by Sergey
This was where she’d made a mistake. She should not have considered an “activity” equal to taking the exam; an activity was a lot less obvious, intermittent, a dashed line. It was fractioned and simultaneously viscous. And that was not called “love,” not at all; this activity had its own verb, its own symbol, and its own notation.
As long as the pencil did not break.
Now. Then.
In the morning, around half past seven, Sasha looked out the window and saw Yegor sitting on her porch, between the stone lions.
He was just as still and white as the sculptures. Two white piles of snow lay on his shoulders.
“What’s wrong?” Sasha opened the door; the drifting snow licked her fur-lined slippers.
For the first time in her life she stepped that far into the past. A few hours. She felt a little frightened.
She let Yegor into her apartment, opened the fireplace and placed an old crumpled newspaper onto the coals.
“We’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry.”
She put a couple of dry logs on the newspaper and lit a match.
“We’ll get warm in a minute. Just wait.”
She picked up her bag, which had been left on the coat hanger overnight. For a second she was confused: it was the same notepad, only the page that was supposed to be covered with signs and symbols was still white and empty . . .
She should sharpen her pencil to make sure it did not break.
“Yegor, don’t be surprised, promise? I know what you want to tell me. I know you will pass this exam. I know how you will pass it. Look at me. Look at me . . .”
She placed a piece of paper on the table. Don’t forget to sharpen the pencil . . .
“Will.” One of the essential symbols with multiple meanings, everything depended on the nuances, on the added meanings. In five dimensions, plus an occasional glimpse of the sixth. Perfect.
“Sasha . . .”
“Be quiet and keep your mouth closed. I am working on something important, just be quiet . . .”
Projection of will onto the identity: will-dash, plus Yegor’s own willpower, which she must take into account, will-two dashes . . .
The symbol glimmered, unfolding in time. She planted the fourth dimension within the time loop—no one had ever taught her that, she’d never even heard of this complicated paradox, but it just made sense to her, and now it was too late to back out, no matter what the side effects would be.
The clock’s ticktock slowed down. The pendulum hung for a second, then swayed again. Sasha smiled happily.
She could.
Taking Yegor’s hands, she claimed him, merged with him. He was such a nice, strong, kind man. This is what the institute had done to him; Sasha fought a sudden and unnecessary feeling of pity. On the way to becoming a carved sculpture, wood goes through the aesthetically displeasing stage of being a stump; half-finished work is not usually displayed in front of half-wits, but lately Sasha was anything but a half-wit.
Here is the second-year Dorofeev. And here is his folded-in entity. Like a letter in an envelope. Receive and sign for it.
Yegor’s hands twitched in her own.
“Sasha . . .”
“Don’t be afraid,” she said softly. “Let’s go, it’s time. It’s already half past nine. Time went so quickly! And the same two logs are still burning, but never mind that. Let’s go, do not worry. It is my imperative. It is my command.”
An hour had passed since the door closed. Then another hour. Students came out one or two at a time. Some immediately lit up cigarettes, others threw their arms around their friends. Somebody was laughing hysterically. Gradually the corridor became noisy, second years chased one another around in the hallway: “What are the sparrows singing on this last day of chill? We live, we breathe, we made it, and we are living still!”
Yegor was the last one to come out. He staggered. Grabbed the wall with his hand.
“Well?”
He stepped forward and embraced her. He staggered, holding on to Sasha like a drunk holding on to a tree. Sasha gritted her teeth and replanted her feet firmly on the ground.
“How did you do it? How did you manage? How?” Tears rolled down his unshaven hollow cheeks. “You did it . . . You . . . thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
Yegor’s classmates slowly tightened the circle around them. Sasha’s “anchor”—the one she planted in Now—was approaching with every minute, and she suddenly realized with dread that she had no idea how to get out of the loop. Time is a grammatical concept; in a few minutes Sasha would again look out the window and see Yegor sitting on the steps between the stone lions. And everything would repeat itself again, only this time Sasha, burned-out and frazzled, would not be able to replicate her heroic deed, and Yegor would fail yet again . . .
