Vita Nostra

by Sergey

  “Please try dialing again.”

  “There is no answer. Perhaps they went to the theater?”

  Sasha walked out into the rain and darkness. Two rows of buildings on Sacco and Vanzetti Street hovered over her: empty balconies, peeling plaster, glistening cobblestones. Naked linden trees. Of course, Mom and Valentin could be at the theater. Or at a party. And it was absolutely normal that Mom was not home when, out of the blue, Sasha felt like calling her . . .

  She walked along the edge of the sidewalk, umbrella hanging by her side. Raindrops beat on her hood. Fallen leaves turned slimy and musty, losing all their poetic beauty. Water flowed between the stones in the pavement.

  A car drove by toward the center of town, a Zhiguli stained by moist dirt. The yellow hands of the headlights snatched the tree trunks and walls for a split second, reflected like flames in each cobblestone, drowned in the darkness, and disappeared. Darkness fell again, and only occasional lit windows and distant streetlights illuminated the road for Sasha.

  A gust of wind made the nearest linden tree shake and toss raindrops and its last few leaves on the ground. Sasha shivered and pulled her hood farther down on her head. For some reason, she thought of that warm starry night when Lisa fell out the window. Why did she think of that? Maybe the sensation was similar . . . The same gust of wind, as if something dark flew over the sky. Sasha thought that, in its despair and helplessness, Lisa’s “suicide” was analogous to her and Kostya’s “love” . . .

  “Good evening, Sasha.”

  She turned her head. A second ago she was alone in the street.

  “Why aren’t you using an umbrella? Is it some sort of a new fad with young people—soaking down to their bones?”

  It took Sasha a few seconds to recognize the very tall man with a hump and long gray hair tumbling from under his hat now standing next to her, wearing a dark coat and carrying a large black umbrella. Nikolay Valerievich.

  “Hello,” she said, more nervous than polite.

  “You must be freezing. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  She’d never been in this restaurant before, even though she’d noticed the sign the few times she’d passed it before. The restaurant was definitely not geared toward students; Sasha’s wet jacket was removed by a cloakroom attendant in a black sports coat. A fire burned in the room separated from the common area with heavy drapes, and Sasha immediately held out her hands, red from the cold.

  “Will you have anything to eat?”

  “Just coffee . . .”

  “Perhaps a sandwich?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Caviar, salmon, ham?”

  “Ham,” Sasha chose, thinking ham might be cheaper.

  Nikolay Valerievich moved his shoulders. The gesture seemed habitual for him; Sasha couldn’t stop thinking that his hump must make him uncomfortable, as if something were folded awkwardly, rolled up, and crumpled on his back, under his jacket.

  “Sasha, tell me about your parents.”

  She did not expect that question. Actually, she had no idea what to expect.

  “Mom’s a designer. I have no father.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No. They divorced, and . . . we haven’t communicated in many years.”

  “Who sent you to the institute? Farit?”

  Sasha swallowed. “Yes.”

  The waiter placed a cup of coffee in front of Sasha and a large snifter of cognac in front of her companion. A few inches from Sasha’s nose appeared a platter filled with tiny sandwiches: caviar, ham, salami, cheese, and smoked salmon crowned by leafy greens leading an intricate dance under the yellow sails of lemon slices.

  Sasha realized that she was ravenous. And had been for a while. She’d missed lunch, and she hadn’t even tried to eat breakfast. Everywhere she looked, she saw those stupid anchovies in tomato sauce.

  “Lean college years,” Nikolay Valerievich murmured to himself. “How about a main course? Cutlets? Pork chop? Soup?”

  “Pork chop . . . Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Sasha, do you have any idea what sort of institute you have been accepted to, and what you are being taught?”

  Sasha swallowed once more, but this time said, “No.”

  Her companion nodded.

  “No one even asked me!” Sasha said bitterly. “No one wondered whether I even want to study here or not. I was forced. We’re not being taught, we are being trained, or brainwashed, humiliated, and . . .”

  She stopped short. Nikolay Valerievich was smiling, as if she’d said something amusing.

