Vita Nostra

by Sergey

  “Because you keep this knowledge from us,” Sasha cut in again.

  Kostya asked, “What exactly are the coins?”

  Kozhennikov absentmindedly stuck his hand into his pocket. He took out a gold disk, and Sasha saw the familiar rounded three-dimensional symbol.

  “Look. This is a word that has never been pronounced. And it never will be.” Kozhennikov flipped the coin; it flew up and landed back on his palm. “Do you understand?”

  Sasha and Kostya were silent.

  “Of course you don’t understand. But you will,” Kozhennikov nodded reassuringly. “Are you interested in fishing? Kostya?”

  “No,” said Kozhennikov junior with disdain. “We have a lot of work for tomorrow. See you.”

  Without a backward glance, he walked away from the river, and Sasha quickly followed.

  Sasha could deal with the mornings and afternoons. She was busy, she had lectures, classes, all sorts of worries. But in the evenings, and especially during the nights, she cried. Every night. Turning her face to the wall.

  She missed her home, longed terribly for Mom. Dozing off, she would see Mom enter the room, stand right next to her bed . . .

  Sasha would wake up—and cry again.

  She barely managed to fall asleep by the time the alarm clock went off.

  Sasha had always taken pleasure in learning. Shuffling between courses and tutors, polishing the seat of her skirt at the library, poring over textbooks in advance, she never quite comprehended how lucky she was back then to be learning things that were logical, comprehensible, and elegant, like a geometry problem.

  But now, when nothing she had to learn was ever logical or comprehensible, even the very sight of the Textual Module, with its pattern of blocks on the cover, made her unbearably bored.

  A week passed. Then another. Every day she had to read sections, memorize, cram, and grind at snippets of nonsensical, unpleasant text. Sasha herself did not understand why this gobbledygook caused more and more revulsion with each passing day. Reading the barbaric combinations of half-familiar and alien words, she felt something brewing inside her: within her head, a wasp nest was waking up, and it droned and hummed in distress, searching in vain for an exit.

  People started playing hooky in the second week of school. Andrey Korotkov stopped attending Math, claiming he used to work on problems like this in ninth grade. Lisa Pavlenko occasionally skipped History, Philosophy, English—without any explanation. Some boys skipped gym, but the girls attended Dima Dimych’s class diligently and cheerfully. Adorable, gorgeous, sweet Dima did not torture anyone with backbreaking training; instead, he dedicated most of the time to games. He gave long lectures on the human body with the goal of making the training more effective. Naïvely, he demonstrated the location of tendons, the structure of muscles—first on an educational poster, then on a live model. The live models requested more details and explanations. Dima blushed and explained again and again: here is the knee joint, here is the ankle joint, and these here are very tender ligaments, which are frequently pulled and can even tear . . .

  Sasha liked watching the young teacher from a distance, somewhere atop a stack of gym mats. The boldness of her classmates, their audacity and cheekiness surprised and embarrassed her, but also made her a bit envious.

  Truancy was fine in the other classes, but Specialty was always meticulously attended by all nineteen students of Group A. And every one of them studied the textual sections diligently. Portnov was a master of coercing. In fact, coercing seemed to be his sole teaching skill.

  “Why do we need these lectures? To learn how to read?” bristled Laura Onishenko, a tall busty girl who carried a plastic bag with her knitting everywhere.

  “It’s not education,” Kostya said. “It’s obedience training, in the best-case scenario. In the worst-possible-case scenario, it is brainwashing. How’s your head—does it feel normal after one-on-one sessions?”

  Kostya wasn’t wrong. To a certain degree, one-on-one sessions were even worse than the lectures. Fifteen minutes twice a week. According to Portnov, he controlled their knowledge, although from Sasha’s point of view, they learned nothing, and his method of control smacked of shamanism: Portnov’s ring blinded her, made her thoughts scramble, time made a dizzying leap, and meanwhile Portnov managed to find out everything she had learned, did not quite learn, or did not learn well.

  “You did not finish Section 5. Tomorrow you will do Section 6, and again Section 5.”

