Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

I don’t know what sort of feelings the news about Voronin will provoke in Platosha. There are lots of scenarios, right up to the desire to kill him. It’s frightening to utter ‘the natural desire.’

For now, I decided not to show my drawing to anyone after all. I’ll practice more and draw something truly worthy of Nastya and Geiger’s appreciation. If my skill were to return to its full degree, I would draw Zaretsky. Portrait of a person mournfully bent over saus-age. I would draw him compassionately rather than mockingly. If not with love then at least with pity. After all, he had nobody to pity him and not one tear was spilled at his funeral. Not one.

In general, I think that when you describe a person in a genuine way, you cannot help but love him. Even the very worst person becomes your composition: you accept him into yourself and begin feeling responsibility for him and his sins – yes, for his sins in some sense, too. You attempt to understand and justify all of that, so far as it is possible to do so. On the other hand: how can one understand Zaretsky’s action if he himself does not?

‘Are you an atheist?’ Innokenty asked me.

‘No, I don’t define myself that way. I’m most likely a person who trusts scientific knowledge. If science proves to me that God exists, well then…’

‘Don’t delude yourself. Science hasn’t been able to answer the most important questions. And it cannot, not one of them.’

‘For example?’

‘How did everything arise from nothing ? How does a soul come about and where does it go? There’s oceans of questions and they all lie beyond the boundaries of science.’

‘Possibly. Even so, it’s difficult for me to step across those boundaries.’

Although I sometimes step across them.

I’m stepping across them now, where things relate to Innokenty.

He read me a phrase from a church canticle. Its point is that if God desires it, the natural order of things is overcome.

In Innokenty’s and my case, the framework of science is tighter-fitting than ever: it’s just poking into my ribs. Squeezing religious thought into me: that only He can help here.

Geiger and I talked about God. He does not deny the possibility of God but first and foremost he believes in facts presented by science. Though there is no need to believe in facts, it’s enough to know them. There are many of those facts – hordes and hordes of them – it’s just that they all relate only to what is not fundamental. It even sometimes seems to me that those facts distract from what is fundamental. Of all the millions of small explanations, it is the one that is all-embracing that doesn’t come together. And won’t come together because those things are located in different dimensions. So Geiger is waiting in vain here for a transition from quantity to quality. A explains B, B explains C, and so on until infinity, but where is whatever explains all that infinity in its entirety?

An abundance of discoveries befogged the heads of my former contemporaries who made atheism a fashion, too. Even then, they were reminiscent of a ladybug on the highway who’s charmed by her own motion and crawls a dozen meters. The ladybug seems to think she’s learned and grasped everything. She will never find out, though, where the highway begins and where it leads. I shared this comparison with Geiger. He narrowed his eyes:

‘The ladybug is God’s creature, though, despite her arrogance. And God allows varying views.’

A cunning Teuton; you can’t get the upper hand.

‘Of course the ladybug is God’s creature, which is why she was granted wings. An insect needs only to fly up into the sky to see the entire road, don’t you see? There was a children’s song about that.’

‘Why “was”?’ he laughs. ‘There still is.’

Geiger finally reported to Platosha about Voronin. Gradually, after preparing him, but he told him. Platosha raised his eyes to Geiger and looked at him for a long time. I thought (feared) he’d rush to Voronin’s right away but he didn’t. He asked calmly when we’re going to see him.

From this, one might think at first that Platosha was somehow reacting inappropriately to the news. I think Geiger had that impression. But it seems like Platosha goes through the most significant things in silence. Although… Geiger offered him his hand as he was leaving. Maybe he expected some sort of inference or something about news that stunned us. But then Platosha suddenly said:

‘If it’s no trouble, Geiger, describe weapons stopped at the station in Siverskaya. They’re being transported on open, flat-bed cars. Autumn 1914. Fog changing to mist.’

Autumn 1914. Fog changing to mist.

The weapons’ barrels are raised upward. Dark green, gradually emerging from grayness. Pensively aiming into the sky, the splendor of their matte luster.

Drops flow down them and fall heavily below. The drops flow along the metal platforms, along wheels that shine in the places they touch the rails.

A kingdom of motionless metal; God forbid it budges. It rattles and shakes softly, answering the military trains passing through.

Sooner or later, they’ll pull the wheel wedge out from under the foremost car and bring over a steam engine. Everything will start into motion. Sorrowful motion to the west.

All that harsh metal will oppose the softness of the human body. Its – the body’s – oneness. It will scatter into small pieces.

The weapons will lose their pensiveness and perhaps even dry off. They will shoot unceasingly, both hitting their targets and missing. Actually, they can shoot when they’re wet, too.

After Nastya went to the university, I read. Later I watched the news on TV but quickly shut it off. I took the photograph of Professor Voronin off the chest of drawers and examined it. There’s the professor sitting in an armchair, legs crossed. His elbow is leaning into a small table with a pile of books. There’s a cane in his hand (he never carried a cane). His hair is combed back; there are symmetrical islands of gray on a beard that is still mostly black. A particular academic chic. I search the professor’s eyes for traces of future suffering – that happens in old photographs, it’s discovered in hindsight – but no, there seems to be none of that… Could he really not have foreseen it? Or was he conforming to the photographer’s expectations and looking at himself through the photographer’s eyes?

The wrenching motionlessness of pre-revolutionary snapshots. Nastya, it occurs to me, never saw her great-grandfather in motion. But I saw. And, incidentally, I see. I freely enter the silver frame and observe the professor setting the cane aside and rising slowly from the chair. It is possible there’s even a sigh or, let’s say, a crack of the joints, since the person has been sitting motionless in that photograph for nearly a century. His gait is slightly pigeon-toed and I could have showed that to Nastya, but that would not be the same thing. No matter who or what I might show, it would be my portrait.

I take the album about Solovki from the bookshelf. I open it to page seventy-seven (I even remember the page!) and see a photograph of a person with the exact same surname: Voronin. You cannot say his face is ferocious; Nastya confirmed this, too, when I showed him to her. I wanted him to have a sharply sloping forehead and fangs coming out of his mouth. Reflecting his inner substance. But no: he has a high forehead, well-proportioned features, neatly combed hair, and is smoothly shaven. He turned out to be tenacious, like all vampires. With his appearance, he could have worked as an assistant school principal or the director of a club and nobody would have discovered his inclination for bloodsucking. He and I will meet tomorrow. I am astounded at my calm. Perhaps that is because the news about Voronin is too unbelievable.