Vita Nostra

by Sergey

  Again the room was silent. Sasha lay barely breathing and the bed under her was just a bed, nothing else.

  What else could she do?

  Perhaps even more pressing, what would she be able to do when she finished her education? The hunchback kept talking about brilliant prospects, wondrous discoveries. About Sasha having a phenomenal talent.

  The alarm clock ticktocked gently. At the very edge of her desk, hidden under a stack of notepads, lay the hunchback’s album. The one Sasha could not deal with before. Kostya was right. The problem was not in the disc or the album, the problem was in Sasha herself. Had been in her—she’d managed to conquer the disc.

  She wondered whether she could now conquer the album.

  Sterkh had not said anything about that. He had been too busy with other things . . .

  No.

  With determination, Sasha pulled the blanket over herself and turned over on the other side. She would return the album to the hunchback tomorrow. She would not open the fragments, and she would never ever again stare at the damned anchor.

  She was so curious, though! It was like doing exercises for Portnov—unbearable at first, and then fascinating—so fascinating that she hadn’t been able to stop. Now, having stepped over the invisible line, the pull of the black album was very tempting.

  What exactly would she find?

  The paroxysm of curiosity was similar to the sharp sensation of hunger. Sasha tossed and turned, wrinkling the sheets, and then got up. Unlike the feet of the bed, her own feet did not find the linoleum warm. She pushed her feet into slippers and approached the desk. She glanced at her English glossary, her notes for the Constitutional Law class, some other papers . . .

  And then there was the album.

  The black oily squares of the fragments glistened. An anchor of three dots gleamed in the middle of each square, like a white constellation.

  She looked away.

  She looked back.

  Sasha opened the very last page. She focused her eyes on the white triangle in the middle and held her breath.

  The three dots disappeared. For a few seconds Sasha was suspended in the blackness, as absolute as the silence in Sterkh’s headphones. And then out of the blackness came—seeped through, developed—a city surrounded by an enormous wall that reached up to the sky.

  Now Sasha saw the city in minute detail, all of it meticulous and very real. The city was the color of carbon. Bearing a slight resemblance to Torpa, it was truly perfect. Wearing slippers and standing on a linoleum floor, Sasha felt marble under her bare feet. She experienced wafts of air, both warm and cold, on her face. The smell of smoke rising from the burning pine in the fireplace. Cool stone and warm stone, smooth and rough, soaring walls, slender windows, spires rising into the sky . . .

  Sasha felt happy. She threw her head back and looked around; she wanted to possess this city. She wanted to absorb it into herself, make it a part of her. She threw herself open and began to grow, rise, expand, and inhale outlines, smells, and the texture of the stone . . . In those places where Sasha stretched enough to reach the city, it ceased being carbon black and became softly gray, like an antique photograph.

  Tiny check mark insects dashed around the edges of her vision. Now they seemed so insignificant that Sasha paid them no attention. She was capturing this life and this happiness; she inhaled the smoke, and the curve of a roof glistening in the rain, and the wisp of fog, and the majestic spire . . . The more she took, the more impatient she felt. She knew she would not stop until this city had become just as much a part of her as her hands, her chin, her hair . . .

  But when she took in the city tower, it suddenly cracked, opened like a flower, and out of its depths a monster, the likes of which she had never seen before, not even in her nightmares, stared at Sasha.

  Sasha drew back.

  The monster slowly climbed out of the broken tower. It shifted, pulsated, spilled onto the ground, but Sasha saw only its eyes. Motionless. A bit cloudy. Staring at Sasha, and no one else.

  And staring back into those eyes, Sasha realized with all her core being something that many understood before her: The creature did not care that Sasha was loved by someone. And that she loved someone herself. And that she had had a childhood, and she had splashed on the seashore; and that she had an old knit sweater with a reindeer embroidered on the front. There were plenty of people loved by someone, the ones who carried a seashell, a button, or a black-and-white photograph in their pockets. But no one had ever been saved by memories, no one had been protected by words and pledges, and those loved greatly by others died too.

  Sasha was numb.

  Expanded, with half of the city now fitting inside her, she watched the blurry penetrating gaze move closer. And when only a few steps—or seconds—separated her from the monster, she remembered that she was standing in the middle of her dorm room, that she was looking at a fragment, and that she still had a chance to escape.

  She fell backward and hit the back of her head strongly enough to make her head spin. The chair that she apparently was holding on to crashed to the floor; a moment later, as if hesitating, the album slipped off the table and landed on the floor, spreading its black pages.

  “Ah!”

  “Goddamn!”

  “What are you doing, you freak! Let us sleep!”

  Waiting for the pain to subside, Sasha raised herself onto one elbow. She saw her own slippers in different corners of the room. A layer of dust on the molding. A shard of a teacup under the bed, the cup that broke a month ago. Both Lena and Vika shouted in harmony over her head; the neighbors thumped on the wall with something heavy.

  The clock was ticking. If one was to believe the clock, exactly one minute had passed since the moment Sasha got up to look at the black album.

  “You are a second-year student! Not a first-year novice! Your actions, Alexandra—your actions leave me absolutely speechless!”

