Vita Nostra

by Dyachenko, Marina

  “It was a gift.”

  The man smirked.

  “Listen, I want to buy it from you. Is ten dollars enough?”

  “No, it’s not for sale.”

  “Twenty dollars?”

  Sasha was nervous. A woman sitting right next to them was listening to the conversation.

  “It’s my coin,” Sasha made her voice sound determined and hard. “Give it back to me, please.”

  “I had a friend,” the man glanced from Sasha to the coin and back. “He was a tomb raider. He did some illegal stuff. Dug up some things in the Crimea. And then someone stabbed him. You see, he probably dug up something he wasn’t supposed to.”

  “I didn’t dig anything up,” Sasha stared at his hand. “It was a gift. It’s mine.”

  They stared at each other. The man wanted to say something, in the same measured and patronizing manner, but he bit his tongue. At this point, Sasha was ready to fight for her coin, sob, scream, and shriek, scratch his face; this readiness of hers must have been obvious in her stare.

  “As you wish.”

  The gold disk fell into her hand. Sasha clamped her fingers shut and, holding her breath, walked back to her mother.

  Mom sat in the same spot, staring out of the window, having noticed nothing.

  ***

  The autumn came in October, suddenly and irrevocably. Red maple leaves stuck to the wet asphalt like flat starfish. Sasha existed between school and preparatory courses at the university: there was tons of homework, essays, reports, tests. She had no time for anything else, even Sundays were filled with work, but Sasha did not mind. She discovered that her brain, overburdened by studies, flatly refused to believe in mysterious strangers and their tasks, in gold coins vomited out by one’s stomach. And even the sea, the kind summer sea with a swaying red buoy, seemed surreal, and everything that happened there, by the seaside, seemed just as surreal.

  And Mom was back to normal. With the end of summer came the end of her depression, especially considering that her office was very busy, as usual. Both of them, locked in the vicious cycle of everyday routine, forbade themselves from thinking of the surreal—each had her own reasons. And up to a certain moment they both succeeded.

  Then the letter came from Moscow. Mom took it out of the mailbox, aimlessly played with it for a few minutes before opening it, and then she did open and read it.

  “Valentin divorced his wife,” she addressed their television set.

  “So what?” Sasha said, not exactly polite.

  Mom folded the letter and went to her room. Sasha turned off the TV and sat down with a history textbook; she reread the same paragraph about ten times, without understanding anything. Polabian Slavs, Polabian-Pomeranian… They must have studied them in fifth grade, and here we go again, they are back in the program.

  Maybe it’ll still work out? People have all sorts of issues in their relationships. Of course, his divorce is not a good thing. And it is even worse that he’s writing to Mom about it.

  The phone rang. Trying to think about the ancient Slavic tribes, Sasha picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Good evening, Sasha. It’s me.”

  The desk lamp was on. It was raining outside. A textbook lay open. Everything was so normal, so real. And—that voice on the phone.

  “No,” said Sasha softly. “You…”

  She almost let “You don’t exist” slide off her tongue, but she stopped just in time.

  “How many coins?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “And how many were there?”

  “Thirty-seven, honestly.”

  “I’m waiting downstairs near the entrance. Come down for a minute.”

  She heard the short beeps in the receiver.

  She kept the coins in an old wallet, in the depths of her desk, behind a stack of books and notepads. Sasha unzipped the wallet and poured the contents onto her desk. She counted them again—still thirty-seven.

  She put the wallet into the pocket of her raincoat and slid her feet into a pair of old rain boots. She put the raincoat right over her bathrobe. She grabbed an umbrella, still wet, and picked up her keys.

  The door to her mother’s room remained closed.

  “I’ll be right back,” Sasha said to no one in particular. “I’m… I’m going to get the mail.”

  She walked down the steps without waiting for the elevator. The neighbor from the fifth floor was entering the hall, all wet, with a huge wet dog on a leash.

  “Hi,” said Sasha.

  The neighbor nodded. The dog shook its mane, drenching everything with rainwater.

