Vita Nostra

by Dyachenko, Marina

  “I see,” Sasha said. “Is he doing his work?”

  “Are you kidding? Our Specialty professor, Irina Anatolievna, yells at him every single class, threatens to send a report to his advisor.”

  “She threatens him…” Sasha repeated bitterly. “I missed one class, by mistake, and Portnov wrote a report right away. And then…” Sasha sighed. “Tell this moron that if he does not pass the winter exams…”

  She hesitated, not wanting to say out loud what was on the tip of her tongue.

  “I was really impressed with how you got him out,” she smiled, changing the subject. “And your CPR skills are better than any ambulance technician. Where did you learn all that?”

  ***

  They stayed in the kitchen for two and a half hours. Yegor skipped Philosophy and Math. People came in, left, smoked, laughed, the kitchen smelled of burnt milk; Yegor assured her that only the linden blossoms could possibly save him from an imminent cold, so they had another cup, and then another, and then another.

  Both his parents were emergency medical technicians. He was going to become a doctor himself. He even went to medical school for two years, when Liliya Popova, his advisor, appeared and crossed out all his plans for the future.

  Sasha listened and nodded. According to Yegor, it sounded as if Popova was not any better than Kozhennikov. Over the course of a single summer she’d managed to convince a mature, confident Yegor that the world is structured very differently from what he thought. And that he had no other choice but to drop out of medical school where he was a straight ‘A’ student for two years, and go to an unknown town, and enroll as a freshman at an odd institute.

  “My parents were in shock… But there was this one thing: my father has this project… If everything works out, he will have his own private clinic. He’s in Germany right now, he left back in August, and they are trying to figure out the financing. It’s almost settled. It’s his dream, you know. And what happened to me—he thinks of it as childish antics. Like I was just acting out.”

  “My mother got married,” Sasha said. ‘She’s having a baby.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Uh-huh,” she looked down. “You know what I think? Our families get some sort of an advance payment when we get here. Good luck… happiness. They stop caring as much.”

  Yegor did not respond for a long time.

  “Well,” he said finally. “I put so much effort into making sure they didn’t figure it out… I can’t say that my parents don’t care about me!”

  “Of course,” Sasha said in a reconciliatory tone. “Same thing with my Mom.”

  Zhenya Toporko walked into the kitchen. She gave Sasha and Yegor a very distrustful look, took two glasses off the shelf and left, with a backwards glance.

  “What do they want from us?” Yegor asked softly. “What are they teaching us, do you know?”

  “I don’t,” Sasha said. “Last year I also thought that second years must know that. No, we don’t. And third years don’t know either. At least until the placement exam. And then they leave, and there is no one left to ask.”

  Yegor smiled suddenly:

  “You are not at all scary.”

  Sasha choked on her tea:

  “Me?”

  “Do you know that our girls are terrified of you?”

  “Of me?”

  “Of course. Sometimes you just look at people… If looks could kill. In the beginning Vika and Lena were afraid of sleeping in the same room with you.”

  Sasha giggled:

  “They should be afraid. They are probably walking around the lawn just about now, foraging for their shoes…”

  They were laughing uproariously over their cups of cool tea, when grim-faced Kostya walked into the kitchen.

  He left immediately, without saying a word.

  ***

  At four o’clock Sasha finally remembered her individual session with Portnov. She said a harried goodbye to Yegor, pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater, grabbed her bag and ran to the Institute. Portnov listened to the gibberish memorized by Sasha, shined his ring into her eyes and gave her a harsh dressing-down: he did not think that Sasha spent enough time reading the paragraph, she did not memorize it well enough, so for the next session she would have to complete three additional penalty exercises on top of the regular material.

  Sasha agreed silently. The exercises did not frighten her any longer, and Portnov was right—in her excitement over the linden blossom tea she obviously had not studied enough. On the other hand, if she fails Sterkh’s exam, what good is her success with Portnov?

  “By the way, Samokhina, what does Nikolay Valerievich think of your progress?”

