Vita Nostra

by Marina Dyachenko

  Sasha hadn’t skated since seventh grade. She stepped on the ice, moved forward, spreading her arms, ready to be clumsy and slow. Not even close: only a second later, she accepted the dull blades of rented skates as a continuation of her own body, and the uneven, dented ice seemed familiar and comfortable.

  She went around in a full circle. Ceased to think and simply moved. She flew, imagining the surface of the ice as the snowed in ground far below. Lights flickered in naked branches, multihued snow shimmered. Sasha skated, oblivious to her surroundings, a little surprised, but joyful; a couple of hours had passed before she got tired and looked around for a bench.

  They were sitting at the edge of the ice. A rather large cluster: four guys and as many girls, and in its epicenter reigned Ivan Konev, a law student, owner of a soft curly beard.

  “Hey, Kon.”

  ‘Hey, Sasha. Decent skating. Guys, move over.”

  Sasha joined the group.

  ***

  All of them went to the most prestigious schools, except maybe one girl, somebody’s sister, who was still a high-school student. But even she, of course, was looking forward to something economics-international-ish with a concentration in law. They had plenty of questions for Sasha, all with a hint of sympathy: what’s there, in the town of Torpa? Do they sell pickles at Torpa stores? Are there bedbugs in the dorm?

  “Only cockroaches,” Sasha assured them.

  “Ivan! It sounds fabulous! Maybe you should transfer to Torpa.”

  The girl who asked the question was a daddy’s girl in an expensive-looking pale pink sheepskin coat. She had trouble understanding why they were wasting time at some stupid ice skating rink, when normal people were enjoying themselves in decent clubs. Sasha aggravated her to no end: the girl must have had some interest in Ivan Konev. Her cell phone kept ringing ostentatiously.

  “I just might transfer there,” Konev said. “Why not?”

  Sasha changed her shoes and returned the skates to the rental office.

  “You’ve grown,” Ivan said, giving her a once-over. “I wasn’t imagining it.”

  All of them went to a café, had a few beers, and Sasha felt unexpectedly relaxed. She even managed to make two or three jokes that made everyone laugh uproariously, even the girl with the cell phone. It was already almost midnight, when the group dissipated; most people got into cabs, and Ivan Konev walked Sasha home by himself.

  “Listen, Samokhina, you have changed so much.”

  “How? I’d like to know myself, really.”

  “Well,” Ivan spread his arms. “I look at you, and it seems as if we’ve never met. And I’ve known you since first grade…”

  “Yes,” Sasha said. “But they say it does happen. People mature, you know.”

  “Maybe I really should transfer to Torpa…”

  Sasha bit back her response.

  “Your face has changed,” Konev continued. “Your eyes are strange. Pupils… Listen, do you… Are you on drugs?”

  “No,” Sasha said with surprise.

  “What is your profession called?”

  “That will be decided during the third year,” Sasha said after a pause. “Transferring to the next level… Specialization.”

  “I see,” Konev said, and it was abundantly clear that he saw nothing. “And one more thing… When you stare at something in the distance, what do you see?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, just like right now. I thought you’d forgotten about me…”

  “I did?!”

  “Listen, are you seeing anyone in that Torpa?”

  Sasha slowed down.

  “No. There was this one guy, but… anyway, not anymore.”

  “I see,” Konev repeated. “But seriously, you are going to transfer, right? To a normal school, and closer to home?”

  “Seriously? No.”

  They stopped in the dark yard of Sasha’s building. The windows were lit, a lone streetlight emitted a dull shine, and a man in a fur hat strode down the path from the underground walkway, a briefcase under his arm. Probably working late.

  “I am leaving in a week,” Sasha whispered.

  “It’s a shame. At least give me your address.”

  “Town of Torpa, Sacco and Vanzetti Street, 12-A, Room 21, Alexandra Samokhina. Write, if you…”

  Three figures emerged out of the darkness behind the passerby. The man with a briefcase didn’t have a chance to even look back: he received a blow on the head and fell down. His hat rolled away and was immediately snatched up.

