Vita Nostra (12 page)

“Good job,” he said with unexpected kindness. “I can see you worked hard. But it is only a miniscule step. You must work like this every single day. For your next practice, read Section 2. Everything that is underlined in red must be memorized.”

“But what about..?”

“Good bye, Samokhina, you are cutting into somebody else’s time already. Go.”

Sasha stepped into the hallway, where Andrey Korotkov waited, leaning over the wall.

“So?” he asked impatiently. “Did he yell a lot? What happened, anyway?”

“Korotkov, I am waiting,” said Portnov’s voice.

The door closed behind Andrey. Sasha shook her head, completely bewildered. She lifted her watch to her nose.

Fifteen minutes had passed since she entered Auditorium number 38.

***

“I told you, I did not see him for many years. He showed up in August. I failed the law school entrance exams… And in September I was turning eighteen. My mother was in shock. And then he shows up! Sort of a savior. Made everything work out… Do you think I wanted to come here? I wanted to enlist! Well, not so much wanted to, but…”

Sasha and Kostya were walking down Sacco and Vanzetti Street, and then down Peace Street, and one other street, further and further from the town center, not really knowing the destination. At first, Sasha told him about the morning swimming sessions, about the gold coins, running in the park and the trip to Torpa. Then Kostya spoke. His story was much simpler.

“… He literally made me. Had I known what it was like here… I’d definitely have enlisted.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Sasha said.

Kostya threw her a surprised glance.

“My father left when I was a little girl,” Sasha said. “He had another family. And he never showed up again. My entire life it was just Mom and me. Always, just the two of us. And… My biggest fear—do you know what it is? That something will happen to her. I remember now what Farit did and said to me… He never threatened me openly. He allowed my fear, all by itself, to break loose and spread all over me. All of me. And my fear brought me here—and is holding me down. And will continue holding me.”

The street suddenly ended. Sasha and Kostya went by the last two deserted-looking houses, and unexpectedly found themselves on the bank of a narrow but relatively clean river. Grass crept close to the stream. A fisherman in a roomy jacket with a hood stood on the wooden dock.

“Would you look at that,” Kostya mused. “Think we can even swim here?”

Sasha followed him down to the water. Grass clung to their feet. Cattails swayed gently, and frogs croaked on the opposite bank. Kostya sat down on a fallen tree trunk, old, bark-less, mossy in places. Sasha lowered herself next to him.

“I wonder if there are any fish here,” Kostya lowered his voice. “I used to love this stuff. I even went fishing in the winter once…”

The fisherman gave his line a strong pull. A silver fish the size of a man’s palm flew up over the water, escaped the hook and fell at Sasha’s feet, then hopped on the grass. The fisherman turned to face them.

This time he was not wearing glasses. The brown eyes of Farit Kozhennikov were perfectly friendly.

“Good evening, Alexandra. Good evening, Kostya. Sasha, please hand me the fish.”

Sasha bent down. The fish trembled in her hand; taking a wide swing, Sasha threw it into the water. Circles stayed on the surface for a few seconds. A few scales stuck to Sasha’s palm.

“Have fun catching it,” Sasha’s voice rang out. “Just keep your feet dry.”

Kozhennikov smirked. He placed his fishing rod on the grass, unbuttoned his jacket and sat down on the tree trunk next to his son. Sasha remained standing. Kostya tensed up, but did not get up.

“How’s everything? Classmates, professors? Are you settling down?”

“I hate you,” Sasha said. “And I will find a way to make you pay for it. Not now. Later.”

Kozhennikov nodded abstractedly.

“I understand. We shall come back to that conversation… in a little while. Kostya, do you also hate me?”

“What I want to know,” Kostya said, anxiously rubbing his knee. “Do you really… Can you really turn reality into a dream? Or is it hypnosis? Or some other trick?”

Still smiling, Kozhennikov spread his hands wide, as if saying—well, that’s just how it works.

“And do you have power over accidents?” Kostya continued. “People get sick, die, get run over by cars…”

“If one directs the sail, does he direct the wind?”

“Cheap sophistry,” Sasha interjected.

“The question is,” Kozhennikov glanced at her, “the question is what should be considered a tragic accident, and what should be considered a happy occurrence. And this, my friends, you cannot possibly know.”

“But you keep this knowledge for us,” Sasha cut in again.