  “That’s not enough time!”

  “I am not interested.”

  It appeared as if Group B was experiencing the same: rosy-cheeked Oksana looked pale and drawn, and spent all her free time at her desk. Lisa continued to smoke in the room, one cigarette after another. Sasha thought she was doing it on purpose; she seemed to enjoy watching Sasha cough and squint from the tobacco smoke.

  Two weeks of classes passed by. Once, during lunch break, when everyone went to the dining hall, Sasha returned to the dorm, found a stash of cigarettes (several packs) among Lisa’s belongings, and flushed them down the toilet.

  Lisa said nothing. But the next day the entire contents of Sasha’s makeup bag—powder, eye shadow, lip gloss, and an expensive lipstick, a birthday gift used rarely, only on important holidays—all of it ended up in the trash, broken, crushed, and smeared over the rusty metal sides of the garbage can.

  Sasha discovered the debacle later in the morning, when Lisa had already left the room. Blind with rage, Sasha dashed to the lecture hall, intending to rip the witch’s hair out. She was too late: the first block, Specialty, had started, and a new dose of the sickening gibberish cooled down Sasha’s wrath faster than a bucket of icy water.

  After all, she’d started it. She threw out Lisa’s cigarettes. But what else could she do if that witch ignored all her requests! Nothing: as far as Sasha knew, Lisa was supposed to find a rental apartment and move relatively soon. And then Sasha could breathe easier. Oksana would never be a problem.

  It couldn’t come soon enough.

  Five minutes remained until the end of the class. Sasha finished reading the section and wiped her moist forehead with a wet, weak palm.

  “Samokhina, come over here.”

  Sasha jumped. Portnov stared at her directly over his glasses.

  “I said, come over here.”

  Kostya threw her a worried glance. Awkwardly, Sasha climbed from behind her desk, stepping over her bag.

  “Everyone, look at Samokhina.”

  Eighteen pairs of eyes—indifferent, sympathetic, some even gloating—stared at her in anticipation. Sasha couldn’t stand it: she looked down.

  “At this point, this girl has achieved the highest academic success. Not because of her talent—her abilities are fairly average. Some of you are significantly more talented. Yes, Pavlenko, that goes for you as well. Samokhina is ahead of your entire group because she works hard, while the rest of you are wearing out the seats of your pants.”

  Sasha was silent, her face burning. Some people’s faces reddened as well. Lisa Pavlenko was the color of a ripe tomato. Kostya went pale.

  Portnov held a long, weighty pause.

  “Having demonstrated an excellent result, Samokhina gets a personal hands-on assignment. Speech is silver . . . all of your words are trash, garbage, not worth the air spent in speaking. Silence . . . Silence is what, Samokhina?”

  “Golden,” Sasha squeezed out.

  “Golden. From this point on, Samokhina, you are to be silent. This exercise is intended to speed up certain processes, which are beginning to emerge, but are way too slow at this moment. You are not to speak a single word, neither here, nor outside. Nowhere at all. I forbid you.”

  Sasha looked up in astonishment. The bell rang in the hall.

  “Class dismissed,” Portnov said. “For tomorrow, Section 12, close reading, red text is to be memorized. Samokhina, that goes for you too. Study. Work hard.”

  That day Sasha missed her first gym class. She simply coul
d not remain among the crowds, even at the gym, even with such a lovely teacher as Dima Dimych.

  Besides, Group A needed some time without her. They needed to discuss her in her absence. She understood perfectly well.

  She went back to the dorm. Halfway there, she turned around. An empty smoke-filled room, the remains of her favorite makeup in the garbage can—chances are, all this would hardly cheer her up, so she left. Walked down the hall, and down the stairs.

  Walked out of the school.

  Sasha followed Sacco and Vanzetti toward the town center; she passed the post office and thought of Mom. How was she supposed to call her now?

  Oddly, she never considered violating Portnov’s taboo. But she wasn’t sure she could have, anyway: her lips, tongue, and larynx ceased to obey. Forty minutes after the end of the last block she could not open her tightly clenched teeth.