  Ivan grabbed Sasha’s hand. Three people, having brought down the fourth, did not rush to scurry away with their loot: they kicked the fallen man, punched him in the stomach, in the face, stomped over him…

  As if a glass had cracked and burst into shards. As if the shards flew into her face. Sasha tore away from Konev’s spasmodic embrace.

  “Hold it! Freeze, you bastards!”

  She remembered Portnov’s caution, but could do absolutely nothing about it. Hatred towards the thugs beating up a helpless victim was far stronger that any warning.

  They dropped their victim and turned to face her. They seemed surprised to see a girl running towards them; one even stretched his lips in a smirk…

  A thin rivulet of blood spattered onto the white snow that sparkled blue under the glow of distant streetlights. And immediately—a stream, a fountain. Stars were smeared before her eyes in the ripped fabric of storm clouds; a sudden chill cut her like sandpaper. Sasha found herself sitting in a snow pile, three people lay unmoving near her, the fourth crawled away, wheezing, toward the main road.

  Her hands hurt. Both palms. Sasha looked down: both index fingers were covered by a sticky film of blood, like a dark finger shield.

  She glanced around, looking for someone. Someone was just here; stillness, darkness, a car drove by without stopping.

  Sasha dipped her hands into the snow.

  There was a telephone booth in the underground walkway. A call for an ambulance was free. Just dial zero zero three.

  ***

  In the morning, getting ready for work, Mom was slicing bread and singing softly. Sasha came out of her room, and words fought to get out of her, rising up her throat.

  “Mom,” she wanted to say, “don’t let me go back to Torpa. I can’t go back. They are doing something with me, I don’t know what. I can’t go back, I am scared!”

  “Good morning, Sasha,” Mom smiled and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “Would you like an omelet? With sausage?”

  Sasha saw her face, tenderly lit by the morning sun. Mom was alive, healthy and happy. Sasha could hear the sound of water—Valentin was in the shower.

  “Mm-hmm,” Sasha nodded, her lips squeezed tightly together.

  She went back to her room and closed the door. She fell on her knees and threw up: unspoken words rolled around the room, gold coins smeared in slime.

  ***

  “Miss! Get up!”

  “What?”

  Darkness. The train rocked softly.

  “Miss, we will be in Torpa in fifteen minutes! Get up, you have a ticket to Torpa!”

  Passengers slept under dusty railroad-issued blankets. Windows were sweaty and frosted over in some places. Snow, nothing but snow swam along both sides of the train; somewhere a spoon jingled in an empty glass.

  “I want it to be a dream,” Sasha murmured.

  But nothing happened.

  Part Two

  At the end of April the prolonged chilly spring suddenly gave way to almost summery warmth. One morning at half past four Sasha woke up with an unyielding need to wash the windows.

  Birds were waking up, and night clouds parted. Sasha sat up on her bed. Since the third years passed their placement exam and moved to a different location, the dorm had become more spacious. Lisa finally found an apartment and now lived in town, in an alley between Sacco and Vanzetti and Labor Streets. Oksana now shared a room with a friend of hers from Group B, and Sasha—what an unexpected luxury�
��now had the entire Room 21 at her disposal.

  She felt about for her slippers. She registered: “These are slippers. They protect me from cold.” Got up, then stood for a while, establishing the ever-changing gravitational vector. Approached the window.

  For the past few weeks she felt like painting her image on the glass. She painted at night when the light was on inside, and the outside was dark. Sasha traced her reflection with gouache paints. Every day the painting looked different. The morning light tried to get through it in vain: the gouache was opaque and lay in a thick, dense layer.

  “Must get water,” Sasha thought. “Windows are washed with water.”

  She moved to the door. The door frames had a lousy habit of slithering out of her reach like a marinated mushroom escaping the fork. That’s why Sasha first felt for the door with her hands, found the obstacles on the right and left sides, and only then exited the room.

  The linoleum floor shined dully. A distant window was reflected on the painted wall. “So beautiful,” Sasha thought.

