Jacob's Ladder

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  Though Vitya remained enrolled at the university, he was granted a leave of absence; he had been traumatized by the whole affair. He had discovered that life consisted of more than a roll with salami for breakfast, mathematics, and the episodic Nora. These heretofore unknown difficulties were something he had wanted neither to notice nor to know about. He had developed no immunity to hardships like this, a fact that would cause him no end of suffering later in life.

  Unlike her son, Varvara Vasilievna was adept at handling the everyday contingencies of life, and it was not for nothing that she worked for the Housing Management Committee. She acquired a valuable certificate from the Neuropsychiatry Clinic attesting that Vitya Chebotarev was subject to fits of depressive psychosis, though he was otherwise absolutely healthy. And, as later life would prove, she had not done this in vain.

  Everything fell into place. Vitya successfully defended his honors thesis and was admitted into the graduate program. Three years later, he was ready to defend his doctoral dissertation on an absolutely new subject: “Computable Operations on Sets.” It is impossible for a nonmathematical mind to grasp, and even for some mathematical minds, but at the preliminary defense, Professor N, a brilliant proponent of the newest branch of “constructive mathematics”—not yet widely accepted, but very highly regarded in the Department of Mathematical Logic—advanced sharply critical views, reproaching the defendant for failing to follow the principles of this very constructive mathematics. Vitya did not accept his premises, and calmly held forth, insisting that the most constructive objects, including his beloved algorithms, could be viewed within the framework of classical logic and mathematics, a framework that was accepted in all the other departments. This unleashed a dispute for which Vitya’s dissertation was only a pretext, because underlying the scholarly issues was a discord in personal relationships that Vitya was not privy to. Vitya listened to the noisy quarrel and couldn’t make heads or tails of what either his defenders or his opponents were arguing for or against. When he tried to interject something, he couldn’t get a word in edgewise—so he quietly stood up and left the auditorium.

  The argument dragged on for a long time after he left; the preliminary defense was aborted. Vitya followed the well-worn path to the divan, where he lay for another three months.

  Varvara Vasilievna also followed the beaten path—to the Neuropsychiatry Clinic, where medication was prescribed for her son, after which he gradually recovered.

  Meanwhile, the year 1968 had come and gone. Vitya was not aware of a single event rocking the socialist world. When his buddy Slava Berezhnoi, who dropped in from time to time to talk about important things, discovered the absolute political infantilism of his friend, he said, “You are simply another Luzin.”

  Vitya’s feathers were somewhat ruffled, since he held Luzin in very high esteem as a mathematician.

  “What do you mean by that, Slava? What does Luzin have to do with anything?”

  Slava related an anecdote that Professor Melnikov had told during a lecture. After the war, the eminent Luzin took part in a seminar, at which he said, “In 1917, the greatest event of my life took place. I began to study trigonometric series.”

  “And? What did he say next?” Vitya said, his curiosity piqued. (He also had a great deal of respect for Melnikov.)

  Slava was astonished by his naïveté. “Nothing. Everyone associated the year 1917 with another event!”

  “Which one?” said Vitya.

  Slava waved his hand, exasperated. “Vitya, 1917 was the year of the October Revolution!”

  “Oh … Oh, I see.”

  Vitya’s dissertation adviser, who was also the head of the department, paid him a visit at home two weeks after the preliminary defense fell through. By this time, Vitya was already coping with his new trauma, and had started thinking about the future again. The two specific criticisms made by his opponent that had ultimately prevented the defense from passing, which concerned Lemma 2.2 and Theorem 6.4, contained a kernel of thought that Vitya began mulling over deeply. He himself had already discerned a few defects, or, rather, inconsistencies, in his dissertation. This disturbed him, and he plunged into the debris of variable and branching sets, which reached far beyond the boundaries of the poor three-dimensional world.

