Vita Nostra

by Marina Dyachenko

  Sasha went into the booth. But even while speaking to Mom, she could not get Kozhennikov and Kostya out of her mind.

  ***

  “Haven’t you slept with him yet?” Oksana sounded worried.

  She was washing the dishes. No matter who made the mess in the kitchen, Oksana ended up doing the dishes. Sometimes she threw pots and pans against the wall and shrieked: “What a pigsty!” but then did the dishes anyway. Greasy plates piled in the sink drove her insane.

  “They are all hypersexual at that age,” Oksana must have been repeating somebody else’s words. “You are going to lose him, you know.”

  Sasha bent over a paragraph. Room 21 overflowed with Lisa and Lisa’s friends and acquaintances. They parked themselves all over the place, even on Sasha’s bed. Sasha did not feel like arguing, she took her books and went to the kitchen, which at that time of night was empty, not counting Oksana and her dishes.

  In the past few months of dorm life Sasha got used to sleeping despite loud noises and studying in the middle of an earthquake. Oksana’s words unsettled her, and she found herself constantly returning to the beginning of the paragraph.

  “You are a strange creature,” Oksana mused. Her back was turned to Sasha; Oksana was soaping up a plate and could hear nothing except for the sounds of running water and her own voice. “Are you eighteen yet? In the spring? You’re a peanut. Portnov gave you an automatic pass, the only one out of thirty-nine people. And you are still cramming, like a wound-up toy, morning to night. Kostya is a good-looking guy, and we have tons of pretty girls around here, somebody will steal him away, you know. Even the local chicks are not bad here, the schoolgirls…”

  The door swung open. The one-eyed Victor, the third year, came limping in, still lopsided and strange. His sweatpants formed bubbles on his knees; a plaid shirt had seen better days. Huge leather gloves covered his hands, and his face was hidden behind enormous dark glasses. Sasha shuddered.

  “Hey, girls,” Victor croaked. “Will you pour me some tea?”

  Oksana turned her face to him:

  “Don’t you have any of your own tea?”

  “Hold on,” Sasha put aside her book. She couldn’t concentrate anyway.

  The electric teakettle began to hiss; the smell of burned duct tape filled the kitchen.

  “Victor, what happened to your hands?” Sasha asked in passing.

  Victor looked down at his hands hidden by the gloves. He wiggled his fingers.

  “Ah, you know… The winter finals are coming, girls, the winter finals. Must survive the winter finals, that’s the thing.”

  “Must survive the finals,” Sasha echoed.

  Victor’s dark glasses turned to her:

  “What are you worried about, you are only first years, have fun and play games. Celebrate New Year’s Eve. For third years there is a placement exam this winter, ladies.”

  Oksana turned off the teakettle. She turned to him, wiping her hands on an already wet dish towel:

  “Is it difficult?”

  Victor inclined his head:

  “I guess you can put it that way.... Difficult. After this exam we are moving to another location. Whoever passes it, obviously.”

  “It might be easier at the other location,” Sasha suggested without a hint of conviction.

  None of the first years had any clue about where the “other location” actually was, and what exactly it entailed. Some people said it was a very advanced institute, equipped with extremely sophisticated technology, with a dormitory recently renovated according to the contemporary European standards, with a computer on each desk. Others said the place was hidden underground, in deep catacombs. It was also said that the other location was in another city.

  Some students—Sasha heard it herself—believed that the other location happened to be on another planet.

  Once Sasha suggested to Kostya that the “other location” for the upperclassmen was a mysterious region beyond the grave that no one knows anything about, because no one ever returns from that place. Kostya had a strange reaction to her joke: he went pale and asked her not to make this kind of a joke ever again.

  “It might be easier,” Victor agreed melancholically. “What can I say, girls. I really meant to be a merchant marine…”

  Sasha plopped a teabag into an enamel mug and poured steaming boiling water over it.

  “Sugar?”

  “Two teaspoons. No, three.”

