Vita Nostra

by Sergey

  Sterkh shook his head.

  “I cannot say anything until the final meeting of the examining board.”

  “But just a ballpark estimate?”

  “After your vacation, Sasha, you will return and find out. The exam was somewhat tense, uneven, that I can tell you. But they did well, almost all of them. They are now facing a new life, new projects, new successes. It’s remarkably fascinating, Sasha. It is so much more interesting than what you have right now. You will see—life begins after the placement exam. But anyway. Right now you’re on vacation; you need to relax and get some rest. No Specialty textbooks, no studying of any kind. No emotional stress. And here’s something else, Sasha. If I were you, I wouldn’t go anywhere right now.”

  Sasha choked on a tomato slice.

  “But I have to! I have a new brother! Mom’s coming out of the hospital any day now, and she’ll need help. Plus, she’s waiting for me!”

  “I understand. But, Sasha, remember what happened on your last winter vacation, a year ago?”

  “I know how to control myself,” Sasha said hotly. “A lot better than before. Besides, that was an accident. It was the first time in my life when somebody was attacked and robbed in front of me! It had never happened before, and I hope never happens again. I am responsible for my own actions.”

  “No, Sasha.” Sterkh shook his head. “It’s me who’s responsible for you. You are older now, and your problems may be different. What is going on with your nails?”

  Sasha hid her hands under the table. When she was stressed, her nails darkened and grew with mind-boggling speed. Having grown by three millimeters during the exam, they were now lengthening again—hard, shiny, like the chitin backs of brown beetles.

  The hunchback rubbed his sharp chin.

  “Sasha, I am not going to stop you. Frankly speaking, I couldn’t—it’s your business, you passed all your exams. But just think what your family is going to say if you enter a metamorphosis in front of them.”

  Sasha did not respond.

  “Of course you’ve learned quite a bit. But just imagine: stress, extreme situation, a newborn baby . . . I’m afraid for you. You are too valuable to behave so irresponsibly.”

  “Nikolay Valerievich . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Am I no longer human?”

  “And why is it so important to you?”

  Sasha looked up. Sterkh sat across the table from her, calm, benign. His ash-blond hair framed his pale triangular face in two parallel lines.

  “I’m serious, Sasha: what is so important about being human? Is it because you simply haven’t experienced anything else?”

  “I’m used to it.” Sasha looked down.

  “Precisely. You have an unusually strong force of habit, and that is what made our breakthrough so difficult. But now things will move a lot faster. Ah, and here is our veal.”

  A huge valley-size plate was placed in front of Sasha. White steam rose above a lake of white sauce, above a thick tangle of dill.

  “I have to go,” Sasha swallowed fretfully. “They won’t understand. Especially my mother. I haven’t seen her in six months. And then I wasn’t quite myself during the summer vacation. I miss her. Just for a few days . . .”

  “A few days.” Sterkh’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, Sasha. I was hoping to talk you out of it.”

  Now he was the one who seemed troubled and despondent. Sasha was embarrassed.

  “I am needed there, do you understand?”

  “I do. It’s your decision, Sasha. But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  She did not leave right away. She waited a few more days, but not because, as usual, she could not get the tickets. And not because Mom was still at the hospital and Valentin was taking some time off work. Sasha wanted to make sure that she still looked human, at least on the outside. Without feathers or crust. Without extra joints. She understood Sterkh’s point: after a very recent childbirth, Mom did not need a daughter covered by fish scales.

  She left the dorm when it was beginning to get dark. She dragged her suitcase down Sacco and Vanzetti, and at the bus stop she spotted Yegor.

  She stumbled and slowed down.

  Yegor was looking away, as if he hadn’t seen her. It was possible he hadn’t seen her; next to him on the hard-pressed snow was a large gym bag.

  Sasha stopped a few feet away from him. She did not know what she wanted—for Yegor to notice her, or for Yegor not to be there at all.

  The bus arrived. Yegor with his bag entered through the front door, Sasha and her suitcase through the back door. The driver checked the tickets, the punching device clicking. The bus started moving.

