Innokenty worries me more now.
His movement is increasingly less confident. Sometimes I see him veering slightly when he walks.
If you don’t look closely, you won’t notice. But I look closely. I want to figure out the course of this thing, to grasp how it will develop further.
The problems aren’t only with motor functions, though. It seems like his working memory is starting to break down. He frequently loses his train of thought if he’s suddenly distracted while he’s speaking.
I don’t want to talk about this yet with either him or Nastya. I don’t want to scare them. I keep hoping it’s temporary.
And that corporate event with the gasmen. I understand that alcohol was the reason for the mix-up. Even so, I don’t like this incident. How can you forget what you studied all evening the night before?
And the corporate event itself, that was Nastya’s escapade. No matter how much they both convince me she had nothing to do with it, I can smell it: Nastya came up with it.
I want to let her have it in the head but am refraining. She’s amusing.
SUNDAY [INNOKENTY]
Today we went for a walk around the cemetery at Alexander Nevsky Monastery. I really love walking around cemeteries. Nastya does not, though. One time during a walk, she said she’s tormented by the thought that our happiness will end someday. I answered that it will indeed end someday, perhaps even soon: after all, anything under the sun can happen. I said that and regretted it: Nastya began crying. Somehow, that was not really like her.
It was very nice, though: diffused September sun, leaves on the ground in individual yellow spots, not yet a complete cover. Nastya walked, holding me by the arm, pressing her cheek to my shoulder, which slowed our motion. We examined inscriptions on gravestones. Old gravestones are very beautiful, more beautiful than even today’s expensive ones. And the inscriptions were simply wonderful because their old orthography cannot compare with the new: it has a soul. Our literature’s Golden Age is tied to that orthography as well.
Even my childhood and youth are tied to the orthography, too, though I am not part of the Golden Age. Platonov (a gaze over a pince-nez), when is the letter yat written in the roots of words? My memory has lost her face, figure, and voice, but that gaze over the pince-nez has remained. Although why, in fact, ‘she,’ when it could be a man? Yes, it was definitely a man: a ribbon from the pince-nez in the frock-coat pocket. The letter yat, I answer, is written in a series of words of age-old Russian origin…
Something familiar revealed itself on a granite gravestone that had risen up in front of us, but I still didn’t understand what. No, I understood. I understood: the name, of course. Terenty Osipovich Dobrosklonov, 1835–1916. And the phrase, ‘Go intrepidly!’ Actually, it’s not written there, but of course not everything under the sun is written.
Go intrepidly into the Kingdom of Heaven, Terenty Osipovich. The taxidermied bear by the door, my running through the enfilade of rooms, and the triumphal recitation of a verse. Theoretically, this could be another Terenty Osipovich, but I feel in my heart that it’s the same one. As it happens, he died a year before everything began. A year before, meaning Terenty Osipovich was lucky. He died peacefully, in full ignorance regarding the imminent changes, and was among – one would like to believe – a circle of people close to him, hoping for their carefree lives.
Eighty-three years have passed since 1916 and one must suppose that little is left of Terenty Osipovich: skeleton, wedding ring, the buttons of his luxurious full dress uniform (and maybe the uniform itself!) and, of course, the two tails of his beard. Yes, a small part of him, next to nothing, but it is part of him, the very same Terenty Osipovich who cheered me at a difficult moment during the sixth year of my life. And there he was, lying under the ground, two meters from me…
‘If this grave were dug up,’ I said to Nastya, ‘we could see a person I met for the last time in 1905.’
Nastya’s long drawn-out gaze at me. Expressively keeping silent. It seemed she did not want to dig up Terenty Osipovich.
‘Simply put, he is one of the witnesses of my childhood,’ I explained. ‘My father called him by his full name to me and I remembered it. That happens. It was one of the first names that lodged in my memory. And I suddenly stumble on him here, can you imagine?’
‘No meeting is more surprising.’
Nastya pressed even harder against my shoulder. She saw that nobody was planning to dig up Terenty Osipovich.
[NASTYA]
A strange strolclass="underline" that’s what I’d call a story about today. We walked around the Nikolsky Cemetery at Alexander Nevsky Monastery. This was not, by the way, the first time we were taking a stroll at a cemetery: Platonov has – how to put this? – a certain weakness for these strolls. They don’t exactly weigh on me but on the other hand, I can’t say they improve my mood much; they’re not exactly Disneyland. Though I do need to walk, because of the baby.
And so we’re strolling and strolling, when suddenly Platosha is standing still by one grave. Terenty Osipovich Dobrosklonov is lying there: it would be a sin not to remember a name like that. Terenty Osipovich coined the phrase ‘Go intrepidly,’ allegedly uttered to my future husband during his childhood. I can’t argue: the phrase is a good one – no worse than Terenty Osipovich’s name – but the impression this grave made on Platosha is beyond description.
He told me, in detail, everything connected with that phrase and then even said that if Terenty Osipovich were dug up, there’d be nothing to reveal but a skeleton and a full dress uniform. Well, yes, I agreed, there’s no reason to labor under delusions here. And he thought a bit and then said the beard, too, would probably be revealed. Metal items of some sort, as well. And I was suddenly feeling like he was somehow saying that for real, all businesslike. That a little more and he’d dig up that grave and reveal all. We stood by the grave for almost an hour.
The saddest part of our stroll is that Platosha’s leg twisted again when we entered the monastery grounds. He said it was because the road by the gate is paved with cobblestones and he’s already become used to asphalt. I nodded but – under the pretext of surging emotions – I grasped him firmly by the arm. And I laid my head on his shoulder to totally reduce the distance between us. He wasn’t walking very confidently at all. I don’t know, should I tell Geiger about that? He’s over-cautious and will start dragging his patient in for testing, and hospital things are already getting under Platosha’s skin. I’ll wait for now.
TUESDAY [INNOKENTY]
Much depended on what seat you took in the lecture hall. It was most interesting to sit at a point with a well-defined line of sight. For example, steeply below and with a three-quarters rotation, which is the most interesting view on Michelangelo’s Dying Slave. His head is thrown back a lot already and if you take a seat in the first three rows, the lower part of the chin – which is always unseen – is revealed, along with the nostrils. The eye slips below the nose and the forehead isn’t visible at all. Those who had the power to build a complex form according to the laws of perspective, as well as to see and maintain proportions, aspired to sit in those spots.
And, by the way, Marx is Alexander Vasilyevich Pospolitaki. I figured that out through a book about the Academy of Arts. I recognized the professors in a group photograph and found his surname in the caption. He died at the White Sea–Baltic Canal. I think his appearance was too colorful. What fit with the 1910s fell into complete disuse in the 1930s. Alexander Vasilyevich turned out not to be sensitive to the change of styles.
[GEIGER]