  Sasha placed the mug on the edge of the table. Victor picked it up with both hands—awkwardly because of the leather gloves—and poured the boiling tea into his mouth, like water.

  Sasha stopped breathing. Victor put his empty cup on the table, smiled and licked his lips.

  “Thanks.”

  “Isn’t it too hot?” Sasha asked softly.

  He shook his head.

  “Nah… Well, girls, I should go study. Thanks, remember me kindly.”

  He left the kitchen.

  ***

  Sasha stepped into her room, a textbook stuck under her arm. The room was dimly lit by a desk lamp and a few burning cigarette ends. Faces were hard to distinguish in the thick smoky air. Lisa sat on the desk next to a stereo system, and about ten people, first and second years, perched wherever they could find a place. Two people sat on Sasha’s bed—a sturdy girl whom Sasha had seen around was making out with her boyfriend. Her name was Irina; his, Slava.

  “Lights out,” Sasha said. “Eleven o’clock. Everybody out.”

  No one heard or listened to her. She approached the desk and threw the stereo system onto the floor.

  The top broke off. A tape fell out. Conversation died.

  “Are you nuts, Samokhina?” Olga from room 32 asked in complete silence.

  Sasha switched on the light. Everyone squinted; Sasha’s eyes were wide open, even slightly bulging.

  Just a few minutes ago, accompanied by laughter and voices, she finished Exercise number twenty-five.

  Even though Portnov only gave her numbers thirteen through seventeen.

  It just so happened that after she completed number seventeen, Sasha read the next one, out of curiosity—and understood absolutely nothing.

  Instead of simply closing the book, she read it one more time. The words were familiar. The images were more or less clear. However, she could not imagine what she was supposed to do with them, and how it was meant to be done.

  And that is when the bee in Sasha’s bonnet resurfaced. Perhaps it had something to do with her personality of a straight A student. Perhaps, her investigative instincts had kicked in. But she pulled a thread from number seventeen to number eighteen, followed it into utter darkness, and a few minutes later she stumbled upon what she thought of as a “contour” of the exercise.

  Here it was.

  Truly happy, she started gently kneading number eighteen. From that one, she sensed threads stretching to number nineteen, and then to number twenty. And then Sasha felt an epiphanal illumination of truth, and she threw herself into the exercises, one after another, and the light was becoming brighter, until finally, on Exercise number twenty-five, she went blind.

  The inner light flashed brilliantly and then faded. Sasha rubbed her eyes; she couldn’t see the kitchen or her textbook. For a second she thought she was inside the exercise. She was a dark contour in a space without upper or lower limits; she did not have a chance to get scared. She heard the door slam, felt a cold draft, heard the refrigerator door open.

  “Bitches! Who ate my herring?”

  “Idiot, did you leave it in the common fridge?”

  “I can’t keep it in my room! It stinks!”

  “Should have eaten it right away.”

  “Morons… Whose sausage is this? I’m going to eat the whole bloody thing.”

  “Don’t, the sausage is Elena’s, it’s spoiled. It was already going bad when she got it.”

  Sasha heard the voices very near her. She sensed the draft on her face, perceived smells. And saw nothing.

&nb
sp; She felt the textbook sliding off her lap. She managed to catch it. There was no fear: didn’t Portnov say something about this, that vision may change…

  What if her vision was lost forever?

  Sasha swallowed her terrified howl. She rubbed her eyes, as if trying to gouge them out, and a few second later she could discern the white blur of the fridge. And one more minute later she detected the head of a herring on the tiled floor, somebody’s feet in slippers, fragments of a broken cup…

  Her vision returned.

  Reeling, Sasha shuffled off to her room. Something was happening to her. Something serious. She could not—and did not wish to—stop it. She flung open the door, became aware of the burning ends of cigarettes and a necking couple sitting on her bed; she did not think about anything and acted on pure instinct.

  “Everybody out. Are you deaf?”

  “Too much studying, sweetheart?” the guy on her bed asked her softly.

  He looked into her eyes.

