THURSDAY [NASTYA]
There was a conversation with Geiger. I’d been expecting that. I already knew not to expect good news. It’s hard for me to reproduce what Geiger said in detail but the essence of it is devastating. The cells in Platosha’s brain have begun a mass ‘die off.’ In speaking of ‘dying off,’ Geiger had in mind not their full death but a sharp weakening of function. Beyond that, a lot of cells are dying and only a very small number of them are being regenerated. In his opinion, what speaks to regeneration is the fact that Platosha has stopped limping on his right leg. At the same time, his overall condition is worsening and fairly quickly. Geiger will begin examining Platosha’s spinal cord in the coming days: he sees problems there, too.
I’m reporting everything intelligibly now, but I was like a crazy woman when I heard what Geiger had to say. Now I’m ashamed. He was already wary of me (could I really not see?) and now he’ll completely avoid me. I didn’t ask Geiger if it’s right to tell Platosha all this but now I realize it’s up to me to decide. On the one hand, it’s horrific to hang that sort of weight on someone who’s ill, but on the other, he’ll soon realize people are hiding something from him, and then his situation will be even worse. I thought and thought but didn’t come up with any-thing. Then I saw him in the evening, started bawling, and told him everything. Not everything, of course. Only as much as I’d been planning to if I decided to tell him. And it turned out I decided to.
He heard it all out calmly. He said that it could only have been expected. That the decades spent in liquid nitrogen had to manifest themselves somehow.
When we were lying in bed, I said:
‘We’ll pull through it all. We just can’t lose hope.’
He hugged me. Pressed his lips to the bridge of my nose. He whispered:
‘Of course. I’ve been working on that all my life.’
[INNOKENTY]
Nastya told me the results of the MRI. It’s better to pronounce all three of those words – magnetic resonance imaging – because the abbreviation sounds a little scary. As, by the way, do the test results.
I went to Serafimov Cemetery today. I knew from the description in the archives that Ostapchuk’s grave is right alongside the cemetery church. I found it without difficulty: the inscription Per aspera ad astra catches the eye from a distance. It was recently refreshed on the browned stone with the same paint they used on the fence. It’s interesting that – in the masses of everything Ostapchuk talked about on that notable day – the conversation, as it happens, did not turn to the stars. The day we met, which became the day we parted.
Even at this time, it did occur to me that I would never see him again. And that turned out to be enough for me to commit the meeting to memory. It’s not that my contact with Ostapchuk made a huge impression on me: the thought that we were parting forever was huge. I just could not fathom that, and it was scary because the loss of any person and any thing is a part of death. Which is the loss of everything.
Here at Serafimov Cemetery, I unexpectedly see Ostapchuk in the flesh, pouring homebrew into mugs. Woven of contradictions, his nose puckers from the impure scent, welcoming it joyfully at the same time. Ostapchuk is bare-chested: he has taken off his high-collared jacket because he’s being careful with it and doesn’t want to wear it out for no reason. He’s sitting on the curb of his grave and partakes of the drink, covering his nose with his fingers (this is a strong drink) and lifting his chin. I follow the movement of Ostapchuk’s Adam’s apple.
Now it’s my turn: I take out the vodka I brought with me and pour it into silver shot glasses brought from home – we didn’t have luxuries like this in 1921, but all the safer for both of us. We drink because it befits the place (we’re not going to knock together display boards here) and, truth be told, I have long felt like having a drink with Ostapchuk. He’s two meters away from me now – maybe not alongside me and maybe underground – but he is here. I think this time he’s wearing a high-collared jacket or even something solemn if, of course, he did not have last-minute regrets about putting it on because everything could be horribly ruined in the ground.
It isn’t so scary to be in Ostapchuk’s presence. Unlike him, after all, I – with my ghastly MRI – am alive and will possibly still live for some time. I am capable of moving around and, for example, riding a tram down Savushkin Street to the cemetery gates or buying vodka and odds and ends, but the main thing is that I can leave here, leave this cemetery alive. Unlike our Ostapchuk, who lies under that beautiful inscription day and night. At night he’s in the cold light of the stars, to which, if one believes the inscription, he so strove, due to his place of employment.
SATURDAY [NASTYA]
Platosha came home drunk yesterday. I asked:
‘Where, if you don’t mind my asking, were you drinking?’
‘I don’t mind, my dear. At Serafimov Cemetery, with Ostapchuk.’
‘So who’s this Ostapchuk?’ ‘Ostapchuk, my darling, is deceased.’
He kissed me and then sat for about another hour and a half at the computer.
[GEIGER]
I understand very little of what’s happening.
I’m not capable of affecting it.
I’m terrified.
Today I dreamt that an automobile is hurtling along at very high speed. And I’m at the wheel of the automobile. Only there’s bad luck: there’s basically no steering wheel. Or even brakes. You don’t need an interpreter to understand that dream.
Yes, I know that cell die-off is the result of the extended supercooling. Only that doesn’t give much information. I don’t have an answer to the question of exactly how it’s all happening.
Why did the cell degradation begin only a half-year later? After all, if a cell is damaged, it’s logical to suppose it won’t ‘wake up’ in the first place. But it did wake up and stayed wonderfully awake for half a year!
And what if I were to allow that the degradation began right away and acquired its avalanching character only now? But that’s not it, no: Innokenty has been under very thorough monitoring.
One might suppose that we’d changed rehabilitation methods and provoked cell death. But the methods haven’t changed. They haven’t changed!
My brain is in overdrive.
[NASTYA]
Time magazine named Platosha ‘Man of the Year.’ The name of the magazine is appropriate for him, and it’s a nice title, too, but there’s obviously little joy. Even a week ago, we would have been happy and arranged a celebration, but ugh…
Platosha looks at us from the magazine cover and from all the billboards and advertising kiosks, too: Time has great advertising. They found an excellent photo: the subject of the shot obviously doesn’t know he’s being photographed while he’s talking with someone, smiling. Of course the photo is black-and-white and the lighting’s amazing, but the nicest thing about it is the wrinkles formed by his smile. Platosha’s like a movie actor.
My pace slows involuntarily at every kiosk. Handsome. Oh-so handsome! And I think: nothing can happen to him, to someone like that. There is surely some kind of logic in events! It’s one thing for an elderly monk with a drab gaze, someone worn down by life… but here’s someone who looks like a playboy (nobody knows he’s not a playboy, after all), some kind of Brad Pitt – how, you might ask, does this picture fit together with ‘cell die-off’?
[INNOKENTY]
First I read Robinson Crusoe, then the New Testament, the parable of the prodigal son.