  Sasha looked out the window. In front of her, among people’s hats, bald spots, and hoods, she could glimpse Yegor’s short light hair.

  He never looked back.

  The bus arrived at the station. Sasha got lucky: almost right away she purchased a really good ticket, a lower berth in the middle of the carriage. The train station café was still open. Sasha bought two pies and a plastic cup of warm tea. She went to the waiting room and through the window saw Yegor getting on the train without a backward glance.

  She forced herself to finish the pies. Then she went to the station’s bathroom, wet and foul-smelling, hiked up her sleeve, and tore off the temporary tattoo with a smiley face, by now slightly warped and green as grass.

  She drowned it in the toilet.

  That night on the train Sasha woke up feeling lousy. She was chilly and nauseated; holding on to the handrails, she stumbled into the bathroom, locked the door, and there, in the tiny smelly space amid the clang and rumble of the train, she grew wings.

  It was cold. Chilly air rose from the toilet hole. Sasha saw her reflection in the mirror—and simultaneously in the dark window. She saw how her made-in-China turquoise jacket with white stripes tensed on her back, ballooned, pulsating as if a live creature were trembling between Sasha’s shoulder blades. She did not feel much pain, she was no longer nauseated, but she had absolutely no idea what to do now.

  She took off her jacket. Pulled off her T-shirt. On her goose bump-covered back two small pink wings twitched fitfully, covered with fluff. The train charged ahead as only night trains can charge through empty fields. Wheels rumbled under the thin metal floor—so very close. Sasha stood, naked from her waist up, slowly freezing, watching her wings settle down, stop shaking, and press against her back as if they were trying to find the most comfortable position.

  Someone knocked on the door. Another knock came, this time more determined, and the voice of the train attendant asked loudly: “Are you alive in there? It is the health service time—I have to lock up the bathrooms!”

  “Go ahead, lock it,” Sasha said.

  “What?”

  “Hold on.” She coughed. “I’m coming out.”

  She hurried to get dressed. A few tiny feathers, multihued and delicate, flew around the bathroom. One landed in the sink. Without thinking, Sasha rinsed it away.

  She came out, hunched over, into the darkness of the corridor. The attendant gave her a sympathetic glance. “Are you sick? Is it your stomach?”

  “Yes,” Sasha said and went to her berth. The first thing she did was find scissors in her makeup bag and cut her nails, covertly, so that no one could see her. She pushed the clippings under the rug. The train rolled onto the night platform and stopped; somebody walked down the corridor, dragging suitcases; somebody rolled over on the upper berth. A workman shuffled along the train, knocking iron on iron, as if playing a huge xylophone.

  Sasha found the player in her bag. She started the “rehabilitation disc” and dove into the absolute pacifying silence.

  Valentin met her on the platform, thin and cheerful. He had a cellular phone, which he demonstrated to Sasha with a great deal of pride.

  “We now have a twenty-four/seven communication line! After all, she is home alone with the baby, and you never know what she may need. Why are you so hunched over? Don’t slouch, sta
nd straight!”

  “I’m tired,” Sasha said, not exactly to the point. “The exams were difficult. And the train was too hot.”

  “Fair heat breaks no bones, as they say. I had a business trip back in November. That, I tell you, is when I was really cold . . .”

  Valentin talked and talked, dragging Sasha’s suitcase toward the metro. Sasha was no longer used to such crowds; standing on the escalator, she felt dizzy. Thankfully, she managed to regain control, and Valentin noticed nothing.

  The wings did not disappear.

  It does not mean anything, Sasha kept telling herself. It had happened before that the rehabilitation disc did not work right away. She remembered how once she grew spikes down the length of her spine—not particularly sharp, not long—made out of bone matter. They stuck out until that evening, and then drew back in by themselves. Chances are, this time the same thing will happen. There was only one problem: among the throngs of normal people that crowded the morning metro, Sasha, with her sweaty wings sticking to her back, felt awful.

