Vita Nostra

by Sergey

  She met Sasha’s eyes. Zhenya suddenly went red, raised her chin up in the air, and walked by without a single word.

  “What is up with her?” Denis murmured, grabbing his bag. “Well, wish me luck.”

  At that point Portnov himself appeared in the doorway, an unlit cigarette stuck behind his ear.

  “Come in, Myaskovsky, and open the window. Samokhina, is this your time slot? What are you doing here?”

  “She is wondering whether it’s allowed to change advisors,” reported guileless Denis. Sasha froze.

  Portnov gave her a sharp glance.

  “It is not allowed,” he said curtly. “Myaskovsky, open the window, I am going to smoke. Samokhina, good-bye.”

  The next day the sun came up, clear and even warm, surrounded by an insubstantial escort of diminutive transparent clouds. Sasha skipped the first block, gym class. When her roommates finally left for their Specialty lecture, she opened the dresser and there, in the crowded jumble of her own and someone else’s clothes, she found her old winter jacket.

  She stuck her hand into the right pocket. Empty.

  She tried the left pocket. Also empty, aside from some loose change.

  For some reason she thought of the day when, out of the blue, Lisa Pavlenko accused her of stealing a hundred dollars. She remembered figuring out that the bill had fallen behind the pocket lining. Sasha remembered seeing the bill for a split second. She’d never experienced anything like that afterward. Almost never.

  Almost without hope she put her hand back into the right pocket and there, behind the thin synthetic lining, she found a paper rectangle.

  Impatiently, she made the hole in the pocket bigger and pulled out a business card, along with some crumbs and pieces of thread—a single phone number, no name. A cell phone number, even though here in Torpa cell phones were still a rare commodity.

  The alley that led to Sacco and Vanzetti smelled of leaves and decay. Yesterday’s rainwater stood in deep puddles—the brown mass of leaves filled up the drains. Sasha stood for a while near the corner phone booth, lifting her head to the warm sun.

  The she picked up the receiver and dialed the number listed on the business card.

  “Hello,” said a very distant male voice.

  “Hello,” Sasha croaked. “It’s me, Samokhina.”

  “Hello, Sasha. Is anything wrong?”

  “Not yet. But it soon will be.”

  “You’re scaring me,” said Farit Kozhennikov.

  “Did Sterkh . . . Has he said anything to you about me?”

  He was silent. Then he said, “Sterkh wouldn’t say anything, Sasha. At least before the test. What happened?”

  Sasha paused, not knowing how to explain.

  “Sasha? Can you hear me?”

  “I am going to fail his test,” Sasha said. “I won’t pass this exam, not the first time, and not the second. This is it, this is the end.”

  One more pause.

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m on the street corner. In the phone booth. The thing is, my mom is having a baby . . .”

  “I understand. Meet me in half an hour, in front of the institute.”

  “She’s due right around the winter exams.”

  “And?”

  They walked slowly along Sacco and Vanzetti. Past a street sweeper gathering leaves, past a girl with a dachshund. The stucco moldings of an old building dampened with rainwater, the pale faces of caryatids staring blindly and dispassionately.

  Sasha avoided Kozhennikov’s eyes. She gazed up and ahead, where blue sky peeked through the balding treetops.

  “I want . . . I want her to be healthy, and the baby, too.”

  “That’s a perfectly natural wish. So?”

  Sasha stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. Saw her own reflection in the dark lenses.

  “I want to make a deal with you. Pay whatever I can. I can do a hundred exercises in one night. I can . . .” She stumbled. “I can do anything. Except for those . . . those CD tracks. I physically cannot. And mentally, I cannot. You can chop off my hand if you want . . .”

  “And what would I do with your hand?”

  “What do you do with all of this?” Sasha whispered fiercely. “Why do you need this institute? Why force us to do these things? What have we done to deserve this? What—”

  She forced herself to shut up. The town of Torpa continued to lead its unhurried, picturesque existence; steam rose out of several chimneys. Smoke-blue and black pigeons stomped about in a puddle and swallowed, throwing their heads back, allowing water to slide down their throats. Dewdrops sparkled on the withered grass of the boulevard.

