Vita Nostra

by Sergey

  She drank half a bottle of mineral water. Shuffled to the bathroom and back. Got back into bed and reached for the CD player and headphones on her nightstand.

  Numbers lit up on the tiny display. Track one . . .

  “The child would have been an invalid with no chance of recovery.”

  Track one, one more time. Again. Then track two. Then three.

  “The child would have been an invalid with no chance of recovery.”

  Track five, track eight. Sasha melted in the darkness like a sugar cube. She disintegrated. She stretched in long pliable threads from herself to Mom. She whispered something in her ear, and Mom tossed and turned in her uneasy slumber; the baby slept, his fists spread over the pillow. And Sasha stretched and stretched like telegraph wires, and she knew she could not hold out much longer, that she was about to break. It was too far . . .

  And too late.

  She made an effort and ripped off the headphones. The player rolled soundlessly down to the floor. No crunch, no thud. The round cover opened and fell off, the whirling disc caught the reflection of a streetlight and stopped. No wind, no squeak, no habitual fuss of the sleepy dormitory; the foreign silence continued.

  She shouted—and could not hear herself.

  Tangled in her blanket, she dropped off the bed, but even the pain in her bruised knees could not break the Silence. She jumped on her feet, realizing that she was about to choke on the Silence, but at that moment the alarm went off.

  A simple electronic device played an old nursery rhyme melody. As soon as that sound broke into Sasha’s consciousness, the Silence departed. She could now hear the wind, the distant radio, the shuffling of someone’s slippers in the corridor, and someone’s disgruntled voice: “Mikhail, any idea who’s yelling?”

  The first block was gym class.

  It looked as if no one had slept that night: second years, Group A, sat and lay on the windowsills, on the mats, and on the naked floor—no one had any desire to look into anyone else’s inflamed tortured eyes. Only Denis Myaskovsky was preternaturally cheerful; he ran around the gym and every now and then he jumped up and dangled from the basketball hoop.

  Grim Lisa sat on the bench, looking from her sneaker-clad foot to a piece of broken shoelace in her hand. Dima Dimych forced everyone to line up and gave them a long lecture on how gym classes were as precious to second years as the air itself, because the study load would prove to be harmful unless they took care of their health.

  “Dmitry Dmitrievich, I can’t jump today,” Sasha said. “My leg hurts.”

  “There is always something wrong with you, Sasha. And meanwhile your class is behind on the regulatory requirements!”

  “I’ll do the requirements later.”

  “You all keep promising. Short distance, long jump, triple jump . . .”

  He fell silent, looking at Sasha with concern.

  “Sasha . . . what’s wrong?”

  “Why?” She touched her cheeks. “Fish scales?”

  Dima looked upset.

  Sasha closed the auditorium door behind her. Said a barely audible hello, not hoping for an answer. She froze, staring at the cracks in the brown floor.

  “Did you work on track one?”

  Sterkh sat behind the teacher’s desk; the curtain across from him was pushed aside, and in the stream of light from the outside all Sasha could see was his dark silhouette.

  “Come closer.”

  Sasha approached. Sterkh rose, walked around his desk, and stopped in front of her: shockingly tall, hunched over, lightly smelling of expensive cologne. A flash—a reflection of the sun on the metal plate of his bracelet—slashed her eyes. At the same second Sterkh emitted a short sound—not quite a hiss, not quite the sigh of an asthmatic.

  “Which track did I tell you to work on?”

  “I started working on track one. It’s not my fault that—”

  “I said to work with which track?”

  “It happened by itself! It’s not my fault!”

  The slap on the face startled the air like a shot from a starting pistol. Sasha flew off and hit her back on the desk.

  “When you opened fragment number one hundred without permission ‘it happened by itself.’ When you decided to experiment with a baby, that also ‘happened by itself.’ Has your own academic program appeared to you? All ‘by itself’?”

  “I did not ask you to teach me!” Sasha screamed back. “I didn’t ask to be accepted here! You decided to teach me! It’s your fault! You . . .”