  The head of the department spent two hours in the semi-basement apartment by the Nikitsky Gates, and left, saddened that his student had abandoned the actual (according to his notions) field of mathematics and leapt into a realm where those damaged by the burden of highly developed intellectual capacities grazed. These were the professional risks of being a mathematician, and the professor had already witnessed two such breakdowns in his life. Regrettable. A very capable young man, perhaps even with a dash of genius, Vitya had completed all his coursework but now refused to defend his dissertation. No job, of course. No means of subsistence. What could the professor do for him? No, there was no way he could help him.

  But in this case the professor was at least partly mistaken. For six months, Vitya gnawed at the lock and bars of the theorem, and managed to wriggle out of the seemingly hopeless situation in an unexpected, almost miraculous way. He sat down and wrote a paper. Then he called Nora. She received him, somewhat bewildered but quite glad. He spent three days with her, and a glimmer of tenderness even appeared in their relations.

  As he was leaving, he asked Nora, “Maybe we ought to get married for real? Things are going so well.”

  “But where are they going? We’re already married,” Nora said, laughing. “Live together, you mean? At your place?”

  “Well, no,” Vitya said, imagining life with Nora and Varvara under the same roof. “Perhaps if we live at your place?”

  “Here? I’m sorry, that’s not going to work.”

  Nora was surrounded by people of all stripes and colors—a most varied assortment of artists, actors, people with one foot in the theater or none at all, gifted, fascinating people who adored being on display. Not one of them was truly unique, or free of at least a touch of vulgarity and superficiality. They all aspired to be geniuses; but geniuses they were not. Vitya came closest of all of them to being a genius. Nora had already guessed this when they were still in school, and required no evidence or proof of the fact. But she couldn’t very well keep him in the house!

  Vitya had a few mathematician friends who knew his worth—his trusty friend Grisha Lieber, and Slava Berezhnoi. Who needs lots of friends, anyway? Vitya was not fine-tuned emotionally, and was incapable of conversation on subjects of general interest, so he was condemned to a life of strictly mathematical friendship.

  It was Slava Berezhnoi—who had been expelled from the university over the “carrot affair,” afterward graduating from evening courses at the Moscow Higher Technical University and taking up computer programming in the early days of the field—who found a position for Vitya in the computing center. The work suited Vitya down to the ground. From the theory of algorithms to programming was just a short leap. Mathematics had never promised to be of any practical use to Vitya; it was a captivating mental game. On the other hand, algorithms written in an artificial, simple, and logical language facilitated the solution to the most various problems, problems that were actually not connected to mathematics at all.

  The directors of the center valued him, and Slava took more pride in Vitya’s achievements than in his own. For the first time in his life, Vitya received a salary, which he spent on books about mathematics and on expensive sweets. He had more than just a sweet tooth—he was addicted to glucose. Couldn’t live without it.

  His work left him some spare time. He moved away from the strictly defined tasks of programming, solved several problems that he, in part, created, and even wrote two papers for a scholarly journal. One of them, however, the one Vitya considered to be the more successful, was returned to him with a negative review, very rude in tone. This offended him, and he took back both articles. Faced with this unfair criticism, Vitya, after a moment’s consideration, sent the pa
pers off to an American mathematical journal. He only found out they had published them a year later.

  At the same time, thanks to Vitya’s blunt honesty, he became embroiled in a conflict with the director of the center, Bogdanov. By the standards of the day, Bogdanov was a decent man, but a careerist. Not long before, he had received a secret award from the government—part of the work of the computing center was classified, involving sensitive military matters—for a new program that was intended to put the West at a disadvantage, with the aim of not merely catching up to it but outstripping it altogether.

  Bogdanov was the nominal head of the project, but he took no part in developing or implementing it. He could not have done so even if he wished to, because he understood almost nothing about computer programming. A Party man, not a scientist, he compensated for his inadequacies by insisting on adding his name to the collection of authors.

  A group of five people were involved in the project, including Vitya as the senior member, and, as the junior member, Amayak Sargsyan, who was a student intern from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He had a fine mind, it must be said.

