Vita Nostra (48 page)

Sasha stumbled. Kostya watched her with tension growing every second. The firm shadows dancing in Sasha’s conscience slowed down, and familiar thought-words jumped out to the foreground like a teleprompter line.

“Forgive me, I made a bad joke about love. I am talking too much. I… you see, I am continuing, flowing, swelling… I cannot stop. I am forced from inside, I am like yeasty dough, sooner or later I will crack, and then Kozhennikov… Sorry. And then
he
will look at me like this, over his glasses, and say: “This will teach you some discipline.” And then I shall not bear it, Kostya. I will do something terrible. I will kill. I will
manifest
a bullet in his heart.”

Kostya’s pupils widened, Sasha knew something was about to happen, and it did—gritting his teeth, Kostya lightly slapped her cheek. Sasha felt Kostya’s insides twist and resonate from this slap.

“Don’t worry, it’s fine,” she tried to smile, “no reason to worry, it did not hurt. Here’s the thing: if entities can be
manifested,
then they can probably be formed anew. To create something that has never before existed, rather than simply project ideas. I am a projector, a motion-picture camera, I project shadows on the screen… But can someone make entities out of nothing? What do you think, can one create something out of nothing?”

“You need to drink some water,” Kostya was becoming pale by the minute. “They have driven you insane. Sasha, there was this one girl, a third year; she went mad… just like that.”

“All girls are mad. Each in her own way. Listen, I think I am omnipotent. I broke out of our text and can view it from the outside. And I can see—it’s just letters. Every person is a word, simply a word. And others are punctuation marks.”

“Listen, I can call someone… or…”

Sasha drowned in silence. Kostya’s lips were moving, he was worried, close to despair. Sasha blinked; she saw Kostya as only half-human, and half—a shadow, a projection of something imperative, much more fundamental than the entire human race. However, Kostya was still human, while Sasha struggled, slid out of her shell, losing her form and losing the ability to think, and Sterkh’s exasperated words dangled at the edge of her dimmed—or kindling?—conscience: “Have you ever turned inside out a dirty sock?!”

And then the door flew open, and
it
, which stood outside, now stepped into the room.

***

“What happened to her?!”

Kostya stood leaning over the wall. The door to the bathroom was left ajar. Water poured out of the faucet. Farit Kozhennikov’s voice answered something, but Sasha could not distinguish the words.

She sat behind the writing bureau. She did not fall on the floor unconscious, as could be expected. She sat moving her pencil over the sheet of paper, and the entire paper was covered with scribbles, strokes, and spirals.

“What is going to happen to her?” Kostya asked again.

Again she missed the reply. The sound of water stopped. Farit Kozhennikov stepped into the room, and Sasha shut her eyes for a second. Only for a second: Farit wore light-grey glasses, almost transparent—but still opaque.

“Should I go?” Kostya’s voice sounded hollow.

Kozhennikov placed two washed cups on the shelf. Sasha recalled drinking kefir yesterday morning, and not having a chance to do the dishes before classes.

“If you are not busy, son, you can run down to the corner store and get some tea, biscuits and instant coffee. That is something Sasha Samokhina truly needs right now. Can you do that?”

“I will,” Kostya said after a short pause.

“Here is some money,” Farit put his hand into the pocket of his leather jacket.

“I don’t need any, I have my own money.”

Kostya left without looking at Sasha.

She glanced at the sheet in front of her. In its center, almost hidden by her scribbles, an unfinished symbol twitched slightly. While she watched, the symbol lost its volume, flattened, until it finally froze. Farit carefully pulled the paper from underneath Sasha’s clenched fingers and brought over his lighter. The paper went up in flames. Kozhennikov opened the screen of the tiny fireplace and put the wisp of flame onto the sooty bricks.

He opened the window a little wider:

“Omnipotent, are you?”

Sasha rubbed her eyes; they burned as if from a long look at the sun. Cloudy tears poured down her face, finally washing off the meticulously applied mascara.

‘They worry about you,” Kozhennikov murmured. “But they don’t know everything about you. If they did—they would kill you to avoid a universal catastrophe…”

He may have been speaking with irony. He employed a bit of sarcasm. Or maybe he didn’t.