  A release of energy. Transformation from one state to another. The insight was sudden, like a flash of light—Sasha sensed within herself the power to make things a part of herself, to absorb Sterkh, and Kozhennikov himself, and the entire institute. Moreover, she felt a pressing need to do it right this minute.

  She detonated herself like a grenade, ran all over in a stream, and enveloped the entire auditorium in a thin fog. A split second, and the fog thickened and charged at Sterkh, storming into his nostrils, pouring into his throat, catching the foreign breath.

  A scent of cologne flashed. It became dark.

  One more second. Sasha lay crumpled like a wet rug. In heavy drops she poured onto the wooden floor, flowed into the wide cracks between the planks, collected into a puddle. A new second: Sasha lay limp, her clothes soaked through, gelatinous like a jellyfish, without a single muscle, without a single thought. The unseasonably warm February sun beat into the windows of the brightly lit auditorium 14.

  “Finish me off.”

  Sterkh paced back and forth. Not quite controlling himself, he kicked a chair, which hit the wall and toppled over with a loud thud. Sterkh mumbled something, paced some more, then stopped.

  “Aren’t you ashamed of saying things like that?”

  Sasha pulled her knees to her stomach and cried like a punished mutt.

  “Sasha?” His voice contained no more ice. Only worry.

  “Let’s get up. It’s the rule: when you fall down—get up. Hush. That’s it.”

  Clutching his cold white hand, she managed to get up and immediately crouched, holding her head with both hands.

  Sterkh lowered himself down next to Sasha and held her. He patted her gently on the head.

  “You are growing. With dangerous speed. You’re growing as a concept. Your potential power is ripping you apart. And since you have not yet matured enough, your own, still human, conflicts add more complexity to the problem. This shall pass. You need to be patient, Sasha, control yourself, and avoid making stupid mistakes.”

  “Why do I . . . why am I doing this?” Sasha sobbed.

  “You cannot yet control yourself. When you feel like fighting—you throw yourself into a fight. As if you were three years old.”

  “No! What did I, why did I do that—with the baby? I can’t live with it . . . I can’t!”

  “I see . . .”

  Sterkh softly embraced her wet shoulders, pulling her to himself. Sasha did not resist.

  “Get up. You shouldn’t sit on the floor. You are at the stage of development, Sasha, when you desire a lot of external information. And not the crude, streaming information, but more sophisticated, organized, structured data. You want everything your eyes can see, and luckily they don’t see all that much just yet. A newborn, a blood relative, a carrier of analogous information sequences—such a tasty treat. I should not have allowed you to leave, Sasha, but I could not imagine how strong you have become. Never, not once, have I seen anything like this. You are a phenomenal student. And a phenomenal idiot. Don’t be upset with me.”

  “Mom won’t forgive me.”

  “She will. You are her child, too. Don’t exaggerate. The baby will be happy and healthy . . .”

  “What if he grows up mentally retarded?”

  “No. He will not. And do you know whom you should thank for that? Farit; he reacted instantly, and there was such a lucky chain of probabilities. But the details don’t matter. What matters is that the child has been restored as an
autonomous information system. As a personality. So enough torturing yourself, Sasha. Last night, for instance, you could have run into much bigger troubles. Get up, I want to take another look.”

  A flash of light slashed her eyes—the reflection from the metal bracelet. Sasha squinted.

  “Sasha, open your eyes and look at me. Yes. I do apologize for hitting you. But you needed it. I would beat you up more if I could. Last night you nearly completed a transition from the basic biological state into an intermediary, unstable one. You have a colossal internal mobility. Right now you’re ahead of the program by at least a whole semester. Stabilization is planned for the fourth year, before the summer exams. If I have to deal with your tricks for two and a half more years, I will not survive, Alexandra. I will retire.”

  He smiled, as if expecting Sasha to appreciate the joke.

  “Have you turned nineteen yet?”

  “No. In May.”

