I wonder why Old Nelya comes over. Is it pity? Or loneliness? If so, does that make her care for me less real? More questions without answers.
I finished another blog post and reviewed my work. Two days ago, after finding out O’Brien’s wife loved birds, Luka instructed me to set up a bird-watching blog. “Don’t you like birds?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well, you do now. Consider it part of your education.”
Before this assignment, I’d never blogged. After I got the task, on the bus ride back, I saw starlings flocking around like a fisherman’s net amidst the clouds, dancing over the cityscape. They had provided my first inspiration.
Cities like Moscow, also Rome, are famous for their starlings, I’d written. People love these gorgeous birds and enigmatic dance! The best way to recreate their flying patterns is to focus on a lead starling and map how others relate geo-spatially, linking their vectors to simulate a flock.
I’d created a sample animation before doubt crapped all over me. Writing a blog entry was more difficult than I thought. “Make her relate to you, want to know you better,” Luka instructed, but somehow what I wrote seemed wrong.
“Maybe I should include the Big-O calculation,” I’d told Anton yesterday. “In case, you know, she’s concerned about the efficiency of the algorithm. Or something.”
“What algorithm?” He looked startled. “What are you trying to do?” He reviewed my posts, then burst out laughing. “You!” He clapped my cheeks with his hands, and rocked my head from side to side. “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?”
I don’t like it when people touch me, but the warmth of his hand on my cheeks mesmerized me. “Sometimes, you remind me of…someone,” he trailed off, his look odd.
He showed me other blogs to mimic. They seemed frivolous, posts about nothing much, just pictures, then a few lines of banal text. It felt lazy, so I resolved to do more research and make things convincing.
These last two nights, as I read up on birds, the girl on my laptop had appeared several times. She reminded me of an exotic creature, housed in a tiny box to one side of my screen, free to come and go. I’d traced her IP address, then looked up Tokyo on an online map. In real life, she’s four thousand seven hundred miles away. Her presence felt closer. A lot closer.
Watching her, I learned what it felt like to stalk an elusive bird in its native habitat. This one sported blueberry mascara and liked punk-black lipstick. Her raven hair was usually plaited over one ear, but when she wore it loose, she appeared young. Despite her bold makeup, she had a vulnerable smile that flitted on her lips when she read her emails or watched some online video. I’d been tempted to write to her before. Hello. I am Andrei Yaklova. I am watching over you. That would guarantee a beautiful friendship! No. Better to enjoy her company in silence, to pretend she was a friend hanging out with me. She was about the same age as Anna and looked totally different. Yet there was something about her expression that made me think the two were alike. Or maybe it’s me. I felt like I knew this girl from a long time ago.
I once read a website that said everyone came from an Oversoul, and we’re fragments blown apart during the Big Bang, so no one’s special or unique. I don’t believe in souls: dead is dead. I’m also not sure about the concept of unique. You’re unique, my father told me once, and it made me feel proud. I’d imagined myself as individual as a snowflake, or as special as that famous psychic, the one who claims Chernobyl changed him, or as unique as that moment when my father took my hand and patted it for no reason. Andryushka, you’re one in a billion, he said.
Later, I realized in a world with more than seven billion people, there are many others like me. Maybe they have different faces and similar worries, or vice versa. Maybe they’re orphans scattered in different corners of the world, all of us bit pieces in the giant computer that is the world, like recursive functions, each of us handing off a tiny part of the answer we’ve found to the question that is life to the next, then the next. Maybe we’re all working towards something bigger, something better, cycle after cycle, life after life, death after death. It’s a comforting idea.
Perhaps it’s the secret defiance lining her lips that reminds me of Anna.
A text message buzzed on my phone. Well??? It was Luka on edge.
I texted back. We agreed to meet at the Café Volga so he could see my progress.
Finish it by then!! His impatience punctuated everything he said ever since we took the job.
Which means more posts to be written up. I went back to my laptop and typed away. After I finished a dozen more entries, I saw the girl rolling back her chair. She stood and started peeling off her t-shirt.
I quickly slammed my laptop cover shut. I’m not like that, I reminded myself, but my fingers itched and rubbed themselves against the laptop’s hard edge. That was when I decided to go to sleep. Wake up earlier tomorrow, finish the blog.
That night, I dreamed of my other selves clustered around, holding me. One of them told me I’m better than I thought. I want to believe that.
1.35
I arrived at Café Volga before Luka. He’d called earlier to remind me of the time, yet he was late himself. It happens. Like me, he’s not good at keeping track of time.
The café was near G.U.M, the department store with fancy colonnades. Once upon a time, only the elite were allowed to shop there and skirt rationing. Now, anyone with more money than sense can. This café tried to be posh, what with its handwritten chalkboards and an exorbitant menu, but the faint smell of varnish made everything seem fake.
As I waited patiently for Luka, I reviewed my bird blog again and again. It’s officiaclass="underline" I’m now a bird expert, especially those with long legs like egrets and herons.
Not that anyone cared. I glanced around. A group of foreigners entered, chatting aloud in English. An inferior language, I imagined Luka sniffing as he entered behind them. The door closed behind the noisy group. Still no Luka.
Phone check: my battery was almost flat. I must have forgotten to recharge it the night before. I tried texting Luka to let him know, but before the message was sent, it blinked out. Not good. For a moment, I considered connecting my laptop to the café’s WiFi, but Luka told us not to connect online needlessly. The N.S.A., the F.S.B.—apparently, a whole alphabet soup’s worth of agencies bug everything these days.
So I continued waiting. I pulled out the latest book Luka lent me. It’s a thick one, Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Luka said his genius was indisputable: “Worth five, no, ten American authors any day.” When he said that, I’d imagined an equivalency table for people. What would the matrix be like: one Russian author equals X American authors equals Y Armenian authors? Can one weigh the worth of a life? The first time I tried reading the book, I fell asleep. War and Peace—the title promised, so I flipped to a random page hoping to find something exciting instead of the dull, lulling prose I read last time. A character leapt out at me this time. Prince Andrei Nikolaevich Bolkonsky. Another Andrei just like me. I flipped a page, then paused when Elgar’s Enigma Variations began playing over the café speakers. Anna had liked it, I remembered, because each variation signified something different: a laugh remembered, a close friend, immortalized love, all the themes different yet alike. It reminded me of people. Of life. Almost all our genes are the same, yet everyone has a different fate. What would it be like if I’d been born royalty? An enigma.