Vita Nostra

by Marina Dyachenko

  She stopped at the door.

  Kostya wept noiselessly, kneeling on the floor, stuffing the hem of his blue tee-shirt into his mouth. On the table, among dirty dishes, lay a crumpled piece of yellow paper—a telegram.

  Sasha already knew what had happened. She just could not believe it.

  “Grandma,” Kostya managed through the tears. “I won’t forgive… never… Grandma!”

  He doubled up and touched his forehead to the floor.

  ***

  Several time during the last eighteen months Sasha heard the crackling sound with which the threads that held together the familiar world ripped apart. She thought she was used to it.

  The catastrophe that happened to Kostya once again reminded Sasha that all these months she walked along the edge of a precipice. All her cramming, the dusty textbooks, the endless little everyday things added up and formed a razor’s edge, upon which Sasha was balancing… and keeping that balance. So far.

  On January third Kostya departed for the funeral. Half of Group A went to the train station to say goodbye. Sasha did not go.

  Lisa did not go either.

  Denis Myaskovsky, with whom Sasha had never been friendly, sat on a bench in the middle of the yard, blindly doodling in the snow with a twig. In response to Sasha’s questioning glance, he shook his head:

  “Nothing terrible. Could be worse.”

  Denis’s advisor was Liliya Popova; that night Sasha thought that Denis was lucky.

  In the evening Lisa went somewhere. Sasha asked timidly whether she could be of any help, and Lisa gave her such a look that Sasha’s lips froze in mid-sentence. Lisa had her own relationship with Farit Kozhennikov, and faint-hearted Sasha preferred not to know how exactly Lisa was going to pay for the failed exam. Meanwhile, the winter finals continued; Sasha overheard one second-year telling another: “Did you hear, the little’uns had a lot of casualties…”

  “It’s not like they weren’t forewarned,” his companion reasoned.

  Sasha stopped sleeping again. She went to bed, stared at the ceiling, tossed and turned, then rose and went to the kitchen to make tea. Oksana slept soundly; Lisa sat over the exercise book. Sasha could imagine her fear. Portnov was capable of failing her again; he wasn’t likely to show mercy. This institution of higher education had no such concept as mercy.

  “Vita nostra brevis est…”

  Sasha thought of her mother. There, far away, existed normal world and normal life. People work, laugh, watch television. Soon Sasha would appear there—but not for long. Only for a month. And then she would have to return to the Institute, work on the exercises and read the paragraphs, and feel the iron garrote, spikes on the inside. It was a harsh collar, very cruel. She went where she was led. She was changing, fading internally, thinking somebody else’s thoughts. And she could not escape.

  The entire first year class, both A and B groups, sunk into their studies. Kostya came back on the seventh, on Orthodox Christmas Day, before the Philosophy exam.

  Sasha volunteered to be the first and waived her right to prepare her answers. She rattled off her facts about Aristotle and Kant. Smiling genially, the professor gave her an A.

  “Please,” Sasha said softly, “don’t fail Kozhennikov. There is a tragedy in his family. His grandmother just died.”

  The philosophy professor gazed at her in surprise. She did not say anything, just gave Sasha back her grade book.

  Kostya got a C, even though, according to eyewitnesses, he never uttered a single word.

  January twelfth was approaching, the day of the last exam and everyone’s departure. The frightened hush that reigned among the first years after the Specialty exam was slowly disintegrating. Already people laughed, kissed, already they furtively—under their jackets—carried vodka and red wine into the kitchen; people seemed happy about their Philosophy grades and hoped that the History professor would be just as lenient.

  Kostya did not talk to anyone. He did not seem to notice Zhenya Toporko who followed him everywhere. He also—Sasha understood that, and her terror rose higher and higher—stopped studying, stopped working on the exercises. He moved, no, rolled down a sharp slope, toward his second failure.

  “Don’t feel sorry for him,” Oksana advised. “I heard he and Zhenya broke a bed in Room 19, with all their humping. They ended up propping it up with a brick.”

  Sasha did not respond.