  She had never seen Sterkh so infuriated. He dashed around auditorium 14, and it seemed to Sasha that he barely stopped himself from kicking the chairs.

  “But you gave me that album—”

  “I gave it to you earlier! When you were still at a different stage! Do you understand? That album is not for you! It was my mistake; I should have taken it back immediately, but who knew you would go for the hundredth fragment?”

  “I didn’t know I couldn’t. I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  Sterkh stopped in front of her. He took a deep breath, getting himself under a semblance of control.

  “Fine. Fine, we will just assume that you and I are both equally at fault for what happened. But no more amateur decisions, please! Work only on those projects assigned to you, and only at the appropriate time. No later and no earlier.”

  “Yes. I promise. But I just wanted to ask . . .”

  “Go ahead.” The hunchback seemed calmer. Or at least he was doing a better job of not showing his emotions.

  “That thing that was there . . . What is it?”

  The hunchback sat behind the teacher’s desk.

  “That, Alexandra, is too early for you to know. No need. I promise you, though—you will.

  “You will find out during your exam.”

  She was late for the lecture on basics of law. She knocked on the door in the middle of the class and asked permission to come in.

  “Alexandra, you’ve missed four lectures in a row. An entire month. I’m flattered that you’ve decided to honor me with your presence only half an hour late, but how are you going to pass the exam?”

  The word “exam” echoed in Sasha’s soul like an echo of a rock thrown into a well. It was just another euphemism for torture, along with “third-degree interrogation” or “civil law.”

  “Sit down, Alexandra. Or were you planning on staying in the doorway?”

  Sasha sat down. Between her and Kostya was an aisle—and Zhenya Toporko. Waiting for the bell, Sasha pushed her pen idly over an empty sheet of paper; against her will, she kept produc
ing three white circles on a shaded area. The circles watched Sasha like blurry motionless eyes.

  The bell rang. The white sheet in front of Sasha was covered with patterns of thickly shaded triangles; she shut her notepad with distaste.

  “Zhenya. I need to speak to your husband. Please give me permission. We are going to discuss only school-related matters, and nothing else.” She made her voice loud and determined, making sure the entire class heard her.

  Zhenya pursed her lips, threw her bag over her shoulder, and left the auditorium, head held high. The others—Yulia, Anya, Igor—did not seem to be in a rush, pretending to gather their textbooks. Sasha didn’t care, though.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Kostya.

  Watched by several sets of eyes, they went out into the corridor, up to the fourth floor and higher, to the staircase that led to the attic. They stopped by the small round window.

  “You saved me. But now I’m not sure; maybe it would have been better to remain trapped in the loop.”

  “What happened?”

  The fourth-floor corridor was drafty, dust twirled in the column of sunshine that fell from the round window, and above them, at the end of the staircase that led to the attic, a door stared at them through a round keyhole.

  “You know,” she said, “this morning, for the first time ever, I thought that perhaps they are telling us the truth. We will finish our education and will comprehend something . . . incomprehensible. And then we’ll tell them ‘thank you.’”

  “‘Thank you,’” Kostya repeated with a strange intonation. “And what are you thinking now?”

  Sasha sighed.

  “I don’t know. Then I was thinking, maybe they are training us to become fighting beasts. And this exam—maybe it’s like a gladiators’ arena. Someone we don’t know will watch us and make bets. And we will fight and die in combat. But then I think that’s ridiculous. This level of sophistication is not necessary to raise a fighting beast.”

  Kostya was silent.

  “Look at them. At Portnov. Or look at Sterkh. When I showed up without eyes, without arms . . . he was crying with joy. Can you imagine that?”

  “Think of what you told me,” Kostya said.

  “What?”

  “‘If we get to the end of the course . . . we shall become just like them. And we shall speak their language. Then we’ll take revenge.’”

  Sasha shook her head.

  “If we get to the end of this course, we won’t want to take revenge anymore. We’ll become just like them . . . and we’ll want to be like them.”

  Kostya bit his lip.

  “Not me. I’ll never forget any of this.”

  The bell rang.

  Yegor was sitting on the bench cleared of snow. He smoked, looking up at the sky. Sasha came over.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello,” Yegor replied, still looking up.

  “May I sit down?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Sasha swiped her palm over the wet planks of the bench, thick with several layers of paint. She perched on the very edge.

  “Did you get the bindings onto the skis?”

  “What skis?” Yegor seemed surprised.

  Sasha bit her tongue.

  “Well, I heard at the sporting goods store they have these cross-country skis, the old-style ones, they are selling them at a ridiculous price. All you need to do is to attach the bindings . . .”

  Yegor was silent.

  This morning, getting ready for class, she had found his green shirt among her own things. The scent of his cologne lingered. She had wanted to put it on as a sign of reconciliation, but she had not had time to iron it, and the shirt was hopelessly wrinkled.

  Obeying an impulse, she touched his sleeve.

  It became a part of her skin—this thick fabric of his winter jacket with a layer of synthetic filling, the slippery lining made of rayon. Smooth and warm.

  Warm.

  Sasha reached for him. Embraced him. Not with her arms.

  Yegor became a part of her. She took him, perhaps even stole him. On the bench in the middle of the yard in front of the dorm. In front of everyone.