  The question caught her on the way out. She turned back reluctantly: Portnov sat behind the teacher’s desk, the daylight lamp reflected in his narrow glasses.

  “It’s all good,” she said through gritted teeth.

  ***

  It was nearly dark by now. As soon as she left the room, the entire weight of this day pressed on Sasha’s shoulders. Tomorrow she had another session with Sterkh: tomorrow she would have to make excuses, mumble, and listen, listen to the revolting silence and struggle against it, knowing that fighting it was forbidden…

  “Sasha, your roommates were looking for you,” Oksana carried a pan with a hissing omelet down the corridor. “Vika and Lena. Did you hide the room key from them?”

  “Sure did,” Sasha unlocked the door.

  “What are you, practicing hazing?” Oksana laughed. Sasha did not answer; she closed the door but decided not to lock it. Gathering all her willpower, she took out the player. She set the first track to an automatic loop, gritted her teeth, put on the headphones and fell on the bed.

  Silence came.

  Half an hour later the door flew open: Vika and Lena burst in, a shoe, a stiletto heel and a sneaker in their arms like weapons. Sasha watched their lipsticked mouths open mid-scream, even saw fillings in their teeth. They were shouting, perhaps, even threatening. Sasha looked through them and listened to the silence.

  A few seconds later her roommates stepped back. They may have gotten frightened. They left the room. The room was now empty.

  The silence was vast. It was devastating. It meant non-existence. Sasha did not dare to blink: only the ceiling covered with tiny cracks, a spider’s web in the corner, the iron headboard tied her to the existing world. “Nothing corporeal has any significant value. Anything that is truly valuable is beyond material substance…”

  But what about a warm hand? And smell? And the linden blossoms?!

  The silence went on and looped onto itself. Sasha lost track of time. Outside the windows the darkness was now absolute, her roommates came back, turned on the light and turned it back off, somebody else came in and left; the silence bore down on her eardrums.

  Midnight came—like the distant beat of a drum.

  Sasha got up. She stuck the CD player into her pocket. The headphones now felt like an integral part of her head; the dormitory was wide awake, lights were on everywhere, people listened to music and sang, perhaps they laughed, but Sasha heard nothing.

  Yegor lived in Room number 12 on the first floor. Sasha knocked on the door with one crooked finger. Then she used her fist. Then she pulled the door open—it was unlocked.

  Yegor was alone, hunched over the textual module.

  “Listen,” Sasha began, but could not hear her own voice; she fell silent. Yegor pushed the textbook aside, rushed toward Sasha, asked her something: she could not hear him. Silence pressed into her soul, and all Sasha’s energy went into preventing it from getting through.

  Then Yegor turned off the light.

  Sasha was caught off-guard. Not being able to hear and see simultaneously—it was too much; she wanted to rip off her headphones, but they were now pressed so close to her ears that she could not say where the foam ended and her own ears began.

  At that moment Yegor took her into his arms.

  The world reduced its
elf to touch.

  Sasha froze. Yegor breathed heavily, she felt his ribs move, go up and down. Perhaps he did get sick, had a fever, or maybe that’s just the way he was, hot, burning hot like a radiator; they pressed against each other, stuck together like two figures made out of play dough. The player dangled between them, but somehow it continued to work, pouring silence over Sasha. Yegor embraced her, enveloped her, she felt his weight, his strength, and the silence ended abruptly—with a sigh, a moan, someone’s off-key voice accompanied by the guitar, the distant chime of broken glass…

  The batteries in the CD player ran out of juice.

  ***

  Next morning, at seven o’clock, Sasha stood under the hot shower in the echoing second-floor bathroom. Heavy drops of condensed steam fell on the floor. Water flowed into the drain, carried away the soapy bubbles, whirling like a tornado. Sasha smiled, then scowled, then licked her tears off her chin.

