Vita Nostra

by Sergey

  The human shell aggravated her like a too-tight suit. She longed to—had to—escape, but the pink phone lay on the table, and Sasha got up and went over to the window.

  She opened a small windowpane. It wasn’t enough: she unlocked the entire window frame. The spring night was fairly cool, a raw wind chased the clouds, in turn exposing the stars and then covering them up again. Sasha kneeled on the windowsill breathing deeply and feeling the wind creeping under her nightgown. The cold was fabulous, it sobered her up. Sasha was a human being.

  “I am a human being. But I am a verb,” she said out loud.

  It was impossible to explain. Sasha, a second-year student who had lived through a disintegration and reconstruction, who had been forced to alter and who had been transformed, accepted her new status not with her mind, and not even with her intuition.

  She simply was. She continued. She resided in space and time. She was getting ready to reverberate.

  To be realized.

  The pink phone lay on the table. Sasha wanted to turn it off. Better yet, to throw it down, onto the cobblestones. Let it break. Let the battery fall out. Let the display flicker out forever.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I must not. I must not.”

  A dark whirlwind flew over the ragged cloudy sky. Sasha recoiled; across from her a shadow nestled on the slope of the tiled roof, shielding the stars like a storm cloud.

  “Sasha, why are you not asleep at this late hour?”

  She gripped the windowsill with both hands.

  “Let’s take it easy. And keep away from the streetlights; we have no need for sensationalism. We have forty minutes, let’s not waste any time on warm-ups.”

  The cold wind impeded breathing. Below lay springtime Torpa: fog flowed over the streets as if over rivers, and the glow of the streetlights became hazier.

  “Follow me . . . don’t rush. Keep calm. And don’t forget to breathe; you are not diving into the water.”

  They landed on the roof of the seven-story building. The fog flooded over the first floor and was creeping up to the second.

  “Are you cold?”

  “N-no.”

  “Sasha, I want you to know: this is not so much academic work, but more of a . . . um, process of adapting to the given situation. As our mutual friend would put it, we cannot ask for the impossible, and you, in your current state, require a certain relief. You must be allowed materialization. But as your professor, I emphatically forbid you to do the same when you are alone. And that restriction remains in full force and effect!”

  Torpa was invisible far below, and only the rooftops swam over the cotton-wool surface of the fog.

  “Sasha, we think very highly of you, your capacity for work, and your ethics. We understand how difficult it is for you. You won’t give us a reason . . . to be disappointed, will you?”

  Sasha opened her wings as wide as she could. For a second she became the town of Torpa—a sleepy town under a blanket of haze, floating in the clouds . . .

  “I w-will do my best, I promise.”

  Part Three

  “Mom, hello. I am here.”

  “Goodness, Sasha! Are you at the station?”

  “No.”

  “Where are you?”

  Sasha laughed. “I’m downstairs, calling from the phone booth.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Dead serious. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “You are unbelievable!”

  When the elevator doors opened, Mom stood on the landing, happy, fresh, wearing a summer frock. “You are insane! Completely out of the blue! What a nutcase!”

  And Mom hugged Sasha for the first time in six months. Sasha closed her eyes. Behind her the elevator doors closed and opened again, hitting the handle of her suitcase. And closed again. Sasha and her mother stood embracing a while longer, then Sasha reluctantly turned and picked up her suitcase.

  The elevator doors snapped shut with an aggravated clunking.

  “Listen,” Mom said, greedily drinking her in. “You look . . . wonderful. Completely grown up.”

  They entered the apartment, and Mom pulled Sasha into the kitchen and sat her down without letting go of her hand. On the stove, steam whirled over a pot, where eggs hopped in the boiling water. Mom looked into Sasha’s eyes, smiled, and shook her head.

  “So big . . . so grown up. How wonderful that you came. You’re just wonderful. But why didn’t you use your cell phone?”

  “It’s a bit expensive.” Sasha made a point to smile. “It’s really for emergencies only.”

  “I called you a couple of times, but there was no connection.”