  For a short moment, she felt what it was like to be Yegor. She knew how prickly were his unshaven cheeks. How frozen were his feet in their thin shoes. How loudly his heart was beating—just when he was trying to appear indifferent. How insulted he felt, how he suffered . . . But why?

  And right then, still being Yegor, having made Yegor a part of herself, she realized how deeply offended he was. Someone had told him about Sterkh’s stipulation. He was made to believe that Sasha started seeing him because of purely physiological reasons—Sterkh had told her to get rid of her virginity, and she had . . .

  Sasha perceived this insult as her own.

  “But how could you ever believe this? You are such an idiot!”

  She took the bench (cold, apathetic) and the linden tree (sleepy, unmoving blood), and the ground covered with dirty snow piles (melting snow tickled and itched like crust on a healing scratch). For a second she became a small country, and Yegor was her capital.

  “It’s a lie! What kind of a man are you, if you can be so easily fooled with sordid lies?”

  He jerked and slipped away from her. Rather, she let him go, sensing his fear and feeling frightened herself. He fell off the bench, as she pushed him off, and immediately got up; his knees trembled.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Who told you? Pavlenko? You believed that bitch?”

  He took a few steps back, staring at Sasha with terror that made her cringe.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  He whispered something. Sasha thought she heard the word “witch.”

  And then Yegor turned and almost ran down to the alley that led to Sacco and Vanzetti Street.

  In the morning Sasha’s skin grew a chitin layer, and both her arms had three elbows each instead of one. She waited until her roommates left to take showers, took the player out of her bag, and played the disc she was now supposed to listen to every morning upon waking.

  Three minutes of silence. Sasha swam within it like a fish.

  Vika and Lena had spent the previous day desperately looking for a way to move out of the room and into another one. Sasha sincerely wished them luck, but suspected that until after the winter exams, neither one of them would have any other choices in the overcrowded dorm. “You may have to deal with it, girls,” she had told them last night. “You should take notes—you’ve got the same thing coming next year.”

  The track was over. The silence departed, and Sasha snapped back to reality. She bent and straightened her arm. Touched her face: her cheek, cold and rough, was covered with human skin.

  Sasha took a deep breath.

  Strangely enough, she felt very well. A lot better than she had in the last few months. She wanted to get up, stretch, go for a run, jump into a hot shower, and then turn on the cold water and shout, making her scream echo between the walls of the shower room. And then go to Sterkh’s lesson. Yes, astounded, Sasha suddenly realized that she wanted to study with Sterkh.

  “All things are reflected in each other. Remember? Wind changes direction getting around a stone, the stone crumbles, reflecting the wind. The chameleon changes color, reflecting leaves. An ordinary hare turns white, reflecting winter. I am reflected in you when you listen to me. You are reflected in many people more or less deeply. The Sasha Samokhina whom you know is just a reflection of Sasha’s true essence. And now this essence is changing—and its reflection is also trying to change, but this reflection is material, established, and that makes it difficult. Keep in mind that I’m speaking conditionally. The communication system that you and I are currently using allows only approximate explanations. That is why we do not bother explaining anything to the students—it would not clarify anything and would be a simple waste of time. Right now you and I are just chatting, enjoying a pleasant moment together.”

  “Nokolay V
alerievich, I keep thinking that I’m disintegrating. Or growing.”

  “You are growing, Sasha. You are overgrowing your own borders, or, rather, those limits that you consider the boundary of your identity.”

  “Does this happen to everyone? I mean, to all students?”

  “It does happen to everyone, but in different ways. You have an obvious inclination toward metamorphosis, Sasha, plus a very rich imagination. Did you paint when you were little? No? You could have . . . Imagine a chameleon that was placed, say, under a glass. Or, better, onto a stock market scroll.”

  “How?”

  “Just like this. The chameleon is used to changing color according to conditions, but what if his new surroundings don’t have a characteristic such as ‘color’? No color at all? Or consider this. Imagine a newborn baby who suddenly, over the course of one minute, became a grown man with the appropriate constitution and physiological characteristics. His essence has been changed. Don’t you think that his old shape would be an obstacle? A small body, swaddling, diapers—all that stuff would crack, letting out the new mature specimen. The same thing is happening to you, Sasha. Your essence is changing, and your shape is lagging behind and is not reacting adequately. That’s the source of this minor annoyance, such as scales, feathers, and extra arms.”

  “Is it going to take a long time?”

  “I don’t think so. I would say a few days. Although regression is possible. Just don’t be afraid, Sasha. Girls get scared of their first menstrual period, but to us, grown people, their fears seem ridiculous.”

  Sasha felt self-conscious.

  “You will understand. Just a little bit of time, and things will get easier. You will realize that you are not being punished, but rather rewarded, and that you have a fascinating, exciting life and enormous possibilities ahead of you. Believe me, Sasha, you are going to be very happy very soon.”

  “I am scared of failing the exam . . .”

  “But that is a perfectly normal fear! Every conscientious student gets nervous when facing an exam, even if the student knows everything. You must study as hard as you can, and then nothing in the exam will be insurmountable for you.”