Vita Nostra (42 page)

A scent of cologne flashed. It became dark.

One more second. Sasha lay crumpled like a wet rug. In heavy drops she poured onto the wooden floor, flowed into the wide cracks between the planks, collected into a puddle. A new second; Sasha lay limp, her clothes soaked through, gelatinous like a jellyfish, without a single muscle, without a single thought. The unseasonably warm February sun beat into the windows of the brightly lit auditorium fourteen.

“Finish me off.”

Sterkh paced back and forth. Not quite controlling himself, he kicked a chair, which hit the wall and toppled over with a loud thud. Sterkh mumbled something, paced some more, then stopped.

“Aren’t you ashamed of saying things like that?”

She pulled her knees to her stomach and cried like a punished mutt.

“Sasha?”

His voice contained no more ice. Only worry.

“Let’s get up. It’s the rule: when you fall down—get up. Hush. That’s it.”

Clutching his cold white hand, she managed to get up and immediately crouched, holding her head with both hands.

Sterkh lowered himself down next to Sasha and held her. He patted her gently on the head:

“You are growing. With dangerous speed. You’re growing as a
concept
. Your potential power is ripping you apart. And since you have not yet matured enough, your own, still human, conflicts add more complexity to the problem. This shall pass. You need to be patient, Sasha, control yourself and avoid making stupid mistakes.”

“Why do I… why am I doing this?” Sasha sobbed.

“You cannot yet control yourself. When you feel like fighting—you throw yourself into a fight. As if you were three years old.”

“No! What did I, why did I do that—with the baby? I can’t live with it… I can’t!”

“I see…”

Sterkh softly embraced her wet shoulders, pulling her to himself. Sasha did not resist..

“Get up. You shouldn’t sit on the floor. You are at this stage of development, Sasha, when you desire a lot, a lot of external information, and not the crude, streaming information, but more sophisticated, organized, structured data. You want everything your eyes can see, and luckily they don’t see all that much just yet. A newborn, a blood-relative, a carrier of analogous information sequences—such a tasty treat. I should not have allowed you to leave, Sasha, but I could not imagine
how
strong you have become. Never, not once have I seen anything like this. You are a phenomenal student. And a phenomenal idiot. Don’t be upset with me. “

“Mom won’t forgive me.”

“She will. You are her child too. Don’t exaggerate. The baby will be happy and healthy…”

“What if he grows up mentally retarded?”

“No. He will not. And do you know whom you should thank for that? Farit; he reacted instantly, and there was such a lucky chain of probabilities… The child has been restored as an autonomous information system. As a personality. And enough torturing yourself, Sasha. Last night, for instance, you could have run into much bigger troubles. Get up, I want to take another look.”

A flash of light slashed her eyes—the reflection from the metal bracelet. Sasha squinted.

“Sasha, open your eyes and look at me. Yes. I do apologize for hitting you. But you needed it. I would beat you up more if I could. Last night you nearly completed a transition from the basic biological state into an intermediary, unstable one. You have a colossal internal mobility. Right now you’re ahead of the program by at least a whole semester. Stabilization is planned for the fourth year, before the summer exams. If I have to deal with your tricks for two and a half more years, I will not survive, Alexandra. I will retire.”

He smiled, as if expecting Sasha to appreciate the joke.

“Have you turned nineteen yet?”

“No. In May.”

“In May… you’re a child. Your professional development is running ahead of your physiological abilities—with a terrifying tempo. And there is no way to slow down the process artificially… Yes, Sasha, as they say, you are a disaster and a gift in one little bottle.”

“Will I pass the exam?”

“Don’t make me laugh. You will pass with flying colors. If you don’t stop studying, of course.”

“Zakhar Ivanov,” Sasha’s voice trembled, “did not pass.”

“He did not,” Sterkh stopped smiling. “Another thing that is bothering you… He did not pass. I feel a great deal of pity for Zakhar, Sasha. It’s a disaster. Why do you think Oleg Borisovich and I keep repeating like broken records: study! Study, prepare for the exam! Do you think we’re kidding? No….”

He patted her on the head like a little girl.