  Yegor and Sasha made their appearance at the first block clutching each other’s hands. Sasha was wearing a man’s green shirt that smelled of Yegor’s cologne. In the hallway, watched by everyone around them, they hugged, kissed and proceeded to their classrooms: Yegor to Irina Anatolievna’s for a Specialty lecture, Sasha—to Sterkh’s, for her individual session.

  The hunchback regarded her attentively. Sasha tensed up expecting him to say something; Sterkh said his usual friendly hello and asked Sasha to put on the headphones.

  The alien silence rose, drowning Sasha first up to her neck, and then completely over her head. Breathing became difficult. The hunchback moved his lips without a sound. Sasha watched him while a cold shiver ran down her spine, and her hair stood on end.

  The first track ended. Sasha quickly pressed the stop button. Nikolay Valerievich strolled around the auditorium and stopped at the window where the raindrops fell again.

  “I can see you tried, Sasha. And I can see that you are truly having difficulties. Well, my girl. You have given me quite a problem.”

  He seemed uneasy and sad.

  ***

  “Congratulations,” said Lisa Pavlenko. She was having a cigarette in the women’s bathroom, shaking the ashes into the sink.

  “Thanks,” Sasha replied automatically, thinking of the hunchback and his exam.

  “Was it dictated by the heart? Or required for academic success?”

  Sasha froze for a second, then slowly looked at Lisa over her shoulder.

  “What do you mean?” she asked very slowly and very coldly.

  Lisa blew a puff of smoke up to the ceiling, as if trying to reach the yellowing plaster, covered by water spots.

  “No need to be embarrassed. You’re not the only one with that sort of problem. Yulia Goldman has been looking for someone to deflower her for a while now. Of course, she’s not the star student here, she has time…”

  “Isn’t it nice that you don’t have this problem,” Sasha said looking at Lisa in the mirror.

  Their eyes met somewhere on the blurry edge between glass and reality. Lisa’s eyes looked red and inflamed; probably because of the smoke.

  ***

  “Group A, everyone close your books and look at me. ‘Everyone’ includes Kovtun. Just so, thank you. Considering that half of this group has not been able to accomplish their goals with the textual module, additional individual sessions have been scheduled. Those students whose names I call will attend the individual sessions, and must come prepared, with memorized paragraphs. Tomorrow, Saturday, I am meeting with Biryukov, Onishhenko, Bochkova, Myaskovsky. Thirty seconds before the bell, does anybody have any questions?

  Kostya raised his hand. Zhenya Toporko who sat next to him blushed for some reason.

  “Yes, Kozhennikov?”

  Kostya got up, nervously clicking his pen.

  “I have an announcement.”

  “For me?” Portnov inquired. “Or for the entire group?”

  “For you and for the group.” Kostya was visibly nervous. “Zhenya and I’ve decided to get married. We applied for the marriage license at the local town hall. Anyway, we are going to have a wedding and I… we wanted to invite everyone.”

  Someone’s whistle made the window pane tremble. Somebody applauded. The auditorium filled with surprised and encouraging noise. Sasha caught a few openly curious glances.

  Her back very straight, her face scarlet, Zhenya stared at Portnov; Sasha detected a hint of pride and audacity in her stare. Sasha herself looked at Portnov thinking—what if he forbids them to get married?

  The hum died down slowly. The bell rang, but no one moved. Portnov stood by the black board, his hands in his pockets, gazing at Kostya and Zhenya curiously, almost serenely.

  A familiar silence descended upon the students.

  “Thank you for making us aware of the situation,” Portnov said benignly. “May you live happily ever after, in sickness and in health, and all that. The only nuance I must warn you about is the following: any student who gets pregnant before graduation will be forced to have an abortion based on medical grounds. Not to mention all the problems with her advisor. Is this clear, newlyweds?”

  Now Zhenya’s face was beet-red, and her eyes filled with tears. Sasha caught herself with a fleeting sense of satisfaction.

  “Class dismissed,” Portnov said unenthusiastically. “Samokhina, stay for a minute.”

