Vita Nostra (11 page)

“Prefect,” said Lisa with an unidentifiable modulation. “Is your last name Kozhennikov?”

“Yeah, why?”

“And who is Farit… Sorry, I don’t know his full name?”

Kostya clenched his fists.

“He’s my father. So? So what?”

“Leave him alone, it’s not his fault,” Sasha said softly. “He’s in the same situation as the rest of us. He was forced into it as well.”

Lisa turned sharply and started walking up the stairs. The mini-skirt clung to her butt, long tanned legs flashed in the semi-darkness.

“Hmm,” pondered Andrey Korotkov, a tall, square-shouldered guy older than most of them—he probably ended up in Torpa after his military service.

Sasha, trying not to look at anyone, followed Lisa up to the third floor, to the door with a modest sign: “Sports Center.”

***

The gym teacher was a gorgeous dark-haired creature around twenty-five years of age. A thin yellow shirt clung to his powerful chest and back muscles; bare shoulders and arms demonstrated impressive physique. In front of the line-up, Dmitry Dmitrievich (that was his name) shared his entire life story with the group: he used to be a professional wrestler, enjoyed considerable success, got hurt during a match, was forced to leave professional sports and become a trainer, but since he had no teaching experience, he was happy to be employed by a regional college. While telling them all the minute details, the gym teacher smiled shyly; Sasha understood why Group B seemed so happy, especially the girls. Dima Dimych—because how else but informally, like a good buddy, could one address him?— resembled a powerful but naïve tiger cub, and the thought that their schedule included four gym classes a week now made them deliriously happy, instead of depressed as it should have. Dima reminded them to wear athletic uniforms and sneakers to each class and promised to teach special classes, wrestling for boys and table tennis for girls. Yulia Goldman, feisty and lively, immediately claimed discrimination—Why, she asked, did he think wrestling was only for boys? Why couldn’t girls wrestle? To the vast amusement of the audience, Dima blushed and promised “to think of something.” By way of warm-up, he suggested they take off their shoes, split into three teams and play a game of basketball.

A very recent thick layer of paint covered the gym floor. Bright green and bright yellow fields, thick white lines, thuds of the orange basketball, the smell of rubber and sweat; Sasha ran between the baskets, imitating action rather than really playing. What was happening then was a perfectly normal, joyful, juicy slice of life, and she had trouble believing that half an hour ago she was reading Section 1, bending under the will of a sadistic professor in elongated glasses on the tip of his nose.

Here they were being bullied. Forced to read absolute gibberish and commit it to memory. The same senseless process as having to scrub a cobblestone plaza with a toothbrush. Or sort out grains, that would later be all mixed together again, and again, and again, and the work is difficult, and the grains are tiny… And again, senseless labor. Punishment. Humiliation.

But what is the point? Who needs this Institute of Special Technologies with its entire staff, dining hall, Dean’s Office, dormitories? What it is, a nest of sadism?

Kostya passed her the ball over Yulia’s head. Sasha caught it, dribbled a few feet, threw it into the hoop, but at the last moment Lisa aimed a heavy blow at her arm. The ball bounced off the hoop, landed in the hands of someone on the other team and—thump-thump-thump—ended up at the opposite end of the gym; Lisa followed, tugging on her mini-skirt, which, frankly speaking, was not the best attire for a basketball game…

Sasha’s team lost.

***

“I can’t memorize it! I just can’t!”

The textbook flew into the corner, hit the dresser door, landed on the floor and stayed there, its yellow pages splayed open. Oksana hit the desk with both fists, making the table lamp hop.

“I can’t! I am not going to study this! They are making fun of us!”

“That’s what I am thinking,” Lisa sat on the windowsill, smoking, a glass jar in front of her full of lipsticked cigarette butts.

“What will happen if we don’t learn it?” Sasha asked.

All three girls fell silent. The question that tortured all of them all day was now out in the open.