  “That’s a perfectly ordinary situation, Sasha. You don’t want to learn? But what do you want? Look into your soul, and you will realize: all you really want is fun and pleasure. Any instance of learning is coercion. Any form of culture must be enforced, alas. You are immature internally, and you must be forced, and forced cruelly. All of you hate Farit . . . and without a good reason.”

  Sasha was no longer hungry. She sat at the table, her head hanging low.

  “Well now,” the hunchback said softly. “Don’t be upset. You’re one of the best, Sasha. And you have a bright, interesting future ahead of you. A really big future. Now take another bite, will you?”

  Sasha forced down a sandwich. She chewed half of her pork chop, leaving the sides untouched. She drank the cooling cup of coffee and then one more cup, fresh and hot, and then a large cup of tea with lemon. The whole time Nikolay Valerievich sipped his cognac and watched her across the table. His pupils looked unnaturally narrow, like poppy seeds, both in the light and in the semidarkness.

  “I will be teaching you next year,” said the hunchback. “And then during third year as well. I am really counting on you, Sasha. It will be very interesting to work with you. Does Oleg Borisovich give you a lot of homework?”

  Sasha gave him a sardonic smile.

  “You see, it is really necessary,” Nikolay Valerievich said seriously. “It is difficult, but you must try hard, Sasha. Try not to pay any attention to this way of life, the disorder, the unsettled state of everyday affairs. Work hard. And you and I shall meet again. In a while . . .”

  Leaving the restaurant, Sasha strolled along the streets. The rain ended, the wind died down, and stars peeked through the shredded clouds; this blazing magnificence was worth taking a little time before going back to the stuffy room. She returned late. To her enormous joy, both Oksana and Lisa were already in bed.

  Sasha turned on her desk lamp, sat down, folding her legs under her, wrapped herself in a blanket, and opened the exercise book.

  On Monday, after classes ended, the entire first-year body congregated in the assembly hall. Portnov paced up and down the stage; an irate-looking superintendent occupied one of the corners.

  “What is this?” Portnov asked, holding up a book with a soft gray cover.

  No one knew the answer. The audience fidgeted on squeaky chairs, chewed gum, and spoke softly to one another.

  “This is a set of additional exercises for first years. In this case, it is a set of penalty exercises.”

  The audience ceased fussing.

  “In the last few weeks I have received too many complaints about the first-year students, who behave abominably in their dormitory with their drinking binges and debauchery. Why did you come here? To get drunk on vodka? Or maybe you’re here to smash windows, break doors, and dismantle faucets? Copulate with whoever is available?”

  “Tell them to turn on the heat,” said a grim voice from the back row.

  “You’ll have your heat, Komarov. After the meeting, take this textbook and do exercises one through three. Your deadline is your individual session on Saturday.”

  The auditorium was absolutely still.

  “Starting today,” Portnov informed them wearily, “consumption of alcoholic beverages is strictly forbidden in this dormitory. Any type of alcoholic beverages. Raids will be conducted regularly. If I find half a bottle of beer in anyone’s room, I will be assigning ten exercises,
and don’t even think of not completing them.”

  Sasha was sitting at the end of the first row. Kostya sat behind her, in the third row, diagonally. She sensed his presence. Portnov’s every word resonated in her head like the growl of a low-flying airplane.

  “Is everybody clear on this?”

  Silence.

  “Return to the dormitory and check your rooms. All the alcoholic beverages are to be emptied into the sink and the bottles returned to the recycling center. If anyone gets drunk tonight, I guarantee he or she will not have a free minute up until New Year’s Eve. Even more so, he or she will not have any time for sleep. That’s all, you are dismissed.”

  The hall filled with the slapping sounds of emptying seats. Sasha picked up her bag from the armrest and moved toward the exit, avoiding eye contact.

  This time there was no line at the post office. Sasha listened to one or two beeps, and then Mom picked up the phone—apparently Sasha’s unexpected phone call really surprised her. Of course, they were just fine. Yesterday they went to Irina’s birthday party and took a cab back home; it was late, after midnight. Was anything wrong?

