And so Innokenty will tell us what to describe.
This will be about specific things, not general things. About what everybody perceives identically.
Mosquitoes in Siverskaya, for example.
What else did he already allude to? Visiting the barbershop, a bicycle on a wet path…
As I understand it, he’s painting some sort of big, important canvas. At the same time, he’s recruiting helpers to sketch the background. They’ll draw the secondary figures along his contours…
‘I’m not refusing to help,’ I said, ‘but I’m a poor helper. Writing isn’t my calling.’
‘To the contrary, Geiger, I value you because you’re succinct and write simply.’
‘And me,’ Nastya said, ‘what do you value me for?’
Innokenty thought for a bit.
‘For the exact opposite qualities.’
I understand it’s impossible to refuse. But I don’t understand how to regard this endeavor. As his vital necessity? As an eccentricity? As a progressing illness?
The latter would be the easiest of all, but I’m not in any hurry to see that.
Something strange. Platosha asked Geiger and me to help him with his descriptions. Yes, yes, of course, we answered. To be honest, though, I don’t know how to go about this. If you ask, you risk offending. I couldn’t stand it and asked the next day. Platosha wasn’t the teensiest bit offended.
‘Treat it,’ he said, ‘as a life story.’
‘Yours?’
‘Mine. And a life story in general.’
The request for help with my descriptions surprised them both a lot: is that really so strange? They nodded to me about everything, but their faces, their faces… Of course the backdrop for my behavior is unfavorable: possible brain failure and so on and so forth. But is the essence of my idea truly not obvious? Yes, every person has particular recollections but there are things that are lived through and recollected the same way. Yes, politics, history, and literature are all perceived differently. But the sound of rain, the nocturnal rustling of leaves, and a million other things – all that unites us. We’re not going to argue about that until we’re hoarse or (you never know) smash each other over the head. That’s the basis for everything here. That’s what needs to be worked with, that’s what I’m requesting of the people dear to me. May their voices appear amid what I’ve described. They won’t distort my voice: to the contrary, they’ll enrich it.
After all, the only thing I’m working on is finding a road to the past, either through witnesses (there are no more after Anastasia’s death) or through recollections, or through the cemetery, where all my life companions have moved. I’m attempting to come closer to the past in various ways, in order to understand what it is. Is it separate from me or am I still living it, even now? I had a past even before my icy slumber, but it never possessed the separateness it does now. Everything that I have recalled about my past has not drawn it closer to me. I think of it as a hand that was chopped off and sewn back on. Perhaps that hand moves somehow, but it is no longer mine.
In essence, the years in liquid nitrogen changed nothing regarding the past. They intensify the problem but do not engender it: the problem existed previously, too. Its essence is that the past is cut off from the present and has no relation to reality. What happens to life when it ceases to be the present? Does it live only in my head? That same head that is now losing tens of thousands of cells a day and raising suspicions even among those close to me? Living people – with my recollections and their own – must be let into my head right away… After reviving our mutual recollections, perhaps those people will also revive what belongs only to me.
Siverskaya of the 1900s was the dacha capital of Russia. The mosquito capital. Especially in June. I think there are plenty of mosquitoes there now, too – you could even rename it Mosquitskovo in their honor – but now there’s sprays, coils, and creams. But back then? Well, maybe creams. Other than that, though, I think it was mostly fires. These were fires that burned old rags, leaves, and other little things that made a lot of smoke. Anyway, the technical side doesn’t interest Platosha.
The details are important to him, like the cautious, even somehow helicopter-like landing of an insect on the arm. A mosquito isn’t a fly, it doesn’t move around on the arm. It works where it lands. It pokes its little proboscis into unprotected skin and starts sucking blood. You swat it on your arm and the blood smears on your skin. When I was a little girl, I heard that if you swat a mosquito at the scene of the crime, the skin won’t itch. I think that’s an exaggeration, with a moraclass="underline" punishment should follow crime. In the same place, at the same time. Blood atonement, as they say.
Nocturnal buzzing is the peskiest. It’s probably worse than a bite. Comparable to dental drilling: you still don’t know if it’ll be painful, but the sound of the drill already permeates you. You listlessly defend yourself through your sleep or just duck under the covers. It’s stuffy, so you duck back out a minute later. And it’s stuffy in the room, too: the windows are closed because of the mosquitoes! It’s double suffering, from the mosquitoes and the stuffiness. You finally toss off the covers and give your body over to the mosquitoes. At least it’s not hot. What’s interesting is that the mosquitoes don’t exactly rush to a naked body. Maybe they’re stunned by the grandness of the gesture. Or maybe all that nudity shocks them.
Will Platosha like what I wrote?
I felt an urge to draw – that hadn’t happened in a long while. I set Themis on the dinner table and moved a lamp from the desk to the bookshelf after removing the books. The lighting came out fairly well, with a shadow. I set up the easel, took a sheet of paper and a graphite pencil, and began drawing. Even before much had appeared on the sheet, I felt like the drawing would come out. After all my numerous attempts, today my hand suddenly recalled the motions. It found confidence with each stroke and I was no longer thinking about the rules of drawing: my hand knew everything on its own.
When it was finished, I turned on all the lights and carefully began examining the drawing. There were many shortcomings in it but that wasn’t important. I had managed to draw something sound for the first time in the months after thawing. My main complaint was probably about the shadow. I remembered that they had taught me not to blacken it, not to fill the paper’s pores with graphite. The paper should shine through slightly, even through the strokes. According to a definition from Marx, from blessed memory, it is better to ‘not quite’ than to ‘overdo.’ I could apply that definition to art in general.
I took the sheet from the easel and laid it on the table. I went to the kitchen and opened the breadbox. Next to the fresh bread there lay some stale pieces Nastya had not thrown away, saving them for the pigeons. I was lucky: among dried-out bread as black as tar there was a stale little piece of white bread. I crumbled it finely on the drawing. Using circular motions and pressing lightly, I rolled the crumbs along the surface of the drawing until they absorbed the extra graphite. I carefully brushed the blackened crumbs on the floor with a wide brush. I blew away the finest ones.
All the lines remained but they had become much paler. I took the pencil and went over the drawing again. It was slightly different now: the accents had changed positions. And I liked it better this way. I felt joy. It also occurred to me – no, it did not occur to me, it simply jabbed: despite the massive mortality of my poor cells, does this mean that some were restored?
July 1913.
Moderately warm evening rays cut through a barbershop. Dust swirls in the rays.