  “In May . . . you’re a child. Your professional development is running ahead of your physiological abilities—with a terrifying tempo. And there is no way to slow down the process artificially. Yes, Sasha, as they say, you are a disaster and a gift in one little bottle.”

  “Will I pass the exam?”

  “Don’t make me laugh. You will pass with flying colors. If you don’t stop studying, of course.”

  “Zakhar Ivanov”—Sasha’s voice trembled—“did not pass.”

  “He did not.” Sterkh stopped smiling. “Another thing that is bothering you, I see. No, he did not pass. I feel a great deal of pity for Zakhar, Sasha. It’s a disaster. Why do you think Oleg Borisovich and I keep repeating like broken records: ‘Study! Study, prepare for the exam!’ Do you think we’re kidding?” He patted her on the head like a little girl. “Study hard, Sasha. You have enough determination, but not enough restraint and discipline. Everything will be fine. And you really should thank Farit; all of you hate him, but without him you wouldn’t have survived even the first semester. So, are we still friends?”

  Sasha looked up. Sterkh watched her with a hint of a smile.

  “Th-thank you,” she said, stuttering. “You helped . . . with the baby. I would have died. There and then.”

  “There is no need to die. Admit it, Sasha—you enjoy learning, don’t you?”

  “I do,” she took a deep breath. “Very much.”

  “Then do as I say. Study.”

  She had no more decent clothes left. She stepped outside in her waterlogged jogging suit and was surprised not to feel the freezing temperature.

  She ran back to the dorm, took a shower, and sat in front of her open suitcase, baffled at the lack of clothing options. Forty minutes remained before her individual session with Portnov.

  Wrapped in a towel like a Roman patrician, Sasha entered the kitchen; two first years sat by the window, along with her former roommate Lena and another girl, a very pale redhead with lots of freckles.

  “Hey,” said Sasha and took a good appraising look at both of them.

  Lena was much heavier and wider in the shoulders than Sasha. But the redhead . . .

  “What’s your name?”

  “Natasha.”

  “Stand up, please.”

  The girl stood up fearfully. Sasha swept her eyes over the girl: her height and general proportion satisfied Sasha completely.

  “Please lend me your jeans and sweater. Right now.”

  The girl swallowed.

  “These? The ones I’m wearing?”

  “Those, or some other ones. But quickly.”

  “Uh-huh.” Natasha breathed and swiftly left the kitchen. Petrified, Lena remained sitting over a cup of tea.

  “It’s temporary,” Sasha said carelessly. “A friendly loan. And don’t look at me like that.”

  She showed up at Portnov’s door right on time, wearing black woolen slacks and a bright yellow, ornate, hand-knitted sweater. Frightened Natasha had sacrificed her best clothes for the menacing Samokhina.

  “Pretty,” said Portnov instead of a greeting. “I’ve seen these flowers somewhere before . . . nevermind. Are you ready for this class?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Go ahead. One through ten, but not in succession, rather in the order that I suggest. Start with number three.”

  Sasha felt lost for a second. She was used to doing the exercises based on the “snowball” method: the second came out of the first, third out of the second, et cetera.

  Portnov sprawled over his chair. He stared at Sasha through the lenses of his glasses, his eyes utterly pitiless, fishlike. “Are you going to take a while? Will you need to warm up?”

  Her hands grasping the back of a squeaky chair, Sasha took in a full chest of air and visualized a long chain of interdependent concepts that have never existed, but were now constructed by her imagination. Or by something else.

  Concepts—immaterial entities, which Sasha envisioned as drops of grayish jelly—were measured by numbers and expressed by symbols. These numbers could not be written down, and the symbols could not be imagined; Sasha’s consciousness operated in these substances, forced them to form chains, and the chains to interweave so that separate fragments would merge and form more and more new entities. And then she “unbraided” the chains imprinted upon one another, mentally, without moving her lips, feeling her right eyelid twitch from the tension.

  “Seven! From this point on. Stop! Half a measure back! From that point—number seven, begin!”

