Vita Nostra

by Sergey

“You’ve changed a lot,” Kostya said. “Sometimes I think you’ve become very much like him.”

  “But you could have passed on the first try.” Sasha felt his growing antagonism, and it made her speak fast and commandingly, as if pressing her chest against a hurricane-force wind. “It’s true, Kostya, it is unpleasant and sad, but it’s true. You could. But you didn’t.” She shrugged. “You’re his son, and you hate him. But perhaps he’s not the worst father. He’s rational. Strict. Effective.”

  “What?”

  “Perhaps he even loves you, in his own way. Perhaps all the fathers in the world are projections of one single entity. It’s just that their method of transformation is different. A ballerina’s shadow is a monster with a tiny head and massive legs . . . Can you imagine how badly any entity can be distorted by an intricate type of projection? If this pile of muck is a projection of a blooming garden onto an infinite time frame, onto rain and cold . . . If my father—who left my mom with a baby in her arms—if he’s a projection of a magnanimous and loving man, but the sun went down, and the shadow got distorted . . .”

  Sasha spoke, realizing to her surprise that she no longer thought in words. Words—only later, but in the beginning—supple and firm . . . images? Pictures? Live creatures? The necessity of converting these thought-sensations into the familiar verbal form was becoming a burden to her.

  Kostya must have noticed this, because he held her hand like an attentive nurse. “Sasha . . . Are you all right?”

  “Me? Oh yes. Poor Juliet was mistaken. Remember? “Tis but thy name that is my enemy; / Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. / What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, / Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part / Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!’ This is a common misconception, not unlike the ‘world is flat’ belief. ‘And whatever your ship is named, that is how it will sail.’ Yes, that’s it. That is exactly right.”

  “Sasha . . .” Kostya seemed nervous.

  “Listen.” She closed her eyes to avoid seeing Kostya and her room, in order to feel the full extent of the strokes and trills of her new thoughts, thought-images, thought-creatures. “I can construct/materialize/actualize/objectify/depict for you and Zhenya this ‘Love,’ the same as Romeo and Juliet’s. You will feel, live, experience, burn with this love, the only one in the whole universe. I will manifest it for you.”

  Sasha stumbled and opened her eyes to see Kostya watching her with growing tension. The firm shadows dancing in Sasha’s consciousness slowed down, and familiar thought-words jumped out to the foreground like a teleprompter line.

  “Forgive me, I made a bad joke about love. I am talking too much. I . . . you see, I am continuing, flowing, swelling—I cannot stop. I am forced from inside, I am like yeasty dough, sooner or later I will crack, and then Kozhennikov . . . Sorry. And then he will look at me like this, over his glasses, and say: ‘This will teach you some discipline.’ And then I shall not bear it, Kostya. I will do something terrible. I will kill. I will manifest a bullet in his heart.”

  Kostya’s pupils widened; Sasha knew something was about to happen. And it did—gritting his teeth, Kostya lightly slapped her cheek. Sasha felt Kostya’s insides twist and resonate from this slap.

  “Don’t worry, it’s fine.” She tried to smile. “No reason to worry,” she repeated, “it did not hurt. Here’s the thing: if entities can be manifested, then they can probably be formed anew. It must be possible to create new entities, rather than simply project ideas. I am a projector, a motion-picture camera. Right now, I project shadows on the screen. But can someone make entities out of nothing? What do you think, can one create something out of nothing?”

  “You need to drink some water.” Kostya was becoming paler by the minute. “They have driven you insane. Sasha, there was this one girl, a third year; she went mad . . . just like that.”

  “All girls are mad. Each in her own way. Listen, I think I am omnipotent. I broke out of our text and can view it from the outside. And I can see—it’s just letters. Every person is a word, simply a word. And others are punctuation marks.”

  “Listen, I can call someone . . . or . . .”