  Sasha listened to her unconcerned voice, thinking that Mom must look younger these days. She and Valentin were happy together. As strange as it was, Farit Kozhennikov was right: three’s a crowd, and Sasha would have been in the way. Nothing had happened, no accidents, no catastrophes, no illnesses; all of it existed only in Sasha’s feverish mind . . .

  She hung up and left the post office, relieved.

  She walked and ran through her exercises at the same time. Her feet tripped upon each other. An old woman glanced at Sasha suspiciously: she must have thought the girl was plastered. Sasha stopped to rest and leaned on a wrought-iron bench. The sun was setting; orange flames burned in the windows in the building across the street.

  “Take the mental formation you accomplished as a result of exercise seven and reconfigure it so that its projection on any imagined surface is shaped as a circle . . .”

  And take this text, underlined in red, impossible to commit to memory, which must be memorized.

  Darkness came early. A desk lamp was lit in the room smelling of stale cigarette smoke. A book was open in front of Sasha. The dormitory was unusually quiet. Oksana busied herself with transferring moonshine from its container to a hot water bottle purchased at a nearby drugstore. Lisa ran out of cigarettes, took a trip around the dorm, and came back with half a pack. None of what they did mattered to Sasha. Pulling a second (or third?) all-nighter in a row, she was cranking the sequence of exercises in her head. In a cloudy broth of insomnia she was beginning to feel that she was thinking somebody else’s thoughts. The thoughts felt so foreign to her that they didn’t even fit in her head. Sasha imagined that processing these thoughts was just as difficult as picking up a pen with a horse’s hoof.

  She was afraid of falling asleep over the book, but the exercises kept her awake, like bright lights or loud music. Swollen eyelids itched, and every now and then she had to stretch her aching back. Tomorrow (actually, today already) was Tuesday—Portnov was going to check her knowledge of the paragraphs. So at four in the morning, Sasha put aside Exercises and opened Textual Module 2. In this one, the paragraphs were longer than in Textual Module 1, and each one of them ended in almost a full page underlined in red.

  I can’t read this, Sasha thought, staring at the page scattered with the discordant nonsensical words. I cannot commit this to memory. Let Farit do what he must.

  Many hours of studying did something to her head. She felt like a crystal: transparent, fragile, and perfectly calm. Like a dangling icicle. Like an apathetic chunk of glass. She tried to cry, as a child tries riding a scooter after a long winter break. She eventually managed. Large tears rolled down her cheeks, but Sasha felt neither sadness nor despair, nor any emotions whatsoever—as if her tears came out of an open faucet.

  She stopped crying—again, simply by willing herself to stop. Wiped her cheeks. She harnessed herself into the text and pulled it; she felt as if she were untangling a knot of barbed wire with her eyes.

  “. . . fear of death and did not find it . . . There was no fear because there was no death . . .”*

  She kept going. That first time, in the library, the erupted meaning was bright blue. This time, it was gray, with a dull shine—steely, almost. Very disconnected. Sasha understood almost nothing aside from “fear of death.” She continued reading anyway, hoping for another eruption, but the lines stretched like rusty centipedes, leaving footprints in her brain, and their meaning eluded her.

  At seven in the morning an alarm clock went off under Oksana’s bed.

  In the bathroom mirror, a monster with a wrinkled pale countenance and red inflamed eyes stared back at Sasha. Her pupils contracted oddly and seemed very small; she blinked several times, trying to figure out what was wrong with her own reflection. Her pupils went back to normal about ten minutes later.

  She skipped Math and English. Put some makeup on to look a bit more normal. She walked the school corridors, head low to the ground, avoiding her classmates. Today’s schedule of individual sessions was posted on the bulletin board: Sasha had the three thirty slot. She hid in a far corner, hopped onto the windowsill, and stretched her tired legs.

  Seventy-two hours without sleep. She’d never thought she was capable of that. But she did not even feel sleepy. Forty-five minutes remained until her time with Portnov; she leaned on the wall to run through the underlined text one more time and lowered her lids for just a moment.

  When she opened her eyes, the window was dark. And the hallway was dark. Around the corner only a day lamp was on.