Sasha stared at her pencil. Kozennikov picked up a stool and sat in front of her—very close. She could have touched him if she wanted to.

“Do you feel like a genie fresh out of the bottle? Ready to build castles and destroy them? You can do anything, anything at all?”

Now he seemed serious. Or, perhaps, he was making fun of her.

“I can’t stop,” Sasha whispered. “I cannot—not be.”

“You can,” Kozhennikov said, and the sound of his voice made Sasha flinch. “Because I
demand
that you remain within the academic limits of this program. That you don’t draw live pictures without your professors present. That you don’t fly like Peter Pan, and don’t try to enter all the visible openings. This is my condition, and I never—remember, never!—ask for the impossible.”

He placed a cellular phone in a soft pink case in front of Sasha:

“This is for you. Call your mother right now and tell her your new number.”

Sasha swallowed.

“Do what I said,” Kozhennikov put a plastic card with a long number on the table. “Dial eight first.”

The phone worked. The keys sang gently when pressed.

Beep. Beep.

“Hello… Mom?”

“Sasha? Sasha, hello! Where are you? I can hear you so well!”

“Mom, I have a cell phone now. Write down the number.”

“Seriously? Isn’t that’s something! Listen, isn’t too expensive?”

“No… not really. Write it down.”

Kozhennikov sat, one leg thrown over the other, and watched Sasha through a pair of smoky glasses.

“So can I call you on this number?”

“Well, yes. At least if you urgently need to talk to me.”

“That’s great.”

“Mom… sorry, I can’t talk for a long time…”

“Bye! Good luck! We’re fine, the baby is doing well…”

“Say hello to… Valentin. Good bye.”

She pressed the Off button. A picture lit up on the display: a globe, or perhaps a stylized clock. Sasha took a deep breath.

“Good,” Kozhennikov nodded. “Now look me in the eyes and listen carefully.”

He took off his glasses. Sasha blinked; Kozhennikov’s brown eyes, ordinary, with normal pupils, stared her in the face:

“Always carry this phone with you. Don’t you dare turn it off. Make sure the battery has been charged. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“If you commit any offense, this phone will bring you bad news. You, genie fresh out of the bottle, remember: for each attempt to build yet another castle, you will get some very, very sad news. And you will find out immediately. Carry your telephone with you at all times.”

Sasha looked down at the phone.

It was small and delicate. In a pink fuzzy case with—as Sasha now saw—little pig ears. The case was shaped like a pig, with a drawn piggy snout; it was cute, almost childish.

Everything had just changed.

As if a genie flying up to heaven had suddenly been jerked by his beard and his face smashed into the concrete wall. And then locked in a cell, three meters by three meters. Without windows or doors.

Only a few minutes ago she felt omnipotent. Only a few minutes ago she felt how the new reality grew around her—it was slightly uncomfortable and a little terrifying, but the process was preeminently fascinating!

And now she was withering. Shriveling into a tiny blob. It happens when synthetic fabric is put on fire: a full-size elegant dress shrinks into a miniscule globule of black tar, and it happens in only a couple of seconds. Sasha, omnipotent just a minute ago, Sasha who could fly, who could transform the world—was now turning into a dot on a flat surface.

The doorbell rang. Kostya came back, carrying a pack of tea, a jar of coffee, biscuits and a chocolate bar; out of the corner of her eye Sasha saw him place the groceries on the shelf, but did not turn her head.

Kozhennikov said something to his son, who replied in a low voice, then in turn asked something. Sasha did not discern any words.

The door closed. Kostya left. Sasha remained immobile.

“I don’t see anything tragic,” Kozhennikov said softly. “You are going to continue all your previous activities, but only under the supervision of your professors. I think they might schedule additional sessions.”

“I won’t be able to study,” Sasha whispered.

“You will be able to. On the contrary, you will make a bigger effort. But… discipline, Sasha, discipline and self-control are very important things, sometimes crucial. Tell me, am I wrong?”

Sasha was silent.

“It is in your power to make sure it never rings,” Kozhennikov said gently. “All depends on you. As usual.”

“I saw you,” Sasha said. “When you entered the room. I went blind almost immediately. Farit, it’s impossible to live in the world where you exist.”