  “Yes, that happens in Torpa.” Sasha’s smile became even wider. “Is the baby asleep?”

  “He just conked out, right before you arrived. We had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, received tons of compliments.” Mom was smiling. “It’s so curious. Usually they try to scare you, refer you to specialists. But here we have a baby with the ideal weight, and ideal development, and he kept smiling at everyone. At this age babies are scared of strangers, but little Valentin is such a sunny baby. When he sees someone, he greets them. He sleeps like a bear. Eats like a piglet. And he’s so beautiful! You’ll see.”

  She finally remembered her pot, took the boiled eggs off the stove, and settled them under a stream of cold water.

  “Valentin is working. He has so much work right now. But it does bring more money, you cannot imagine how expensive everything is these days.” She looked at her daughter. “Sasha . . . have you got a boyfriend?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Mom sat across from Sasha and touched her hand. “I just think so. You’ve changed.”

  “We just haven’t seen each other in a long time.”

  “While the baby is asleep . . . we have some time. Tell me: how are you?” Mom asked. “Do you have friends? Boys are probably after you in herds—you’re so beautiful.”

  “I study day and night. Not so much with the herds of boys.”

  “But still. You must like someone! What kind of boys are there in that Torpa? I can’t even imagine. Are they nice?”

  “They are nice, sure. Different . . . just like everywhere else. You say it like Torpa is some hole in the middle of nowhere!”

  “It’s not a hole.” Mom caressed her hand. “I fell in love during my second year, I remember, purely platonically. I could not stop thinking about him, though. It was like an illness, it rolled over me and left just as quickly. But times are different now, aren’t they?”

  “At this point I have absolutely no personal life,” Sasha confessed honestly. “The workload is too heavy.”

  Mom shook her head with a hint of distrust.

  “You are a workaholic . . . and it’s already the end of the second year.”

  “And I got straight A’s.”

  “Straight A’s . . . Sasha, let’s start getting you out of there. It’s the best time right now, after the second year. I made some inquiries—our university will accept you with open arms.”

  “Mom . . .” Sasha took away her hand.

  Mom shook her head stubbornly.

  “Sasha. Let’s forget the past. You lived through . . . you did not accept Valentin. I mean, you accepted him to be polite, but inside . . . back then you were still a girl, a teenager. Now you are an adult, I can see it. And we can say all of those things, unspoken before, out loud. You can see—we are happy. The only thing missing is you, Sasha. Because you are also our daughter, you are a part of this family, and nothing and no one can replace you. Come home. Please.”

  Sasha’s mouth was suddenly dry. Mom watched her from across the table and smiled.

  “I have come back,” Sasha muttered. “I . . . you’re right. Now I’ve come back for real.”

  Mom got up, nearly toppling over her stool, and embraced Sasha, pressing her face to Sasha’s shoulder.

  “Your bedroom is still yours, of course—make yourself comfortable. Put your things away.
Valentin are I are perfectly fine in our bedroom, and it’s easier for us to get up with the baby right there. But he sleeps through the night now. He’s such a sunny baby, calm and happy. You’ll see. People used to live in communal apartments, three, four people in tiny rooms, but these days we have our own apartment. Tomorrow we’ll go to the university . . . or maybe you want to go by yourself? And then we’d have to go back to Torpa to get your documents. And pick up your things, you probably left some stuff there?”

  “Uh-huh,” Sasha said. “We can decide that later.”

  “Don’t wait too long. Oh, the sink is clogged. I wanted to make sorrel soup, it’s almost ready. I just need to add the sorrel. Want to do it? It is so cool when sorrel changes its color in the hot broth . . . Or do you want to take a shower first? Or put away your clothes? A whole night on the train, you’re tired . . . Do you want to take a nap? In your room?”

  “I’d rather help you,” Sasha said. “Let me cut up the sorrel.”

  She had spent the previous night in a blissful half-dream. Lying on the soft berth of a compartment coach, she’d listened to the rattle of the wheels and slowly, by sly degrees, she’d appropriated the train.