  “He’s your advisor’s son, after all. Family matters.”

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

  “Well,” Oksana hesitated. “How old was his grandmother? Seventy-six? Not exactly a spring chicken, was she.”

  Under Sasha’s glare, Oksana stopped talking and pretended to be very interested in the contents of her cooking pot. It seemed that out of the entire population of the dorm, Oksana was the only one who knew how to cook; from time to time she spoiled herself and her neighbors with some delicious homemade ragout or cabbage dumplings.

  Sasha left the kitchen, went downstairs and knocked on the door numbered seven. Zakhar’s voice answered:

  “Come in!”

  Sasha walked in. The room was indescribably messy. Items of clothing from underwear to winter jackets were strewn on the chairs and the floor. A thick layer of textbooks, glossy nudie magazines and crumpled sheets of paper, socks and dirty plastic plates covered the desks. The miasma of old cigarette smoke was far heavier than in Sasha’s room.

  Zakhar leaned over the book. Lenya, the third roommate, stood in the corner, holding up his hands and staring at some point in the distance. He did not blink. Had Sasha seen this earlier, in September, she would be scared to the point of getting sick to her stomach. Now she was pretty sure that Lenya was simply going through his mental exercises.

  Kostya lay on his bed facing the wall.

  “Eh,” Zakhar caught Sasha’s eyes. “I keep telling him, study, you moron, it’ll just get worse. But he’s had it, he’s done. We had a guy like that last year… The winter finals broke him.”

  “Was he expelled?” Sasha asked idiotically.

  Zakhar gave her a gloomy sneer.

  “Expelled… yeah, they expelled him… all over the place. He went kind of crazy, and… Did you want something?”

  Sasha looked at Kostya.

  “Zakhar, how did you get Portnov’s glasses?”

  “I went over to him and asked.”

  “And he agreed?”

  “Of course. He said it’d be cool.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “Well, more or less. Why?”

  “No reason….What will happen to us?”

  Zakhar clicked the switch of his desk lamp:

  “You and I will graduate. Lenya as well. That one… I don’t know.”

  “What will happen to us when we graduate?”

  Zakhar hesitated.

  “We will change. Everything will change. Our vision, hearing, our entire organism will transform itself. Then… during the winter finals there will be this crucial placement test that qualifies you for moving to another level. And then…”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think they tell the second years everything? But I think we’ll stop being human altogether.”

  “Then who are we going to become? Robots?”

  “I think it’s different for everyone. Specialization begins during the third year, after the placement exam. I guess that’s what happens.”

  “But what is the point? What is it for? Who is it for?”

  Lenya did not blink. Whatever was happening in the room held no interest for him. Zakhar rubbed the tip of his nose and smiled uneasily, as if Sasha and her questions embarrassed him.

  “Are the teachers human?” she wouldn’t give up.

  “The gym teacher is definitely human…”

  “I am not talking about the gym teacher! You know whom I meant!”

  Zakhar licked his lips:

  “I know as much as you do… What color is your hair?”

/>   “Black,” Sasha said, puzzled. “Dark-brown. Why…”

  “I keep thinking it’s purple,” Zakhar closed his tired eyes. “Everyone has yellow hair, and yours is purple. Colored spots. Portnov says it’s normal, it’s supposed to go away.”

  Sasha looked at Kostya again. He was not asleep. Sasha knew he was simply pretending.

  “Be careful on vacation,” Zakhar said. “One girl in my group went home after the winter finals, enjoyed her vacation, freedom got into her head and she said to her parents: I got into a totalitarian cult, I am being poisoned with psychedelic drugs, I’m losing my mind, save me. Her parents had money, so they put her into some prestigious clinic for treatment…”

  “What happened?”

  “When Farit brought her back a week later, she was already an orphan. She lasted one semester, failed the summer finals, and that’s when she went really mad. She’s at some nuthouse now.”

  “No way!”

  Zakhar closed his eyes.

  “Listen, I passed Specialty, but I still have my English exam. Did you want to tell Kostya something?”