  Sasha went outside in the rain. It was dark already, the windows in the neighboring houses were lit, and maple leaves lay on the black asphalt like colored patches.

  A man in a dark blue raincoat, similar to Sasha’s and shiny with rain, sat on a wet bench. The lenses in his glasses were smoky rather than dark, but the dusk of an autumn evening made them completely impenetrable.

  “Hello, Sasha. Are you frightened?”

  She did not expect this friendly, joking inflection. She swallowed. Cold wind crawled underneath her clothes, licked her naked knees.

  “Give me the coins.”

  She handed him the wallet with the coins. He weighed the wallet in his hand and nodded, putting the wallet away.

  “Good. I have a task for you to perform.”

  Sasha opened her mouth.

  “It’s a simple task. Very simple. Every morning, at five o’clock, you will go to the park for a jog. Run as much as you can—two circles in the alleys, three circles. When you’ve jogged enough, find thick bushes and urinate on the ground. It’s better if you drink enough water beforehand to avoid any sort of issues. Every morning at five o’clock.”

  “Why?” Sasha whispered. “Why do you need this?”

  Rain slid down her cheeks, mixing with tears. The dark man did not answer. Drops of rain hung on his glasses, reflecting the distant streetlights, which made his eyes seem multi-faceted.

  “Once a month you can have some time off during your period. Four days… is four days enough?”

  Sasha was silent.

  “Watch the alarm clock. Missing a day or being late at least once is a tremendously bad idea. The sequence of actions cannot be altered: plan ahead, drink enough water.”

  “For the rest of my life?” Sasha burst out suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Do I have to run… for the rest of my life?”

  “No.” The man seemed surprised. “I’ll tell you when to stop. Well, now go home, you’re freezing.”

  Sasha was shaking.

  “Come on,” her companion said softly. “Everything will be just fine… Of course, as long as you demonstrate enough discipline.”

  ***

  A lone streetlight burned near the park entrance. Under the iron pole where a long time ago hung a town clock, an old man with a dog lingered, the first and only passersby at this time of day. His eyes slid indifferently over Sasha.

  She ran through the pouring water. Jogging paths curled around the central flowerbed in the middle of the park. Sasha chose the shortest path. Not watching her feet, she flew right into the puddles; cold water splashed from under her sneakers and washed over her sweatpants, right up to the knees. Sasha gritted her teeth and kept running. Water under her feet gurgled just like the contents of her stomach: she drank over a quart of water before leaving the house. The feeling was unbearable. One more circle. One more.

  She slowed down and stopped. The park was completely deserted. A lone streetlight shimmered through the half-naked branches. Stepping over wet leaves, Sasha crawled into the bushes that drenched her with raindrops and, cursing everything under the moon, fulfilled the last obligation of the ritual. She bitterly thought of herself as a dog being taken for a walk.

  The short crawl into the bushes brought relief, a quite legitimate one, considering the amount of liquid she poured into herself. She felt a bit l
ess miserable and even managed to stop crying. At half past five she unlocked the door of her apartment with her own key, crept into the bathroom leaving wet footsteps, hid her jogging suit and squishy sneakers under the sink, and turned on the hot shower.

  A minute later she threw up. The coins flew onto the bottom of the bath, yellow disks on white enamel. Sasha washed her face, took control of her breathing, and collected the coins in her hand. Four coins, with a round symbol on one side and a zero on the reverse. They looked very old, as if for many years they were kept in locked chests, an unidentified treasure…

  Fifteen minutes later Sasha fell asleep in her bed, a deep dreamless sleep, the kind she hasn’t experienced in a long time. When Mom came to wake her up an hour later, she claimed to be sick and stayed in bed.

  ***

  …And why would she bother with school?

  Her tutor called in the afternoon, and Sasha lied about being sick. The tutor, displeased, asked to warn her in advance should that happen again.

  At night she was supposed to attend prep courses at the university. Sasha did not go. She lay on her bed, textbooks thrown aside, and thought.

  What’s the purpose?

  The world did not work the way she imagined before. The visible connection between different events—objective laws, consistent patterns, accidents, and regular days—all this simply served as a Chinese screen for another existence, invisible and incomprehensible.

