What an appropriate abbreviation that is anyway, LAZARUS, even if you consider that I didn’t lie there for four days. I have seen icons depicting Lazarus’s resurrection: he’s walking out of a crypt and the people standing nearby are covering their noses. Fine… According to Geiger’s description, I didn’t look so good when they took me out of the nitrogen. I did not, however, smell.
Lazarus’s first death was not sudden: he was sick, very sick. My departure for freezing was not unexpected, either. It works out that we both had time to prepare ourselves. And his and my thoughts before departing were possibly the same, too. And then the Lord resurrected him: so how did he live with that? Even I, after all, who was returned to life by the mere mortal Geiger, cannot fully realize the extent of what happened. I arrived at the only thought possible: that the Lord thawed me, employing Geiger’s hands.
How did Lazarus’s life turn out after his resurrection? Yes, it is allegedly known that he lived another three decades and was a bishop in a Cypriot city, but I don’t mean the details that are called biography. What concerns me is what he felt after having already once departed the world of the living.
After all, it is not accidental when a person returns from wherever he was. It is a change to the natural course of events or to a decision that has been made. There should be weighty reasons for any return. A person has special tasks when the return is from the great beyond and not just anywhere. Lazarus of the Four Days attests to the Lord’s omnipotence.
What do I attest to? In the final analysis, to the same thing. Beyond that, though, probably also to the time I was initially placed in. Those living in that time of mine did not yet know what to attest to for their descendants, did not know exactly what would prove useful decades later. But I know. This helps me to some degree, though of course it is only to some degree because my attestations are futile anyway. For all that, it’s good if they serve the resurrection of my previous time, even if a resurrection like that is incomplete.
I think ever more often about resurrection. Nastya’s name speaks to that, too. Sometimes it seems to me that Nastya has resurrected Anastasia, that they are seamless and compose a common life, purposely created for me from two different lives. At times, that thought seems like insanity to me because it denies the uniqueness of any separate life. I can speak with certainty about only one thing, that I love them both.
THURSDAY [NASTYA]
Platosha received a proposal to host a corporate event for a gas company. He turned it down. Put bluntly, I was a little blown away when I heard the amount of the fee. I didn’t reproach Platosha, not one word: he’s a man, it’s his decision. The gasmen, however, didn’t back off. They contacted me and explained that they’re drilling test holes in the Arctic, meaning that, under the circumstances, they needed Innokenty Petrovich – even if they had to sweat blood. If not in the capacity of leading the corporate event, then at least in the capacity of a guest. And the fee would not even be reduced. All that was required of Innokenty Petrovich would be to show up with the Order of Courage, propose a toast to the company’s general director (and his wife), and wish everyone success in extracting gas. That was already a different matter. It’s funny, of course, about the toast and the director, but not burdensome or shameful. Platosha agreed. I asked him to tell Geiger that this decision was made without my knowledge, otherwise our mutual friend would simply devour me. It’s interesting that Geiger understands the meaning of banknotes but when talk turns to methods for earning them, that’s when the grimaces and all that ‘You see, Nastya,’ and the like start. I don’t want to look more mercantile than everybody else – maybe I dream about being Lady Hamilton, too – but someone has to arrange the means for existence. Really, it’s strange the German’s not the one doing that.
Be that as it may, we went, the sun scorching us, to that corporate event. The scene for the action was the Yusupov Palace, where – at the entrance and on the staircase (wow!) – there were black servants in livery and cut flowers everywhere. In the foyer were members of the board of directors, Duma deputies, movie actresses, bandits, zombies with a Soviet look, fashion models, correspondents, and professional schmoozers. In short: everybody that loves gas.
Vadim, head of the company’s PR department, greeted us. He embraced us both around the shoulders and reported to us in a loud whisper with no introductions whatsoever:
‘I’m liking that journalist woman Zhabchenko more than anybody. Her invitation was specifically for one person: her. And you know what she did? Do you know?’
‘No, we don’t,’ we answered in chorus.
‘She gave the invitation to her husband and showed up herself a half-hour later and said she was on the list. Showed her passport, too. The guards checked her and the lists, and, naturally, let her in.’
‘And is her husband Zhabchenko, too?’ asked Platosha.
‘Well, there’s the whole trick. Who would look at the initials with a surname like that? The little bitch! Forgive me…’
Vadim smiled charmingly. A minute later he was already talking with somebody else. They brought us champagne. I jokingly asked Platosha if the champagne would impede his performance. He smiled and slapped himself on his jacket pocket. That’s where he had the printout of his toast, provided to us by the very same Vadim. In that toast, the person who had been freed from icy captivity was to raise his glass to the health of the Savchenko couple – Vitaly and Lyudmila – who wage war with ice near the North Pole itself. Everybody knew that the couple waged war with ice without leaving Nevsky Prospect, but a statement of that sort was considered admissible as poetic license.
Platosha looked rather tired at the palace. Yes, he was smiling – that smile does look good on him! – but it came out kind of forced. Of course he drank quite a bit, too much, I’d say, but his tiredness wasn’t because of that. It had engulfed him in the first minutes after we arrived at the banquet.
The serving of the dishes, for example, displeased him: about two dozen waiters carried roast piglet around the hall on a platter and, behind it, also on a platter, sturgeon and lots of things I didn’t even know the names of. I asked Platosha if he was sick but he said he was only feeling a light indisposition.
A retired admiral was sitting at the table with us, a kindly fellow who was making sure not one toast went by without drinking a shot. A half-hour later Platosha asked our neighbor if it was true that he had as much free time as a retired admiral. The admiral answered that it was the absolute truth. He smiled, displaying the whiteness of his false teeth. Platosha soon repeated that question again and then again, but the admiral answered just as kindly as the first time.
It’s too bad the promised toast wasn’t at the beginning of the evening: then the effect would have corresponded better to what the gasmen had planned. But since the toast was conceived as a culmination, it came closer to the end. It didn’t evoke much protest from the hall when Platosha proposed drinking to the Zhabchenko couple who wage war with the ice. I’m not even sure everybody heard his toast. It’s interesting that the Zhabchenko couple, who were sitting in the far end of the hall and yelling louder than everybody, heard it. After the scene to get into the banquet, it didn’t surprise them that a toast was being proposed in their honor. Even their declared war with the ice didn’t surprise them. They stood and bowed.
And we received the fee anyway.
[INNOKENTY]
Here in my old apartment, I sometimes feel as if I’m on an island, in the middle of the sea of someone else’s life. Poor Robinson Crusoe.
[GEIGER]