Anastasia. She sank into the armchair when the GPU’s secret policemen presented their paperwork. The professor was still clarifying something with them but she was already sitting, motionless and silent. I had never seen her so pale. Voronin had a fright, too, from looking at her. He crouched in front of the chair, took her by the chin, and said that everything would turn out fine. They led him to the other end of the room. One of the GPU men brought Anastasia some water; there was a glimmer of something human in that.
Zaretsky did not hide that all this was happening because of his denunciation. Wary of them missing something in the search, he even led the visitors to the Voronins’ cabinet in the kitchen. They found a colander, a grater, and several empty jars. It was unclear to everybody – likely even to the searchers themselves – what they were searching for.
‘You are responsible for her now,’ Voronin whispered to me in the hallway.
We embraced. Then he embraced his daughter. The employee who had brought Anastasia the water forced apart her hands that had joined on her father’s neck. Both these actions were probably customary for him. Anastasia did not cry in her father’s presence; she was afraid he would not withstand that. She only began crying after he left. When she spoke, the words came out of her with sobs, one after another, like waves of vomiting. It was horrible for her that he left in the evening – rather than in the afternoon or at night, when the order of things seems settled – since evening is a shaky, transitional time.
I went to Zaretsky’s door and tugged at the doorknob. It turned out to be locked from the inside with a hook. I pulled it with both hands and the hook flew off. Zaretsky was sitting with his hands clasped on the table. The table was clean; there was not even any sausage on it.
‘I’ll kill you, you louse,’ I said quietly.
‘You’ll stand trial if you kill a proletarian,’ Zaretsky responded just as quietly.
There was no challenge in his words, more likely sorrow. He was sitting motionless; only a bump twitched on his cheekbone. Amphibian. Sorrowful reptile. I walked right up to him.
‘I’ll kill you so nobody will ever find out.’
I spent that whole night in the Voronins’ room. Anastasia was sitting in the armchair and I was on the floor alongside her. She fell asleep toward morning and I carried her to bed. When I placed her on the bed, she opened her eyes and said:
‘Don’t kill him. Do you hear me, don’t kill him.’
She said that as if she were sleeping.
I kept silent because I did not know how, exactly, to respond: fine, I won’t? I’ll try not to kill? I thought: what will life be like after her father’s arrest? I looked at Anastasia; she was sleeping again. I’m going to sleep now, too. The pen fell from my fingers once and woke me up. I’ll continue tomorrow.
WEDNESDAY
Continuing. Oddly enough, after the professor’s arrest, life went on almost as before. My mother, Anastasia, and I ran into Zaretsky – in the kitchen, in the hallway, and by the toilet – and, surprisingly, we greeted him. My mother was the first to greet him (she was afraid Zaretsky would continue denouncing and hoped this would buy his silence), then I, and then Anastasia, too. My mother greeted him aloud but we only nodded. We were not thinking about future denunciations: put simply, it is difficult to pretend a person does not exist if you are living under the same roof. It is difficult to live in constant hatred, even if it is justified.
One time Zaretsky was walking drunk through the hallway and said to me:
‘I myself don’t know why I denounced the professor. I went there, so for some reason I denounced.’ After taking a few steps toward the toilet, he turned: ‘But I won’t denounce you, you can rest easy.’
Afterwards, I thought more than once about why he actually did denounce. An insult? But nobody insulted Zaretsky, people simply paid him no attention. Hm… Perhaps for him that was the worst insult?
From time to time, Anastasia and I would go to Gorokhovaya Street in hope of being granted a meeting with the professor, but we received no meeting. They also accepted no packages. No matter how Anastasia attempted to speak with the oprichniks there – she smiled at them, adding tinny notes into her voice, and ingratiating herself— nothing helped. Their backwards physiognomies remained impenetrable. I looked at them and imagined grabbing them by the hair and pounding them against the wall full force. I’m pounding with full force, I pound with enjoyment, and their dirty-brown blood is spewing on the government-owned chairs, floor, and ceiling. That’s how I imagined each of our trips there. I think they could not help but know that. We went the last time on March 26, and those people told us Professor Voronin had been shot, executed.
FRIDAY
Today Nurse Angela showed up instead of Nurse Valentina. She’s young but lacks Valentina’s charms. Her appearance is fairly vulgar, not to mention her name. Geiger said Valentina is ill; I did not like his tone very much. I don’t know why.
All day I attempted to type on the computer. I felt as if I were a printing pioneer.
SATURDAY
A few days ago, Geiger brought me a book by an American about freezing the dead for subsequent resurrection. He had already offered me something similar. It’s fascinating reading, especially as hospital reading goes. The author lists questions that the trailblazers of freezing will be forced to contend with: they are not at all easy. Will widows or widowers be allowed to enter into marriage after the deceased is frozen? What is someone who has been thawed and brought back to life to do when encountering spouses of former spouses? Is there a lawful right to freeze a relative or (I will add for myself) a flatmate? Could someone who was officially declared a corpse and then frozen have lawful rights and responsibilities? Could that person vote after being thawed? That final question genuinely moved me.
In the American’s opinion, however, the primary complication lies less in voting than in the freezing and thawing process. Upon cooling, liquid is released from cellular solutions and turns into crystals of ice. As we know, water expands during freezing and this process is capable of damaging the cell. Moreover, what does not turn to ice becomes an extraordinarily caustic saline solution that is destructive for the cell. For all that, if freezing is very fast – there are seemingly grounds for optimism here – the size of the crystals and the concentration of the saline solution end up being reduced.
Glycerin is used to ward off damage during freezing: it neutralizes the saline solution. This way, removing the glycerin from the body becomes the first task during thawing. All other actions are pointless if that is not resolved: glycerin instead of blood does the body no favors. True, there are other questions here, too: why is Geiger bringing me things of this sort and why am I reading it all?
‘So it works out,’ I ask him on one of those days, ‘that it isn’t so much a matter of freezing as of proper thawing?’
‘That’s right.’
‘If I understand correctly, nobody has ever been revived during thawing, despite all the success of science?’
‘They have,’ he answers.
‘Who might that be? I wonder. A baboon?’