And fail again . . .
And again.
“Everything is fine,” she whispered. “You need to rest. Go, wash up . . .”
Her gentle voice exuded power over Yegor. He straightened up and, squeezing Sasha’s hand one more time, shuffled through the crowd of his classmates toward the men’s bathroom. Sasha did not have to look at her watch to sense the “anchor” drawing closer.
The front door opened. Sterkh stepped into the hall; snow melted on the long tails of his black coat.
“Hello, Nikolay Valerievich.”
“Hello, Alexandra. Congratulations, you are in the loop with variations. In the old times it was used as a punishment for disobedient slaves.”
Sasha was silent. Everything that had happened in the last few hours (or minutes?) took so much of her strength that she was now ready to fall down—or burst out crying.
“I am kidding,” Sterkh’s voice was a little softer. “Get some paper. Concentrate. If a sum of realities is expressed through a subjunctive mood, then in order to come out of the loop, we must first of all define the actual reality—the current one—then express it through the narrative and lock it in with a command. Go ahead!
“Oh—and if you make a mistake, I’ll write a report to your advisor.”
The next day, on January 12, Sasha carried the fir tree outside and fixed it in a snow pile across from the stone lions. The tree looked alive; the wind stirred its gold garland.
Portnov and Sterkh held her in a consultation from noon to two in the afternoon. Sasha returned from the institute, lay down on top of her comforter, and, surprising herself, fell asleep.
She dreamed of Zakhar. He was sitting in an underground vault filled with gold coins with a round symbol on their faces. In her dream he seemed very happy to see Sasha. “Are you here as well? That’s cool. I’m bored here all by myself. I have been sitting here for a thousand years, cleaning sticky dirt off these words. Help me.”
And Sasha sat down—in her dream—next to Zakhar, picked up a small moistened rag, and began to clean the dull coins, one after another. Her efforts would alter the zero on the face of the coins—change it into fives, tens, eights—and when the figure eights fell down on their sides, Sasha would detect the sign of infinity . . .
“Have you been here long?” she asked Zakhar.
“There is no such thing as the fourth dimension here. And no third dimension, either.” And then Sasha realized that the coins, and Zakhar, and she herself were drawn on a flat surface, and the time in the picture was not moving . . .
She woke up when it was already dark. Snow fell outside her windows. Somewhere on Sacco and Vanzetti a street cleaner’s shovel made scraping sounds.
Less than twenty-four hours remained until the placement exam.
That night Sasha said good-bye to her landlady and called Mom. Baby Valentin was sick again, and Valentin senior had left for a business trip and not returned yet. Mom’s voice sounded tinny, detached, as if from another planet. “Everything will be fine,” Sasha said, knowing perfectly well that Mom did not believe her.
Her suitcase was half-packed. Sasha thought that she had no clue where she would unpack it, and whether she w
ould have to do it at all. With pleasure she realized that this thought did not frighten her in the least.
She gathered the trash—old drafts, notes, slips of paper—and made a fire in her fireplace for the last time. Paper covered with ink did not burn well.
Someone rang the doorbell. Sasha saw Farit Kozhennikov in the window—and for the first time in her life she felt no fear.
He walked in and looked around. Straddled the chair. Sasha had not finished cleaning up; plastic bags lay around, in the corner stood a broom, a dustpan, and a mop.
“Ready for departure?”
“Farit,” Sasha said drily. “I’m very busy. If you have something important to say—say it. If not . . . As you can see for yourself, I’m not exactly relaxing right now.”
He swayed back and forth.
“Important . . . yes, I guess you can say that. Let me ask you something: How many of your classmates would decline taking the exam if they had the option?”
“All of them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Of course, we can cheer one another up, we are sure of our success. We are words, we must reverberate, must fulfill our destiny. But if somebody could slip out, scamper, do a vanishing act with impunity—he would flee so fast only a clean pair of heels would show.”
