FRIDAY [INNOKENTY]
It seems stupid somehow, but I collapsed in the bathroom the other day. With a crash. Nastya came running in, anxious, and I pretended everything was fine, though I actually did hurt myself. I told her my foot went out from under me on a slippery spot, but slippery had nothing to do with it. My leg simply buckled and I fell. The most unpleasant thing is that this was not even the first time. Last week I caught my foot on a curb when I was running across the road and nearly fell. A day later, I went out for milk and did fall then, on the steps to the store.
It’s somehow especially shameful when a young person falls, arms flapping, with instant fear in the eyes. That’s not such a big thing for an old man, but for someone young – ugh! – despite the fact that I’m already a hundred. And everybody helps you get up, everybody sympathizes: how very revolting to be the center of attention! This aversion of mine apparently comes from my father. And it’s very strange: for some reason, I thought of him when I was lying on the steps at the store, thought about him lying silently outside Varshavsky Station.
My falls are beginning to worry me, and there was that glass at the Kremlin, too. I don’t know if it’s worth speaking to Geiger about this; he fusses over me as it is and if I tell him, it’s farewell, quiet life, and hello to tests, and things being banned.
Maybe it just seems this way to me, but everything began after the statuette of Themis returned to our apartment. She reminds me about my fiasco with art and the sorrowful events that took place before my arrest. I am not ruling out that this is all a matter of the psyche. As it happens, Geiger did tell me that half of all illnesses originate in the psyche. Just as, by the way, recoveries do. It’s important to find the right mindset. I will try to handle that myself.
[NASTYA]
The award-winner has a new fantasy. He wants to fill in the gap in time that came about after he was frozen. He and I are now gathering books and films from the 1930s through to the 1980s. It’s really mostly movies: despite the Soviet drivel in them, they show the way of life very precisely. And the fashion: wide trousers and rolled-up shirt sleeves in the 1950s. Cigarette trousers and pointy-toed shoes in the 1960s. Platosha pokes me in the side:
‘Just look at their faces: the faces are completely different and half a century hasn’t even gone by.’
‘Well, yes, well, a little different but not that much… So what are faces like now?’ I ask him.
‘Do you really not see? Nervous in some way, mean, a “Don’t touch me!” expression. Not everybody’s, of course, but a lot.’
‘So you like Soviet good looks more?’ I nip cautiously at his ear.
He shrugs his shoulders. It appears he doesn’t like it.
MONDAY [GEIGER]
Innokenty’s watching old films and newsreels now. He says there’s a hole in time for him so he’s filling it in.
I watched a fifties newsreel with them yesterday. It’s remarkable. Like being on another planet.
He stopped the video player when they were showing a Komsomol woman close up. Yes, the face was expressive. I noticed, by the way, that the epoch is reflected more vividly on female faces than male. Maybe because female faces are more animated.
‘There were still millions in the camps but there’s unfeigned happiness on her face. Unfeigned!’ Innokenty walked right up to the screen. ‘Why is she so happy, huh? Despite everything.’
Nastya grimaced. Yes, female faces are phenomenally animated.
‘And why doesn’t a drug addict sense the reek in a drug den?’ I said. ‘Why do people prefer utopia to reality?’
‘I, by the way, did not prefer it.’ Innokenty took the remote and switched from the video player to the television. Channels flashed by. ‘So now everybody’s supposedly free, but what a sour look they have! I was sure joy would come with freedom.’
‘It turns out,’ Nastya said, ‘that it’s better to be in utopia and be happy than to be free but sorrowful.’
Innokenty threw up his hands. The remote fell with a crash.
I didn’t initially want to write this: Innokenty worries me. Some sort of trouble with his health. Problems with his motor functions. And I can’t yet understand what the exact issue is.
Nastya told me about Platosha’s fall in the bathroom. I myself saw the smashed glass in the Kremlin. Of course it could be accidental to fall and to drop the glass and the remote, but something in all this puts me on my guard.
I’ve begun keeping a more watchful eye on Innokenty. An uncertainty has appeared in his gait. It’s unnoticeable if you don’t look closely, but it wasn’t there before.
TUESDAY [NASTYA]
Entrepreneur Tyurin called us yesterday. That’s how he introduced himself: Tyurin, entrepreneur. Evidently an oilman. Platosha spoke with him, putting on the speaker phone so I could hear (our Platonov is adapting by the hour, not the day). Tyurin said he’s arranging fireworks in the evening on Yelagin Island and wanted very much for us to come. I suddenly remembered: mamma mia, he’s in the top ten on the Forbes list! A Moscow person – there aren’t any like him in Petersburg. Or Siberia, either, where he pumps his oil. If you toss aside local patriotism, then all the money, careers, and everything else, too, it’s all in Moscow. That should be recognized as an indisputable fact; it’s not even an issue to get distracted by, like I am now.
Anyway, according to Tyurin, entrepreneur, he stopped by Petersburg today and felt like arranging fireworks in the evening, at the last minute, no advance preparations. He asked if we were offended that this essentially unknown person popped up out of nowhere. Unknown, Platosha agreed, but we’re not offended. Life, said Tyurin, should be casuaclass="underline" if you feel like fireworks today – and on Yelagin Island in particular – then there will be fireworks. Those words would be music to the ears of the homeless man who rummages around in our bin: he simply doesn’t know what life should be, otherwise he’d have arranged for fireworks on Yelagin.
Platosha conversed unenthusiastically with Tyurin but I made an energetic sign to him, to pull himself together. I understand that all that shooting things off on Yelagin is horrifically money-oriented and ostentatious, but even so… I really wanted to go. ‘I really want to go,’ I wrote on a slip of paper and put it in front of Platosha’s eyes.
‘Fine,’ Platosha told him, ‘we’ll come.’
We didn’t have to come: they sent a limousine for us… Just now, he, my sovereign master, came up behind me. He read the word ‘limousine’ and started laughing.
‘Stop,’ he said, ‘stop writing about limousines.’
You’re right, sweetie, you’re right… No, I’ll say two other things anyway. After the main fireworks there was a salute, and the volleys were named. The first volley, of course, was dedicated to Tyurin, and the second one was for Platosha. And also – maybe the most surprising thing – I noticed a fantastically beautiful diamond ring on Tyurin’s finger. I told him that, in front of everybody, so it would be nice for him. And he took off the ring and held it out to Platosha, as if it would suit him better. And he winked at me. Platosha refused but Tyurin placed the ring in his palm and closed his fingers over it. A very showy gesture, regal, as one of the journalists said (I already saw that shot in several newspapers today). Though Tyurin, I repeat, is probably money-oriented, and not a king. The ring, however, truly is amazing – I examined it all morning. Platosha, the silly man, doesn’t want to put it on.
[INNOKENTY]