  Her head had been a diesel locomotive. The wheels had spun along her stomach, sonorous and confident. The tracks had turned out to be smooth and cool by touch, like marble. In the morning they they had been covered by dewdrops. Sasha had felt the tiny particles fly all over, vaporize, and condense again; felt the fog slink away from her face; felt the wind dash behind her back, wagging like the tail of a dog. Green semaphores had risen over the horizon like stars.

  She finished her second year and completed the so-called internship—almost an entire month of renovating the dorm. She liked working with the paint roller, liked the whitewash spray, and enjoyed walking around in work clothes stained with paint and chalk. She liked coming from the dorm back to her loft, taking a shower, and sprawling on her bed with a book.

  She read nearly a hundred books that month. She read with a remarkable speed, read everything—classics, memoirs, travelogues, Harlequin novels, and mysteries. She had gone through the entire collection of the Torpa regional library with a fine sieve. The Textual Module, the Conceptual Activator, the exercise sets—all the Specialty books had been taken away from her by Portnov and Sterkh.

  Sasha would read until she couldn’t discern the letters any longer. Then she would brew some tea and sit on the windowsill without turning on the lights.

  The sky would grow dim like a screen. The streetlights would come on, and Sasha’s breathing would get labored. She would wait, watching the surrounding roofs. A rare passerby would glance at her curiously.

  Quite often the waiting would be futile. At half past one in the morning, gloomy and disappointed, Sasha would slide off the windowsill and go back to bed. And lie there for a long time, listening to the rustling noises of the night, until falling into a deep sleep.

  But once in a while—two or three times a week—an enormous shadow would conceal the stars over Torpa for a second, and a dark figure would land on the opposite roof. It usually happened on the border of evening and night, when the sky was still light on the west, but the streets were already dipped in a dense darkness.

  Then Sasha, choking with joy, would leap from the windowsill out onto the street and unfold her wings—sometimes right above the pavement.

  “. . . Sasha, of course, you can go. But it will be difficult and unnatural for you. It would be best if you went for three days, just let your family know right away—a lot of students do just that; a couple of days at home, and the rest of the time with their friends on some trip. Why should you be stuck inside four walls the entire time? Careful, don’t step on the shingles, they are broken . . .”

  In the summer, even the nights above Torpa were hot and humid, so that steam rose up from the ground and the air trembled gently over the tiled roofs that retained the heat of the midday sun. During the short periods of rest Sasha would stretch on the tiles, absorbing their warmth, watching the stars, smiling vacantly.

  During their nightly flights Sterkh did not so much instruct her, as—she understood it well—allowed her to materialize. He supervised and held her back with a great deal of tact; she slipped up only once—when she rose especially high over Torpa and suddenly saw that the town itself represented a phrase, a long complex sentence, and the comma could be moved easily.

  Her right wing pressed to her side and the left one stretched out. Gritting her teeth with unexpected pain in hollow bones, Sasha went into a tailspin. The lights of Torpa melted, merging into concentric circles. Then the lights went dark. Sasha plummeted into the world of many dimensions, cold and dry like discarded snake skin. Somebody’s will plucked her out of the darkness; again she saw the ground underneath, so very close, and expanded her wings right above the pavement.

  Sterkh did not even reprimand her. Instead he said, “You skidded. Lost control. Nothing happened, but do you see how important it is for me to remain close?”

  She calmed down incredibly fast. Perceiving herself as a Word made her forget the concept of fear, and even the wretched pink telephone did not cause her the usual despair.

  Sterkh insisted her return home be that of a well-brought-up young lady: on foot and always through the front door.

  “You are not going to crawl through the window like a cat into the birdhouse, are you? It’s so aesthetically displeasing, don’t you agree?”

  Sasha thanked him profusely for each of those night excursions. She did not know how she would have survived that summer without flying over Torpa’s rooftops.

  On the train on her way home Sasha recalled in minute detail the tiles and the waterspouts, the sparrow nests and the weather vanes of the old town; she thought of a boy who once saw her out his window. He was reading a book, Karlson on the Roof; Sasha laughed and waved to him.