  Sasha drowned in silence. Kostya’s lips were moving; he was worried, close to despair. Sasha blinked; she saw Kostya as only half-human, and half—a shadow, a projection of something imperative, much more fundamental than the entire human race. However, Kostya was still human, while Sasha—no matter what Sterkh said—struggled, slid out of her shell, losing her form and losing the ability to think. The professor’s exasperated words dangled at the edge of her dimmed—or just beginning to burn?—conscience: “Have you ever turned a dirty sock inside out?”

  And then the door flew open, and it, which stood outside, stepped into the room.

  “What happened to her?”

  Kostya stood leaning over the wall. The door to the bathroom was ajar. Water poured out of the faucet. Farit Kozhennikov’s voice answered something, but Sasha could not distinguish the words.

  She sat behind the writing bureau. She had not fallen on the floor unconscious, as could be expected. Instead, she sat moving her pencil over the sheet of paper, and the entire paper was covered with scribbles, strokes, and spirals.

  “What is going to happen to her?” Kostya asked again.

  Again she missed the reply. The sound of water stopped. Farit Kozhennikov stepped into the room, and Sasha shut her eyes for a second. Only for a second: Farit wore light-gray glasses—almost transparent, but still opaque.

  “Should I go?” Kostya’s voice sounded hollow.

  Kozhennikov placed two washed cups on the shelf. Sasha recalled drinking kefir yesterday morning, and not having a chance to do the dishes before classes.

  “If you are not busy, son, you can run down to the corner store and get some tea, biscuits, and instant coffee. That is something Sasha Samokhina truly needs right now. Can you do that?”

  “I will,” Kostya said after a short pause.

  “Here is some money.” Farit put his hand into the pocket of his leather jacket.

  “I don’t need any, I have my own money.” And Kostya left without looking at Sasha.

  She glanced at the sheet in front of her. In its center, almost hidden by her scribbles, an unfinished symbol twitched slightly. While she watched, the symbol lost its volume and flattened, until it finally froze. Farit carefully pulled the paper from underneath Sasha’s clenched fingers and brought over his lighter. The paper went up in flames. Kozhennikov opened the screen of the tiny fireplace and put the wisp of flame onto the sooty bricks.

  He opened the window a little wider.

  “Omnipotent, are you?”

  Sasha rubbed her eyes; they burned as if from a long look at the sun. Cloudy tears poured down her face, finally washing off the meticulously applied mascara.

  “They worry about you,” Kozhennikov murmured. “But they don’t know everything about you. If they did . . . they would kill you to avoid a universal catastrophe.”

  He may have been speaking with irony. He employed a bit of sarcasm. But she didn’t think he meant anything but what he’d just said.

  Sasha stared at her pencil. Kozennikov picked up a stool and sat in front of her—very close. She could have touched him if she wanted to.

  “Do you feel like a genie fresh out of the bottle? Ready to build castles and destroy them? You can do anything, anything at all?”

  Now he seemed serious. Or, perhaps, he was making fun of her.

  “I can’t stop,” Sasha whispered. “I cannot—not be.”

  “You can,” Kozhennikov said, and the sound of his voice made Sasha flinch. “Because I demand that you remain within the academic limits of this program. That you don’t draw live pictures without your professors present. That you don’t fly like Peter Pan, and don’t try to enter all the visible openings. This is my condition, and I never—remember, never!—ask for the impossible.”

  He placed a cellular phone in a soft pink case in front of Sasha.
>
  “This is for you. Call your mother right now and tell her your new number.”

  Sasha swallowed.

  “Do what I say.” Kozhennikov put a plastic card with a long number on the table.

  The phone worked. The keys sang gently when pressed.

  Beep. Beep.

  “Hello . . . Mom?”

  “Sasha? Sasha, hello! Where are you? I can hear you so well!”

  “Mom, I have a cell phone now. Write down the number.”

  “Seriously? Isn’t that something! Listen, it isn’t too expensive, is it?”

  “No . . . not really. Write it down.”

  Kozhennikov sat, one leg thrown over the other, and watched Sasha through a pair of smoky glasses.

  “So can I call you on this number?”

  “Well, yes. At least if you urgently need to talk to me.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Mom . . . sorry, I just wanted you to have the number. I can’t talk for a long time . . .”