  There was a great deal Vitya did not know about the administrative organization of the computing center. The computer itself took up an entire building. It was filled with punch cards and young women, who were in charge of delivering them from point to point, so computations, among other things, involved their rushing energetically between floors to the rhythmic clip of their high heels. Vitya did not even suspect the existence of another, invisible level, that of relations between people. In short, at a certain moment, when the program was ready to be sent to the higher-ups for final approval, Vitya noticed that the name of Bogdanov, who had made no contribution to developing the program, headed the list of authors, while the name of the highly competent student, who had helped Vitya a great deal, especially in debugging the program, was missing altogether.

  Vitya went to see Bogdanov during his office hours. Perhaps if he had begun the conversation more diplomatically the matter would have had a different outcome. But Vitya began by saying that it was unjust for Bogdanov to put his own name first on the list of authors, since he didn’t have a clue as to the merits and faults of the program, whereas the name of Sargsyan, who had taken part in the project and made a genuine contribution, for some unknown reason was absent. Bogdanov answered dryly that he would look into it.

  After this meeting, Vitya could no longer gain admittance to Bogdanov’s office. He showed up at the weekly office hours time after time, until the secretary whispered to him that he should just give up—it was pointless. Vitya then forced his way into the office and caused a bona-fide scandal. He even shouted something about the interests of the state, which the director wasn’t taking into account. Poor Amayak Sargsyan was immediately fired from the computing center. He was not permitted to defend his honors thesis, and, being an exceptionally thorough and conscientious person, he wasn’t able to write a new one in time. Vitya’s hunger for justice resulted in a great deal of misfortune for Amayak, but it strengthened his faith in humanity.

  A month and a half later, Vitya himself lost his job. He felt both indignant and dejected—not so much because his name was also removed from the list of authors as because he did not understand the first thing about this whole predatory and cruel operation.

  Vitya lay down on the divan again without a word. He did not intend to search for a new job, and he refused to answer his mother’s questions. Varvara Vasilievna, who still continued to hope that her son was a genius, began to doubt the wisdom of that elderly psychiatry professor who, shortly before his death, had predicted for Vitya a unique and outstanding role in life. Where was it, then? Where was it?

  Vitya himself was completely oblivious to the idea of any unique mental endowments or gifts he might have had. After he was dismissed from the computing center, he continued, through inertia, to think up new programs. When he had been lying in bed for a long time, he realized that his initial program could be improved. He began elaborating something that he could no longer have presented to anyone. Such was the program that his own mind was running: his brain could not live without intellectual activity, just as an ordinary person cannot live without food. He would have been glad to do something else, to live in some other way, but he knew not how. He sank deeper and deeper into a sleepless depression, until Varvara Vasilievna realized it was time to call in the doctors. This was the same trap that had snared him before his defense of the ill-starred dissertation.

  It was cold and rainy, an autumnal spring. Tengiz had gone away forever. Again. Nora intended to start a new life. She called Vitya and invited him over. He came. While he was eating frankfurters he told Nora about what a bastard his boss had turned out to be. He explained to her how a good computer program differed from a bad one. Nora listened to him with half an ear, then made a beeline for the bedroom.

  Vitya fulfilled the task entrusted to him seriously and honestly. And a new life began: for Nora, a pregnancy; and for Vitya, ever deeper depression.

  Yurik was born early in the year 1975.

  9

  Admirers

  (1975–1976)

  Andrei Ivanovich had been ill with pneumonia for the whole autumn and into the winter, and Amalia Alexandrovna spent that time nursing him back to health. Thus, it turned out that the first family member to visit the newborn was Genrikh. He came over with his wife, the kindly, talkative Irina. They came bearing presents and provisions. Irina’s name did not suit her in the least. In Nora’s estimation, an “Irina” should be fragile, slender, and slightly angular. This woman was a sort of gentle, unbridled bear, with a somewhat bulbous nose and a soft pouch instead of a chin. She could have been a Domna, or a Xavroniya—or so thought Nora.