  If the man in the dark glasses exists, really, truly exists, if his hands hold dreams, reality, accidents… What is the purpose, then, of going to school? Entering a university? When at any moment everything could disappear, be destroyed, simply because Sasha’s alarm clock did not go off on time?

  Mom returned from the office; she asked worried questions, took Sasha’s temperature, shook her head in despair.

  “Did you overexert yourself already? It’s a bit early, it’s only October, and the school year is just starting. I told you to go for a walk on Sunday! Go to the movies, call your classmates, you do have friends, don’t you?”

  “Don’t worry,” Sasha’s answers came as if taped previously, “It’ll be fine.”

  She added to herself, “Of course, as long as I demonstrate enough discipline.”

  Before bed, she set up three alarm clocks: her own, mom’s electronic one, and one more, an old one, her grandmother’s. Throughout the night she fell into chunks of sleep, woke up in cold sweat, and glanced at their faces: one in the morning, quarter to two, half past two…

  At half past four she was almost glad she could get up.

  ***

  In November the weather suddenly improved. Unexpected, conditionally autumnal, but quite tangible warmth returned. The sun came out every day—not for long, but it was generous enough. Dried-up leaves rustled underfoot and smelled fresh and tangy, sad but not without hope.

  Sasha would wake up at four thirty, one minute before the alarm clocks’ roll call. She deactivated them one after the other, like mines, pulled on a warm jogging suit, a jacket, and walked to the park. In one month, she learned all the minute details of the path. She knew where the asphalt was touched by erosion, the places where puddles collected after the rain, knew all the slopes and all the flat spots. Running along the dry alleys, jumping over the piles of leaves gathered by the park rangers, she used the time to repeat her English dialogues, plan that day’s chores and silently sing a song that she heard on the radio the day before. Finishing the third and then the fourth circle around the flowerbed, she knew for sure that nothing bad could happen to her, or to Mom. From that, she derived bitter, detached, autumnal joy.

  ***

  Unexpectedly, “the days of rest,” spent without the morning jog, turned out to be the most excruciating in the last few weeks. Sasha continued to wake up at half past four, and lay without sleep until seven, listening to the waking up sounds of her building: the rumbling of the dump truck, the din of the elevator, fights between the street cleaners. The ritual was broken; Sasha imagined her fate stretched out like a thread, pulling, drying, about to break. Every day she got more and more nervous, until the morning finally came when she could pull on her sneakers and, leaving footsteps on the frosted grass, walk into the November sunrise.

  Then Valentin arrived.

  Sasha came back from school for a minute, to drop off her bag, grab a bite to eat and run to her lesson. A stranger sat on the bench near the entrance to her building. She said hello (she always said hello to anyone sitting on that bench, just in case) and only then recognized the pale-skinned, thin non-stranger.

  “Hello,” said Valentin. “I noticed no one was home.”

  “Mom will be back by six,” said a bewildered Sasha. “And I… um..”

  “I’ll wait.”

  It was half past two. Sasha glanced at her watch, then at Valentin.

  There was no hope that he would leave. She did not feel too optimistic about Mom chasing him away. Plus, how could she make any decisions regarding Mom’s fate according to her own desires?

  “You can call her at the office,” she said frostily. And added, a little too late, “How are you feeling?”

  ***

  She woke up at four twenty-nine, turned off the alarm clocks, shuffled over to the kitchen, gulped some tea from a thermos. She got dressed and went into the hall; she locked the door.

  Last night Mom and Valentin stayed up in the kitchen, talking softly for a long time. Sasha went to bed early (she always did these days, the lack of sleep was getting to her), covered her head with a pillow to avoid inadvertent eavesdropping, shut her eyes and tried to fall asleep. But sleep evaded her. Sasha thought of life as a collection of identical days. To her, existence consisted of days, and each day seemed to run like a circular ribbon, a bike chain, moving evenly over the cogs. Click—another change of speed, days become a little different, but they still flow, still repeat, and that very monotony conceals the meaning of life…

  She was probably falling asleep. Never before she had thoughts like that, not in a conscious state.