  “Bye! Good luck! We’re fine, the baby is doing well . . .”

  “Say hello to . . . Valentin. Good-bye.”

  She pressed the Off button. A picture lit up on the display: a globe, or perhaps a stylized clock. Sasha took a deep breath.

  “Good.” Kozhennikov nodded. “Now look me in the eyes and listen carefully.” He took off his glasses. Sasha blinked; Kozhennikov’s brown eyes, ordinary, with normal pupils, stared her in the face. “Always carry this phone with you. Don’t you dare turn it off. Make sure the battery is always charged. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you commit any offense, this phone will bring you bad news. You, genie fresh out of the bottle, remember: for each attempt to build yet another castle, you will get some very, very sad news. And you will find out immediately. Carry your telephone with you at all times.”

  Sasha looked down at the phone.

  It was small and delicate. In a pink fuzzy case with—as Sasha now saw—little pig ears. The case was shaped like a pig, with a drawn piggy snout; it was cute, almost childish.

  Everything had just changed.

  If she was a genie, then it was as if she had been flying up to heaven and was then suddenly jerked by her beard and her face smashed into the concrete wall. And then locked in a cell, three meters by three meters. Without windows or doors.

  Only a few minutes ago she’d felt omnipotent. Only a few minutes ago she’d felt how the new reality grew around her—it was slightly uncomfortable and a little terrifying, but the process was preeminently fascinating!

  Now, though, she was withering. Shriveling into a tiny blob. It happened when synthetic fabric was set on fire: a full-size elegant dress would shrink into a minuscule globule of black tar, and in only a couple of seconds. Sasha, omnipotent just a minute ago, Sasha who could fly, who could transform the world—was now turning into a dot on a flat surface.

  The doorbell rang. Kostya came back, carrying a pack of tea, a jar of coffee, biscuits, and a chocolate bar; out of the corner of her eye Sasha saw him place the groceries on the shelf, but she did not turn her head.

  Kozhennikov said something to his son, who replied in a low voice, then in turn asked something. Sasha did not discern any words.

  The door closed. Kostya left. Sasha remained immobile.

  “I don’t see anything tragic,” Kozhennikov said softly. “You are going to continue all your previous activities, but only under the supervision of your professors. I think they might schedule additional sessions.”

  “I won’t be able to study,” Sasha whispered.

  “You will be able to. On the contrary, you will make a bigger effort. But discipline, Sasha—discipline and self-control—are very important things, sometimes crucial. Tell me, am I wrong?”

  Sasha was silent.

  “It is in your power to make sure it never rings,” Kozhennikov said gently. “It all depends on you. As usual.”

  “I saw you,” Sasha said. “When you entered the room. I went blind almost immediately. Farit, it’s impossible to live in the world where you exist.”

  “It is impossible to live in the world where I do not exist,” he said after a short pause. “Although it’s hard to resign oneself to my existence, I understand that.”

  “Don’t bend your knee, Sasha! Stretch, like this . . . just a little bit more, and you’ll make it!”

  Lisa Pavlenko stretched into a split, bearing her hands down onto the floor, but maintaining an absentminded facial expression. Sasha groaned and got up.

  “I can’t. My muscles hurt too much.”

  “Because you must stretch every day!” To strengthen his argument, the gym teacher pressed his hand to his chest. “Lisa stretched—and she did it, see?”

  “I’m delighted for her,” Sasha said.

  Dima Dimych sighed. Yulia Goldman had been in a bridge position for the last five minutes, curved like a triumphal arch, and the tips of her hair brushed the wooden floor.

  “Sasha, you must at least pass the somersault. And put away your cell phone—didn’t I ask you not to bring cell phones to the gym?”

  Sasha hesitated, but then took the pink cord off her neck. She put the phone into the pocket of her sweatshirt and zipped it up. Dima Dimych looked almost annoyed.

  “Is somebody going to steal it? Can’t you put it down for a second?”

  Sasha’s stare was grim enough to make the young gym teacher shrink in embarrassment.