  Kozhennikov stood, leaning his head to one side. Sasha saw two reflections of herself in his dark mirrored glasses.

  “There is absolutely no way of negotiating with you, is there?” she said, her voice as low as a whisper. Her lips felt numb.

  “Sasha,” he answered in the same manner, almost whispering and almost friendly. “The world is full of entities that people cannot negotiate with. But somehow people survive, don’t they?”

  “Some do.” Sasha’s toes froze inside her sneakers. “Some die.”

  “That has nothing to do with you,” Kozhennikov said even more softly. “And nothing to do with your family. I know you can do it. There is no reason why you couldn’t pass this test with excellent results. No reason at all.”

  “I can’t.” She shook her head. “I cannot do what he wants me to!”

  Kozhennikov took off his glasses. He did this so rarely that Sasha had forgotten what his eyes looked like: brown, common, even ordinary. With normal pupils.

  “I once said that I would never ask you to do anything impossible. That is still true. But think about it: everything you’ve ever done for me has been based on overcoming an obstacle—a small step over an internal limit. It was difficult. But it could be done, Sasha. It can be done now.”

  Sasha shook her head in despair.

  “Think of Kostya, think about him passing the winter exams,” Kozhennikov continued softly. “Do you remember—he had given up, washed his hands. He could have died and brought others to destruction. While it was absolutely feasible—possible!—to pass the exam and survive. There was an exit—and you proved it to him. I’m very sorry that Kostya is not able to pay you back for that act of grace. He can’t help you now, he doesn’t have enough . . . Although that is not important.”

  “Tell me,” Sasha said with effort. “Kostya’s grandmother . . . You were related to her—did you know her? And how did you kill her, tell me, please? By yourself? Or did you have help?”

  Kozhennikov’s eyes remained undisturbed.

  “What makes you think I killed her? She was very sick and bedridden most of the time. Sasha, the average life span around here is sixty-seven years. Seventy-six is a stroke of luck.”

  “And if Kostya had passed the exam the first time?”

  “People are mortal. All of them.”

  A cat slunk out of the doorway, pale-orange, almost pink. The pigeons simultaneously flapped their wings and flew up, circling Sacco and Vanzetti and disappearing over the tiled roofs.

  “I am very sorry about the way things turned out between you and Kostya,” Kozhennikov said.

  Sasha looked away. The conversation was definitely over now. Kozhennikov could continue chatting, or he could be quiet, it did not make any difference. None whatsoever.

  “Listen.” Kozhennikov put his glasses back on and pushed them up with an index finger. “I believe I know how to help you.”

  “How?”

  “Break through the impossible. Simply a mechanical gesture. Steal a wallet at the market. Break a window with a naked fist. Do something that you consider impossible. It will loosen your rock-hard stability and will help you to burst through to the next level. Do you understand?”

  “Doubtful,” Sasha said.

  Kozhennikov got behind the wheel of his milky-white Nissan, waved to Sasha, and d
rove away. She remained standing in the middle of the street, watching the pink cat lapping up autumn water from a puddle. Blink—and the cat turned emerald green in her eyes, and the water became carmine red; Sasha rubbed her face with her fists.

  The town market was only ten minutes away, if she walked slowly. Steal a wallet?

  The window of the bakery was conveniently located at the level of Sasha’s chest. Slam her fist into it? What could she possibly do to “cross the threshold,” to stop being herself?

  Maybe buy a ticket and leave Torpa. Forever.

  Nothing felt more impossible than that.

  She walked without purpose, not toward the market, but away from the center of town. She passed the institute; two first-year girls teetered out of a ground-level café. Both were absolutely smashed; holding on to each other, they crossed the street and disappeared into the alley. What are their parents thinking? Sasha wondered. Doesn’t anyone care about the fate of the children who left the family home to study in an unfamiliar town?