“What exactly are these coins?” Kostya asked.

Kozhennikov absentmindedly stuck his hand into his pocket. He took out a gold disk, and Sasha saw a familiar rounded three-dimensional symbol.

“Look. This is a word that has never been pronounced. And it never will be.” Kozhennikov flipped the coin, it flew up and landed back on his palm. “Do you understand?”

Sasha and Kostya were silent.

“You will understand,” Kozhennikov nodded reassuringly. “Are you interested in fishing? Kostya?”

“No,” said Kozhennikov-junior with disdain. “We have a lot of work for tomorrow. See you.”

Without a backward glance, he walked away from the river.

***

She could deal with the mornings and afternoons. She was busy, she had lectures, classes, all sorts of worries. But in the evenings, and especially during the nights, she cried. Every night. Turning her face to the wall.

She missed her home, longed terribly for Mom. Dozing off, she would see Mom enter the room, stand right next to her bed… Sasha would wake up—and cry again.

She barely managed to fall asleep by the time the alarm clock went off.

***

Sasha had always taken pleasure in learning. Shuffling between courses and tutors, polishing the seat of her skirt at the library, poring over textbooks in advance, she never quite comprehended what happiness lay in learning things that were logical, comprehensible and elegant, like a geometry problem.

And now, even the very sight of the “Textual Module,” with its pattern of blocks on the cover made her unbearably bored.

A week passed. Then another. Every day she had to read sections, memorize, cram, and grind at snippets of nonsensical, unpleasant text. Sasha herself did not understand why this gobbledygook caused more and more revulsion with each passing day. Reading the barbaric combinations of half-familiar and alien words, she felt something brewing inside her: within her cranium, a wasp nest was waking up, and it droned and hummed in distress, searching in vain for an exit.

People started playing hooky in the second week of school. Andrey Korotkov stopped attending Math, claiming he used to work on problems like this in ninth grade. Lisa Pavlenko occasionally skipped History, Philosophy, English—without any explanation. Some boys skipped gym, but the girls attended Dima Dimych’s class diligently and cheerfully. Adorable, gorgeous, sweet Dima did not torture anyone with back-breaking training; instead, he dedicated most of the time to games. He gave long lectures on the human body with the goal of making the training more effective. Naively, he demonstrated the location of tendons, the structure of muscles—first on an educational poster, then on a live model. The live models requested more details and explanations. Dima blushed and explained again and again: here is the knee joint, here is the ankle joint, and these here are very tender ligaments, which are frequently pulled and can even tear…

Sasha liked watching the young teacher from a distance, somewhere atop a stack of gym mats. The boldness of her classmates, their audacity and cheekiness surprised and embarrassed her, but also made her a bit envious.

Specialty was meticulously attended by all nineteen students of Group A. And everyone of them studied the textual sections. Portnov knew how to coerce. Moreover, coercing seemed to be his sole and master teaching skill.

“Why do we need these lectures? To learn how to read?” bristled Laura Onishenko, a tall busty girl who carried a plastic bag with her knitting everywhere.

“It’s not education,” Kostya said. “It’s obedience training, in the best case scenario. In the worst possible case scenario, it is brainwashing. How’s your head, does it feel normal after one-on-one sessions?”

To a certain degree, one-on-one sessions were even worse than the lectures. Fifteen minutes twice a week. According to Portnov, he controlled their knowledge, although from Sasha’s point of view, they learned nothing, and his method of control smacked of Shamanism: Portnov’s ring blinded her, made her thoughts scramble, time made a dizzying leap, and meanwhile Portnov managed to find out everything she had learned, did not quite learn, or did not learn well.

“You did not finish Section Five. Tomorrow you will do Section Six, and again Section Five.”

“I won’t be able to!”

“I am not interested.”

It appeared as if Group B was experiencing the same: rosy-cheeked Oksana looked pale and drawn, and spent all her free time at her desk. Lisa continued to smoke in the room, one cigarette after another. Sasha thought she was doing it on purpose; she seemed to enjoy watching Sasha cough and squint from the tobacco smoke.

Two weeks of classes passed by. Once, during lunch break, when everyone went to the dining hall, Sasha returned to the dorm, found a stash of cigarettes (several packs) among Lisa’s belongings, and flushed everything into the toilet.