It was evening. The sun was setting outside their window. Somewhere someone was strumming his guitar. Behind them was the first day of classes, Specialty, Physical Education, Philosophy and World History. Neither the third, nor the fourth block brought any surprises. Sasha wrote down the definition of the principal point of philosophy and how Materialism differs from Idealism, took notes on the dwellings of primitive peoples and their customs, and received two perfectly ordinary textbooks. An excellent dinner was consumed in dead silence. First years returned to the dorm, began to study, and soon found out that the homework assigned by Portnov was an impossible task to accomplish.

One could read this nonsense, forcing one’s self every step of the way. But
memorizing
the underlined passages—that was unfeasible. The brain refused to function, and spots swam before their exhausted eyes. Oksana was the first one to crack, and her textbook flew across the room.

“I can’t memorize it!” Oksana sniffled. “Even if he kills me!”

Lisa wanted to say something, but at that moment someone knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Sasha said.

Kostya entered and closed the door behind him.

“Hey. I am… I need to… the schedule for tomorrow. I mean, the individual workshops, it’s during the third and fourth blocks.”

“Prefect,” said Lisa with a degree of disdain that had no equal.

“It’s not like it was his idea, you know!” Sasha snapped.

“Considering whose son he is…”

“What is the difference whose son I am!” Kostya burst out, drops of saliva flying in all directions. “What is the difference? Did I ask who your father is? Did I bother you at all??”

He slammed the door and ran out into the corridor, Sasha flying behind him.

“Kostya. Wait. Don’t pay attention to her. Just wait!”

Not answering, Kostya dashed into the men’s bathroom. Sasha slowed down. She considered the situation and perched on the windowsill, prepared to wait.

A third year was walking down the corridor, carefully taking each step. He slowly turned his head, as if his neck were made of rusty metal. Now and then he would freeze, as if listening to something, and even his eyes stopped moving, fixed on some unknown point. Then he would start walking again, and this way, step after step, he approached Sasha perched at the window.

Despite the unusually warm, sunny and almost summery day, he wore woolen gloves. A wide knitted headband covered his forehead, either it was an adornment of some sort, or a cure for a headache.

“Hello.”

Sasha did not expect him to speak and answered automatically:

“Hello.”

“First years? Nightmares? Hysterics?”

Sasha licked her lips.

“I guess so…”

“I see,” said the third year. “Were you a straight A student in high school?”

“Why?” Sasha frowned.

The guy took a step forward her. He stood swaying, then with an unexpected ease he hopped onto the windowsill next to her.

“You should get a haircut, bob your hair. And a brighter lipstick.”

“What’s it to you?” Sasha was deeply offended.

“I am older than you—I can give you all sorts of advice,” the guy smirked. “Valery,” he extended a gloved hand.

Sasha had to force herself to stretch her own hand in return and touch the pilling black wool.

“Alexandra…”

She took a deep breath and began talking rapidly, quietly:

“Valery, tell me, explain to me, you must know by now… What are they teaching us here?”

“To explain is to simplify,” Valery informed her after a short pause.

Sasha jumped off the windowsill.

“See you.”

“Wait.” Something in Valery’s voice made her stop. “I am not… making fun of you. Laughing at you. Jesting. Having fun at your expense. Needling you. Taunting you… I…”

He fell silent, surprised and even confused; his own words like cockroaches running from the bright light.

“You see. It really is difficult to explain. The first semester is the hardest. Just survive this semester, that’s all. Then it’s going to get easier each year.”

“Do I have a choice?” Sasha asked bitterly.

Still sitting on the windowsill, Valera shrugged.

“Listen,” Sasha said dryly. “Can you please go into the bathroom and tell this guy—the first year—that I’m waiting for him. Tell him to stop hiding.”

***

At half past midnight Sasha gave up. She closed the book and dropped it under the bed, closed her eyes and fell asleep almost immediately.

She woke up from the smell of tobacco smoke. Lisa smoked sitting by the window, Oksana was not in the room.

“Ugh,” Sasha waved the thick cloud of smoke away from her face. “Can you please smoke in the bathroom?”

“Anything else?” Lisa inquired calmly.

Sasha forced herself to get up. Half an hour remained before the first block; the corridor was filled with sounds of running, stomping, laughing and yelling.

