He was sick for a long time, and there were complications. Just at the time he returned to the university, there was a meeting at which the students who had abandoned the potatoes, or, rather, the carrots, were expelled from the Komsomol. Their fate was predetermined: after expulsion from the Komsomol, expulsion from the university followed automatically. Vitya Chebotarev’s case was considered separately. He had a medical certificate attesting to his illness, but it was dated two days after the exodus from the carrot fields.
Logically, he was guilty and did not deserve pardon; but from a humane perspective, he really had been ill. Moreover, there were other factors of a purely medical nature that had bearing on the matter: the two days prior to the issuing of the certificate could have been the incubation period of the illness, when the symptoms had not yet manifested but the infection was already hard at work trying to undermine the host organism.
In short, taking into account the above-mentioned circumstances, they gave Vitya a break in the form of a reprimand, though all the other offenders were kicked out of the Komsomol.
While he was sitting in the Komsomol meeting, he made an effort to remember why he had ever joined. This detail had completely vanished from his memory. Then he remembered—his mother had insisted. Yes, Varvara Vasilievna considered it necessary. She herself was a Party member, and knew there were certain matters in which you had to be like everyone else, and even a bit better—so as not to violate the laws of life. Vitya, who had never objected to his mother’s trivial demands, had submitted his application for acceptance to the Komsomol in the eighth grade with the same insouciance with which he applied for a marriage certificate two years later.
In matters that did not interest him, Vitya never made a show of principle. This time, however, he suddenly sensed the injustice of it alclass="underline" they had been deceived. They were promised that if they dug up all the potatoes, they would be allowed to leave, but they were prevented from leaving. So in what way were they to blame? For believing what they were told? This was fraud!
“What do you think you’re doing, you idiot? Stuff it!” Slava Berezhnoi, a friend and fellow student, whispered. “You won’t help us, you’ll only make things worse for yourself.”
And that’s just what happened: Vitya was expelled, too. Shocked and shaken to the core, he went home and lay down on the divan. And refused to speak. Varvara Vasilievna wasn’t able to ferret out the facts from him, but she put two and two together and decided that Nora, her mythical daughter-in-law, was the culprit in Vitya’s depression. By this time, she and Nora had already met, and Varvara Vasilievna managed to get hold of her telephone number, which wasn’t all that difficult for someone who worked in the Housing Management Committee. She called Nora, but wasn’t able to get a straight answer from her. She believed Nora was beating around the bush.
A week later, Slava Berezhnoi came to visit him and explained everything to Varvara Vasilievna. But Vitya refused to discuss anything with Slava, either, and was taciturn the whole evening. Nevertheless, Varvara Vasilievna, now that she understood everything, went to the university and straight to the Party committee, where she spoke with the department representative heart to heart, communist to communist. He understood the situation on a human leveclass="underline" it’s hard for a single woman, a soldier’s widow, to raise a son by herself … It must be said that Varvara Vasilievna embellished the truth somewhat, elevating the rather unseemly circumstances. She wasn’t exactly a soldier’s widow, and not really a widow at all, but she did say things that were perfectly true: Vitya had fallen into a depression, and Varvara Vasilievna had managed to pull him out of it with good medication, an effort that took her three whole months. Vitya was reinstated in the Komsomol, and they didn’t expel him from the university. The head of his department also weighed in on the matter: though frightened, the old crank didn’t want to lose an outstanding student. “The future of Soviet mathematics”—those were his very words.
Though Vitya remained enrolled at the university, he was granted a leave of absence; he had been traumatized by the whole affair. He had discovered that life consisted of more than a roll with salami for breakfast, mathematics, and the episodic Nora. These heretofore unknown difficulties were something he had wanted neither to notice nor to know about. He had developed no immunity to hardships like this, a fact that would cause him no end of suffering later in life.
Unlike her son, Varvara Vasilievna was adept at handling the everyday contingencies of life, and it was not for nothing that she worked for the Housing Management Committee. She acquired a valuable certificate from the Neuropsychiatry Clinic attesting that Vitya Chebotarev was subject to fits of depressive psychosis, though he was otherwise absolutely healthy. And, as later life would prove, she had not done this in vain.
Everything fell into place. Vitya successfully defended his honors thesis and was admitted into the graduate program. Three years later, he was ready to defend his doctoral dissertation on an absolutely new subject: “Computable Operations on Sets.” It is impossible for a nonmathematical mind to grasp, and even for some mathematical minds, but at the preliminary defense, Professor N, a brilliant proponent of the newest branch of “constructive mathematics”—not yet widely accepted, but very highly regarded in the Department of Mathematical Logic—advanced sharply critical views, reproaching the defendant for failing to follow the principles of this very constructive mathematics. Vitya did not accept his premises, and calmly held forth, insisting that the most constructive objects, including his beloved algorithms, could be viewed within the framework of classical logic and mathematics, a framework that was accepted in all the other departments. This unleashed a dispute for which Vitya’s dissertation was only a pretext, because underlying the scholarly issues was a discord in personal relationships that Vitya was not privy to. Vitya listened to the noisy quarrel and couldn’t make heads or tails of what either his defenders or his opponents were arguing for or against. When he tried to interject something, he couldn’t get a word in edgewise—so he quietly stood up and left the auditorium.
The argument dragged on for a long time after he left; the preliminary defense was aborted. Vitya followed the well-worn path to the divan, where he lay for another three months.
Varvara Vasilievna also followed the beaten path—to the Neuropsychiatry Clinic, where medication was prescribed for her son, after which he gradually recovered.
Meanwhile, the year 1968 had come and gone. Vitya was not aware of a single event rocking the socialist world. When his buddy Slava Berezhnoi, who dropped in from time to time to talk about important things, discovered the absolute political infantilism of his friend, he said, “You are simply another Luzin.”
Vitya’s feathers were somewhat ruffled, since he held Luzin in very high esteem as a mathematician.
“What do you mean by that, Slava? What does Luzin have to do with anything?”
Slava related an anecdote that Professor Melnikov had told during a lecture. After the war, the eminent Luzin took part in a seminar, at which he said, “In 1917, the greatest event of my life took place. I began to study trigonometric series.”
“And? What did he say next?” Vitya said, his curiosity piqued. (He also had a great deal of respect for Melnikov.)
Slava was astonished by his naïveté. “Nothing. Everyone associated the year 1917 with another event!”
“Which one?” said Vitya.
Slava waved his hand, exasperated. “Vitya, 1917 was the year of the October Revolution!”
“Oh … Oh, I see.”
Vitya’s dissertation adviser, who was also the head of the department, paid him a visit at home two weeks after the preliminary defense fell through. By this time, Vitya was already coping with his new trauma, and had started thinking about the future again. The two specific criticisms made by his opponent that had ultimately prevented the defense from passing, which concerned Lemma 2.2 and Theorem 6.4, contained a kernel of thought that Vitya began mulling over deeply. He himself had already discerned a few defects, or, rather, inconsistencies, in his dissertation. This disturbed him, and he plunged into the debris of variable and branching sets, which reached far beyond the boundaries of the poor three-dimensional world.