  Sasha jumped, covered in cold sweat. She looked at her watch—ten minutes before six; the individual sessions had ended an hour ago.

  She ran. Her steps resonated in the empty corridor. The door of auditorium 38 was locked; Sasha tugged it a few times, hoping for a miracle. She looked around. Alexandra Samokhina was the only human being in the entire long dimly lit corridor. Silence prevailed within the institute, and only somewhere above her, laughter and screaming could be heard as table tennis players congregated at the door of the gym.

  Sasha adjusted the bag on her shoulder and went down the hall. She did not know why. She probably should be going to the dorm. She probably could not change anything at this point. Perhaps as early as tomorrow she would have to explain to Portnov . . . At the very thought of explaining anything to Portnov, Sasha started crying, this time for real, out of pity for herself.

  “Where have you been?”

  Kostya leapt at her out of the shadows, from underneath the bronze belly of the horse.

  “Where the hell have you been? I tried . . . I went everywhere, chased everyone down, changed the schedule, made sure somebody took your slot, and then more people . . . more changes . . . I kept thinking you’d show up . . . I waited until the last possible moment! Where were you?”

  “I fell asleep,” Sasha said, letting her tears flow. “I memorized everything. Last night. I fell asleep.”

  “Damn,” Kostya said after a pause. “You should have seen . . . He totally lost it. He yelled at me, at everyone else. All because you did not show up.”

  Sasha sat down on the granite pedestal and wrapped her arms around herself. Kostya sat next to her. The way he was sitting there, silently, his side touching her side, the way he was sniffling and staring directly in front of them, made Sasha catch her breath and momentarily hate herself. She hated herself for staying away from him. For the anchovies in tomato sauce. For avoiding eye contact and missing classes. For everything.

  “I wanted to go twice,” Kostya said. “For myself and then for you.”

  She broke down sobbing. Going to the individual session with Portnov twice was equivalent to dying twice; Kostya was ready to do that for her, and she had run out of his bed, thrown up all over his room, and thumbed her nose at him for nearly a week!

  “Is he gone yet?” she asked through her tears. />
  Kostya shrugged. “He’s still at school. I’ve been here for a while, since the one-on-ones finished up. He hasn’t left yet. Listen, what if I go tell him that I found you, tell him you are sick? Passed out . . . Why not?”

  Because Sasha was shaking her head. Lying to Portnov equaled suicide. Kostya’s volunteering to be the messenger equaled self-sacrifice.

  “I’ll go see him myself.” She was conscious of her tears causing her mascara to cover her face in black streaks; but it was all that damn snot that made her nose swell up and redden. “Before he leaves. Let him do what he wants.”

  “He’s livid! Don’t go now—let him cool down a little bit.”

  “Cool down? Portnov?”

  Sasha got up. The concierge in the glass booth gaped at her with bewilderment and sympathy.

  “Just wait for me,” Sasha said feebly. “It’ll be easier for me if I know you’re waiting.”

  Kostya nodded.

  Sasha went downstairs, toward the dining hall door, closed by now. Across from the entrance was a full-size mirror. Sasha did not pay much attention to her overall reflection, but she cleaned up the black streaks around her eyes as well as she could. She took a deep breath and went farther down, to the corridor with brown imitation leather doors. The first one, wide, double-paned, bore a sign:

  teachers’ lounge.

  Sasha knocked softly, and the sound was drowned in the leathery thickness. She knocked on the doorknob.

  “What’s the matter?”

  The voice was harsh. It was Portnov’s voice.

  Sasha tugged on the door handle.

  She saw a long, softly lit room, furnished with several couches along the walls, a coat hanger with a few raincoats, and a completely naked plastic mannequin. Farther away from the door, Portnov sat behind an old writing desk. He stared at Sasha over his glasses, his eyes ice-cold and immobile.

  Kostya is waiting for me, she reminded herself and swallowed.

  “What do you need, Samokhina?”

  “I learned it,” Sasha said, trying not to show her fear. “I learned everything. I’m ready for the one-on-one.”