  It seemed to her that only a few seconds had passed. In reality, when she came to, the clock showed half past eleven, and she was alone in the room. Cigarette butts lay on the floor. The tobacco smoke made her nauseous: she moved to the window, ripped off the paper she and Oksana had taped on the frame, plucked out the foam and threw open a panel, gulping the icy November air.

  ***

  “You know, I am getting to be quite scared of you,” Kostya said. “Sometimes you have this look on your face…”

  They sat on the windowsill in the corridor near auditorium thirty-eight. Kostya had come out of his individual session ten minutes ago, Sasha had five minutes to wait before hers.

  “Sasha… what exactly did happen? Something happened, and none of them would admit it, as if they were ashamed.”

  “Nothing,” Sasha waved her hand without much enthusiasm. “I told them to go to hell.”

  “You have changed,” Kostya said.

  “We’re all changing.”

  “Yes, but you… Maybe you are a genius. Or something worse than that?” Kostya attempted a joke.

  “I gotta go,” Sasha said.

  She stopped in front of auditorium thirty-eight. Actually, she still had a couple of minutes: Portnov’s voice was sharp and loud behind the door. It sounds as if he’s flogging someone, or hammering in nails. Sasha thought that today he would definitely not yell at her. Today she brought not five, but twenty-three exercises. Twenty-three… She felt anxious and happy, like when she was a little girl riding a Ferris wheel.

  Zhenya Toporko left the auditorium, strangely hunched over, holding back tears. Probably deserved it, Sasha thought without pity. She entered the auditorium.

  “Good morning, Samokhina. Have you finished?”

  Sasha nodded. She leaned over the straight-backed chair and began the mental process starting from Exercise number thirteen.

  She lost it on number fourteen and began again. Made a mistake on number fifteen and went back to the beginning. Portnov watched her, his lips pursed skeptically. Ready to panic, Sasha started again and lost it on number thirteen. Portnov was silent.

  “Give me a minute, I just need to concentrate.”

  “Then concentrate.”

  “I…”

  Sasha stumbled. She remembered last night. Oksana and her dishes. Victor and his gloves. “Haven’t you slept with him yet?” Scalding tea… Flashes of cigarettes in the dark.

  She started number thirteen—and felt the exercises glide. One after another. Like the links of a chain. Like familiar thoughts. Insane. Alien.

  She passed number sixteen. Seventeen. Immediately merged into number eighteen. Nineteen. Her heart asphyxiated; Sasha felt like a tightrope walker, dancing on a wire over a screaming crowd, she could almost hear their ecstatic shrieks—although in reality the auditorium was quiet, somewhere in the hallway students spoke to each other, and she stood grasping the back of the chair, staring into space, and across from her Portnov sat and watched her, and somehow—how?—he knew and saw her dance on the wire, and he was her only spectator.. Or listener? Accomplice? What was happening to her, and how could he sense it? And what exactly about her thoughts and exercises did he see?

  Right after the twenty-fifth exercise she went blind. Just like last night in the kitchen. A flash of light—and darkness, like a closed container. Obscurity.

  And stillness. Portnov did not move.

  “Sit down.”

  Holding onto the chair, she walked around it and sat down. The seat squeaked.

  “Which numbers were you supposed to study?”

  “Thirteen through eighteen.”

  “Then why the hell did you touch the twenty-fifth?”

  Sasha swallowed.

  “Answer me!”

  “I wanted to.”

  “What??”

  “I wanted to!” Sasha was ready to snap and talk back at him. Had she still had her eyes, she would get up and leave, and slam the door behind her. However, she was blind and afraid to appear ridiculous by running into the door frame on her way out.

  “What can you see?” Portnov asked an octave lower.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  Sasha blinked a few times.

  “Nothing,” her voice was barely audible. “The same thing happened last night. But it went away almost immediately.”

  “How many times did you do number twenty-five?”

  “Twice. Last night and this morning.”

  She heard Portnov get up and approach her. She rose; Portnov took hold of her chin and sharply, almost cruelly jerked her face up. There was a flash of light; Sasha blinked.