“And how about you?”
“What about me?”
Kozhennikov adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose.
“As your advisor, I am officially offering to release you from the placement exam. To release you from your tenure at the institute. Officially. According to the ‘it was only a dream’ method.”
The fire burned in the fireplace. Old notes, papers, and drafts were dying down. Sasha sat at the table—her back very straight.
A minute passed.
“Are you joking?”
He took off his glasses. Sasha met his ordinary, average brown eyes.
“No.”
“Farit, are you making fun of me?”
“No. I will tell you right away: none of your classmates has received such an offer, and none of them will.”
“Why me . . .”
“Because.”
Sasha squeezed her hands. A second ago she was sure of herself, calm, even detached. A second ago she was a grown-up, devoid of fear and ready to look straight into her destiny’s face.
“Once again you will be sixteen years old,” he said. “Everything that happened later would turn out to be a dream and shall be forgotten.”
“That’s impossible.”
He sniggered.
Sasha stared at him. His face was hazy before her eyes. Sasha hadn’t cried in a long time. She had forgotten how to cry. She did not believe something could shake her so violently before the placement exam.
“Think about it. ‘It was a dream.’ Say it—and you will wake up. Back there. And nothing will happen again. There will be no me. There will be no institute. You will be accepted at the School of Philology—if you don’t fail the entrance exams. Well, have you decided?”
Sasha bit on her fingers.
Mom . . . Valentin . . . and the baby. They wouldn’t be there. And what would be would possibly—most likely—be completely different. Absolutely different. Would Mom be happy? Of course she would, she would have Sasha . . . even without Valentin, without the baby. Mom would have Sasha! She would do everything to . . .
Word. A verb. Harmony of Speech. A crystal termite nest of meanings. Inhuman beauty. Infinite cognition. Page after page, and the book does not end, the most fascinating book, is it possible that Sasha would not know what happens next?
Minus three and a half years. Difficult, terrifying years. It was a dream. How simple. It is only a dream . . .
Kostya. He wouldn’t be a part of her life; that was for the best. Yegor . . . They had no choice, they would never have to choose.
HOW LUCKY THEY ARE!
“Farit, why?! What have I done to you? Why do you constantly pick on me? Why?”
“Sasha?”
“Why do I get to choose? I can’t . . .”
By then she was sitting on the floor, hunched over, pressing her palms to her cheeks. Kozhennikov lowered himself next to her.
“I pick on you? On you? Not a hair fell off your head! All your relatives are alive, more or less healthy, happy . . .”
“I cannot choose! I can’t—like this—I can’t choose, do you understand that? Why . . .”
“Cut it out. Any of your classmates—any of the third years who had ever existed—would give their right hand for such an opportunity. You said so yourself.”
“Why, though? Why like this?” She lifted her tear-filled eyes up to him. “Why through fear? Why not . . . Why wouldn’t you explain things? I would study. I would work hard if you were nice to me!”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t have, Sasha. Only a strong incentive takes you over the edge. Only motivation.”
“But there are other stimuli. Love. Ambition . . .”
“There are none equal to fear,” he said, almost with regret. “It is the consequence of objective, unyielding laws. To live is to be vulnerable. To love is to fear. And the one who is not afraid—that person is calm like a boa constrictor and cannot love.” He held her shoulders. “Well, have you decided?”
She pushed his hands aside and got up. She bit her lip. Tears streamed down her face—but it did not matter. What mattered was her jagged breath that made her voice sound so piteous.
“I have decided. I want to finish the institute. Become a part of Speech. To reverberate. Be admitted to graduate school. That’s why tomorrow I am going to take the placement exam.” She staggered but stayed on her feet.
Kozhennikov’s pupils narrowed. Only for a moment. His eyes looked as if they were lit up from the inside. Sasha recoiled.
“Is that your final word?”