  The train rushed through the forest. Sasha dreamed of coming back to Torpa.

  “Here we go, he’s awake!”

  A soft hesitant crowing could be heard from the bedroom. Wiping her hands on the way, Mom rushed into the room. At the door she smiled conspiratorially.

  “You are not going to recognize him.”

  Sasha sat at the table, moving the tip of her knife over the wooden cutting board. She thought malapropos of the lifeless baby lying on that table, and of herself pressing the telephone receiver to her ear, accepting and absorbing the silence, wringing out fragments of somebody else’s information. Thankfully, she had not had the pink cell phone back then. But then she’d had enough trouble without it.

  In the past, coming home on vacation had meant Sasha was constantly afraid of something: of appearing insane. Of killing a man. Of turning into a monster in front of everyone. Now, with these fears behind her, or so she hoped, Sasha was afraid of the moment when she would have to tell Mom about the ticket that lay in the pocket of her bag.

  The return ticket for the day after tomorrow, an evening departure.

  “Come, baby Valentin, come, sweetie pie . . . Your sister came home . . . Sasha is here . . . Let’s go say hello . . .”

  Mom entered the kitchen smiling, a dark-haired, dark-eyed little boy with an intelligent—albeit sleepy—look on his face nestled in her arms. Sasha put aside her knife and got up.

  How he had grown! From a little worm he’d turned into a human being, a child. He looked like Mom and like Sasha—the hair, the lips, the forehead. He had something of Valentin as well; sitting in his mother’s arms, he gazed at Sasha with cheerful incredulity, as if asking—and who do we have here?

  “This is Sasha, your sister. Sasha has come home. Our baby Valentin, meet Sasha . . .”

  “Hello,” Sasha said.

  The baby looked at her with mistrust—and suddenly smiled.

  Sasha understood why Mom called him “a sunny baby.” His round face became even rounder, and the dimples on his cheeks lay in semicircles. Her brother watched her with sincere joy, as if he’d been waiti
ng for Sasha for a long time.

  As if he loved her.

  “Shall we crack open the champagne?” Valentin rubbed his hands cheerfully. “In honor of Sasha’s return?”

  Mom had just put the baby to bed; he fell asleep soundly and without complaint. Sasha had a chance to notice that Mom’s lullaby was different—not the one from six months ago, not the one that she had sung to Sasha. It was a new song.

  One day of Sasha’s time at home went by. One out of three days. Only two remained, but neither Mom nor Valentin—not even the baby—knew that yet.

  “Sasha, for you, darling. Be healthy, and let all your dreams come true.”

  “Mom, it’s not my birthday!”

  “But we didn’t get to celebrate your birthday with you! Tell me, how was it?”

  “The usual. I bought a cake, a chocolate one, kind of like this one. Brought it back, some kids came over, so we had the cake, made some tea . . .”

  “What, no wine?” Valentin asked suspiciously.

  “No, we’re not allowed to consume alcohol.”

  The moment Sasha said it, she bit her tongue. Valentin and Mom exchanged meaningful glances.

  “What’s so strange about it? It’s the usual practice in many schools these days,” Sasha lied.

  “In our dorm we drank up to delirium tremens,” Valentin said.

  “You see—and was that normal?”

  Valentin again looked at Mom, but she did not respond—she watched Sasha, propping her cheek on her fist.

  “Since I moved into the loft,” Sasha said to end the uncomfortable pause, “everything is really good. I get enough sleep. It’s such a pretty loft, I have a flower box, even a small fireplace, not a decorative one, a real working one, and in the winter I can make a fire.”

  This time she bit her tongue hard.

  “What do you mean—in the winter?” Mom asked. “You won’t be there in the winter, you’re going to transfer from Torpa, right?”

  “Well, yes,” Sasha said quickly. “I mean . . . It’s still under consideration, right? They may not allow me to enroll as a transfer student, or something else may happen . . .”