Vita Nostra

by Sergey

  She looked down. Here was the first assignment; Sasha tensed up and immediately relaxed. Piece of cake. She’d done hundreds of these last year.

  Second assignment. Yes, Sterkh was right. This is simple, a cakewalk.

  The distribution of examination sheets continued; now they had reached Group B. Oksana, Sasha’s former roommate, was walking toward her seat, pressing the papers to her generous bosom . . .

  Third assignment. Sasha turned the coarse paper over.

  On the third page a black “fragment” displayed an “anchor” of three white circles in its center.

  At first she froze. Then she smiled.

  She could do it. She’d done it before. She must focus her eyes on the “anchor” and hold her breath. There stands a black city, where a monster lives in the tower. Fragment number one hundred. On the other hand, why exactly one hundred? What if it is number one hundred and one? Two hundred? One thousand?

  “. . . by now all of you have received your assignments. I repeat, you have enough time to prepare. Do not rush. As soon as you are ready I would like to ask you to raise your hand and . . . what’s wrong, Sasha?”

  Not giving herself time for reflection, she cast up her shaking hand.

  “I am ready.”

  “Already?”

  The three examiners stared at her: the function, dispassionately, the woman, anxiously; only the gym teacher, whose new identity Sasha could not get over, squinted with obvious pleasure.

  At the foot of the stage Sterkh nervously moved his shoulders. “Are you sure, Sasha?”

  “Yes.” She got up.

  She caught Kostya’s eyes. A long, heartrending glance. She recalled the fir tree with a single garland, the flames in the fireplace: this is where she should have placed the time loop. She hadn’t thought of it . . . or was too scared. Because she had already had a bitter experience, there was already a day in her life when Yegor repeated time after time: “Let’s get married . . .”

  Yegor had never found out the truth about the infinite day. Thinking about it made Sasha almost proud.

  What am I doing? she thought, making her way along the row. I am a verb in the imperative mood, and I am about to reverberate for the first time. I am going to become a part of Speech. Become a command. And here I am, thinking about . . . garland.

  At the foot of the stairs leading to the stage she was met by Portnov and Sterkh.

  “Good luck,” Portnov said solemnly, looking over his glasses. “You are the best one.”

  “Everything will be fine.” Sterkh offered her his hand helping her up the stairs. “Good luck, Sasha. We will fly together again.”

  In front of the table she stopped, not knowing what to do next. Dima Dimych rose and beckoned her with his finger. At the far end of the stage stood tables, just like in the auditorium. A cup filled with sharpened pencils, a stack of white paper, and a bottle of mineral water surrounded by glasses were placed on each table.

  “No need to be nervous”—the false gym teacher moved a chair toward Sasha—“we are old friends. And we will be working together during your fourth year. Then during your fifth. Then, I hope, you will be accepted to graduate school. Right now, though, we only have a placement exam, and you must pass beyond the limits. Jump over your own head. As usual.”

  Behind Dima Dimych she saw a highly complex structure, terrifying and powerful—it was hard to imagine that some time ago Sasha had that as her swing partner. She forced the corners of her lips to lift slightly. The examiner nodded, encouraging her.

  “The first two assignments we can deal with quickly, agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She tested the tip of the pencil with her finger and pricked it. Licked off a drop of blood. Without stopping, without checking herself, she drew a chain of associations on the paper—from memory.

  “Excellent. Next.”

  Sasha took a deep breath. Five cognitive processes begin at one point of time, each is periodical, the periods are multiples . . .

  “That’s enough, thank you. I knew it wasn’t going to be difficult for you. I am interested in the third sheet.”

  Sasha licked her dry lips.

  “Water?” the former gym teacher opened a bottle of mineral water. He poured some into a glass: the bubbles hissed and stuck to the walls of the glass. “Here you go.”

  Sasha took a sip and coughed. She drank the whole glass. The examiner immediately poured her another one.

  “Keep drinking. I assume you know how to complete the tests with the black fragments?”

  “Of course.” Unintentionally Sasha spoke in the same tone.

  “Good. If you are ready, let us not lose any time. Begin.”

  Sasha pulled closer the page with a black rectangle and three white dots in the center. Took a deep breath.

  Behind her she heard the anxious rustling of paper. Her classmates were preparing for the test. She wanted to turn around for the last time to see their faces, but she did not dare.

  The stage of the assembly hall smelled distinctly of dust. One of the windows let in a draft. And everything was drowned in sharp light; even through closed eyelids Sasha saw the glow.

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. Verb, you may begin.”

  Sasha focused on the three white dots—three luminous eyes. She held her breath. One, two, three, four, five . . .

  . . . one hundred sixty-eight, one hundred sixty-nine, one hundred seventy.

  Out of the blackness emerged—jumped out, revealed itself—a city surrounded by a wall high enough to reach the sky.

  She saw it in minute, most explicit, most authentic detail. The city was the color of coal, graphite, the color of dark steel, faultless in its monochrome harmony. Sasha felt marble under her bare feet. Cool stone, and warm stone, smooth and rough, soaring walls, slender windows, spires rising into the sky . . .