  She walked along the corridor, trailing her hand on the wall just in case.

  The tin bucket stood in its usual spot under the sink. Sasha filled a one-gallon jar with water and transferred it into the bucket. One more jar. And one more. “Three gallons of water.” She picked up the bucket by its narrow handle and carried it to her room.

  In her absence the door managed to shift a couple of feet. Sasha bumped into the door frame and splashed a little bit of water. “It is fine. Now I will be able to enter.”

  She found pieces of old pillowcases that served as cleaning rags behind the radiator. The heat was turned off two weeks ago. Sasha tore off the paper strips, pulled out the yellow foam, wet one of the rags and, dripping water on the floor, guided it over the painted image: up and down and left to right. For some reason, her painted reflection had blue eyes.

  Eyes. Must see. Lately she could only think of things that could be seen through her eyes. Lines in textbooks could be viewed: Sasha read, trying not to move her lips, and the pages changed colors under her glance. Redness inched slowly from the book’s spine, filling the page with cranberry juice, and then the page faded, became yellow, and then an emerald color. When she read, Sasha stopped thinking altogether.

  The gouache paints were becoming blurry. Sasha moved her hand from side to side, every now and then dipping the rag into the bucket, but she did not squeeze it dry; her body felt relaxed, blurry like the paint. As if she, Sasha, was but a puddle of hot wax. The space around her contracted and stretched, time broke off the hands on her watch and got tangled up in the bowels of the electronic alarm clock. Time served no master and answered no one. It was just half past four—and here it was, eight o’clock, time to get ready for school.

  Sasha dropped the rug into the bucket. She glanced at the sky through the still cloudy glass. She opened the window: outside the air was cool and smelled of lilacs.

  “Get ready for school.”

  She moved her eyes to the slightly ajar door of her dresser. “Dresser is for clothes.” Put on clothes. Jeans… Get books. Notepads. Time for classes. First block is Philosophy.

  She would move in a crowd of first years, greeting them, nodding, occasionally even smiling. “These are people. Must speak with them.” She would take her usual seat and open her notes. She would listen to a succession of unfamiliar words, her face static, unmoving; she would laugh when everyone else laughed. She would take notes, write down word after word.

  She would always try to be the last one to exit the room—in order to hold the door open. Slowly. Gradually. The second block was free—no class. It was time to read the textbook.

  Holding on to the wall, she would go to the library. Greeting the librarian’s chair, she would sit by the window and open the textual module in the spot where, instead of a bookmark, lay a birthday card from Mom. The card depicted a sheep with a bouquet of bluebells.

  She picked this card on purpose. Common sense told her that her birthday was important for her mother. She called home and, while speaking, held the card in front of her eyes. Only Mom’s voice remained now: Sasha could not see her and could not imagine her, so she spoke to the sheep. The sheep smiled; Sasha knew she was supposed to feel happy, and she smiled back.

  Since that day, the card reminded her of something she could not imagine. This is a sheep; the sheep is happy. It was my birthday. I am eighteen years old. I must read Paragraphs seventeen and eighteen.

  “He did not sleep all night. He had plucked the flower because he saw in this action a deed he was in duty bound to perform.”

  Nonsensical combinations of letters stretched like caterpillars, grabbing onto each other with tin hooks. The process resembled swimming in muddy waters: Sasha would see nothing and hear only the screeching of her own ground-up thoughts. Then suddenly she would swim up to the surface, and in front of her—just for a moment—opened distant flashes of meaning.

  “At the very first glance through the glass door the blood-red petals had attracted his attention, and it seemed to him that from this moment it was perfectly clear what in particular he was called upon to perform on earth.”

  “Samokhina, go eat something. The dining hall closes in fifteen minutes.”

  “In this brilliant red flower was collected all the evil existent on earth… all evil. It flourished on all innocent bloodshed (which was why it was so red), on all tears, and all human venom.”

