Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

‘Absolutely right. Maybe it only seems they didn’t happen. Just like when it seems something didn’t exist but it did.’

The main thing is not to overvalue events as such. I do not think they come into being as something internally particular to a person. After all, they are not a soul that determines personality and is inseparable from the body during life. There is no inseparability in events. They do not compose a part of a person: to the contrary, a person becomes part of them. A person falls into them as people fall under a train – and just have a look at what’s left of you after that .

I ask myself yet again: what should be considered an event, anyway? Waterloo is an event for some people, but for others an event is an evening discussion in the kitchen. Let us suppose there is a quiet discussion in late April, under a lampshade with a dim, blinking light bulb. The sound of automobile engines outside. The discussion itself – with the exception of individual words – might not remain in the memory. But the intonations remain: they are tranquil, as if all the world’s serenity entered into them that evening. When I felt like having serenity, I recalled those exact intonations and that exact April discussion.

No, no, I was recalling a discussion at a railway station in the winter, too, but the question is, what year? I suppose it was 1918 or, for example, 1922: I could still have witnessed it in those years. In essence, nothing prevents that discussion from occurring in my absence in, say, 1939. Even so, I did not take part in it, I only listened. But its fundamental quality would not change even if I had not listened: in terms of its degree of tranquility, that discussion is not inferior to what is described above. And in the metaphysical dimension of the phenomenon, the discussion meant only one thing: striving for serenity.

Now, regarding the main thing. Waterloo and a tranquil discussion only seem incomparable at first glance because Waterloo is world history but the discussion apparently is not. That discussion, though, is an event of personal history, and world history is but a small part – a prelude or something – of that. It is clear that under circumstances like that Waterloo will be forgotten, even though a good discussion never will.

Platosha’s saying strange things. I’ve made it a rule to agree with him.

January 1939. A railway station.

Consider it a polar station: snowdrifts to the windows, icicles to the ground.

Four o’clock in the afternoon but it’s already twilight.

A yellow light in the window. When frozen, it seems to transform into a large lantern. A lighthouse for those walking to the railway. There aren’t many of those who walk: the trains run infrequently here.

A weak bulb burns in the waiting room (let’s be blunt: what kind of a room is this?) and that is what fills the window with its light. In the corner is a potbelly stove. Not the greatest interior here, but it’s warm. There are footprints of melted snow on the plank floor.

Two people are sitting on a bench, having an unhurried discussion.

The cashier is listening in on their conversation from her window. Occasionally she adds something.

About once an hour, freight trains or long-distance trains rush past the station. Neither type stops here. They drench the window with steam and then their cars or tanks begin clacking monotonously.

During those moments, the chair shakes underneath the cashier. The bench shakes under the two having a discussion, too. They go silent and wait for the train with an emphatically patient look.

On their knees are fur hats with earflaps; they tug at them with fingers reddened from the cold. One’s hair is tousled, the other’s is the opposite, flattened.

That’s how fur hats with earflaps affect people differently.

Why did God resurrect Lazarus? Maybe Lazarus understood something that could only be understood after dying? And that understanding summoned him back to earth. More specifically, he was granted a kindness, a return.

Or maybe there was a grievous sin on him that could only be corrected while alive and he was resurrected for that? Only it is unlikely a person like that could carry a grievous sin.

It is known that Lazarus never smiled after his resurrection. Which means earthly matters could no longer evoke emotion by comparison with what he saw there .

I saw nothing when I was removed from life. Then again, I did not die.

1958. A summer morning on the Fontanka River. The sun hits window panes and rushes to the river at a sharp angle. A yardman in a white apron is spraying the granite embankment with water from a hose. When he presses a finger to the end of the hose, he increases the water’s pressure and it polishes the grainy pink surface with a hiss. A yardman’s task is not as simple as it may seem, and it does not lack for danger. The yardman lets go of the end of the hose and looks absently at his red finger. Then he looks at the water and its weak-willed flow. He shakes his head. He presses the end of the hose again and now he’s spraying, undistracted. He shifts the stream from the sidewalk to the granite parapet and, further, to an ornamental grating. The metal transforms the stream into a million mist droplets and they turn into a rainbow in the sun.

An automobile – a Pobeda with its top down – drives along the freshly rinsed roadway. The wheels make a soft, damp sound and small watery crests form behind them. A woman with light-colored hair, wearing glasses, is behind the wheel; she’s smiling. Alongside her, on the front seat, is a folder fastened with a tie. A professor. It’s very likely the woman is a professor. She’s driving to the university or, let’s say, to the public library. The morning is greeting her with a coolness that streams, unhurried, out of dark, high-walled courtyards. It’s damp in the courtyards, summer is only at the top stories of the buildings, where flower pots are placed in open windows. Below is cold and mud. I’d have liked to add ‘and snow’ but that would not be correct. There is only cold and mud.

In thinking about how to provide for the future of my family, I catch myself realizing I will not witness what happens to them. There is already no place for me in that future. The only way out is to transfer my I into them. Or for me to enter their I . I am not ruling out that, during the course of our common motion, we will meet in the middle and our I will become common to all of us. Nastya and I need to work out some common views and assessments of situations, inasmuch as my remaining time allows that. We need to at least reach positions on the most crucial things, so the absence of one of us will not be noticeable. So the one who is absent will feel comfortable that decisions will be made in the only proper way.

I was stunned today.

When I stopped by at the Platonovs’ this evening, I saw a drawing by Innokenty. A portrait of Zaretsky.

I don’t know precisely what to call the technique, I suppose it’s a charcoal drawing. Something softer than a pencil.

The contours break off in some places; in others they dissolve, somewhere unnoticed, in the paper.

A figure bent over a table. Splayed fingers ruffling hair.

On the table are a bottle and a glass with vodka at the very bottom. A piece of sausage with the end bitten off.

There’s not even a shadow of caricature in the portrayal. Either in the face of the sitting man or in how he’s propping up his head or even in the bottle and sausage. The drawing is deeply tragic.

The sitting man is mourning something (perhaps his own life) and the vodka and sausage are his only witnesses. The facial features are refined. The shoulders are hunched.