Vita Nostra

by Sergey

  “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 should have ended two minutes ago.

  “Wait!” Portnov yelled with irritation—he had never made anyone wait before. He turned to Sasha again.

  “Your aggression levels are over the limit. It’s just a stage. But in your particular case, it’s close to out of control.”

  “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. Before she could respond, though, he said, “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 uncomfortable.

  “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 had 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 continued to fall, 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 that all you talk about? The exercises?”

  “Not all the time . . . I . . .”

  She faltered. Then stopped walking. Kostya faced 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 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.

  They kissed in foyers. The town of Torpa had plenty of dim, echoing, empty foyers. The foyers of some buildings smelled of cats, some of perfume or wet plaster. Some smelled of nothing. Old mailboxes, ficus trees in planters painted so many times that they looked monumental, a child’s sled, perambulators, a disassembled kid’s bike—the annals of the town were opening up to them, lobby after lobby, and Sasha learned to kiss properly on the brink of her eighteenth birthday.

  Before, she’d considered kissing a useless ceremony. Now, with Kostya, she finally understood the hidden meaning of this ritual; Sasha longed for one of these locked apartments to be theirs. She wanted to enter now—and remain inside for a long time. To live like that, forever holding hands.

  It was snowing outside, and they ran in the snow, from one building to another. They drank coffee to warm up, and looked for another secluded nook. Once somebody, probably a street cleaner, caught them off guard and yelled into their faces: “What do you think you’re doing here?” And they threw themselves out of the foyer like frightened children, into the snow. They ran and laughed, and knocked the snowflakes off their faces.

  It must have been the happiest night of Sasha’s life.

  November flew by like a commuter train. It was now December; the dormitory was cold once again. The radiators felt as if they were barely working, and wind howled through the cracks.

  “Verification: using empirical data or experiment to confirm the truth of theoretical scientific hypothesis by ‘returning’ to the visual level of knowledge, when the ideal nature of abstract entities is ignored, and they are ‘identified’ with the objects observed. For example, the ideal geometric objects—points, lines—are identified with their empirical images . . .”

  Sasha thought of the lengthy definitions as baby dragons curled into a ball. All she had to do was find its tail, and then carefully unwind the entire thing: the question led her, like a thread, along the creature’s spine. From tail to the heads, and there may be several of those.

  Sometimes Sasha enjoyed simply understanding the text. Sometimes she’d feel disillusioned, and think of the Philosophy textbook as a brick of premasticated food. Other times she learned definitions that were the result of somebody else’s inner life, but could not imagine the process that led to that result. She went to the library and requested books no one had wanted for the past few decades; she studied.

  During those chilly days, the joy of learning, this heightened experience, had to compete with another newly found pleasure: kissing in dark hallways, behind the curtains in the assembly hall, in the empty classrooms. The closer the winter finals were, the more insistent Kostya became. His roommates, the second years, spent very little time in the dorm, and all they needed to do was to skip a block and lock the door from the inside, but Sasha stalled, trying to buy herself some time; her memory of their first try was still too awkward. And also—she liked that tightly stretched thread that now connected the two of them. She wanted her “kissing affair” to last forever.

  New Year’s Eve was coming and while the town of Torpa draped itself with snow and now resembled a half-developed photograph, the second years were preparing a celebratory roast. Black trees under the white sky, gray buildings in white muzzles of balconies, diffused contours, everything rippled and very clean. Sasha completed the book of exercises given to her by Portnov, while Kostya had barely made it to number thirty-five.

  The schedule of winter finals had been posted. The amount of noise and number of late-night parties decreased to a minimum. With all this going on, Sasha continued to run in the snow that fell overnight, beat her new footsteps into her own, and call home every Sunday. Mom asked when she was coming home for the winter break. Sasha did not know what to tell her.

  English was their first pass-fail exam. Sasha passed easily. The gym teacher, Dima Dimych, gave everyone a passing grade, and for the rest of the block they played volleyball. The Math exam required a serious effort, and so Sasha had a sense of accomplishment when she passed. The Math professor had a long intricate signature: Sasha studied her report card like a work of art.

  Their last exam was Specialty, scheduled for January 2. “They d
id it on purpose,” Oksana stated gloomily. An excellent homemaker, she managed to dig up some pine branches, put them into a glass jar wrapped in aluminum foil, and decorate them with tinsel. Now, in Oksana’s opinion, the room looked properly adorned.

  Kostya either pranced around with sparklers and fireworks or turned catatonic over a textbook.