  It frightened her, especially when she suddenly felt incredibly thirsty. She purchased a bottle of mineral water at a grocery store, having to resort to gestures to explain to the salesperson what exactly she wanted. Only then her teeth unclenched and chattered on the glass lip of the bottle. Sasha drank the entire bottle greedily. Her stomach rumbled; she had to sit down in front of the post office.

  She’d called Mom last Sunday. Mom had said that Valentin was back from Moscow, but their wedding had been postponed again. Despite everything, Mom sounded cheerful and unconcerned. They are happy without me, Sasha thought.

  With that in mind, she went into the post office, gestured for one of the telegram slips, and wrote the following: “Everything fine will not be calling telephone broken.” She gave the slip to the surprised woman behind the counter, paid for the telegram, and walked out again. Relieved, a thought hit her:

  So now I’m the top student.

  It’s not surprising that Pavlenko blushed like that. But Sasha would give up her favorite lipstick—not just the lipstick, she’d give anything—for Pavlenko to be shown off, for her to be called the best student, despite her average talent, and forbidden to talk. And she, Sasha, would go to the gym with everybody else, and would chat about this curious episode, and tell Dima Dimych about it, and play ball, and sprawl on the stack of mats . . .

  Why does she have to be silent? What can she possibly learn that way? What sort of “emerging processes”?

  At first she planned on skipping Philosophy as well, but did not want to miss anything important. Her notes were becoming so logical, so harmonious, that she did not want to leave a gap in Plato’s place. She went to class.

  General lectures were attended by both Groups A and B. As usual, Kostya sat on one side of Sasha. Oksana settled on the other side.

  “Congratulations,” she whispered into Sasha’s ear.

  Sasha raised an eyebrow.

  “‘The world of ideas (eidos) exists outside of time and space. This world has a certain hierarchy, on top of which is the idea of Good . . .’”

  “Portnov was heaping praises on you,” Oksana babbled. “He says no one in our group even comes close to you . . .”

  Sasha sighed.

  “‘In the allegory of the cave, Good is portrayed as the Sun, and ideas symbolize the creatures and objects that pass in front of the Cave, and the Cave itself is a symbol of the material world with its illusions . . .’”

  “And the objects themselves—are they shadows of ideas?” Kostya asked out loud. “Projections?”

  The professor began explaining. Sasha turned away—and caught Lisa staring at her from the opposite corner of the lecture hall.

  “To a certain degree, this solves the problem. If Samokhina shuts up, living here is actually a possibility.”

  Sasha was silent. Lisa couldn’t relax; she wandered between the beds in her underwear, picked something up from the floor and dropped it again, opened the wardrobe, and went through her suitcase.

  “You were going to rent a place.” Oksana scowled. “And get the hell out of here.”

  “I am getting out. I just don’t have the time to deal with it. I’m leaving at some point, don’t you worry.”

  “I am not worried.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t!”

  Oksana was the type who gets excited about other people’s exclusivity, even the most minor kind, and who looks to befriend such a person. Lisa was one of those people who long for their own exclusivity and are offended to find themselves overshadowed.

  Sasha could have said: there is no reason to envy, and no reason to be angry. Lisa herself said that this was not education and not any kind of science, but instead a clear case of shamanism, hypnosis, psychosis, and whatever else. So what should I be proud of—my accomplishments in psychosis?

  But Sasha was silent. Her only attempt at speaking—last night, with Kostya, when she completely forgot about her ordeal—ended in grunting and spitting. Thinking of it made her feel ashamed.

  Lisa opened the window wider. The cold September night smelled of dead grass and moisture. Lisa lit up demonstratively.

  “We asked you not to smoke,” said Oksana.

  “Go to hell.”

  Sasha closed her eyes.

  Meaningless sentences rotated in her brain like tank treads. Sasha was reading Section 20. It was the second week of her muteness, and it seemed as if the world around her was slowly descending into silence.

