geiger and me to help him with his descriptions. Yes, yes, of course, we answered. To be honest, though, I don’t know how to go about this. If you ask, you risk offending. I couldn’t stand it and asked the next day. Platosha wasn’t the teensiest bit offended.

‘Treat it,’ he said, ‘as a life story.’

‘Yours?’

‘Mine. And a life story in general.’

The request for help with my descriptions surprised them both a lot: is that really so strange? They nodded to me about everything, but their faces, their faces… Of course the backdrop for my behavior is unfavorable: possible brain failure and so on and so forth. But is the essence of my idea truly not obvious? Yes, every person has particular recollections but there are things that are lived through and recollected the same way. Yes, politics, history, and literature are all perceived differently. But the sound of rain, the nocturnal rustling of leaves, and a million other things – all that unites us. We’re not going to argue about that until we’re hoarse or (you never know) smash each other over the head. That’s the basis for everything here. That’s what needs to be worked with, that’s what I’m requesting of the people dear to me. May their voices appear amid what I’ve described. They won’t distort my voice: to the contrary, they’ll enrich it.

After all, the only thing I’m working on is finding a road to the past, either through witnesses (there are no more after Anastasia’s death) or through recollections, or through the cemetery, where all my life companions have moved. I’m attempting to come closer to the past in various ways, in order to understand what it is. Is it separate from me or am I still living it, even now? I had a past even before my icy slumber, but it never possessed the separateness it does now. Everything that I have recalled about my past has not drawn it closer to me. I think of it as a hand that was chopped off and sewn back on. Perhaps that hand moves somehow, but it is no longer mine.

In essence, the years in liquid nitrogen changed nothing regarding the past. They intensify the problem but do not engender it: the problem existed previously, too. Its essence is that the past is cut off from the present and has no relation to reality. What happens to life when it ceases to be the present? Does it live only in my head? That same head that is now losing tens of thousands of cells a day and raising suspicions even among those close to me? Living people – with my recollections and their own – must be let into my head right away… After reviving our mutual recollections, perhaps those people will also revive what belongs only to me.

Siverskaya of the 1900s was the dacha capital of Russia. The mosquito capital. Especially in June. I think there are plenty of mosquitoes there now, too – you could even rename it Mosquitskovo in their honor – but now there’s sprays, coils, and creams. But back then? Well, maybe creams. Other than that, though, I think it was mostly fires. These were fires that burned old rags, leaves, and other little things that made a lot of smoke. Anyway, the technical side doesn’t interest Platosha.

The details are important to him, like the cautious, even somehow helicopter-like landing of an insect on the arm. A mosquito isn’t a fly, it doesn’t move around on the arm. It works where it lands. It pokes its little proboscis into unprotected skin and starts sucking blood. You swat it on your arm and the blood smears on your skin. When I was a little girl, I heard that if you swat a mosquito at the scene of the crime, the skin won’t itch. I think that’s an exaggeration, with a moral: punishment should follow crime. In the same place, at the same time. Blood atonement, as they say.

Nocturnal buzzing is the peskiest. It’s probably worse than a bite. Comparable to dental drilling: you still don’t know if it’ll be painful, but the sound of the drill already permeates you. You listlessly defend yourself through your sleep or just duck under the covers. It’s stuffy, so you duck back out a minute later. And it’s stuffy in the room, too: the windows are closed because of the mosquitoes! It’s double suffering, from the mosquitoes and the stuffiness. You finally toss off the covers and give your body over to the mosquitoes. At least it’s not hot. What’s interesting is that the mosquitoes don’t exactly rush to a naked body. Maybe they’re stunned by the grandness of the gesture. Or maybe all that nudity shocks them.