  “I don’t understand it, and I never will. The human brain is just not cut out for this! It cannot be imagined!”

  Sasha made many attempts to help him, but every time she realized that her experience wasn’t worth a dime to Kostya. She failed to demonstrate how to move from number thirty-five to thirty-six. “Verification” proved to be of no use: Sasha gesticulated; drew pictures; talked about a bicycle chain, a spiderweb; referenced Escher’s drawings of bees, fish, and lizards. Desperate in his failure, Kostya concentrated on kissing.

  “Will you just do him already,” Lisa suggested one winter evening, when Oksana lay in bed with a book, and Sasha sipped tea, about to start her new book of exercises. “It’s painful to watch how you string him along.”

  Sasha took hold of Lisa’s blond mane and gave it a sharp pull. Lisa howled. Oksana, who tended to stay neutral, hid deeper under her blanket and watched Sasha and Lisa trying to gouge each other’s eyes out.

  Finally, Lisa withdrew and disappeared for the rest of the night.

  At the end of December, a tree was erected in the assembly hall—the institute was getting ready to celebrate New Year’s Eve. On the thirtieth, the school filled with holiday hustle and bustle. Second years ran last-minute rehearsals; the dining hall staff moved tables, getting ready for the evening buffet. By six o’clock the assembly hall was packed; Sasha was surprised to see some of the teachers in the first rows—some she had seen before, some she’d never met. Hunchback Nikolay Valerievich was there as well—he sat next to Portnov, telling him what must have been a very amusing story. Strangely enough, Portnov was not wearing his usual glasses.

  The dusty velvet curtain opened and Zakhar, Kostya’s roommate, came out wearing narrow glasses nearly identical to Portnov’s. His coordination was a little off, and he got tangled up in the curtain, but once establishing himself in the proscenium, he stared adamantly at the audience and, looking over his glasses in a very recognizable manner, informed them that everyone who did not pass the New Year’s Eve’s celebration on the first try would have an unpleasant conversation with their advisors. Sasha was stunned; the joke seemed way too audacious to her, but the second year managed such a sharp and precise caricature of Portnov that only a minute later she laughed, and her laughter merged with the delight of the entire room.

  Only when Zakhar was stepping off the stage, throwing ferocious looks and gestures at the audience (here he was going overboard, but the compliant crowd forgave him easily), Sasha realized that the glasses on Zakhar’s nose were real, actually belonging to and borrowed from Portnov. Shocked, she was about to mention it to Kostya, but at that moment second-year girls in very short skirts burst onto the stage accompanied by a deafening soundtrack.

  She was still focused on Zakhar’s act, though: never in her entire life would Sasha have imagined someone like Portnov lending his glasses to an impersonator for a better effect. But it was much harder to imagine that somewhere in this school was a person capable of actually submitting such a request to Portnov. Shaking her head, she tried to relax.

  Sasha had never been to a real holiday roast, and this one was really well done: with a great sense of humor, reasonably loud, and very colorful. The audience squealed with laughter; music roared and colored lights danced everywhere. Sasha laughed alongside Kostya, holding his hand.

  “Do you think Zakhar will have to pay for this one?” she asked during a short and somewhat disorganized change of sets onstage.

  Kostya shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly. But I wouldn’t risk that much, if I were in Zakhar’s place.”

  Sasha nodded.

  And then the concert was over.

  The cheerful crowd pushed their way out into the corridor. Kostya dragged Sasha behind the curtains and kissed her, pressing his entire weight onto her body.

  A sharp corner of the windowsill cut into Sasha’s back.

  “Wait,” she said with a note of irritation. “You are so . . . clingy.”

  She could not see his face in the dark.

  They emerged from behind the curtain, holding hands. Downstairs in the dining hall the celebration continued in full swing. A hired band played songs from children’s cartoons as a warm-up. At some point Sasha and Kostya had separated—she went to the bathroom, he pushed through the crowd to congratulate the courageous Zakhar. In all her almost eighteen years, Sasha had never encountered such a celebration, so much noise, delight, and commotion; she felt intoxicated without drinking wine.

  Not that it wasn’t available—alcohol was quietly being distributed in both the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms. Sasha took a swig of champagne from a plastic cup, stunned by her own courage. The band took requests, the music never stopped, and cheese and salami sandwiches, bread, cookies, and orange slices disappeared quickly from the dining hall tables.

  Sasha looked for Kostya in the crowd, taking bites out of her sandwich and smiling.

