A computer is a hilarious item. It turns out one can type on it as if it were a typewriter. And correct. Correcting is the important thing: it’s as if there had not been a mistake, all without nerve-wracking bother, without tedious erasures on five copies. Typists would die of envy. Texts can be saved in the computer and read from the computer. I’m going to learn to type.
At Geiger’s suggestion, I read an article entitled ‘Cloning,’ something in the spirit of Herbert Wells. I did not quite grasp what the article said about ‘nuclei’ and ‘ovule’ or what was transplanted where. I liked the part about the sheep supposedly bred from a sheep udder: she was named in honor of the singer Dolly Parton, who loved emphasizing the merits of her bust. Geiger thinks what was described in the article (I have the sheep breeding in mind here) is true. He says he’s introducing me to changes that took place in the world while I was unconscious. In order, as it were, to prepare my consciousness.
He also gave me something to read about cryogenics – this article is no less exotic. About how bodies are frozen for subsequent resurrection. There is something rather ghastly about the idea itself, independent of the fact of whether or not that sort of freezing exists in reality. If the article is to be believed, there are quite a few frozen people, although there is not yet anyone alive who has been thawed. At the same time, certain experiments can be acknowledged as successful. A chicken embryo was in liquid nitrogen for several months, then thawed, and the embryo’s heart began to beat. A rat’s heart was frozen to -196 °C and it began beating after thawing, too. A rabbit’s brain had been frozen. After thawing, the rabbit’s brain (does a rabbit have a brain?) maintained its biological activity. Finally, an African baboon was cooled to -2 °C. The baboon spent fifty-five minutes in a frozen state and was successfully revived afterward.
MONDAY
Anastasia. It’s an astonishing name, simultaneously pleophonic and gentle, with four ‘a’s and two ‘s’s. She said: ‘My name is Anastasia.’ She was standing over me like the Snow Queen in new Halifax skates with her hands in a muff, in the middle of Yusupov Garden. What did she utter first? I remember everything: ‘Please forgive me.’ She uttered: ‘Did you hurt yourself?’ And I am on all fours. I am looking at her skates, at the flaps of her coat, and at the fur hem from which extend barely, barely – only about a vershok – shins in leggings. I am seeing stars after my fall. Blood is dripping from my nose to the ice and that is the most awful, the most shameful, part.
She bends – no she crouches – and takes a handkerchief from her muff and applies it to my nose: ‘I knocked you down, forgive me.’ The spot on the ice is spreading and I draw my hand along it in shame, as if I want to erase it, but that doesn’t work. The orchestra continues playing, everyone skates past, some stop. The handkerchief smells of perfume and is covered with my blood, but I still cannot stand, I’m at the rink for the first time, and there are tears of shame in my eyes. She gives me her hand – it’s warm, from the muff— and I sense it with my entire palm. And then one of my palms is on the ice and the other is in her hand, and there is such contrast in that, such convergence of warm and icy, lively and lifeless, human and… Why did I compare her to the Snow Queen? Her beauty is warm.
After all, she had not pushed me; it was I who recoiled from her. She was skating fast, beautifully, sometimes alone, sometimes together with other grammar school girls. It seems she was a grammar school girl, that’s how it seemed, what else could she be… At times they skated in threes, in fours, crossing arms with one another. Their feet moved so very beautifully – simultaneously and broadly, with a cutting sound. Once I had put on my skates, I stood at the edge of the ice for an entire hour, delighting in the skaters, delighting in her. After the damp chilliness of the changing room and the smell of wooden benches and perspiration, there was the frosty wind on the rink, shouts, laughter, and the main thing, the music. And how she danced when the orchestra stuck up ‘Chrysanthemums,’ oh my! With some student who, of course, was not even close to her level; I tried not to watch him and saw only her, and my soul was transfixed.
Other falls (pun unintended) in my life were linked with women. I recently described swinging in a hammock. And I retained that because I crashed hard then. The girl rocked the hammock so forcefully that I flew out of it and hit the back of my head on the root of a pine tree. I had a nosebleed then, too, and they stitched up a wound on the back of my head. I had agonizing headaches for a long time after…
What comes to mind after all I’ve said: it was not Anastasia in Yusupov Garden. If I’m not mistaken, she and I met in 1921. And what kind of skating was there in 1921! Why did I decide that had been Anastasia?
TUESDAY
Today I made a chronological discovery: I placed a date on my present day. I placed a date on it and cannot believe it myself.
Valentina usually brings my pills on a tray but today she took them out of a box. She forgot the box on my nightstand. I examined the unusual packaging and read: Date of manufacture: 14.12.1997. I initially thought it was a misprint but then I saw, lower: Expiration date: 14.12.1999. Not bad.
It works out that it’s now either 1998 or 1999 if, of course, they’re not using expired medicines. What kind of accident could I have been in that I turned up at the opposite end of the century? What was this: my damaged consciousness playing games? I was certain there was some sort of simple and rational explanation for those figures.
I laboriously rose from my bed and went over to the mirror by the door. Deeply sunken eyes with circles underneath. Gray eyes, circles of dark blue. Lines from my nose to the corners of my lips, but creases, not wrinkles. That’s thought to evidence smiles: I have to think I smiled a lot in my previous life. Medium-brown hair, not one strand of gray. Pale. Pale but not old! In 1999, someone the same age as the century should have a completely different appearance.
Geiger came in.
‘Doctor, is it now 1999? Or 1998?’
‘It’s 1999,’ he answered. ‘February 9.’
He was completely calm. A quick glance at the medicine.
‘Did you read that on the package? I suggested Valentina leave it here. Hints like that are admissible.’
‘Maybe you could hint the rest to me? How I got here in the first place and what happened to me?’
He smiled:
‘I’ll certainly hint but I won’t tell you. I did already explain everything to you. Your consciousness resembles a stomach after a fast: overloading it means killing it. As you see, I’m candid with you to the greatest degree possible.’
‘Then tell me what’s happening in Russia now. At least in general terms.’
Geiger thought for a minute.
‘Dictatorship gave way to chaos. They steal like never before. The person in power abuses alcohol. That’s general terms.’
Yes… Well, there you have it, Aviator Platonov.
FRIDAY
I haven’t felt like writing for two days; I have been thinking about what Geiger said. And about my ninety-ninth year. I haven’t come up with anything because I cannot fathom it. It seemed I had grasped it, accepted it, and calmed, but then it was as if I’d come to my senses… and my head began spinning again. Geiger is right: if I learn any thing else new now, I’ll likely go out of my mind. It is better to think about the past.
In Siverskaya, there was a rather long street, Tserkovnaya Street, that ran from the flour mill, past the Peter and Paul Church, to the far bridge that crosses the river. The street rose from the Oredezh and descended to it, too, where the river made a jog. Our squadron was marching along that road. It was not a large squadron but it was fully military and excellently outfitted. In front was a banner with a two-headed eagle, behind that were a bugler and a drummer, and, behind them, the squadron itself. The road was level for most of the way, so one could maintain a measured pace. The banner fluttered, the bugler blared, and the drummer, accordingly, drummed. And so: I was that drummer. Papa bought me the drum for Siverskaya’s marches: it was real, stretched with animal skin. Unlike a toy drum, it produced a lingering, resonant, and simultaneously deep sound. And it was such a nice, sweet feeling for me to drum then: tram-tararam, tram-tararam, tram-tararam-pam, tram-pam-pam.