  This time, the presents were all the very things she needed: a miniature swing set, and a squishy, oversized teddy bear that resembled Irina just a bit. Yurik, in fact, adored the teddy bear, and two years later began calling it Bearfriend. It was one of his first words.

  Nora’s father usually gave her things that were exceptional in their uselessness—a set of baking forms for making cookies of various shapes, or a set of knives that could only have been wielded by the market butcher. Once, completely out of the blue, he gave her a hat made of silver-fox fur, which Nora immediately donated to the theater.

  The food that her father brought from the delicatessen shop at the Prague Restaurant was, as usual, delicious. Grandmother Marusya herself had loved to indulge in treats from this delicatessen, and surprised her granddaughter with pâté in tiny fluted pastry cups, or fish gleaming under a coat of aspic, transparent as ice. Irina desperately wanted to tickle and squeeze the baby, but she pulled back her hands under Nora’s cold gaze, and cooed at him from afar. Yurik looked at her, astonished, but Nora was glad: Clever boy! Blood is thicker than water.

  Genrikh didn’t venture to touch, but examined the child attentively, with obvious approval: “He definitely takes after our side of the family—round head, big ears. And such a tiny little mouth.”

  Nora, somewhat disappointed, was forced to agree. Some of Genrikh’s features revealed themselves like the play of shadows in Yurik’s tiny face.

  Amalia showed up a month and a half after that—with Andrei Ivanovich, of course. Even before she had taken off her coat, she hugged Nora and immediately started crying. She wept openly, with childlike tears.

  “Forgive me, daughter! I’m so sorry. We couldn’t make it until now. But I know you understand; you always do, my clever one.”

  Nora understood. From the moment Andrei Ivanovich had appeared in their lives, Nora had understood, though she was not yet ten years old. When he visited them at home for the first time, she had felt that his face was already familiar. She had noticed him when he stood on Nikitsky Boulevard, observing her and her mother going out for a stroll, or when he was there to rush her to Filatov Hospital after an attack of appendicitis, or when he met her and Mama coming out of the theat
er and walked home behind them like a shadow, so that he could spend twenty fleeting minutes with his beloved Amalia. Her mother only rarely turned back and smiled at him—and for the sake of this brief smile, he would tell his wife a little lie, break free, and fly to the theater to catch a glimpse of them as they left to go home. What other lover was capable of such devotion?

  Growing up, Nora experienced a multitude of emotions toward this stern, serious, wiry man—jealousy, deep irritation, admiration, and confused love. He stood behind her mother in his customary stance of protector, prepared to intervene at a moment’s notice, to beat off any attack, to fend off anyone who dared insult her. Even when she embraced her mother, Nora couldn’t shed her sense of having been betrayed, her feeling that her mother had abandoned her, her only daughter. Amalia so loved her Andrei that she damaged her other great love—her daughter.

  And now Amalia was crying. So she, too, understood. It wasn’t right. Not during the last weeks of Nora’s pregnancy or during the first days after Nora brought the tiny creature home with her had Amalia been there. The old scores, never yet revealed, were poised in her mind as she stroked the back of her mother’s woolen coat. Andrei Ivanovich stood behind her with a look of guilt. Throughout his illness, he had urged Amalia to go to Moscow, but she couldn’t bear to leave him behind, alone and sick, in the country. Now Nora’s mother was shedding hot tears, and Nora passed her palm over her mother’s knitted cap again and again and felt sadness, and envy, and was filled with a sense of superiority, because she was not that way—she would not have cried.

  Nora helped her mother unbutton her coat, but Andrei Ivanovich dashed over, grabbed the coat, and, crouching down on his knees, unbuckled her boots and placed house slippers on the floor in front of her. While he was doing this, Amalia mechanically smoothed down the sparse hairs on top of his bent, balding head. His hands moved up one of her calves and stroked her knee surreptitiously. Nora saw this out of the corner of her eye.