  In the middle of the room a dance floor was set up. It looked as if Dima Dimych danced with three partners at the same time. The gym teacher wore a formfitting sweater; watching him dance, Sasha realized how much she wanted to touch those bulging muscles. A while back Dima had hoisted Sasha onto the balance beam; she still remembered the sensation.

  Thankfully, none of the other teachers were present—Sasha could not imagine anyone having any fun in Portnov’s presence. However, there was no sign of Kostya either. Zakhar was reaping the fruits of his glory amid a large group of people. Cameras flashed here and there. Sasha swiveled her head—in this crowd, it was very easy to miss a person, especially if he was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, like those kids in the corner . . .

  By then the gym teacher requested swing music and commenced to perform different stunts with all the eager girls. Some girls shrieked, with fear or delight; Dima threw his partners from arm to arm like a coat, easily tossed them behind his back and pulled them out again, and they glided on the hardwood floor between his wide open feet. The girls somersaulted, mouths open in surprise, Dima tossed them up and caught them again; the crowd cheered. A line of potential partners waited for Dima. Those who tried to take another turn were angrily pushed aside.

  Sasha fought with herself for one long minute. She really wanted to dance with Dima, but was too timid.

  The swing number had no end—one variation merged with another, like the exercises from her textbook. Sasha stepped out of the room, which was getting too stuffy, and saw the burning ends of cigarettes in the dimly lit corridor. Somebody was speaking softly in the dark. When she came out, the conversation stopped.

  “Looking for someone?” Lisa asked.

  Sasha was unpleasantly surprised. In the last few days they had demonstratively ignored each other. “Not for you.”

  Lisa did not respond, but the cheerful mood flew off Sasha like the last leaf off an already naked tree.

  No idea where to go, she moved down the corridor. In every window, behind every curtain, somebody was making out, breathing heavily and giggling. It seemed to Sasha that she was strolling along a dimly lit museum, where all the statues had gone mad and started necking.

  She went down to the coatroom to get her jacket. Of course, she probably could have gotten back to the dorm without it . . .

  They were sitting under the counter.

  Zhenya Toporko, with her schoolgirl braids and her blouse unbuttoned, and a completely drunk, red-faced Kostya. He was kissing Zhenya, who giggled hysterically, and his shaking hand slid over her chest.

  Sasha walked out, leaving her jacket on the hanger.

  She spent the remaining New Year’s Eve walking around the town of Torpa. She had to get out of the institute; th
e dorm shook and bellowed, every room blasted its own stereo system, and every kitchen’s table groaned under a smorgasbord of cheap fare. Eventually too cold, Sasha went back and talked the concierge into unlocking the coat check room where, amid empty hooks, Sasha’s jacket was still on its hanger . . . and Zhenya and Kostya were nowhere to be seen.

  She gave the concierge a chocolate bar to thank her.

  The town of Torpa was celebrating, the festivities muffled by the snow. Colorful lights blinked in the windows of buildings and shops. Cabs lingered in intersections. Sasha strolled toward downtown, walked back along Sacco and Vanzetti, then continued toward the river.

  The river was frozen, and ice was covered by the snow. Somewhere clocks chimed and happy people shouted; Sasha stared in front of her and involuntarily—almost automatically—ran through the exercises from Portnov’s book.

  The exercises flowed, one after another. Smoothly. Sasha did not go blind after the twenty-fifth, and her arm did not grow numb after the forty-third, as it had initially. She remembered them all, from number one to number one hundred twenty-five, the last one in the book. She sat down on a fallen tree trunk, smiled, closed her eyes . . .

  And opened them on a bright sunny morning.

  Snow was piled on her head, on her shoulders, in her lap; it sparkled like Portnov’s ring. Even brighter. Sasha squinted. A total silence spread over the frozen river and the cattails, over the entire town.

  Sasha swallowed, then jumped up. A huge pile of snow fell off her lap. Had she stayed here the whole night? She must have frozen—perhaps she’d frozen to death. Something was most certainly frostbitten!

  She raised her gloveless hands to her face. Her fingers felt warm and moved easily. She touched her nose: it was almost hot. Her feet in their thin boots were warm. Her ears were definitely not frostbitten. Sasha looked around: she stood in the middle of a field, covered by fresh snow. Snow hid her footsteps from last night, and it was easy to believe that Sasha had flown down from the sky.

  She found it difficult to disturb such magnificence. But she discovered that she was very hungry.