  What is my mother thinking?

  Mom is thinking of her new, yet unborn baby. Of a creature, whose right to live has not yet been officially authorized. Of course, medical science has been developed and all that, and women over forty are giving birth all the time . . .

  Sasha stumbled into a puddle. She stomped her foot, shaking off the water, and remembered that under her bed was a box with a pair of fall shoes. She’d brought them to school after vacation—she’d bought them with Mom at a store sale, a good, sturdy pair of shoes.

  She missed Mom. She missed her so much that her eyes filled with tears. She had been thrown out, banished, forcefully ejected from the normal world, where Mom was always near, where she could hug her any time she wanted to, where the door could be open when Mom came home from the office. A normal, human world.

  It was entirely possible that the parents of all the students in the institute were dealing with the most crucial life problems right now. Some might be going through a divorce. Some fighting a grave illness. Somebody might be in the middle of a custody battle, somebody else expecting a child. And all of them would prefer to think that their grown children were getting an education at a decent, albeit provincial, institution of higher learning. And no one would suspect that the success of their endeavors, their health, and even their very lives depended on the academic performance of their forgotten children, abandoned in Torpa.

  Sasha had not noticed reaching the end of Sacco and Vanzetti; following what looked like a country road, she arrived at the riverbank. Yellow and brown leaves floated down the river; some flattened themselves upon the surface, trying to merge with their own reflections. Others bowed like sails, as if trying to fly away. Some chickens puttered around. And the log, on which Sasha and Kostya had sat a long time ago, and on which Sasha had spent her New Year’s Eve—that very log was still there.

  Sasha sat down and stretched her legs.

  Five minutes passed, then ten, then half an hour. Sasha was now missing the second block, English; leaves continued to float in the river, an endless, solemn, unhurried caravan. Gazing at the black mirrored water, Sasha thought for the first time in two years—for the first time in her life, if she were absolutely honest—that perhaps it would make some sense to jump into that blackness from the wooden bridge that crossed the river a few hundred feet away from her. Jump, splash, break that mirror along with the sky reflected in the water.

  She rose, still considering. Was it deep enough? Or would it only reach up to her waist? On the other hand, people drown in bathtubs that are certainly not made with suicide in mind . . .

  Leaving footprints on the wet sand, she approached the water. The grass on the southern tip of the hill was still summery green and dotted here and there with wild asters. Sasha moved along the bank, circling the swampy parts, looking at the water and flowers on the hill. A yellow curtain of willow branches hung in front of her; yesterday, when she was working on one of Portnov’s paragraphs, something about the willow tangle sounded in her head, and she was trying to recollect that sentence when she heard a splash, immediately followed by a scream, and then another splash.

  Apparently Sasha was not the first one to think of jumping off the bridge. Somebody more courageous—or less intelligent—had just jumped, and now two people were being carried off by the river.

  Sasha’s mouth dropped open.

  Both were fighting the current, one was shouting. The other one was trying to reach him, taking large wide strokes. The water carried both of them past Sasha, and she finally came to her senses and dashed after them along the riverbank. She tore through the willow branches and burst into a sandy horseshoe-shaped beach. Here the river changed direction slightly; the opposite bank was pretty high, with easily discernible swift nests. Under the steep bank whirlpools were visible, and there, into the vortex, the current now carried the two people. One was still shouting, choking, coughing, and shouting again.

  Sasha looked around in panic—the beach was deserted. A hundred feet away stood a concrete wall covered by graffiti.

  “Help!” Sasha yelled, even though it was abundantly clear that help was nowhere to be found.

  In a state of sheer panic, she took off her sneakers. The wet sand was cold as ice, and just as hard. Sasha dashed to the water, staring at the drowning people in terror and realizing that she could not possibly save either of them; she had no chance—they would take her along with them.

  The screaming was cut short. One of the drowning people had done something to the other one: Choke him? Held him underwater? The convulsive splashing was replaced by measured strokes: one of them swam to the shore, dragging the other one along.

