Yesterday another event took place that is inextricably connected with Anastasia. After leaving the hospital (we did not arrive in time to see Anastasia’s body in the room), we went to my place. Nastya had offered to see me home because my condition worried her. I truly could not handle myself. Anastasia’s death, which was natural and expected, evoked a lucid sadness in Nastya but affected me completely differently.
It shook me. I was speaking loudly and incoherently; my voice was not minding me, and every now and then it cracked. I seemed to calm down after we left the hospital grounds but I fell apart again in the taxi and shouted at the driver. Most surprising is that I remember everything down to the most minor details: even that when I was quarrelling with the driver, I was thinking that I would be ashamed of myself for that later.
At home, I sat in an armchair and began to weep. The last thread that linked me with my time had broken with Anastasia. Nastya sat down on the armrest. I felt her hand on my head. I took her hand in mine and kissed it. I kissed it several times. Nastya cautiously retracted her hand:
‘Don’t do that. It’s really just her you need, isn’t it?’
I was gripped with fear that I would lose Nastya too.
‘I want for you to be her.’
That was our first night. As I entered Nastya, I knew that she would certainly conceive today. This knowledge of mine uncovered feelings and made them unbearably acute: it pierced me, cut me to pieces, spilled into her, and I called out. At that moment, I truly no longer understood if this was Nastya or Anastasia. And she and I never again used the formal ‘you.’
Part Two
FRIDAY [GEIGER]
Innokenty announced to me the other day that he hasn’t been keeping his journal for a couple weeks now. He just kind of announced that, by the by.
I did already know he’s not keeping it. Only it hasn’t been a couple of weeks, but almost a month, although (as the saying goes) who’s counting?
I didn’t hold back and clarified anyway about it being a month. He responded by calling me a German, ha. Then he smiled and said that, for him, that’s praise. And I smiled, as if, abgemacht.[2] I responded that it’s praise for me, too.
And the important thing: I took advantage of that conversation and convinced him to continue the journal. True, to do that I had to promise Nastya would do the same. And even I. Otherwise, according to Innokenty, he’ll feel like a lab rat. So there you go…
So we’ll all write, each at our own computers. Then we’ll merge everything.
I have observed that, for some reason, writing is pleasurable for Innokenty. A sort of replacement for drawing, which somehow went wrong for him. He’s not writing these days because life is now more important to him than creating something.
I’m a different case. I speak poorly. I write poorly. There’s neither life nor creating, just science. Everything that I need to write about Innokenty would basically fit in a logbook.
Or maybe not everything?
FRIDAY [NASTYA]
Everybody has to write! That idea seemed a little weird to me at first but then I thought, well, why not? Some kind of three-way journal’s pretty interesting.
The first thing, which I have to start with – because no other news is more important – is that I’m pregnant! I think it happened on my first night with Platonov. His behavior then kind of scared me. It seemed like he lost consciousness once or twice, for a second. That’s understandable: he loves me double, for my grandmother and for me. That doesn’t bother me, though. I actually like it.
What bothered and worried me is the thought that I’m not a virgin. That’s just a detail for a contemporary person but my beloved is unusual. He only started using the informal ‘you’ with me on our first night, something he never did with my grandmother. Geiger quoted Bunin with regard to Platonov: ‘A person of a bygone age.’ They regarded virginity very strictly in that bygone age: do not dare lose it! But my kind friend did not so much as ask a question on that score. Although I think he noticed everything. Felt it keenly, you might say.
We moved to his place on Bolshoy and I’ve heard nothing from him but words of love ever since. Of course I’d guessed before about how he regarded me but, after all, he couldn’t say anything to me then. Meaning he’s talking now. And I’m talking because I really love him. Platosha’s smart and affectionate. He’s also, by the way, very good in bed: you wouldn’t say this is a guy who’s just been thawed out. He’s good and I tell him that all the time. He smiles back. Now that’s somebody with a nice smile.
Smile, sweetie!
SATURDAY [INNOKENTY]
And so, a continuation of the notes. If I am to be exact, these are no longer notes. Based on the fact that it has now been suggested that I use a computer, I thought up the word printings. I informed Geiger and Nastya about that and they nodded listlessly. They do not like it, oh, they do not like it. And it’s not pretty enough for them. Truth be told, it’s not for me, either, but I don’t let on. I am testing how far my friends’ tolerance will go.
So far, they are tolerating. Geiger is basically happy that – to express it in a preindustrial way – I’m again putting pen to paper, since it turns out I wrote nothing for about a month. I somehow wearied of my previous scribblings and thought I had stopped, but here I am starting again, induced by Geiger. I’ll put it bluntly: not without hesitation.
Geiger put pressure on me in the sense that the journal is an ancient genre and is thus natural for me. I, after all, stated in Bunin’s way, am ‘a person of a bygone age.’ And I kept a journal wonderfully for half a year so why not keep it further? He already spoke to me about the ‘not-bygone age’ at some point. It is a vivid phrase, I remembered it. True, I have only read early Bunin and don’t remember reading that there, but I understand Geiger’s motivation. It is important for him to document what happens in my brain. But why do I need that? As Geiger himself said, I wrote for an entire half-year; is that really not enough?
I told him that these notes make me into someone unusual, the subject of an experiment. Rather like some sort of rat, at a time I should be blending in with this new way of life and, well, basically (I giggle, forcedly), I have a young wife and I am not in the mood for notes in the evenings. Geiger objected: rats don’t keep journals and nobody is impeding me (a glance at Nastya) from blending in with a new way of life. He was, put bluntly, insistent.
Geiger convinced me that the course of my rehabilitation should remain for science. Reacting to the rat, he suggested putting everyone in equal positions: me, Nastya, and him. In his opinion, events will be presented from three angles so there will be multiple dimensions of views about what happens. It’s supposed to comfort me that everyone in our troika will write, since I will no longer be in a special position. Anyway, Geiger convinced me.
The most important thing is last: Nastya is pregnant.
MONDAY [GEIGER]
I wonder: how does Innokenty perceive Nastya? She came into his life without my involvement. Very felicitously, in my view. Something that’s genuinely good can’t be arranged. It happens on its own.
Take Nastya. More than anything, she loves him. Beyond that, she loves him and all the fullness of his life. With his feelings for Anastasia, with his camp experience, with his current fame.
His fame, it seems to me, is an object of particular attention for Nastya. She simply basks in it. That’s excusable: Nastya is essentially still very young.