She shut her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Good afternoon, third years.”
Both the assembly hall and the stage were brightly lit. Portnov and Sterkh stood below the stage, near the first row of chairs, and two men and a woman sat behind the long table placed near the front edge of the stage. The woman’s name was Irina Anatolievna—she taught Specialty to Yegor’s year—but the men were unfamiliar to Sasha. At least she thought so, until one of them, the one sitting on the far left, raised his head. Sasha’s mouth dropped open: it was the gym teacher, Dima Dimych. Wearing a suit and tie. With an unusual look on his face: it seemed frozen. As if all the muscles responsible for facial expression had turned into plaster of paris.
The third examiner, blond, about forty years old, had never been human. Like Portnov, he was a function.
The old wooden chairs squeaked mercilessly. Sasha took a seat in the middle of the second row, with Denis Myaskovsky on her right and Lisa Pavlenko on her left. Kostya sat in the front row, two seats to the right of Sasha. If she wanted to, she could reach for him with her hand. But Kostya stubbornly avoided looking at her.
“Dear third years!” Sterkh stayed below the stage, not coming up. “The big day has arrived. You will now receive printouts with your assignments. You will have time to prepare. Do not rush and do not be nervous. When you hear your name, approach this table, sign, and receive your examination sheet. Is everyone ready? Can we begin?”
Dead silence was his answer.
“Biryukov, Dmitry. Noun.”
“Bochkova, Anna. Noun.”
“Goldman, Yulia. Adjective.”
Staggering in her high heels, Yulia stepped onto the stage. The blond function sitting at the corner handed her several stapled sheets of paper. Unsmiling, Dima Dimych offered her a pen. Yulia managed to sign, her hands shaking; she started reading her assignments on the stairs that led down from the stage, and Sasha saw how the expression of panic on her face was replaced by surprise and then joy.
“Kovtun, Igor. Adverb.”
They rose one after another. The procedure was running smoothly and clearly ha
d been run before; the established routine had a calming effect.
“Kozhennikov, Konstantin. Pronoun.”
Sasha watched Kostya move toward the table. He was handed the stapled sheets by the blond teacher, and the former (false?) gym teacher offered him a pen. Sasha saw Kostya’s eyelid twitch.
Walking down the steps, Kostya tripped up.
“Calm down,” Sterkh said gently, steadying him. “All your emotions stayed outside. All your fears are buried underneath this threshold. Concentrate.”
Sasha watched Kostya read his assignment. At some point he paled, his lips shook; then he relaxed and Sasha felt his instant relief. He will pass; he will get through this. He was confident, he managed to regain this confidence. Pronoun . . . let it be so.
“Samokhina, Alexandra! Verb!”
Sasha jumped up, making the wooden row shake. Already? So fast?
She climbed out from the row, stumbling over someone’s feet and knees. She rose up to the stage: the room swayed like the deck of a ship. The six eyes of the people sitting at the table watched her. The stack of examination sheets under the blond man’s hand had become much thinner.
Dima Dimych’s lips formed a faint smirk, so unlike the sincere and sparkly, toothy smiles he so generously gave to all the girls at the gym.
“Good luck . . . verb.”
“Sign here,” said the blond man.
She picked up the fountain pen with a gold nib. The nib scratched the paper. Sasha barely managed to write “Samokhina” in black ink across from the blue check mark. She turned and began walking away from the table.
“Sasha, you may want to take the examination sheet—just in case.”
She turned around. Dima Dimych watched her ironically, but without mockery.
She accepted three thin sheets from his hand. Clutched them with her moist hand. Made it back to her seat and only then took a look.
On the top of the first page she saw the round symbol for “Word.” And one more—for “verb.” And the third one, the meaning of which Sasha did not understand and so became frightened, but then immediately realized that this was not an assignment. It was the header, the legend, the identification symbols; underneath printed text read: “Alexandra Samokhina.” There was today’s date and her crooked signature.