  The desperate shriek of a newborn baby greeted them at the entrance of their apartment. Mom, wearing a bathrobe, stood in the doorway of her room, joyful and bewildered at the same time.

  “He’s not sleeping. I’ve been at it for two hours . . . Sasha, finally! Look, this is your brother!”

  Sasha stretched her neck. A red-faced baby in a white diaper was writhing in Mom’s arms, sobbing his heart out. He shrieked, moving around senseless blue eyes.

  The “introduction” lasted about one second: Valentin mumbled something about drafts and germs, so Mom closed the bedroom door. Valentin stuck his feet into his slippers and ran to wash his hands, and Sasha remained in the entryway, leaning on the door.

  The wings itched and ached. Sasha moved her shoulders as if her back hurt, and, pressing the toes of her right foot onto her left heel, began to take off her boots.

  “Why are you slouching? Straighten your back!”

  The three of them were sitting at the kitchen table. The baby had finally fallen asleep; Mom looked exhausted, Valentin, fatigued. Sasha kept on her thick knitted cardigan, even though the kitchen was warm, even hot.

  “I caught a draft on the train. Something aches . . . probably pulled a muscle.”

  “We should rub it with ointment,” Mom said. “I forgot what it’s called . . . that one with the bee venom. Valentin, do we have any in the medicine chest?”

  “There is no need,” Sasha said. “It’ll go away on its own.”

  “I don’t like the way you look,” Mom said. “Do you have a fever?”

  She placed her hand on Sasha’s forehead in a very familiar, natural gesture.

  “Doesn’t feel warm, but you’re all sweaty. Take off your sweater—why are you wrapped up like that?”

  The wings, stuck to her back, twitched. Sensing something, Mom reached for her shoulder—but at that moment Sasha’s brother started bawling his head off, and Mom got distracted and hurried into the bedroom.

  “The first month is the hardest,” Valentin murmured, “but it’s going to get better from now on. By the way, you should learn how to change diapers—you’ll need it soon enough!”

  He smiled, a friendly, sincere smile—but Sasha did not smile back.

  The pattern on the steamy tiles in the bathroom was familiar to her up to the tiniest detail; she remembered it from her childhood—since a gloomy mustached contractor installed the tiles. He did a great job—the tiles still looked good after almost eight years—and Sasha, again finding herself in the world of familiar things, felt lost for a second.

  She stood in her own bathtub, in the stream of hot water—she, Sasha Samokhina, who had returned home. This bathroom remembered all her days; here she sleepily brushed her teeth, getting ready for school. Here she cried because of a chance C. Here she dreamed of Ivan Konev calling her . . .

  She closed her eyes and directed the showerhead right on the top of her head. She thought of Konev, of their only run together in the park at five in the morning. Everything could have been different if, a year ago, she hadn’t rushed to help a stranger . . . and had not mutilated three enormous men.

  And if Konev had not run away, upon seeing that carnage.

  Could she blame him, though? Would any guy stay with her? Who would maintain that friendship, or at least ask for an explanation?

  One she wouldn’t be able to give.

  Warm water streamed down her face. Tiny feathers, black and gray, went down the drain. There were only a few, but Sasha was still worried of clogging the tub. She tried to catch them, but they slipped out of her fingers and down the drain, and Sasha was thinking apathetic thoughts of buying some unclogging chemical and cleaning the pipes in advance. That, at least, was easy enough.

  But her wings . . . she did not know how to clean the wings. Underneath the thin feathers, tender pink skin collected into folds. The wings were totally useless. They could not be used for flying. White steam filled the bathroom, the mirror was sweaty. What truly bothered and tortured Sasha was not even the very presence of the wings, but this paradox: her bathtub, her home. Here, everything was ordinary. She was ordinary. But then—everything that had happened, and what still lay ahead. The placement exam next winter . . .

  Mom knocked on the door.

  “Sasha, are you going to be long? The baby just pooped, I need to wash him!”

  “One minute,” Sasha said.