  The flashes of meaning ceased, and only muddy waters remained. Sasha would finish the paragraph. She placed the bookmark on the page: the sheep’s smile reminded her of something, but she had a tough time figuring out what it was exactly. Sasha would close the textbook, put it into her bag, locate the doorframe (the library doors were especially nimble and slippery). She would walk out; the corridor seemed very dark, then, filed with extremely bright lights that made visible every parquet plank, every crack, every cigarette butt on the bottom of a tin urn.

  “I am walking along the corridor. Dining hall is over there. I must eat. Here is my lunch ticket.”

  “…what in particular he was called upon to perform on earth….”

  Every second the world around her altered. Some connections strained and grew, others broke. The process resembled convulsions: every now and then Sasha would stand still, listening to herself: inside, an invisible thread would tauten, cutting and rehashing, weakening and twitching again. Occasionally, she saw herself from the outside: a small lake of melted ice cream, and in the coffee-colored slush swam a tiny acrid nubbin—Sasha’s fear. Sasha did not like looking at her fear. It looked like a half-digested chunk of meat.

  But she was not afraid, because she could not see anything that would frighten her, and she could only think of things she was able to see. Time stretched and tightened, until it was time for summer finals.

  ***

  “Samokhina, what are you thinking regarding the summer internship?”

  Brilliant rays of sun beat on the window of auditorium thirty eight. They seemed nearly as dazzling as the reflected beam of the pink stone of Portnov’s ring.

  “Nothing.”

  It was true. The fragile thread of Sasha’s thoughts was gradually turning into a dotted line. She observed things—these dust particles in the sun beam, that desk with a deep scratch, and those green tops of the linden trees outside the window. Yet she did not think about them.

  “Listen carefully, here’s what needs to be done. The summer finals will be over on June twenty-fifth. Internship starts on the twenty-sixth. Don’t forget to notify your parents.”

  Sasha was silent.

  “In August you can spend two weeks at home before school starts again.”

  “Fine,” Sasha said watching the sun beam.

  “Good for you,” Portnov said. “And now show me Exercises fifty-two through fifty-four. Simultaneously, don’t forget. Three branches of the process must be led in parallel, with a half-measure step between them. Concentrate.”

  ***


  In the middle of July, on the anniversary of her meeting with Farit Kozhennikov, Sasha balanced on a branch of a large cherry tree. Her summer internship responsibilities included going up a ladder into the thickness of tree branches, locating red berries amidst the light and shade, taking hold of them with her palm, carefully picking them off and placing them into the basket that hung on her chest.

  The garden was enormous. The cherry branches intertwined, the berries hung in clusters and could be picked from the ground, but the real magnificence started on top of the trees.

  Sasha swallowed so many cherries that her mouth was sore. Cherry juice covered her white t-shirt. Her lips seemed huge, as if blown-up. Cherry juice collected under her fingernails. Sasha was happy. The only thing that upset her was giving up all her textbooks. Sasha told Portnov that she’d lost the Exercise book; he went into her room and pulled the textbook from the crack behind the radiator. Since then Sasha stopped studying. Neither did she think. She just watched. And felt: warmth, light wind, her palms touching the tree bark, cherries caressing her face.

  It was a summer day—a single day, very warm and bright; leaves protected Sasha from the blazing sun. In the morning trucks brought the first years—no, second years already—to the garden. At midday they would be given food. Yet time stretched, lacquered cherries reflected the sun—and Sasha’s face. Lunch hadn’t arrived yet, but the day had already passed. And here was a whole week, even though this day hadn’t yet ended. Time resembled a neat bow.

  Then the weather changed. Clouds crept all over the sky, predicting a thunderstorm. Sasha spread the branches over her head and watched the sky, as if trying to commit it to memory: the edge of a cloud moving over the sun and the resulting color of mercury. A brim of a cloud, reddish like a jelly-fish. A flat whirlwind in the sky, resembling a thumbprint. Thunderstorm, Sasha thought, the rain is going to be heavy, I need to hide under an awning…

  She was still thinking of what she could see. Yet she was beginning to feel anxious: it seemed she was starting to look into the future. Predicting what was going to happen in a few minutes.