“It is impossible to live in the world where I do not exist,” he said after a short pause. “Although it’s hard to resign oneself to my existence, I understand that.”

***

“Don’t bend your knee, Sasha! Stretch, like this… just a little bit more, and you’ll make it!”

Lisa Pavlenko stretched into a split, bearing her hands down onto the floor, but maintaining an absent-minded facial expression. Sasha groaned and got up:

“I can’t. My muscles hurt too much.”

“Because you must stretch every day!” To strengthen his argument, the gym teacher pressed his hand to his chest. “Lisa stretched—and she did it, see?”

“I’m delighted for her,” Sasha said.

Dima Dimych sighed. Yulia Goldman has been standing in a bridge position for the last five minutes, curved like a triumphal arch, and the tips of her hair brushed the wooden floor.

“Sasha, you must at least pass the somersault. But put away your cell phone, didn’t I ask not to bring the cell phones to the gym?”

Sasha hesitated but then took the pink cord off her neck. She put the phone into the pocket of her sweatshirt and zipped it up. Dima Dimych looked almost annoyed:

“Is somebody going to steal it? Can’t you put it down for a second?”

Sasha’s stare was grim enough to make the young gym teacher shrink in embarrassment.

***

At three forty Zhenya Toporko exited the auditorium thirty-eight. She threw a haughty glance at Sasha and, without saying hello, sailed away down the corridor.

“Ah, it’s you,” Portnov greeted Sasha.

She murmured a curt hello and sat down at her table in front of the teacher’s desk—just a regular student. She pulled out the conceptual activator. Then the textual module. She stared at her hands.

The phone on the pink cord touched the edge of the table, a pink spot in her peripheral vision.

“At first I thought you were simply the kind of student who crams day and night,” Portnov muttered. “Then I suspected you had a talent… Then I realized you are a verb. It happened when you regained your speech. When I made you silent, and you found the right word in a matter of only few days. Remember?”

Sasha nodded.

“Then everything seemed to hang by a thread, and I thought I had made a mistake… and so did Nikolay Valerievich… and then you transformed in a single leap. It became obvious you were a verb, and I strongly suspected,” Portnov leaned forward maintaining an eye contact with Sasha, “that you were a verb in the imperative mood. You are an imperative, Sasha, you are a command.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will,” Portnov squinted. “It’s the nature of our specialty: nothing can be explained. One can only achieve understanding on one’s own. You are a command, a part of the Speech of Creation…. A load-bearing structure. I told you once you were a projection. Remember? Here it is: you are a projection of the Word that is destined to
reverberate
. And every day you get closer to the original. You are a foundation upon which an entire universe can be built. And this cannot be explained, Sasha, it can only be understood.”

Sasha shut her eyes.

For a second she ceased thinking in words. Her thoughts seemed to be living creatures that resembled multi-colored amoebas lit up from the inside.

“You understand everything,” Portnov said. “You are lacking experience and knowledge. Second year… you have just started studying Speech… but already you are a Word, Sasha, a Word, not a human being. A command, an imperative. You have colossal value as a future specialist. We will study in May, June, and part-time in July—every day, and quite seriously.”

Sasha glanced at the pink phone.

“Under professional supervision!” Portnov raised his voice.

He slapped his pocket in search of a cigarette, then said in a different tone, very business-like:

“Get your pencil and paper. Open the activator. Let’s begin with the minor stuff.”

***

She felt like a balloon straining to go up. Her small pink phone pulled her down like an anchor, preventing her from breaking loose; like this, “at the edge of rupture,” she lived through a long day, perhaps the happiest day of her life.

She left Portnov’s auditorium filled with the picture of the world, brilliant, spellbinding and terrifying. She carried that image until late at night, trying not to spill it.

Enlightenment surged over her like a tide and departed again. When Sasha perceived herself as Word, she felt serene like never before in her life. It was the tranquility of a dandelion blossoming for the first time on green pastures. It was a happy moment without wind, without future and, of course, without death.

Then again she would feel human. She would remember the existence of Farit Kozhennikov, remember the phone hanging from her neck. She would grit her teeth and wait for the word-sensation to sweep over her again, and having reached that point, she would freeze in warm numbness…