Татьяна Толстая - Aetherial Worlds

Something was wrong with Nielsen. I must have made a mistake.

This was my house, after all, a living thing that I loved, and that had put its trust in me; where the sun danced on the golden floor; where the invisible glass table, the one I loved to sit at, existed: when I was away, the shadows of the dead and departed would take my place at it, no longer alive but still refracting the light that went through them, like prisms—where else could they gather to converse and drink wine? And now Nielsen was walking through this house touching everything with his sterile, prepubescent hands.

Perhaps it was Nielsen permeating my nightmares. He appeared as worminess, as decay, as rot, white fungus, pustules, lichen. A meaningless path that veered left onto a dimly lit road, or a treacherous scree—that was him. Houses with open doors, strange faces in the twilight, wet shoes—that was him. Ominous beaches, lost keys, leftovers, missed trains, a threat from above—that was him, all him. This house was my earthly pod, one of my shells. He infiltrated it, making his way under the skin. And he called upon the forces of darkness to unleash the evil eye.

I’d betrayed my treasure and I alone was to blame.

It was a bad year. I lived near the college that was sucking my soul dry, bleeding me of all that was alive inside me. There was extraordinary beauty everywhere: tall spruces, white snow; Beauteous Death. I was already in the habit of waking up at five in the morning, but there was nowhere to go at that hour, and nothing to see other than my ceiling. Hang in there, I’d tell myself, the year will go by quickly. Nielsen will leave, then I’ll sell the house and go home. This isn’t the right place for me. Once again it’s not right. I should know by now that the right place is inaccessible; maybe it exists in the past, over the green hills, or maybe it’s drowned, or, perhaps, it hasn’t materialized yet.

What if the Lord wants us to know that we can’t get anywhere on this earth, can’t own anything, can’t hold on to anyone. Perhaps only at five in the morning, though not every day, is the truth revealed to us: everything, everything that we’ve ever desired is simply a mirage, or a mock-up. Maybe… But then the night begins to vanish, the outlines of rented furniture come into view, and it’s time to get up and make coffee, strong, the way they brew it in the East, not this muddy American dishwater, and then set off for the college to give out unearned grades: I’m leaving soon anyway. I have already decided.

I gave an A to a Haitian girl for a short story that wasn’t worth a C. She knew this and freaked out when she saw the A, expecting there to be a catch. There was no catch. It was just the story of her escape in a boat, illicit, with bribes, from her island to the United States. The crew—their guides—collected payment in the form of dollars and sex: they raped all the women and girls on board. They gave no water—that was also paid for with sex. A baby died and was thrown overboard. All these details seemed matter-of-fact to her: “Does it happen any other way?” She made the journey with her mother, grandmother, and boyfriend; everyone suffered the same fate, but all were happy: they’d made it from a grave world into an aetherial one. Not everyone gets to finish that journey.

The story was simplistic, poorly put together; showing no imagination, she told everything exactly as it had, alas, happened. I sat with her for an hour after class, asking questions. Her family members were well settled here: the grandmother back to practicing voodoo, the mother taking in laundry. The boyfriend had already bought a Mercedes, and we don’t want to dwell on how he managed, but we have an inkling. As for the girl herself, thanks to a government program, she was taking a creative writing class to rack up credits toward a degree.

She was gathering her papers into a pile with trembling hands; I was collecting mine and also trembling. She couldn’t understand why she got an A and so she had come to find out; my job was to hide the reason—My goodness, I’m a dishonest Russian person, I’ll throw ten As your way: go ahead and rack up the necessary credits, you sunny, pure being who holds no grudge against her tormentors!

Oh, these scales of mine. What weights and plummets!

My lying was inspired—yes, I’m good at that!—and she bought it, trusting me that there was value in her composition, that the details had been ably chosen, that the beginning was great and the ending even better—Of course, you can improve slightly here and rewrite a bit there, but you do understand, don’t you, nothing’s ever perfect, and some writers rewrite their novels six times, if you can believe it!

I acquired a taste for this sort of thing and broke bad. I walked around with a horn of plenty, pouring out splendid grades, generously bestowing them upon anyone whom I perceived to have even the tiniest of dreams, the slightest timidity before the darkness of being—howdy, folks!—the smallest desire to get on their tiptoes and peer over the fence. Mean idiots got Ds from me, kind idiots got Bs. I forgave some slackers and not others, according to whim. When, at the end of the semester, my teacher evaluations came from the dean’s office, I tossed the entire package without even taking a look. I was done!

Goodbye to the North, to the snow and the cliffs, to the fairy-tale wooden cabins, to the faraway blue mountains, beyond which Canada lies, and to you, my friends—ours were real friendships, and I did love you, but now it’s your turn to become translucent jellyfish, now fireflies will pass right through you, as starlight is refracted just a little.

I came back to this Princeton of mine, which wasn’t really Princeton. Nielsen had already left. I walked into my house and began to inspect the rooms. I was gripped by terror and dread.

Everything that could have been broken was broken, everything that could have been damaged was damaged. This was no accidental destruction, not the result of boisterous horseplay, which could be expected from a young man—no: this was premeditated, demented, and bizarre. It was as if a worm, or a large arthropod, or a mollusk, had inhabited my house, and in some obscure stages of its life cycle hurled heaps of roe, sprayed the walls from its ink sac, laid eggs high up under the ceiling, stopping, perhaps, for a week or so in its pupa stage, and then, cracking its chitinous cocoon, emerged in new form and with a fresh need to crawl through things.

He carved holes the size of dessert plates in the walls, holes big enough for an adult’s head, let alone a child’s, to fit through; every wall had a hole at eye level. Wooden window frames, David’s pride and joy, were defaced with deep grooves, as if Nielsen had suddenly sprouted a polydactyl paw with bone claws and a desperate need to scratch against something. Upon finding a screen door, Nielsen apparently enjoyed shredding that, too, until it dangled like a ripped spiderweb. Perhaps he slept in it, or maybe hung in it upside down.

He liked to chip away at the bathtub with a hammer and chisel, but only in the near left corner. The bathtub was cast iron, and he must have been trying to get to the metal through the enamel. Apparently he didn’t find the other corners palatable.

The basement had housed some air ducts below the ceiling; they carried warm air to heat the house. Now the basement no longer housed them: Nielsen had cut them out. He ripped out sections, three yards in all, according to a plan he alone understood, a plan that no human brain could comprehend. Thinking that my eyes deceived me, I dragged a certified American contractor in to inspect the damage: What is this? Can you, please, explain?

“Holy shit,” whispered the certified American contractor, backing away in fear. In American B movies, that’s the facial expression that earthlings have as they stand there looking and not knowing what to do next when suddenly— thump! —something covered in spiderwebs and goo jumps into the frame and carries off in its jaws a young actress of average looks, the one that you always knew was going to get quartered and eaten after getting entangled in something sticky.