For Innokenty, that frame of mind is connected with his overall condition. Which is worsening.
[ ]
Geiger and I debated. In my opinion, he has a strange notion that someone is tossing the noose down upon us from above again and again. That we’re not the ones who braid it. Quite the defender of the Russian people… And at one time he was telling me about his hopes: there, he thought, Soviet power will go away and we’ll start living! And… so? Have we started living now? Soviet power has been gone for how many years now: did we start living?
And its arrival was not accidentaclass="underline" I do remember it well. The Bolsheviks are now called ‘a handful of conspirators.’ And how was this ‘handful of conspirators’ able to topple a thousand-year empire? It means Bolshevism is not something external for us.
So Geiger does not believe in a collective impulse for perishing and does not see rational reasons for it. But reasons can be irrational, too. All, all that threatens to destroy holds for the mortal heart a joy of inexplicable delight… That, of course, is not always how it is, and it’s not for all people (here, Geiger is right), though it is for a great number of them! For enough to turn the country into hell. My cousin succumbs to the oprichniks, my neighbor goes to snitch on Professor Voronin. Voronin’s colleague Averyanov gives monstrous testimony about him. Why?!
Well, who cares about him – my cousin – he’s a weak person, he wanted to establish himself. Averyanov, let’s say, was envious: a natural feeling for a colleague. But why did Zaretsky snitch? Out of considerations based on principle? But he had no principles (or considerations, either, I suspect). Money? But nobody was giving him money. He himself told me when he was drunk that he didn’t know why he snitched. I know, though: out of an overabundance of shit in his body. It – that shit – grew in him and waited for the social conditions to spill over. And they did.
In that case, though, maybe he is not to blame for snitching on Anastasia’s father? Maybe the social conditions are to blame? I think Geiger thinks so. But then it wasn’t social conditions that snitched on the professor, it was Zaretsky. That means he committed a crime and his getting bashed on the head turned out to be his punishment. The justified, I emphasize, punishment of a villain, though few knew of that. Everything looks more complex with respect to who bashed him. Is he a villain or an instrument of justice? Or both? How can all that be explained to Anna?
Sitting at the computer, Innokenty asked me:
‘Where is the Internet’s content located?’
At first I didn’t understand the question.
‘What do you mean where? It’s in the Internet…’
‘Can you name the specific place where it’s stored? Or am I to understand that it’s evenly spread around a network?’
‘There are computers that store the information. They’re housed in data centers –’
He didn’t let me finish.
‘So there’s nothing mystical about it and there are fully dedicated machines that store that content, right?’
Right. I didn’t understand what surprised him so much.
[ ]
Geiger explained to me how the Internet functions: its content is distributed in a series of computers. If you think about it, it would be pretty much impossible otherwise, but I had almost come to believe in some kind of special system standing over computers. Almost a special reality arising from the very fact of the connection between computers.
It suddenly occurred to me that this is a sort of model for public life. Which, when it all comes down to it, is not life but a phantom. Plunging into it is not without its hazards: it can sometimes become clear that there is no water in the pool. Life and reality are on the level of the human soul – that is where the roots of everything good and bad are located. Everything is decided by touching the soul. Probably only a priest works on such things. Well, and maybe an artist, too, if they’re successful at it. I was not.
[ ]
Platosha says he thinks all the time about Anna: that’s what we already call our little girl now. I know it’s early and we shouldn’t, but what can we do if she’s come into our lives? We already sense her character, for example. When she stamps her little foot in my belly, we understand there’s a feisty young woman growing. Platosha asks me to call to him when she’s kicking like that. One time we both saw my belly swaying from Anya’s little foot!
He wants Anya to know everything about him. That’s why he’s now planning to write much more thoroughly. I said to him:
‘Don’t make things more complicated for yourself. She’ll grow up a little and you’ll tell her everything.’
‘No,’ he answers, ‘I’ll write: everything’s firmer on paper, more reliable. Oral stories, you know, blur in the memory, but what’s written doesn’t change. And what’s important is that it can be reread.’
I do know why he’s writing, though! Good Lord, there’s no secret there. He thinks he won’t live until she’s born.
One time in Siverskaya I saw an aeroplane taking off from a poorly mown field. As it sped up along the runway, the aviator drove around potholes, bounced on hillocks, and – oh, joy! – suddenly ended up in the air. Watching that machine move spasmodically around the field, frankly, nobody expected flight. But the aviator took off. There was no more hillocky field for him and no more laughing spectators underneath his wings: there appeared a sky with sprawling clouds and the colorful earth like a patchwork.
For some time, I have seen that picture as a symbol of a fitting course for life. It seems to me that accomplished people have a defining trait: they depend little on those around them. Independence, of course, is not the goal but it helps achieve the goal. There you are running through life with the weak hope of taking off and people are looking at you with pity or, at best, with incomprehension. But you take off and from up high they all seem like dots. That’s not because they have instantly diminished but because the view from above (lectures on the basics of drawing) makes them into dots, into a hundred dot-faces oriented toward you. With open mouths, it would appear. And you’re flying in the direction you chose and tracing, in the ether, figures that are dear to you. Those standing below delight in them (perhaps envying a little bit) but lack the power to change anything because everything in those spheres depends solely on the flyer’s skill. On an aviator splendid in his solitude.
[ ]
Platosha told me about some aviator’s flight in Siverskaya. Based on the tone of the story, I understood immediately this was not so much about the aviator as about Platosha: he has differing manners when talking about others and himself. He talked and talked, then suddenly pondered.
‘What are you thinking about?’ I asked.
‘What pothole did I trip in, anyway? Why didn’t I take off? What ruined my artistic abilities?’
At first I tried persuading him that his abilities couldn’t have just left him, that they’ll certainly come back. That’s not simply consolation: I myself firmly believe it. The comparison with the aviator is, of course, lovely, but it’s lame if applied to Platosha. He hugged me and said he’s already lame. Then we sat, silently, for a long time. Rocking slightly.
Innokenty decided to write for his daughter. To describe his life.
He also appealed to Nastya and me with an unusual request: help him write.
‘How?’ I asked. ‘How can someone be helped in describing his own life?’
‘Not the life itself but what’s on its fringes. I’m simply afraid I won’t have time for everything on my own.’