She took a shower in the steamy shower room, taking squeamish steps on the water-logged wooden planks. It was too late to dry her hair. The kitchen was packed with the sound of clanking dishes and loud people waiting for their turn with the electric teakettle. Sasha poked her nose into the kitchen and left immediately. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt, and jogged over to the back entrance of the Institute.

Group A was nearly bursting with emotion. Some people were flaunting their indifference, some balanced on the verge of hysterics, some were still trying to memorize the nonsensical text, staring at the accursed “Textual Module” with the abstract pattern on the faded cover. No one managed to “memorize” as requested by Portnov: the text refused to be memorized.

“It’s going to be just fine,” Andrey Korotkov crooned in basso profundo; from the very first day Andrey played the role of everyone’s older brother. “What could he possibly do to us?”

Lisa, thin and haggard looking, watched him through squinted eyes, as if through a cloud of tobacco smoke. Sasha did her best to avoid Lisa.

The first block was Mathematics, which Sasha disliked and had hoped to avoid after high school, but it was not to be: standard textbook, review of previous material, trigonometry, triangular coordinates…

Sasha found herself deeply interested in half-forgotten high school subjects. The textbook was logical, it was consistent, and each task had meaning. The thin book printed on lousy paper suddenly provoked a bout of nostalgia; Sasha placed it into her bag with a warm, almost tender emotion.

The second block was English. The class was held in Auditorium number 1, and that auditorium, even the black board, which the English professor cheerfully covered with English grammatical constructions, reminded many of the students of some unpleasant memories. Listening to the familiar dialogs about the weather, London, and pets, Sasha watched Kostya re-read the nonsensical section from the textual module. He shook his head hopelessly.

Sasha liked the English class as well—the professor, a sarcastic woman with an intricate hairdo, and the textbook, and even what she had to do during the class. Language was logical. The efforts were clear. Even the process of memorization, the learning of new words, was reasonable.

They broke for lunch.

On the bulletin board where the generic schedule was posted, Kostya hung up a separate list: one-on-one Specialty workshops. Sasha found herself in the first time slot, right after the bell for the third block.

“How come you put me first?”

“What, you don’t like it?”

“Calm down,” Sasha said apologetically. “I’m just asking, no subtext.”

“I just thought you’d prefer to get it over with,” Kostya said after a pause. “Plus, you know that idiotic text better than everyone else.”

“What the heck makes you think that?”

“If you don’t want to go, I’ll take your slot!”

The bell rang.

***

Auditorium number 38 was hidden behind the dean’s office, a little pigeonhole of a space. Why the auditorium had this high number, Sasha had no idea. She knocked on the door and entered. The classroom was tiny, had no windows, and fit only a desk and a few chairs. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling on a very long cord. The piercing light made Sasha squint.

“You are two minutes late, Samokhina.”

“I… I couldn’t find number 38. I thought it was on the third floor.

“I am not interested in that.”

Sasha lingered by the door, not knowing where to go and what to do. Portnov beckoned her with a bent finger. She approached; Portnov, in the same striped sweater, sat behind the office desk, watching her intently. His gaze—over the glasses—made Sasha even more uncomfortable.

“Just look how bogged down we are,” said Portnov, perhaps to Sasha, perhaps to himself. “Up to our ears. Pure jelly. Why don’t you come here.”

He got up, his chair squeaked lightly, and in the next moment he was right next to her. Very close. She smelled his cologne—and had a split second to wonder. For some reason, she didn’t think someone like Portnov would use cosmetics.

Above, almost over her head, the bare light bulb burned brightly. Round black shadows lay on the linoleum floor. Projections. Shadows…

“I am listening. Tell me what you have learned.”

Sasha began, losing her way, stumbling, absolutely sure that she would never get close even to the end of the first paragraph. And further—after the first ten lines—it was hard to imagine, there existed a black hole, and the gibberish melted into a solid gray hum…

“Look in here.”

He lifted a hand to her face; she saw a ring on his finger, a ring that was not there before. A large pink stone diffracted the light of the bulb, became bright blue, then green; Sasha held her breath. She felt dizzy, took a step, trying to maintain equilibrium…

“Hold it.”

She blinked. The ring was no longer there. Portnov stood beside her, holding her shoulders.