I’ve been reading everything Innokenty wrote all these months, so it’s as if I’ve come to appreciate his view.
Sometimes I see things exactly as he does. As if I’m listening with his ears.
The clanking of instruments tossed on a tray.
The crackle of a bandage torn off.
The smell after washing floors: lemon, sometimes strawberry. It lifts the mood if it’s not cloying.
This is the smell of changes. Only sensing that did I grasp how radically life has changed. It used to smell of bleach: I did catch that time.
During my internship, I earned extra money as an orderly and washed the floors with bleachy water. It’s supposedly a disgusting smell but it does connect me with my youth. My heart beats faster when I sense it.
It turns out that you can even warm to something disgusting and then sigh about it some time later. And then there is the beautiful.
My time hasn’t been interrupted, but here I am, capable of grieving for the past.
And then there’s Innokenty: he has two lives that are like two shores of a large river. He’s looking from the present shore to the past shore.
He didn’t swim across that river: there wasn’t even a river. He simply regained consciousness and the water was behind him. What had been his road became the riverbed. And he didn’t walk that road.
He once told me he yearns for the years unlived.
THURSDAY [INNOKENTY]
I have been reading Bakhtin. From time to time Geiger brings me books that, according to him, an educated person should know, at least through an initial reading. He brings the best that appeared in various fields during my icy slumber. As I was reading, I thought: Robinson was tossed on an island for his sins and deprived of his native realm. And I was deprived of my native time, and that was for my sins, too. If not for Nastya…
By the way, it turns out she’s read Bakhtin. She called those deprived of a time and space the chronotopless. Geiger laughed hard; he appreciates Nastya despite his difficulty relating to her. But I didn’t laugh. I suddenly thought about those deprived both of their time and the space they inhabited: they are, after all, the dead. It works out that Robinson and I are half-dead. And perhaps even dead, at least for those who knew us in a previous time and previously inhabited space.
SATURDAY [GEIGER]
I called Innokenty and Nastya came to the phone. She said Platosha had headed for Smolensky Cemetery. That she’d gone with him several times but frequent strolls around cemeteries (breathing loudly in the phone) had become rough for her.
‘Strolls around cemeteries?’
‘Yes, around cemeteries. It’s his new hobby.’ Nastya went silent. ‘He’s searching for previous acquaintances.’
I went to Smolensky Cemetery. I remembered where his mother’s grave was and went in that direction. I saw Innokenty a couple of minutes later at the end of a tree-lined walkway. Wearing, at my suggestion, dark glasses so he wouldn’t be recognized. People recognize him anyway.
He walked, limping from time to time. He had a newspaper-wrapped bundle in his hands. The Evening Paper. The bundle was strange and initially distracted me from the limping.
After greeting him, I asked Innokenty what might be carried to the cemetery in a bundle. Innokenty blushed. He muttered something unintelligible. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known my question would agitate him so much.
‘You don’t have to tell me…’ I smiled.
‘I have nothing to hide.’
Innokenty unfolded the newspaper. In it lay the statue of Themis. Well, how about that. Why, one might ask, does he need that at the cemetery? What kind of justice was he restoring here?
This began to seem funny but I held back. Why, why… He was carrying it, supposedly, to his mother; he didn’t go to see Anastasia. There was apparently some story connected with Themis. But there really was nothing to blush about…
We slowly moved toward the exit along the tree-lined alley. I walked with my head down. As if I was contemplating something. I was watching his feet.
He truly was limping.
We’ll get down to serious testing in the coming days. I didn’t say anything to him about that.
[NASTYA]
Plastosha has infected us with plain old bare description. He keeps repeating: describe more! I catch myself thinking over how best to describe this or that. Even Geiger, I heard, is attempting to express something. And really, why not Geiger, too? On what grounds do I deny him artistic capabilities? In German, by the way, ‘Geiger’ means ‘violinist.’
SUNDAY [GEIGER]
So, let’s say there’s a choir at a morning concert.
We had a choir like that at school. It goes without saying that I didn’t sing in it – with my ear! But I listened and was thoroughly absorbed during morning concerts celebrating various holidays.
The happiest morning concert was for the New Year.
The choristers assembled in rows on a wooden structure (light clattering) that I don’t know what to call even now. Benches installed in three tiers on a stage.
According to the choir master, this design revealed the singers’ vocal possibilities most fully. They were somehow arranged there so the sound floated in a special way: right to the soul. At least to mine.
The girls’ voices were wonderful – like sterling silver – and it was they who defined the beauty of the morning concerts. I called their voices ‘morning voices’ to myself.
I listen to music in the car every day, some of it choral.
How rarely morning voices now sing. One might say they do not sing.
There’s competent and professional articulation, but there’s no magic. There’s no morning.
[NASTYA]
It’s 1993; my mother and I are in Tunisia. We’re abroad on holiday for the first time (and some of the first to go!). And without my father for the first time. Although it’s at his expense: he sends us money from America. Officially, it’s like he hasn’t left us yet, like he’s still there to earn money, but, it’s obvious what’s going on with him. During one of his visits, I was watching him out the window and saw a young woman waiting for him in our courtyard. It’s not that he didn’t think he had to hide: he simply hadn’t thought about it. It never occurred to him that he might be noticed. They kissed and set off, hooking their pinkie fingers – a variation from abroad that people here weren’t using yet. I ran into this little twosome later in the city; my father was embarrassed. She was American; she had come with him and was staying at a hotel. As I understand it, he spent the greater part of the day in her hotel room.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Yes, Tunis. I wanted to describe Tunis, one of my most vivid impressions. Carthage, which should have been destroyed, and that senator (what’s his name?), I forget… The beach. Heat that gives way to coolness in the hotel lobby. African fruit and vegetables as part of an ‘all-inclusive’ package. On the very first evening, I had the runs, of a very high quality; this also turned out to be included.
Evenings were something special. Surprisingly fresh and pleasant. Not what I expected from Africa at all, who would have thought… Maybe it was the evenings that made this land so attractive. Accordingly, they attracted aggressors from various tribes, including my very own mother. I got tired returning her abuse and counted the days until leaving because it was impossible to switch my plane ticket. This isn’t about my mother so why am I writing all this?
This is about Platosha. I sense there’s something happening that’s not good, and I’m feeling uneasy. I already spoke with Geiger: he’s worried. Very. The conversation with him basically left me reeling. I didn’t even understand half of what he told me but what I did understand was enough to put me in a daze.