“Study hard, Sasha. You have enough determination, but not enough restraint and discipline. Everything will be fine. And you really should thank Farit; all of you hate him, but without him you wouldn’t survive even the first semester. So, are we still friends?”

Sasha lifted her eyes. Sterkh looked down at her with a hint of a smile.

“Th…thank you,” she said, stuttering. “You helped… with the baby. I would have died. There and then.”

“There is no need to die… Admit it, Sasha—you enjoy learning, don’t you?”

“I do,” she took a deep breath. “Very much.”

***

She had no more decent clothes left. She stepped outside in her waterlogged jogging suit and was surprised not to feel the freezing temperature.

She ran back to the dorm, took a shower and sat in front of the open suitcase baffled at the lack of clothing options. Forty minutes remained until her individual session with Portnov.

Wrapped in a towel like a Roman patrician, Sasha entered the kitchen; two first years sat by the window, her former roommate Lena and another girl, a very pale redhead with lots of freckles.

“Hey,” said Sasha and took a good appraising look at both of them.

Lena was much heavier and wider in the shoulders than Sasha. But the redhead…

“What’s your name?”

“Irina.”

“Stand up, please.”

The girl stood up fearfully. Sasha swept her eyes over the girl: her height and general proportion satisfied Sasha completely.

“Please lend me your jeans and the sweater, Right now.”

The girl swallowed.

“These? The ones I’m wearing?”

“Those, or some other ones. But quickly.”

“Uh, huh,” Irina breathed and swiftly left the kitchen. Petrified Lena remained sitting over a cup of tea.

“It’s temporary,” Sasha said carelessly. “A friendly loan. And don’t look at me like that.”

***

She showed up at Portnov’s door right on time wearing black woolen slacks and a bright yellow hand-knitted ornate sweater. Frightened Irina sacrificed her best clothes for the menacing Samokhina.

“Pretty,” said Portnov instead of a greeting. “I’ve seen these flowers somewhere before… Are you ready for this class?”

“I’m ready.”

“Go ahead. One through ten, but not in succession, rather in the order that I suggest. Start with number three.”

Sasha felt lost for a second. She was used to doing the exercises based on the “snowball” method: the second came out of the first, third out of the second, etc.

Portnov sprawled over his chair. He stared at Sasha through the lenses, his eyes utterly pitiless, fish-like:

“Are you going to take a while? Will you need to warm up?”

He was openly sarcastic.

Her hands grasping the back of a squeaky chair, Sasha took a full chest of air and visualized a long chain of interdependent concepts that have never existed, but were now recreated by her imagination…. Or by something else.

Concepts… immaterial entities, which Sasha envisioned as drops of grayish jelly, were measured by numbers and expressed by symbols. These numbers could not be written down, and the symbols could not be imagined; Sasha’s consciousness operated in these substances, forced them to form chains, and the chains to interweave so that separate fragments would merge and form more and more new entities. And then she “unbraided” the chains imprinted upon each other, mentally, without moving her lips, feeling her right eye lid twitch from the tension.

“Seven! From this point on. Stop! Half a measure back! From that point—number seven, begin!”

Sasha’s efforts made her nauseous. The world recreated in several minutes leaned on its side. As if someone upended a beehive, an unhappy hum rose up; Sasha wove new chains of associations and meanings out of nowhere, made them into loops, and broke the circles, and her eyelid twitched stronger and stronger.

‘Ten.”

A new jump. Sasha has never performed the exercises out of sync, but her very being was part of an internal mechanism that had by now warmed up and started working in full force, fed by her stubbornness and hatred toward Portnov. Is he trying to humiliate her? Let’s see who wins!

“Second!”

Sasha swayed. Regained her balance. She touched the tips of her fingers to her face, felt the surface of a rough fabric, as if someone had put a canvas sack over her head. Exercise two… almost from the very beginning, but where is the starting point? Which junction should she choose?

“Will you ever talk back again?”

The voice sounded from far away. Sasha saw Portnov’s face as if through a multitude of interwoven fibers, shiny like silk.

“Stop, Samokhina. Stop. I am asking you: will you ever give me lip again? Will you ever be late for my class?”