  Sasha’s efforts made her queasy. The world re-created in several minutes leaned on its side. As if someone upended a beehive, an unhappy hum rose up; Sasha wove new chains of associations and meanings out of nowhere, made them into loops, and broke the circles, and her eyelid twitched stronger and stronger.

  “Ten.”

  A new jump. Sasha had never performed the exercises out of sync, but her very being was part of an internal mechanism that had by now warmed up and started working in full force, fed by her stubbornness and hatred toward Portnov. Was he trying to humiliate her? Let’s see who wins!

  “Two!”

  Sasha swayed. Regained her balance. She touched the tips of her fingers to her face, felt the surface of a rough fabric, as if someone had put a canvas sack over her head. Exercise two . . . almost from the very beginning, but where is the starting point? Which junction should she choose?

  “Will you ever talk back again?”

  The voice sounded from far away. Sasha saw Portnov’s face as if through a multitude of interwoven fibers, shiny like silk.

  “Stop, Samokhina. Stop. I am asking you: Will you ever give me lip again? Will you ever be late for my class?”

  “I won’t,” Sasha muttered through her teeth.

  “I’ll believe you for the last time.” Portnov smirked. “For tomorrow, work on the diagram on page three of the Activator. A little extra effort would be for your own benefit.”

  She stepped outside, but instead of walking out to the yard she went down Sacco and Vanzetti. The pavement glistened as if rubbed with oil. Sasha stopped under a large lantern stylized to look antique. Or perhaps it truly was antique. Its flame swayed behind the matte glass, the yellow dot of its reflection mirroring in each cobblestone.

  The door of a café on the opposite side of the street opened. Out came a woman dressed inappropriately for the season, in a short, light-colored coat and a frivolous cap with a checkered visor. When she stepped onto the pavement, Sasha’s eyes widened: How could one walk over the cobblestones in those extremely high, needle-thin stilettos?

  Denis Myaskovsky came out of the café following the woman. Limping, he shuffled next to the woman, or rather slightly behind her—like a lapdog. Intrigued, Sasha observed the couple: something tense, dangerously explosive, was happening between these two entirely different, unsuitable people.

  She retreated. Semidarkness reigned only a few steps away from the lantern. Sasha stood at the dark half-circle of the alley entrance.

  “It could be worse, as you can underst
and,” the woman said in a hoarse, almost boyish voice.

  “It could not,” said Denis.

  He stood there in an unbuttoned coat, a white scarf hanging low to the ground like a twisted rope.

  “It’s just the beginning of this semester,” Denis’s voice trembled. “It’s so far from the test . . . it’s the very beginning of the semester!”

  “The further it is, the harder it’s going to be,” the woman said.

  Denis stepped forward. Sasha froze: he grabbed the woman by her collar and jerked her up, her thin stilettos dangling in the air; he was a head taller than the woman and twice as heavy, and the woman seemed completely helpless in his arms, but she did not even try to resist.

  A second passed. Sasha did not get a chance to scream. With a strange sound, Denis put the woman back on the pavement. Regaining her balance, she managed to get her heel stuck between the cobblestones.

  “Forgive me.” Denis’s voice was hollow. “I . . .”

  And he suddenly sank before her, fell on his knees, and Sasha felt fear ten times stronger than a moment ago.

  “You have been forgiven a lot,” the woman said, trying to pull her heel out of the deep crack.

  “Don’t!”

  “You can help them. You know how.”

  “I can’t! I can’t . . .”

  “Yes, you can. Your classmates can. And you can. Look at Pavlenko’s work. Look how Samokhina tears herself apart every day.”

  Sasha flinched.

  “Do you remember the test after the first semester?” the woman spoke lightly, even cheerfully. “Do you remember what you promised me then?”

  “I cannot memorize that!”

  “You are not in kindergarten, Denis,” the woman said with a hint of disappointment. “Everything depends on you. You must work hard.”

  And with the lighthearted clickety-click of her stilettos, she passed by Denis, frozen on the pavement, passed by the porch, passed by the entryway. As she moved past Sasha, she turned her head: she had a small white face shielded by a pair of dark glasses.