Needless to say, the number of Lera’s complaints and sighs increased when we lay down in bed. Lera was not shy in directing my motions and she promised someone unknown that she was teaching a boy for the last time. After a while, it seemed that Lera’s sighs lost a shade of indignation, but I am not fully certain of that. How old was she? I think she was eighteen, no more. She seemed utterly adult to me then.
Then she smoked, sitting on the chair. Legs crossed, still undressed. Her thumb and index finger held a silver holder with a cigarette and she carefully released smoke from her mouth. I silently watched her after settling myself on the bed, cross-legged. I was seeing a naked woman’s body for the first time. After pointing at my cross, Lera asked:
‘Do you believe in God?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s shameful to be a religious believer in an epoch of aeroplanes. I’m a priest’s daughter and I don’t believe.’ She inhaled smoke. ‘Why do you keep silent?’
‘Did aeroplanes really abolish death?’
Lera began laughing:
‘Of course!’
MONDAY
I recalled. I recalled everything about the aviator. I was about ten or twelve years old when my father took me to the Commandant’s Aerodrome to watch aeroplane flights. No Commandant’s Aerodrome had existed even a couple of years before: there was only the Commandant’s Hippodrome where air demonstrations took place. Once they built the aerodrome next door, the demonstrations have been taking place there… I know from Geiger that in today’s life this is called an air show but I like demonstrations much better. I think there are too many shows in life these days. I’m speaking as a person who has watched TV all week.
July, sun. A warm wind blowing at the lace on parasols. Many people wearing straw hats; a few wearing triangular hats made of newspaper. We’d arrived first thing in the morning, so were standing in the front spectator row. We could examine not only the aeroplanes but also the aviators. I firmly resolved to become an aviator the very first instant I glimpsed those people. Not a fire captain and not a conductor, but an aviator.
I wanted to stand the same way, surrounded by assistants and slowly bring a cigarette to my lips while gazing into the distance. To adjust slightly the protruding ends of a mustache that same way. To fasten the helmet strap under my chin with one hand before starting off toward the aeroplane. Unhurriedly don aviation goggles resembling canning jars. But that was not even where the most important delight lay. The very word mesmerized me: aviator. Its sound united within itself the beauty of flight and the roar of a motor: freedom and might. It was a wonderful word. Later another word -which a poet apparently thought up – came into being, ‘flyingman.’ It’s a decent word, but somehow it comes up short: there is something sparrow-like to it. But an aviator is a large, beautiful bird. I wanted to be a bird like that, too.
Aviator Platonov. That did not exactly become a nickname but people called me that every now and then. And I liked it.
TUESDAY
And I truly am thinking unhistorically here after alclass="underline" Geiger is probably correct about this. A historical view makes everyone into hostages of great societal events. I see things differently, though: exactly the opposite. Great events grow in each separate individual. Great upheavals in particular.
It is all very simple. There is crap in every person. When your crap comes into resonance with others’ crap, revolutions, wars, fascism, and communism start… And that resonance is not tied to a standard of living or form of rule. Or rather it may be tied to it, but not directly. What is notable: the good in others’ souls does not respond at the same speed as the crap.
WEDNESDAY
I hadn’t written for an entire week. I felt ill. Valentina thinks I was too cold during an outing; she advises me to dress warmer. Geiger disagrees with her. In his opinion, I described Anastasia’s and my illness so diligently that I myself took ill. Geiger is not far from the truth.
It was not exactly that I could not write: I didn’t want to, I wasn’t in the mood. No mood for it at all. Geiger said that’s natural. That I had held on those first weeks, through tension with shock-induced composure, and then fell apart when life began settling into a routine. Yes, I agree, I fell apart. As it happens, though, I don’t like my routine. Somehow it’s uneven and intermittent – where did it meander all those years? And, most important, where does it lead now? To that strange life I see on television? That life does not yet captivate me. Or Geiger either, it turns out.
Regarding the journal, though, he said I need not worry: after all, nobody is forcing me to write in it every day. Nobody is forcing me; well, thank you for that. So I won’t. Actually, I like Geiger more and more. He’s sparing with his emotions, even a bit cold, but there’s a sense of genuine goodwill that comes through all that coldness.
The opposite is worse, when there is something rat-like hiding behind outward cheerfulness. I had an acquaintance, Alexei Konstantinovich Averyanov. Small and balding, with a large head, a complete toadstool. And he apparently reproduced through spores because how could anyone imagine someone like him with a woman? Although, no, he did have some women, apparently just as small as he himself. Should you converse with him for an hour or two, he’s all heart: mild, obliging, and well-wishing without excesses. He laughs with abandon, with a loud, distinct ha-ha-ha, head tilted to the side. And then one fine day it emerges that he is not mild and is not well-wishing but a pathological envier who says these things behind your back…
Who was he, that Averyanov? What did he do, how did I know him? I don’t remember anything. Though his mushroom-like quality, that worm-eatenness, remained in my memory. Yes, the bulging lenses in his glasses, which made his eyes seem to bulge, too, stayed with me. How did this conversation suddenly shift to him? Oh, yes, Geiger: he’s not like that.
‘A certain Averyanov just came back to me,’ I told him, ‘his character and height, even his glasses. But try as I might, I cannot remember what he meant in my life. Why are recollections constructed that way? And what is a recollection from a scientific standpoint?’
A recollection is a certain combination of neurons, of brain cells. When neurons come in contact with each other, another recollection presents itself to you.’
‘In other words I do not have enough neurons to imagine Averyanov in full? Somehow that’s very mechanistic.’
‘Well, don’t you worry, maybe Averyanov will still come to you in all his splendor. Maybe you won’t even be glad. Anyway,’ Geiger buttoned the upper button on my robe, ‘it would be boring if recollections reflected life like a mirror. They only do that selectively, which brings them closer to art.’
Strictly speaking, I don’t need Averyanov anyway. What I recalled about him is more than plenty.
THURSDAY
Here is what astounds me about people on television: they’re always playing something there. Guessing words and tunes, and also, I read, planning to send someone away to survive on an uninhabited island. They’re all cheerful, resourceful, and fairly, I would say, wretched. It works out that they didn’t have any islands in their life where they were forced to survive. Is this what their lives are lacking or something?