  A long time ago, when Sasha was little, she wanted to get herself a daddy. Not the one who left and now lives someplace else, without a care in the world, but a real one, one who would live with them, in the same apartment. Audaciously, Sasha tried to convince her mother to date any one of the more or less suitable men; life “with mommy and daddy” to her symbolized a true happiness.

  That was years ago. Sasha’s heart ached when she thought of her mother and Valentin. He lied to her once, he would probably do it again. Mom realizes it, but she still speaks softly to him in the kitchen over a cup of cool tea; they sit, heads almost touching, and talk, even though it is already past midnight…

  Nocturnal frost made the puddles sparkle. Through her woolen socks and the soles of her sneakers, Sasha could feel how cold the ground had become overnight. Her daily training made running easy. A lone streetlight burned near the park entrance. The old man with the dog lingered, and Sasha nodded to him, as if greeting an old acquaintance.

  Somebody was in the park. That somebody stood on the path, shifting from foot to foot, wearing a jogging suit, a windbreaker, and sneakers, like Sasha herself. She had to come almost face to face before she recognized him.

  It was Ivan Konev, Kon, her classmate.

  “Hey. Shall we run?”

  Sasha did not reply. Kon fell into step with her, almost touching her sleeve with his own. When their jacket sleeves did touch, the fabric made a harsh swishing sound— shhikh-shhikh.

  Sasha ran, skillfully skirting the familiar puddles. Ivan slipped a couple of times; once he broke through the thin ice and stepped into the water, but kept up.

  “Do you run every day?” he asked, panting. “My grandpa, he’s got insomnia, he walks the dog early, and he says, ‘A girl from your class runs every day like crazy, at five in the morning.’ oh!”

  He stumbled upon a tree root and almost fell down.

  “Are you into sports now? I’ve never though
t that about you. Or are you training your willpower?”

  “Training willpower.”

  “That’s what I thought…” they completed only two circles, but he already seemed out of breath.

  “And you?” Sasha deigned to ask. “What are you training?”

  “Willpower,” Kon said seriously. “I could be in my nice warm bed right now, sleeping soundly.”

  He slowed down.

  “Think it’s enough?”

  Sasha stopped.

  The sky was peppered with stars, bright like crystals illuminated by spotlights. Red-cheeked and out of breath, Ivan looked at her with unabashed humor.

  “You’re a strange creature, Samokhina. A transcendental object. A closed book. Now you’re running. My grandpa says, every day, five in the morning. Are you some kind of a coded princess?”

  He babbled nervously, smirking a little, afraid of appearing ridiculous. He himself was a closed book, a boy geared towards success. A winner of competitions and glutton of science fiction, with high cheekbones and dark curls, dressed in shirts always neatly ironed by mom or sister, a dandy who at sixteen knew three different tie knots.

  Sasha watched him and thought of one thing: right now she had to go into the bushes. Immediately. Otherwise the ritual would be broken; plus, to be honest, she wasn’t going to make it home anyway.

  “Kon, wait for me at the entrance.”

  He did not understand. He kept talking, smiling coyly in the half-light, kept sputtering nonsense about an encrypted princess, and how she must be deciphered.

  “Kon, go and wait for me! I’ll be right there!”

  He did not get it. Idiot. Conceited chatter-box. Time was running out, the run was completed, but the ritual was not.

  “I have to pee!” Sasha snapped. “Do you get it?”

  When she left the park, the entrance was deserted. No old man with a dog, no Ivan Konev. Only a chain of footsteps stretched over frosted grass.

  ***

  Valentin left. Sasha hoped for good, but it was not to be. The three of them celebrated New Year’s Eve together—like a family, with champagne and a little fir tree that Mom decorated herself, rejecting Sasha’s help.

  All night fireworks rumbled outside. At half past four, when Mom and Valentin were still watching The Irony of Fate on one of the local channels, Sasha pulled on her boots (she did not dare run over the snow in sneakers) and wound a scarf around her neck.