  She felt like a blimp filled with soap bubbles. The bubbles—her unspoken words—rose up in her throat and crawled out, hung on her tongue, like clumsy acrobats on a trampoline. Then they popped, leaving a bitter aftertaste. Not a single word was strong enough to conquer the barrier, escape, and fly away.

  “Your words are trash, garbage . . .” Portnov was right, Sasha thought. Words did not matter. Glance, inflection, voice—all these thin threads, the antennae pointing into space, informed people of indifference or empathy, calmness, anxiety, love . . . Words did not. And yet, without the words it was much harder.

  She read words, though. Or, rather, she read gibberish, she memorized complete nonsense. All in vain: it was a Sisyphean task, the desperate efforts of the Danaides. An Indian summer followed the cold September days. Lisa Pavlenko never found an apartment. She continued smoking just as much, but by now Sasha was used to the constant smell of smoke. She had to write a paper for Philosophy class. Sasha chose Plato and went to the library, for some reason bringing her copy of the Textual Module. It was forbidden to talk in the tiny, confined reading room cramped with bookcases. Sasha was happy about it: nowhere else had she felt as mute as she did in a noisy crowd.

  She strolled along the bookcases, then chose a seat by the window and opened the Module, purely automatically, unaware of her own intentions.

  Only a few pages of the book remained unread. Sasha started the familiar process of scraping through the nonsensical combinations of letters. She kept reading until, suddenly, the words broke through the rasping in her brain:

  “. . . as enthralling as daylight; she perceived thoughts as a ray of sun . . .” *

  Sasha jerked her head.

  She was the only person in the reading room. The day outside the window approached nighttime. Through an open window she could smell a distant fire.

  She tried to reread the paragraph, but nothing worked. She returned to the beginning—having forgotten about Plato and his eidos, about her paper, and the closing time of the reading room, she pored over Textual Module 1. Her headache grew. She felt as if a hundred metal spoons banged on iron pans behind a thin wall, but she kept reading and she could not stop, like a barrel tumbling down a hill.

  “. . . that makes its way down the corridor and then everything in the world gains the gift of speech; and the sunlight speaks to you . . .”

  The librarian who showed up to lock the room found Sasha prostrate over the open book.

  She went to the post office and bought three graphed notebooks. A picture was on the back of the cover—a rippled mass of dots and squiggles. If one did not stare directly at the ripples, but instead unfocused and look
ed through the paper as if through glass, eventually the ripples gave way to a seemingly three-dimensional image: one notebook had an Egyptian pyramid, the other, a horse, and the third one, a fir tree. Some time ago, her physics teacher explained the principle of creating pictures like that, but Sasha had forgotten.

  She walked down the street, notebooks under her arm. Something niggled at her—something about the very nature of her time at the institute. What it came down to, Sasha thought, was this: That which we are forced to learn has meaning. We do not comprehend it. But it is not just brainwashing, not just cramming: meaning seeps in through this sluggish mess just like a three-dimensional image rises out of dots and squiggles; it is not a “horse,” and definitely not a “fir tree.” Chances are this science cannot be described by a single word. Or even two words. Perhaps words that describe this science, this process, do not even exist. Not a single second year, not to mention the third years, had ever deemed it possible to even hint at what we are being taught here. Maybe Portnov—or some other teacher—made them silent? Maybe. Or, perhaps, they don’t know that either.

  Victor, the one-eyed third year, told her that after the winter finals his entire group would be going to “another location,” where the fourth years and the graduates reside. Sasha thought of the third year of school, especially the winter finals, as something unbelievably distant, and she did not even feel any curiosity regarding where this “other location” was, or why the older students had to be separated . . .

  Darkness came early now. The tops of the linden trees on Sacco and Vanzetti, just yesterday so thick and opaque, now let through the glow of the distant streetlights. Yet the unseasonable warmth did not allow one to believe in the yellow leaves underfoot or the upcoming winter. Sasha stood for a while, taking deep breaths and watching the stars over the tiled roofs of the town of Torpa. Eventually, though, she had to go inside. She had two choices: walk through the school building or through the narrow alleyway that led directly to the dorm. Having considered both options, Sasha decided to take the shortcut.