  Right in front of her eyes was Portnov’s ring. Its green light dimmed little by little.

  Portnov removed his glasses. He looked at Sasha—perhaps for the first time in her life, he looked not above his lenses, but straight at her. His pupils were tiny, like poppy seeds. They reminded Sasha of the eyes of the hunchback, Nikolay Valerievich, who once treated Sasha to a restaurant dinner of sandwiches and porkchops.

  “Listen to me, girl. If I say something, that means you have to do it exactly as I say. You may not do less. You may not… should not do more. If you want to do more, come to me first and ask. And here is something else: you have two exams coming up. You are missing a lot of classes. I checked attendance—you’ve missed almost as many classes as Pavlenko. Have you made peace with her yet?”

  Sasha was silent for a moment. The last question caught her off-guard.

  “I didn’t… didn’t fight with her.”

  “If you kill someone, you will go to prison. Have you turned eighteen yet?”

  “No… what do you mean, if I kill someone?”

  Someone knocked on the door. Sasha’s individual session ended two minutes ago; previously, Portnov never made anyone wait.

  “Wait!” Portnov yelled with irritation. He turned to Sasha again.

  “Your aggression levels are over the limit. It’s just a stage. But in your particular case, it’s over the roof.”

  “In my case?!”

  “Yes. Think about it. That’s it, you are dismissed.”

  Sasha departed, making way for Andrey Korotkov. Almost right away she bumped into Kostya.

  “I thought he killed you.”

  “Listen, am I aggressive?”

  Kostya did not say anything for so long that Sasha got really worried:

  “But I never… Just the opposite, I…”

  “You are strange,” Kostya said after a long pause. “Tell me, what are you doing tomorrow?”

  ***

  They spent Sunday strolling around town and doing absolutely nothing. Kostya took Sasha to a café; they had ice cream and watched sparrows huddling near the kitchen’s air vent for warmth. Sasha kept thinking that Kostya expected something of her. It was in the way he gazed at her, and in the way a minute pause accompanied each of his words, as if he wanted Sasha to interrupt him.

  His expectant manner made her feel uncomfortabl
e.

  “Do you want to go to the post office with me? I have to call my mother.”

  Mom insisted on knowing every detail about Sasha’s studies. Sasha told her how she was praised for her work, and how she was now the best student in her class; Mom promised her a “nice little gift” to celebrate after the finals. Then Kostya talked to his family, his mother and grandmother. By the time they paid for the phone calls and left the post office, dusk turned to darkness, and it started to snow.

  “… Well, don’t you think it’s beastly to smoke in the room when you have been repeatedly asked not to smoke? What does it have to do with her personal issues? I’ve always been nice to her… I understand she has issues, and Kozhennikov drives her insane…”

  Sasha faltered. Kostya walked by her side, hunched over, hands stuck in his pockets.

  “Maybe I should change my last name,” he commented bitterly. “Take my mother’s.”

  Sasha did not know what to say. Snow fell, draping over the black twigs of the linden trees, the wrought iron benches, stucco corners and tin awnings. Here and there steam rose over the roofs, white steam on the black sky. It was beautiful.

  They continued to walk in silence. Sasha felt Kostya’s tension, as if he were a member of the audience in the dress circle, and Sasha had just appeared in the limelight and was holding a theatrical pause. But if Kostya bought his ticket, then wasn’t she obligated to say or do something?

  “Let’s walk back to the dorm,” Sasha said. And added, after hesitating for a second: “Don’t you need to work on the exercises?”

  Kostya turned sharply to face her:

  “Is it all you talk about? The exercises?”

  “Not all the time… I…”

  She faltered. Then stopped walking. Kostya stood in front of her with so much disappointment and reproach that Sasha felt utterly lost.

  “Do you really think that I…”

  And again she could not find the right words.

  “Don’t you understand that I…”

  Then she felt deeply offended. Her throat felt tight.

  “And in any case, that’s not my business!” she screamed and walked away very quickly, slipping and stumbling on the wet pavement.

  Kostya caught up and held her in his arms.