  Sasha thought he swam for a really long time. The current carried both of them lower down, where the ground was swampy and marshy, where it would be impossible to climb out. The swimmer turned onto his back and worked his free arm; the person he pulled along resembled a pile of wet rags.

  Reaching the shallow water, the swimmer got up, and Sasha recognized him. It was the first year named Yegor: his blond hair was plastered over his head, his eyes were red, and his lips blue. The drowned guy was also a first year Sasha had seen around the institute, but she did not know his name. He looked much worse: face swollen and bluish, lips nearly black.

  Yegor took a wondering look around the area and saw Sasha. “Got a cell phone?”

  She shook her head.

  “Go find a phone booth. Call an ambulance, hurry.”

  Sasha ran. She stepped on a shell with her bare foot, gasping with pain. She came back and pulled on her sneakers, hopping on one foot, not bothering with the socks. She had enough time to watch Yegor place the other boy on his stomach, and, muttering something, press braced palms on his back; after that she had no more time left.

  She found a phone booth not far from the bridge, across from the last house on a quiet, almost rural road. Sasha tore off the receiver and was relieved to hear a distant beep; she had a fleeting memory of last winter, of pushing tiny buttons with her bloody fingers, and the bodies lying behind her in the snow, the bastards she’d mutilated herself . . . People.

  A chill settled over Sasha, but at that moment a voice came on the line.

  “Someone just tried to kill himself!” Sasha shouted. “He drowned! He was pulled out, but now he’s not breathing!”

  “Address?”

  “It’s by the river!”

  “The river is long. What’s the address? Where are we supposed to go?”

  Sasha looked around. A few squiggles were painted on the fence across from the phone booth, vaguely resembling letters and numbers.

  “Lugovaya, seven dash one!”

  “Got it. Sending a car over.”

  The ambulance arrived thirty minutes later. By then, thanks to Yegor’s resuscitation skills, the nearly drowned first year had not only started breathing, but had opened his blurry eyes and started writhing and struggling. He screamed, spewed profanities, and seemed to be completely
deranged.

  “Did he drown, or is it delirium tremens?” asked a grim nurse in a gray uniform, when the student was finally stuffed into the van.

  “He jumped off the bridge—he was drunk,” Yegor explained. “He’s really a normal kid.”

  “Normal,” muttered the doctor, exhausted, with black circles around his eyes. “We have two ambulances in the entire town. Right now someone’s child might be dying, or there could be a heart attack somewhere, and here we are, messing with these drug addicts. Bloody students . . .”

  The doctor spat on the ground.

  “Where do you see . . . What drug addicts?” Sasha cried.

  Indignation enveloped her, like a wave covering a sand castle. Strangers, alien indifferent faces. Yegor saved someone’s life, and no one expressed even a word of thanks!

  An icy-cold hand grabbed her elbow; Yegor stopped her and pulled half a step back.

  “He drowned.” He looked into the doctor’s eyes. “He had water in his lungs, and there is sand and mud . . .”

  “Any other learned advice?” scowled the doctor. “Is that all? Let’s go.”

  The ambulance tore off and disappeared, leaving behind a cloud of malodorous exhaust fumes. Yegor and Sasha watched it for a few seconds. Then Yegor let go of Sasha’s hand; he was beginning to tremble.

  “Thank you,” Sasha said.

  “What for?”

  “I can’t get angry. When I get mad . . .” Sasha hesitated. “You know what—you need to have some vodka.”

  “Let’s run,” Yegor said, trying to stop his teeth from chattering.

  He jogged up the street away from the river, Sasha following him.

  Her body still remembered the once-regular daily jogging sessions; she ran steadily, keeping up with Yegor. He stomped his feet, dripping water, and the cadenced squelching of his wet sneakers in turn merged with Sasha’s steps, and then formed a dissonance. Neither of them spoke; as always, running helped Sasha think.