  It’s happening. She will do everything right. There, in the tower, a monster is waiting for her. Sasha must meet it face-to-face and not feel fear. A year ago it seemed impossible. But not anymore: having recognized her power, Sasha threw open her arms, unfolded her wings, and flew.

  She grew.

  She billowed. She swelled. She absorbed outlines, smells, the texture of stone. In those places where Sasha stretched enough to reach the city, it ceased being carbon black and became softly gray, like an antique photograph. She claimed this life and this happiness. She inhaled the smoke, and the curve of a roof glistening in the rain, and the wisp of fog, and a majestic spire. The more she took, the more powerful and multidimensional she became. Multicolored thoughts, so heavy and reluctant in a human brain, now flowed like a stream. No—like the sea.

  She embraced the tower. It flinched, tensed up like an egg a split second before the birth of a baby bird, but Sasha squeezed it softly, buried it under her will like under cement. The tower failed to open, and whatever was hidden inside was now buried forever, and Sasha continued to grow without obstacle.

  She claimed the city. She sensed it within herself like one senses one’s heart in the moment of powerful joy or fear. She flowed farther, claiming the dark sky with two dull stars. These stars were superfluous in her picture of the universe.

  Superfluous.

  Extinguish?

  She appeared—she was—a dark empty space. And she was also sitting at the table on the stage of the assembly hall, and in front of her lay a black “fragment.” Examiner Dima Dimych sat across from her at the table. His face was no longer cast in papier-mâché. He frowned and grew visibly more anxious with every second.

  “What’s happening?”

  Sasha hung between the points of “was” and “will be.” At this moment—for the first time since she’d opened the fragment—she had the feeling that something was not quite right. Something was wrong.

  But she was doing everything correctly!

  “Stop her! She’s broken loose again! Stop her, she’s uncontrollable!”

  The doo
r opened with a long screech. Simultaneously the heads of people sitting in the assembly hall turned: a man in very dark glasses walked down the aisle, stepping slowly, heavy-footed, over the old, dull parquet floor.

  The suit jacket on Sterkh’s back ripped open along the spine; steel-colored feathers peeked through the jagged slit.

  “What is the matter?”

  “Calm down. Continue the examination.”

  Sasha sensed but did not see them around her. Not people—structures, diagrams of processes and human beings; the examiner who was a function. The matronly Irina Anatolievna. The gym teacher, Dima Dimych, with his strange and terrifying metamorphosis. Sterkh stood with his angular twitching wings thrown up in the air. Next to Sterkh was Portnov, so tense that he was constantly changing, pulsating like a garden simultaneously undergoing both spring and fall. Something was wrong; she had gone too far. According to the planned examination she was supposed to stop near the tower . . .

  She felt as if a page from the Activator opened in front of her—enormous, multidimensional, encompassing all that could be represented in the universe. She saw herself—a mute word ready to reverberate. She saw many layers of reality—bright, textured, dull, vague, they gathered into surreal folds at the edge of her field of vision. Probabilities and rearrangements: she was supposed to stop at the tower, meet the examiner, select a point of application—she was a verb—and reverberate; it was similar to throwing a bowling ball into the midst of immobile pins or swinging a still pendulum. Chip the neck of an ideal and thus nonexistent pitcher. The dominoes would collapse, cars would run along distant roads, raindrops would fall, and Sasha would materialize for the first time.

  She, the Imperative, an instrument of Speech.

  But something had gone wrong. She could no longer go back—not because the fourth dimension was irreversible. Because her nature, her inner essence, led her here, to this dark space with two stars above her head, and here she was subject to different laws that did not fit into any reality known to her. Laws alien to any dimension.

  “Stop!”

  “Stop her! It’s not a verb, it’s a . . .”

  “Yes. She is Password.”

  Sasha, who was the dark space, shuddered. Two stars leaned over above her head—they were eyes, very intense, unblinking, and now black lenses no longer remained between them and Sasha.

  “Greetings, Password.”

  That, which came from the darkness, spoke without words, in bare meaning. Sasha knew how to communicate, but she did not answer. She lost her . . . no, not her tongue. She lost that place in her soul where words are born.

  “Do you hear me, Sasha?”

  She was still sitting behind the table. In the empty and dim hall without ceiling, without walls. Fog curled above her head. Across from her, in the examiner’s chair, now sat Farit Kozhennikov.

  “Can you hear me?”

  She nodded, overwhelmed for a second by the pain within her enormous, heavy head.

  “As I’m sure you’ve gathered, you are not simply a verb in the imperative mood. You are Password—a key word that opens a new informational structure. Macrostructure. Do you understand what it means?”

  Essences around her shifted, remaining in place, flowing, turning different facets. Meanings followed in a single file. Sasha managed to grab the simplest definitions, the ones lying on the surface.

  “Reverberate. Beginning.”

  “Mistake—no. Act of creation—important.”

  “All the subtleties and finesse will be taught to you during your fourth and fifth year, and in graduate school. The Introduction to Applied Science is over; your applied science is here. Your most important applied work.”

  “Password. Name, new essence, Creation.

  “Creator . . .”

  Concepts moved like a triumphant procession. Like a large ship going by. Sasha recognized them sequentially—and simultaneously.