  Drying the wings with a towel was painful and uncomfortable. Ideally, she should have dried them with a hair dryer, or simply spread them near a radiator, but Sasha no longer had her own room. She had no place where she could dry her trembling wet wings without interruption. She tried to imagine what would happen if Mom or Valentin found her in the process . . . and could not.

  “Sasha, hurry up!”

  “I’m coming.”

  She put on her robe and put a towel around her shoulders. She came out, hunching over. The baby cried in the bedroom. Mom was smiling.

  “Come, I’ll show you how to wash him. Your nails . . . what happened to your nails?”

  Sasha stuck her hands under her arms.

  “Are those artificial nails?” Mom asked horrified. “But it’s so distasteful! Why black?”

  “I’ll wash it off,” Sasha said. “It’s nothing.”

  The next morning, her wings remained in place and even seemed to have grown a bit. Sasha used all her willpower to suppress panic.

  Mom was not feeling well, and Sasha volunteered to take the baby for a walk. It was a warm, almost summery day, the sun was shining, and the baby was already ten days old. Half an hour, Valentin said. No more than that.

  Wet poplar branches glistened in the sunlight, dripping with melted snow. Sasha walked, pushing the carriage in front of her and marveling at the unfamiliar sensation. Her brother was buried amid the mattresses and blankets, and only his tiny nose poked though—the pink nose of a deeply sleeping baby. The day was startlingly calm: deserted courtyard. Trees motionless in the still air. Sunshine.

  Almost reaching the place where the slaughter took place last year, Sasha turned the carriage around. Of course, there was no sign of what had happened, and the new clean snow was melting slightly on the ground. Sasha took out her player and sank into the silence.

  Anxious silence, as if in expectation of a verdict. It could last for hours, but by now Sasha knew: it was in her power to change the recording on that disc. The silence could become different. The observer influences the process of observation, as Portnov stated a while ago.

  In order to manage that force, she had to let it into herself. Make it a part of her. Own it. And only then—on her own behalf—could she weave the pattern of the Silence.

  The quiet before the storm. The hush of a cemetery. The silence that occurs when one runs out of words. The vacuum of a galaxy. Endless narrative; and the one who is listening is at once the narrator, the protagonist, the ear, the air, and the acoustic nerve . . .

  A thousand
people simultaneously held their breath. Something was bound to happen; Sasha walked slowly along the line of damp bushes, passing poplars and birches, an old willow, and a rowan tree with some leftover berries hanging on its branches. And to the right of Sasha walked her shadow, clutching the shadow of the carriage, her projection onto the world of packed water crystals, and it was long, tinted blue, and the color of the sky was an integral part of it.

  Object and its projection had a reciprocated bond. That’s what Portnov said some time ago. He spoke—“tossed at them,” to use his own expression—words and sentences that sometimes lacked all meaning, and sometimes seemed like banal clichés, or were simply incomprehensible, and Sasha listened to and immediately forgot those words.

  But now, for a split second, she sensed simultaneously—incorporated, made an integral part of herself—all her projections.

  Her classmate still remembered words that, in the heat of an argument, Sasha threw at her at the end of the seventh grade.

  The tree she planted four years ago had grown a little.

  An impression of her shoe lingered in the hardened concrete near the new construction site.

  She was reflected in Mom, in Valentin, in little Valentin Junior, in another hundred people: she was reflected—surprisingly sharp—in Kostya. She was Ivan Konev’s nightmarish dream. She was reflected in the fate of a distant stranger—her father, who lived on the other side of town.

  And she herself was a reflection. This realization made Sasha disintegrate into minute pieces, and then rebuild anew; when she opened her eyes, Valentin stood in front of her, his coat unbuttoned, and he looked bewildered and angry.

  Sasha took off her headphones.

  “It’s been forty minutes! Do you expect me to run looking for you? He needs to eat!”

  The baby was still sleeping soundly, pink nose peeking from the pile of blankets. Valentin took the carriage from Sasha and pushed it toward the entrance, so quickly that water splashed from underneath the wheels.