  Sasha took a deep breath. She picked up a mug with leftover tea and upended it over Kostya’s head.

  He leapt up. Of course, he was awake; he stared at Sasha as if at an executioner.

  “What do you want? What? Just let me die! All of you, let me die!”

  “Control yourself,” Sasha said.

  She was surprised to hear Portnov’s notes in her own voice.

  ***

  Kostya’s makeup test loomed in three days.

  “You must do this. Everything else we’ll deal with later.”

  “I can’t. I…”

  “Shut up! You’re a weakling, you’re not a man, you’re slime, impotent! You don’t know how to fight!”

  His shoulders slumped in response.

  “Listen,” Sasha said. “If we learn all this… If we get to the end of the course… we shall become just like them. And we shall speak their language. Then we’ll take revenge upon your father. I promise.”

  Kostya slowly looked up. For the first time Sasha noticed something besides grief and despair in his eyes.

  “And if they crush us, we won’t be able to avenge ourselves. Right now we are weak. But we’ll become different. We’ll find a way to pay them back.”

  “I just can’t,” Kostya said. “Ten exercises in three days—it’s not possible.”

  “It’s possible. I did twenty.”

  “What?!”

  “Pick up your book! Read the exercise out loud!”

  Hour followed hour. More often Sasha wanted to hit him, punch him to make him focus; to make him concentrate and finish up what he’d already half completed. She could not peer inside his imagination, but managed to distinguish success from failure by his eyes and his breathing.

  When he missed a cue at the end of a long sequence of five complex exercises, she lost her patience and slapped him on the cheek. He recoiled, clutching his face:

  “What the hell?”

  “Concentrate!” Sasha screamed in his face. “Focus and do it from the beginning, or I swear, I’ll do it again!”

  Belatedly, she felt her palm burning. She was surprised at her own reaction: never in her life had she actually hit anyone. Even as a joke. And now she was ready to grab a broom with a long handle that happened to stand in the corner of the room, and beat him with that handle, thrash him, cause him pain.

  In the evening he wanted to go to sleep, but Sasha wouldn’t allow him. She sat up with him the entire night, and at daylight, around nine o’clock, he suddenly became aware—and understood how these exercises were to be done.

  They sat on the chairs brought into the hallway from his room. Around them things were happening, people stomped by, yelled, laughed, complained about lack of sleep, asked for snacks; at that moment, Kostya accepted as reality that in two days he would pass the exam.

  And only now Sasha understood what agony he carried around inside him all these days.

  ***

  “Sasha! I’m so glad you called! We are getting ready to meet you tomorrow, and we have such a huge surprise for you!”

  “Mom… I am sorry, I won’t be able to come tomorrow.”

  Pause.

  “Sasha… How? What happened?”

  “This boy here is taking a makeup test. I’m helping him.”

  Another pause.

  “Who is this boy?”

  “My classmate.”

  “Oh… We are so anxious to see you… It’s the Old New Year…”

  “I will do my best to arrive on the fourteenth,” Sasha said. “I honestly… I just can’t get home earlier.”

  ***

  Strangely enough, she got another ‘A’ in History. Considering that she did not study at all. She got very lucky: she knew the question really well, attended the lecture and took notes, her notes were really good, and now she could remember everything to the minute detail.

  “I wish I had more students like you,” the History professor beamed at her. Lowering her eyes in false modesty, Sasha asked:

  “Please… Kozhennikov just had a death in the family… he’s devastated. Please give him a ‘C,’ I’ll make sure he catches up.”

  The History professor tortured Kostya for nearly a full hour, got absolutely nothing out of him, wavered and pursed her lips, but at the end did give him a ‘C.’

  That night almost all of the first years departed. Only a few people stayed behind, people whose trains arrived in the morning, and those with makeup tests scheduled for the thirteenth.

  Sasha stayed.

  The third years’ placement exam—that very important one, the one that was crucial for the next level—was scheduled for the thirteenth as well. No jokes were made about the unlucky number. The dorm was half empty and oddly quiet.

