Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

I didn’t talk him out of it. I just said I’d meet him at the airport.

He didn’t explain his action at all, but what kind of explanations could there be, anyway? He said only that an understanding of the matter only came to him in Munich.

Well then, it’s good that an understanding came to somebody. Me, I don’t understand anything. I don’t even know if intervention from the Munich doctors would have been useful.

I know one thing: I offered him that opportunity. And he made his choice.

I’m writing by hand for the first time in several months. That isn’t at all simple: my hand doesn’t move well. Geiger calls this ‘problems with fine motor skills.’ I’m writing and not typing because it turns out it’s forbidden to use a computer when a plane is landing. The word landing contains its own overstatement. A half-hour ago, they announced that the plane’s landing gear won’t extend. We cannot land.

I’m writing because I need something to do. Some people are looking out the windows. They might not have looked, but they were ordered to open the shades. In the event of an emergency landing, the eyes would not need to waste time acclimatizing themselves to natural light. Some people are crying, but it’s better to write. I think paper is more reliable than a computer. Unlike a computer, paper would not be destroyed when hitting the ground. True, it can burn.

The airplane is using up fuel so that doesn’t happen. There have already twice been commands to press your head against the seatback in front of you, then twice the plane made a landing approach. After flying over the runway, it smoothly rose into the sky: yet again, the landing gear had not extended.

I am in a window seat in one of the airliner’s last rows. To my right is an elderly German with a white band above his collar. I know it denotes his belonging to the clergy. He asks with a mild German accent:

‘How many of us are flying here, about three hundred people?’

‘At least,’ I answer.

His line of thinking is comprehensible but I don’t want to follow it. I turn away, toward the window. Petersburg is under the wing, but not the slightest sign of landing gear. From time to time, a crew member approaches a window but sees the same things I do: the lines of Vasilyevsky Island, the cupola of St Isaac’s Cathedral, and the spire of Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral. It is a rare city that can present such beauty for a last moment.

The airplane’s captain comes out of the cockpit and addresses the passengers using a microphone. He says that landing-gear failure is a common occurrence in aviation and nobody has died from that yet. His appearance radiates calm. The first bars of The Seasons sound in the speakers. The stewardesses appear in the parallel aisles at the same time. They are no longer smiling like at the beginning of the flight but panic is not noticeable on their faces, either. The captain (his uniform brand-new) walks through the cabin, unhurried, and disappears behind the curtain in the tail of the plane. My neighbor looks at the stately Russian beauties with fascination as they pour mineral water to the music of Tchaikovsky. Danger intensifies the perception of beauty.

Behind me are the sounds of stifled sobs and brief slaps. I turn around. Through a gap in the curtain, I can see one of the stewardesses sitting on a fold-down chair and sobbing; the captain is smacking her cheeks with his hands. His unhurried movement into the rear compartment had a very concrete mission.

In a parallel row, someone is throwing up.

My hand can already barely trace out letters, they’re becoming ever smaller and more crooked, I need a brief rest. And yes, this is important, I promised to describe Zaretsky’s murder. There doesn’t seem to be much time before landing.

The landing gear on the Munich plane is jammed. They just announced that at the airport.

I’m terrified.

I’m trying not to think about anything.

I have my journal with me and will simply describe what I see. I think Innokenty would act exactly the same way.

One thing is good: Nastya doesn’t know what’s happening. She doesn’t even know Innokenty left Munich.

People who are here to greet passengers are standing around in tears. The peculiar stillness of those preparing themselves for tragedy. A draft rustles the cellophane on bouquets: little by little, the flowers are acquiring an ominous meaning.

They’re setting up the first TV cameras in the concourse and outside.

The horrible thought flashes that in some sense a catastrophe for a sick person is… The thought is horrible in its wrongness.

Psychologists are showing up in the concourse. They immediately determine who needs help: really, you don’t need to be a psychologist for that.

They don’t approach me. I’m writing and they know that those who write are fully within psychological norms.

A TV broadcast from the airport pops up on a huge screen. Television is harsh. It’s supposedly impassive in recording what happens, but the harshness is in that impassivity.

Existence is bifurcated. There are people with bouquets here and the exact same ones are on the screen. I see myself. There’s a psychologist next to me hugging a client on the screen, stroking her spine every so often. Strange, I hadn’t seen them.

I turn around: yes, they’re standing here. The client is absentmindedly crying on the psychologist’s shoulder. It’s not yet clear if she needs to cry: this might yet all work out.

The airplane: a camera zooms in on it. A huge structure, taking up the entire screen. An opera house, ice palace, or water park, not just an aircraft. The embodiment of the idea of what is grandiose.

It’s not flying but hanging. Posing for the camera on the border of the landing field, in ripples of molten air.

It approaches for a landing. Descends.

Rushes over the landing strip.

We see the landing gear hasn’t extended again – don’t land! Don’t land…

A mutual scream.

The airplane gains altitude and departs for its next lap.

I figured out a long time ago that Platosha killed Zaretsky. With him so far away now, it’s easier for me to write about that. Of course my grandmother threw me off track with her I put out a contract , but not for long. For some reason, I simply hadn’t considered whom she had the contract with. Meaning: whom she told. When they arrested her father – my great-grandfather – she told Platosha that under no circumstances should he kill Zaretsky. It was difficult not to understand that request. I think the idea had crossed his mind anyway, but what was left for him after what she said?

I don’t picture the murder itself very well. I won’t fantasize: it’s all too serious. I’ve wanted many times to talk with Platosha about Zaretsky but just haven’t dared. Since he doesn’t speak about it, I thought I shouldn’t, either. Now, though, maybe I will. After all, it’s for good reason that he approached Geiger and me about Zaretsky: it was a request about something bigger.

And Geiger, by the way… For some reason, it seems to me that he had a hunch about it all, too. Maybe even before I did. But he’s keeping quiet, keeping quiet.

Lord have mercy. I told the priest: so I repented in confession that I once killed a man but I feel no relief. The priest responded: you asked forgiveness from God, Whom you did not kill, but perhaps you should ask forgiveness of the one you killed? My God, what can I say to the one I killed? And will he hear me from there? So I came home, took the murder weapon, and went to the scene of the crime. When I arrived there, I said: forgive me, servant of God, Nikolai, that I killed you with a statuette of Themis on a March evening in 1923. Maybe you have been waiting for those words since that same year and I just have not uttered them – I simply did not think that was possible.