  At three forty, Zhenya Toporko exited auditorium 38. She threw a haughty glance at Sasha and, without saying hello, sailed away down the corridor.

  “Ah, it’s you,” Portnov greeted Sasha.

  She murmured a curt hello and sat down at her table in front of the teacher’s desk—just a regular student. She pulled out the Conceptual Activator. Then the Textual Module. She stared at her hands.

  The phone on the pink cord touched the edge of the table, a pink spot in her peripheral vision.

  “At first I thought you were simply the kind of student who crams day and night,” Portnov muttered. “Then I suspected you had a talent. But then I realized you are a verb. It happened when you regained your speech. When I made you silent, and you found the right word in a matter of only a few days. Remember?”

  Sasha nodded.

  “Then everything seemed to hang by a thread, and I thought I had made a mistake—and so did Nikolay Valerievich—and then you transformed in a single leap. It became obvious you were a verb, and I strongly suspected”—Portnov leaned forward maintaining eye contact with Sasha—“that you were a verb in the imperative mood. You are an imperative, Sasha.

  “You are a command.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.” Portnov squinted. “It’s the nature of our specialty: nothing can be explained. One can only achieve understanding on one’s own. You are a command, a part of the Speech of Creation. A load-bearing structure. I told you once you were a projection. Remember? Here it is: You are a projection of the Word that is destined to reverberate. And every day you get closer to the original. You are a foundation upon which an entire universe can be built. And this cannot be explained, Sasha, it can only be understood.”

  Sasha shut her eyes. For a second she ceased thinking in words. Her thoughts seemed to be living creatures that resembled multicolored amoebas lit up from the inside.

  “You understand everything,” Portnov was saying. “You are just lacking experience and knowledge. It’s your second year, and you have just started studying Speech . . . but already you are a Word, Sasha—a Word, not a human being. A command, an imperative. You have colossal value as a future specialist.” He sat up straighter. “Well then—we will study in May, June, and part-time in July. Every day, and quite seriously.”

  Sasha glanced at the pink phone.

  “Under professional supervision!” Portnov raised his voice. He slapped his pocket in search of a cigarette, then said in a different tone, very businesslike, “Get your pencil and paper
. Open the Activator. Let’s begin with the minor stuff.”

  She felt like a balloon straining to go up. Her small pink phone pulled her down like an anchor, preventing her from breaking loose; like this, “at the edge of rupture,” she lived through a long day, perhaps the most magnificent day of her life.

  She left Portnov’s auditorium filled with the picture of the world: brilliant, spellbinding, and terrifying. She carried that image until late at night, trying not to spill it.

  Enlightenment surged over her like a tide and departed again. When Sasha perceived herself as Word, she felt serene like never before in her life. It was the tranquility of a dandelion blossoming for the first time on green pastures. It was a happy moment without wind, without future, and, of course, without death.

  Then, just as suddenly, she would feel human. She would remember the existence of Farit Kozhennikov, remember the phone hanging from her neck. She would grit her teeth and wait for the word-sensation to sweep over her again, and having reached that point, she would freeze in warm numbness . . .

  In the evening she had a really tough time. Having finished the Module, she went to bed and turned off the light. She closed her eyes—and immediately a magnificent anthill of meanings unfolded beneath her eyelids.

  Conformities and associations. Projections and reflections. Sasha turned onto her other side, then one more time, and one more. She rumpled the sheets. She sat up: the clock ticktocked in the darkness. Streetlights burned along Sacco and Vanzetti. The accursed pink phone lay on the bureau. And all around her the accursed eide soared, whirled, and teased her. Sasha disliked the expression, but she could not find another word for the spinning colorful amoebas.

  All one needed to do was to manifest. Everything already existed in the world. Everything that was the best and the most suitable. And happiness. The simplest thing—to grab this golden amoeba by its tail and manifest it accurately and clearly, without any distortions. Happiness is what Sasha felt when she perceived herself as Word. Happiness is what a man feels when he matches up his destiny. What would prevent Sasha from doing it? Because she could!