  In the morning the third years congregated in the assembly hall. Lisa, Denis and Kostya waited in Auditorium number 1 (the misfits from Group B were scheduled one hour later). Sasha roamed the halls; not a sound could be heard from the assembly hall. As if it were completely empty.

  Then Portnov emerged. Sasha thought he looked aggravated. She managed to hide behind the bronze stallion’s leg just in time. Portnov entered Auditorium number 1. Sasha heard his dry voice: “Get ready. Pavlenko, you’re first.”

  Sasha bit her lip.

  Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen.

  Then Lisa popped out of the auditorium. She was pale as plaster. Sasha felt scared.

  Lisa spotted her. She swallowed.

  “What happened?” Sasha couldn’t help it.

  “I passed,” whispered Lisa.

  And, hugging Sasha’s neck, she burst into sobs.

  It was so unexpected, and it actually hurt: Lisa’s watch snagged on a lock of Sasha’s hair and pulled it quite painfully. It also felt weird: no one had ever sobbed on Sasha’s shoulder. She only encountered this in novels. Her sweater became soggy with Lisa’s snot and tears; shyly, hesitantly, Sasha stroked her back.

  “You see…you’ve done well. Everything is good now.”

  Lisa detached herself and, wiping her face with her sleeve, ran toward the girls’ bathroom; on the way she stumbled, then tried to perform some swing dance moves. She did it all on her own, Sasha thought. I don’t know what Farit did to her, but it does not look like any sort of lenience.

  Denis was the second one to emerge. Unlike Lisa, he was red rather that white.

  “How did you do?”

  “A ‘C,’” Denis could not believe himself. “Holy cow… It’s just…”

  “How’s Kostya?”

  “He’s up right now,” Denis was already thinking of something else. “Sasha, I’m going to get wasted. I’ll go into town. I’ll drink myself to the point of oblivion, like a pig in the mud!”

  He smiled beatifically, like Cinderella before the royal ball.

  Denis left. The third years’ exam was still going on, and silence reigned in the assembly hall and i
n the entire school. Losing her composure, Sasha measured the hall with her footsteps.

  The sun came out. The glass dome over the statue was set ablaze. The humongous equestrian swam out of darkness as if lit up by limelight. Who was he? Why was he placed there? Sasha walked and walked, listening to the sound of her footsteps. Time passed. Kostya did not come out.

  Finally, the door opened; Sasha flew toward it and almost ran over Portnov. It was him, not Kostya, who exited the auditorium: glasses on the tip of his nose, blond ponytail thrown over his shoulder.

  “Samokhina..”

  Sasha stepped back. Portnov gave her a once-over; they hadn’t seen each other since he recorded an A in her grade sheet.

  “I did pass him…” Portnov gave a casual nod toward the auditorium. “I did pass him, although… Come with me.”

  He turned to the concierge’s glass booth. Sasha peeked into the auditorium and saw Kostya, sweaty, exhausted but not brought to his knees.

  “Did you pass?”

  He nodded curtly, as if not believing it himself. Portnov got the keys from the concierge and signed her journal.

  “Samokhina, auditorium thirty-eight.”

  He walked along the corridor, jingling the keys in his hand. Sasha followed him as if on a leash.

  “Did you hit him?”

  The key turned in the lock.

  “No. Well, yes. It just sort of happened…”

  “I understand. Come in.”

  She entered. The chairs were stacked feet up to the ceiling, seats down on the only table in the auditorium. Portnov flipped the chairs back.

  “Come over here.”

  A bright-green light, refracted in the pink stone of Portnov’s ring, shot into Sasha’s eyes. She staggered. Portnov grabbed her elbow.

  “When is your train?”

  “I don’t know… I returned my ticket for today...”

  “I see. There are no tickets for tomorrow; you may not be able to leave.”

  Sasha swallowed hard. Portnov took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit up and immediately put his cigarette out:

  “Sorry. I forgot you don’t smoke.”

  That surprised Sasha. Portnov was the first person in the school who noticed such a minor detail, and it was obvious that he really wanted a cigarette.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I’m used to it. Please smoke.”