  “But why?!” Sasha shouted out of the blue, unexpectedly, very loudly and almost hysterically.

  Portnov’s glance—and surprised stares of her classmates—made her come to her senses and regain self-control as soon as possible.

  “Because I need to tell you something,” he informed her unenthusiastically. “Group A, hurry up, you’ll be late for the gym.”

  The door was flung open. Outside in the hallway Sasha saw Yegor waiting for her. He’d be waiting even after the bell and the start of the next block; nervously gripping the handle of her bag, Sasha watched her classmates pile out of the auditorium.

  Korotkov, the last one out, closed the door behind him.

  “Come here,” said Portnov.

  She approached the teacher’s desk, mentally shuffling through all the reasons and problems that could prompt Portnov to have a conversation with her.

  “Listen, Samokhina… You do know how silly girls get in trouble?”

  Sasha drew in the air like a broken water spigot.

  “Why? What business is that of yours?”

  “Who else would give you advice? Mommy? Daddy? Give me your hand.”

  His hard fingers found Sasha’s wrist, hitched up her sleeve, and pressed a temporary tattoo on the back of her hand, a cheap kind usually sold on the beach—a smiling face the size of a small coin.

  Sasha jerked her hand away. She stared at the tattoo—it stuck to her skin like it was glued on. The little face, transparent just a few seconds ago, now filled with a carroty-orange color.

  “It’s a very simple test. On your safe days, it is green and yellow. When it turns red, you are absolutely not allowed to, and don’t complain later that you weren’t warned.”

  Sasha looked at Portnov. He leaned back on the chair and wiped his glasses with the hem of his shirt.

  “You are dismissed, Samokhina. Go, your boy is waiting for you,” Portnov bared his teeth in a smirk.

  On her way out, Sasha allowed herself to slam the door. She lost her nerve at the very last moment, but the door did slam just a little bit.

  ***

  In gym class, running laps, doing pushups and situps, throwing the ball into the hoop, Sasha managed to return to a certain mental equilibrium. Kostya is marrying Zhenya Toporko? That’s terrific, and wasn’t it she, Sasha, who gave him this wonderful advice? May you live happily ever after, as Portnov said.

  Even in the gym class she continued wearing Yegor’s green shirt. Under her sleeve, she barely felt the temporary tattoo on her right arm. Working on her passing skills under Dima Dimych’s direction, Sasha admitted to herself: Portnov was right. Being eighteen years old, she was
still inexcusably infantile when it came to “female business.” Mom was too far away… It’s not like she would discuss it with Lisa!

  On the other hand, Portnov…

  How did he know? Why did he care about Sasha’s personal life?

  Lisa figured it out as well. Sasha and Yegor did not hide anything. On the contrary—they flaunted their love to everyone in plain sight…

  She felt uncomfortable in Yegor’s green shirt.

  Kostya and Zhenya sat on the bench like two sparrows on a telegraph wire. Anna Bochkova sat down next to them, chatting, laughing. Sasha wondered if they were talking about her, about Yegor?!

  With a hollow sound, the ball hit the board, rolled over the rim of the hoop and fell out. Kostya had chosen his fate, and she, Sasha, had also chosen her own.

  And all this seemed utterly nonsensical considering that the winter exams were only three months away.

  ***

  Her next session with Sterkh turned into a nightmare. Sasha could not handle the tension; the alien silence crept into her soul, and the hunchback sided with that silent, clammy, heavy beast. Sasha no longer tried to let it in, neither did she try to force it out—she simply hung between the two chasms, as if writhing in a seizure. It seemed as if the session lasted many, many days.

  Finally, Sterkh shook his head and removed her headphones.

  “Sasha… It will be all right, don’t get discouraged. Do not lose your heart…”

  For a long time he sat silently behind his desk. Sasha, sweaty and barely alive, stared out the window that faced Sacco and Vanzetti Street, but could only see her own reflection. It was already dark outside; Sterkh always put her name last in the schedule of individual sessions.