Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

Vica’s first reaction on entering Regina’s apartment and meeting Regina and Sergey was that, yes, they were true Muscovites. She immediately grasped the vast difference between Vadik and them. Sergey and Regina didn’t have to work at being Muscovites, didn’t have to prove that to anybody, they just were. They were born into the world of privilege and they took it for granted. That was precisely what made them true Muscovites — the fact that they took it for granted! Vadik couldn’t see it. He was proud to be a Muscovite, and that pride betrayed the fact that he wasn’t. But while Regina with her forlorn gaze and sallow complexion didn’t interest Vica in the least (“a fish asleep,” she thought), she couldn’t take her eyes off Sergey. She didn’t think he was handsome, not at first. He was short, thin, with a head too big for his body and a nose too big for his face. But then she noticed that Sergey resembled that actor in Truffaut’s films she and Vadik had just seen (Jean-Jacques? Jean-Pierre something?) and saw what she initially perceived as flaws in a completely new light. Sergey was graceful, both his movements and his manner of talking were. Vica had never observed this quality in a man before, so she didn’t recognize it right away, but once she did she found it deeply attractive. He was graceful and passionate. He said that he was spending most of the time at the Lenin library doing research for an article about the concept of singularity applied to linguistics. He talked about the idea of singularity at length, and he would close his eyes for a moment or two as if overwhelmed by the intensity of his insights. Vadik liked to talk about scientific concepts too, but he wasn’t really passionate about them, he didn’t have the ability to get consumed by them the way Sergey did. He couldn’t possibly generate as much heat as Sergey did. She thought of the scientific fact that impressed her most when she was a child. “Inside the Earth, there is a hot glowing core,” their teacher said, “and if not for that core, life on Earth wouldn’t be possible.” Vica kept thinking about that for a long time, kept touching the ground to check if it was even a little bit hot. That’s what Sergey had, she thought that day at Regina’s place, a hot glowing core.

But he was taken, Sergey was. By this slovenly boring Regina, who obviously took him for granted, the way she took everything in her life for granted. Her beautiful old apartment, her paintings, her famous mother. Vica was sure that it was Regina’s mother who ensured her daughter’s acceptance to the most prestigious university in Russia, while Vica had to claw her way to medical school. Did Regina even love Sergey? Did she even want him? Was she even capable of wanting something or somebody with the same passion as Vica? How was it fair that Regina had Sergey?

They had to leave early, because Vadik had to go to work (he worked nights at a programming center). Back at her dorm, Vica couldn’t fall asleep for a very long time. She would get up and pace around the room, then go back to bed, then get up and pace around the room again, thinking and thinking and thinking about Sergey. She finally fell asleep, praying that the next day she would feel calmer and would be able to go on with her life undisturbed. But when she woke up, she felt lovesick, angry, and determined to act. She had a quick breakfast, took the subway to the Lenin library, and got a temporary pass to the collections. She spent the entire day there, just walking around, hoping to see Sergey. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there the next day either. When she finally saw him on her fourth day at the library, by the bookshelves at the far corner of the reading room, she was so nervous that she wanted to hide.

“Vica!” he shouted from across the room, making the other library patrons frown and shush him.

Vica dumped Vadik the very next day, but it took the “supersensitive” Sergey another three weeks to break up with Regina.

It was then that Vica understood that you couldn’t will or force love. Love was all about surrendering her will to a force that was larger than anything she had encountered. A point of no return just like the singularity. How impatient she and Sergey were to take possession of each other, to penetrate each other as deeply and absolutely as they could. How greedily they listened to each other’s childhood stories, how greedily they studied each other’s peculiarities, as greedily as they made love. How eager they were to take that journey to the United States, to explore another country, to embark on a never-ending adventure together.

And what a crushing disappointment it turned out to be. Their disgusting apartment in Brooklyn, Vica’s surprise pregnancy, the botched delivery by an exhausted intern that resulted in a horrible infection for her. (Thank God the baby was okay!) Sergey’s losing interest in sex with her. There were times when he couldn’t even get it up for her. The boredom, the hopeless, bottomless boredom of their daily routine. At night, as Vica lay in bed alone (Sergey was studying) with a heat pack attached to her aching back, facing away from sleeping Eric in his crib and his stinky overflowing diaper pail, she began to fantasize about her former boyfriends and how she would be so much better off with any of them. Especially Vadik. He had large hands. Rough fingers. Large dick too. She didn’t get to see it, but she imagined it as large. Way larger than Sergey’s. It was such a mistake to leave Vadik for Sergey. If only she was granted a chance to fix that horrible mistake. When Vadik announced that he had found a job in New Jersey and was coming here to live, Vica thought she would go crazy with anticipation.

Then Vadik arrived, only to fall in love with somebody else on his very first day here. But still, Vica kept chasing him, up until they finally got their sick, stupid, embarrassing two hours on the couch.

Vadik, Vica thought. He’s been acting strange lately. He seemed tense when they had that dinner at Whole Foods. Reluctant to discuss either Sergey or Virtual Grave. Was it because of his sense of loyalty to Sergey? Ugh, what a mess.

Vica needed to pee. Her first thought was to go back to the deli on Madison, but she didn’t want to bump into that Outer Borough man again. The Met was right there. She decided to pay a dollar for a ticket and go look at the collections after she used their restroom.

She hadn’t been to the Met in ages. You couldn’t consider yourself a refined and cultured person if you hadn’t been to the Met in ages, could you? But then did New Yorkers even go there? Tourists and art students went there, yes, but what about regular New Yorkers? Vica tried to think of the most cultured New Yorker she knew. Regina? Regina wasn’t a real New Yorker. Eden? No, Eden never went there. Both Eden and her husband had graduated from Harvard, so they didn’t have to go to the Met because they didn’t need to prove they were cultured.

Well, screw Eden and her husband. Vica would go to the Met, not because she needed to prove that she was cultured, but because she truly enjoyed art.

She bought her ticket for a pay-what-you-wish dollar and asked the guard about the restrooms. He pointed to the Egyptian wing. Vica walked briskly past all those mummies and gravestones. She always hated the Egyptian wing, because it reminded her of a cemetery, which it essentially was. These people seemed to have devoted their entire lives to preparing for death. Such a waste. Such a stupid horrible waste, Vica thought as she peed and then washed her hands in the tomblike bathroom. But then weren’t modern people even more stupid when they chose to simply ignore death? Ethan was right. Death was inevitable, enormous, and terrifying. Wouldn’t it be wiser to make at least some effort to be prepared?