“I won’t,” Sasha muttered through her teeth.

“I’ll believe you for the last time,” Portnov smirked. “For tomorrow, work on the diagram on page three of the activator. A little extra effort would be for your own benefit.”

***

She stepped outside, but instead of walking out to the yard she went down Sacco and Vanzetti. The pavement glistened as if rubbed with oil. Sasha stopped under a large lantern stylized to look antique… or perhaps it truly was antique. Its flame swayed behind the matte glass, the yellow dot of its reflection mirroring in each cobblestone.

The door of a café on the opposite side of the street opened. Out came a woman dressed inappropriately for the season: a short light-colored coat and a frivolous cap with a checkered visor. When she stepped onto the pavement, Sasha’s eyes widened: how could one walk over the cobblestones in those extremely high needle-thin stilettos?

Denis Myaskovsky climbed out of the café following the woman. Limping, he shuffled next to the woman, or rather slightly behind her—like a lap dog. Intrigued, Sasha observed the couple: something tense, dangerously explosive was happening between these two entirely different, unsuitable people.

She retreated. Semi-darkness reigned only a few steps away from the lantern. Sasha stood at the dark half-circle of the alley entrance.

“It could be worse, as you can understand,” the woman said in a hoarse, almost boyish voice.

“It could not,” said Denis.

He stood there in an unbuttoned coat, a white scarf hanging low to the ground like a twisted rope.

“It’s just the beginning of this semester,” Denis’s voice trembled. “It’s so far from the test… it’s the very beginning of the semester!”

“The further it is, the harder it’s going to be,” the woman said.

Denis stepped forward. Sasha froze: he grabbed the woman by her collar and jerked her up, thin stilettos flying up in the air; he was a head taller than the woman and twice as heavy, the woman seemed completely helpless in his arms, but she did not even try to resist.

A second passed. Sasha did not get a chance to scream. With a strange sound, Denis put the woman back onto the pavement. Regaining her balance, she managed to get her heel stuck between the cobblestones.

“Forgive me,” Denis’s voice was hollow. “I…”

And he suddenly sunk before her, fell on his knees, and Sasha felt fear ten times stronger than a moment ago.

“You have been spared a lot,” the woman said, trying to pull her heel out of the deep crack.

“Don’t!”

“You can help them. You know how.”

“I can’t! I can’t…”

“Yes, you can. Your classmates can. And you can. Look at Pavlenko’s work. Look how Samokhina tears herself apart every day…”

Sasha flinched.

“Do you remember the test after the first semester?” the woman spoke lightly, even cheerfully. “Do you remember what you promised me then?”

“I cannot memorize
that
!”

“Kindergarten,” the woman said with a hint of disappointment. “Denis, everything depends on you. You must work hard.”

And with the light-hearted clickety-click of her stilettos, she passed by Denis frozen on the pavement, passed by the porch, passed by the entryway. Passing by Sasha, she turned her head: she had a small white face shielded by a pair of dark glasses.

Sasha had never seen her before. But at this moment she recognized her.

***

She made a cup of tea, dissolved a bouillon cube in a mug of boiling water, carried everything back to Room 21, sat at her dusty desk and meditatively opened the yellow brochure—the conceptual activator. Page three, diagram number three. After the initial five minutes, Sasha could no longer tear her eyes away from the diagram.

The yellow brochure printed on lousy paper was a key that joined many jigsaw pieces into one picture. It stitched together—with rough, jagged sutures—the difficult experience Sasha had endured during her time at the Institute, and her own perception of the world that became so unsteady in the last couple of years.

There are concepts that cannot be imagined but can be named. Having received a name, they change, flow into a different entity and cease to correspond to the name, and then they can be given another, different name, and this process—the spellbinding process of creation—is infinite: this is the word that names it, and this is the word that signifies. A concept as an organism, and text as the universe.

The fourth dimension “sewn” into the diagram wholly eliminated the concept of time. The result was word, and word was the original cause of any process; circles swam in front of Sasha’s eyes, slow bright dots that usually appear if one bends down sharply, or stands on one’s head. Sasha’s tea was now cold, the broth was covered with a film of fat, but it did not matter.