  “Sasha.” Kozhennikov’s voice interrupted the stream of information like a wave breaks into the surface of the water. “Stay conscious. The transformation has not yet been completed. When you reverberate . . . do you know what will happen?”

  “I . . .”

  “You are Password. You will align fragments of reality—and open a new informational expanse. Do you understand what is happening?”

  Farit Kozhennikov spoke, his lips moved. Reality again split and faded. Sasha found herself in the assembly hall, a bottle of mineral water stood on the table, bubbles hissed, each reflecting the assembly hall, the professors, a cup filled with pencils, Sasha leaning over the sheet of paper . . .

  “Pick up your pencil. Concentrate. Are you ready?”

  She complied—but did not feel the pencil in her numb fingers. She blinked—and lost her human body, hanging in the middle of the empty dark space. Empty and dark. And only two stars watched her from above—the white eyes.

  “Your will. Create. Reverberate.”

  The order was so authoritative that she immediately felt relief.

  It was simple—like flicking a switch in a dark room. Digits on the display would coincide. Grooves would align, template and print would line up. The darkness would be broken by the light.

  “Reverberate!”

  She held her breath under the petrifying stare of the two distant stars.

  Silence can be unbearable—a moment before the Word finally wrenches itself free.

  Darkness—a second before the appearance of the first spark.

  In the beginning was . . .

  Silence. Stillness.

  In the beginning was . . .

  “No.”

  Two yellow eyes inched closer.

  “Why?”

  To live is to be vulnerable. A thin membrane of a soap bubble separates one from impenetrable hell. Ice on the road. The unlucky division of an aging cell. A child picks up a pill from the floor. Words stick to each other, line up, obedient to the great harmony of Speech . . .

  “Everything will be different for you. Your will. Your power. Let the sun shine always. I believe in the world without evil. Let a hundred flowers bloom. You are the favorite instrument of Speech . . . Reverberate!”

  Sasha flinched from the force of this command. But she didn’t flinch from her response.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. Because for me to love is to be afraid.”

  There, in the assembly hall, a glass pitcher fell off the examiners’ table.

  “I will reverberate, and the fear will reverberate in me—in the First Word. And all the love that I carry will forever be poisoned by fear. I refuse . . .”

  Shards of glass flew up.

  “Word is spoken.”

  “The end. She failed.”

  “She did not pass.”

  “Failing grade.”

  The empty dark space around Sasha lit up with a multitude of stars, and the stars turned into gold coins. Dull, heavy, they flowed and overflowed, threatening to bury her underneath.

  “I refuse to be afraid!”

  And at that moment she reverberated, and knew she was heard.

  “Sweetheart? Honey?”

  The baby was asleep. He breathed heavily. He coughed in his sleep and tossed and turned. The woman lay next to him, her hand squeezed between the beams of the wooden crib, pressing her palm to the hot little head.

  “Baby . . . sweetheart . . .”

  The other side of the queen-size bed was empty. Cold smooth sheets.

  The baby had another coughing fit. The woman closed her eyes, sore as if filled with sand.

  Several more hours until morning. Coughing. Crying. Long beeps in the receiver. “The person you are trying to call is out of reach.” Where is he, what happened to him? When will he come back? Will he come back at all?

  A strip of parquet floor crunched softly under a bare foot.

  “Who . . . who is it? Who is there?”

  Step. One more step. The woman was sitting up in bed. She was watching the dark
ness. Her shoulders twitched under the thin bathrobe.

  “It’s me.”

  “Sasha!”

  “I haven’t completely come back yet. I am in your dream.”

  “Sasha . . .”

  “Mom, I have to tell you one very important and secret thing. I love you. I’ve always loved you, and I always will. Listen! I love you . . .”

  The baby inhaled deeply—and breathed evenly.

  In the morning, when the man returned and unlocked the door with his key, they were sleeping in a tight embrace—the baby was moist with sweat, but his forehead was cool and lusterless. And the woman was haggard, pale, with a weak smile on her lips.

  Darkness.

  “In the beginning was the Word.”

  Slow rotation.

  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

  Luminous dust folds into a flat silver curve with two soft spiral arms.

  “Do not be afraid.”

  Acknowledgments

  Fate brought us together and gave us more than twenty-five years of love, writing, and creativity, and we are eternally grateful for that.

  We would like to thank our parents, relatives, and friends who blessed our union, sharing our joys and supporting us in our darker moments. Without you, this book would not exist.

  We thank our daughter, Anastasia, a kind, intelligent, and creative girl who served as an exciting stimulus to write this novel. When we were working on Vita Nostra, our teenage Anastasia was on her way to becoming an adult, just like our heroine. Anastasia’s trials and tribulations, along with those of her parents, grew into the metaphors upon which our story is built.

  Our thanks to Julia Meitov Hersey, not just our translator, but also our loyal friend, for knowing all our texts inside out, and for lending us the tuning fork of her impeccable artistic taste.

  Thanks to Josh Getzler, our wise literary agent from New York, for believing in our literary future. Josh’s optimism, persistence, and cheerfulness make us believe in it as well.