Lisa said nothing. The next day the entire contents of Sasha’s makeup bag—powder, eye shadow, lip gloss, and an expensive lipstick, a birthday gift used rarely, only on important holidays—all of it ended up in the trash, broken, crushed and smeared over the rusty metal sides of the garbage can.

Sasha discovered the debacle later in the morning, when Lisa had already left the room. Blind with rage, Sasha dashed to the lecture hall, intending to rip the witch’s hair out. She was too late: the first block, Specialty, had started, and a new dose of the sickening gibberish cooled down Sasha’s wrath faster than a bucket of icy water.

...After all, she’d started it. She threw out Lisa’s cigarettes. But what else could she do if that witch ignored all her requests! Nothing: as far as Sasha knew, Pavlenko was supposed to find a rental apartment and move relatively soon. And then Sasha could breathe easier. Oksana would never be a problem.

Five minutes remained until the end of the class. Sasha finished reading the section and wiped her moist forehead with a wet, weak palm.

“Samokhina, come over here.”

Sasha jumped. Portnov stared at her directly over his glasses.

“I said, come over here.”

Kostya threw her a worried glance. Awkwardly, Sasha climbed from behind her desk, stepping over her bag.

“Everyone, look at Samokhina.”

Eighteen pairs of eyes—indifferent, sympathetic, some even gloating—stared at her in anticipation. Sasha couldn’t stand it: she looked down.

“At this point, this girl has achieved the highest academic success. Not because of her talent—her abilities are fairly average. Some of you are significantly more talented. Yes, Pavlenko, that goes for you as well. Samokhina is ahead of your entire group because she works hard, while the rest of you are wearing out the seat of your pants.”

Sasha was silent, her face burning. Some people’s faces reddened as well. Lisa Pavlenko was the color of a ripe tomato. Kostya went pale.

Portnov held a long, weighty pause.

“Having demonstrated an excellent result, Samokhina gets a personal hands-on assignment. Speech is silver... all of your words are trash, garbage, nor worth the air spent in speaking. Silence... Silence is what, Samokhina?”

“Golden,” Sasha squeezed out.

“Golden. From this point on, Samokhina, you are to be silent. This exercise is intended to speed up certain processes, which are beginning to emerge, but are way too slow at this moment. You are not to speak a single word, neither here, nor outside. Nowhere at all. I forbid you.”

Sasha looked up in astonishment. The bell rang in the hall.

“Class dismissed,” Portnov said. “For tomorrow, Section Twelve, close reading, red text is to be memorized. Samokhina, that goes for you too. Study. Work hard.”

***

That day Sasha missed her first gym class. She simply could not remain among the crowds, even at the gym, even with such a lovely teacher as Dima Dimych.

Besides, Group A needed some time without her. They needed to discuss her in her absence. She understood perfectly well.

She went back to the dorm. Halfway there, she turned around. An empty smoke-filled room, the remains of her favorite makeup in the garbage can—chances are, all this would hardly cheer her up. Sasha followed Sacco and Vanzetti toward the town center, passed the post office and thought of Mom. How was she supposed to call her now?

She never considered violating Portnov’s taboo. Her lips, tongue and larynx ceased to obey. Forty minutes after the end of the last block she could not open her tightly clenched teeth.

Her teeth unlocked when she purchased a bottle of mineral water at a grocery store, having to resort to gestures to explain to the salesperson what exactly she wanted. Only then her teeth unclenched and chattered on the glass lip of the bottle. Sasha drank the entire bottle greedily. Her stomach rumbled; she had to sit down in front of the post office.

She’d called Mom last Sunday. Mom said that Valentin came back from Moscow, but their wedding had been postponed again. Despite everything, Mom sounded cheerful and unconcerned. They are happy without me, Sasha thought.

She went into the post office, gestured for one of the telegram slips, and wrote the following: “Everything fine will not be calling telephone broken.” She gave the slip to the surprised woman behind the counter, paid for the telegram and walked out again.

So now she’s the top student.

It’s not surprising that Pavlenko blushed like that. But Sasha would give up her favorite lipstick... not just the lipstick... She’d give anything for Pavlenko to be shown off, for her to be called the best student, despite her average talent, and forbid her to talk. And she, Sasha, would go to the gym with everybody else, and would chat about this curious episode, and tell Dima Dimych about it, and play ball, and sprawl on the stack of mats...