With effort, I moved on the wide bed and Valentina lay down alongside me, on top of the blanket. I myself do not know why, but I was certain she would fulfill my request. She inclined her head toward my head. I inhaled her scent: an infusion that joined ironed, starched, and snow-white with the aroma of perfume and a youthful body. She was sharing that with me and I could not breathe in enough of it. Geiger came into view as the doorway opened but Valentina remained lying there. Something tensed in her (I felt it) but she did not stand. She probably blushed; she could not help but blush.
‘Very good,’ said Geiger without entering. ‘Get some rest.’
A wonderful reaction in its own way.
I had not really intended to describe this as it relates not only to me, but since Geiger already saw everything… Let him have a proper understanding of the essence of what happened (though of course he understands anyway). I want for this to recur, if only for a few minutes each day.
SUNDAY
After waking, I mentally recited the Lord’s Prayer. It turns out that I can reproduce the prayer without hesitation. When I could not go to church on Sundays, I would at least recite ‘Our Father’ to myself.
I would move my lips in the damp wind. I lived on an island where attending services was not taken for granted. And it was not that the island was uninhabited – there were churches – but somehow it turned out that attending was not simple. I can no longer remember the details.
Church is a great joy, especially during childhood. I’m small, meaning I’m holding on to my mother’s skirt. The skirt under her fur jacket is long and the hem rustles along the floor. My mother places a candle by an icon and the skirt rises a tiny bit, my hand in a mitten along with it. She carefully picks me up and carries me toward the icon. I feel her palms on the small of my back, my felt boots and mittens move freely in the air, and it is as if I’m soaring toward the icon. Under me are dozens of candles – holiday candles, wavering – and I look at them, unable to avert my gaze from that brightness. They crackle, wax flowing from them, freezing on the spot in intricate stalactites. Coming to greet me, arms spread, is the Mother of God and I clumsily kiss Her on the hand because I am not in control of my flight and, after kissing, I touch Her with my forehead as one should. I feel the coolness of Her hand for an instant. And I soar around the church like that, I drift through aromatic smoke, over a priest swinging a censer. Over the choir, through its canticles (the slowed flapping of the precentor and his grimaces on the high notes). Over the candle lady and the people filling the church (flowing around the pillars), along windows, outside which there is a snow-covered country. Russia? Bitter cold swirls visibly near a door not tightly shut; there is rime on the handle. The crack widens abruptly and Geiger is in the rectangle that has formed.
‘We are in Russia, doctor, are we not?’ I ask.
‘In a certain sense, yes.’
He is preparing my arm for an intravenous drip.
‘Then why are you Geiger?’
He looks at me, surprised:
‘Because I’m a Russian German. Deutschrusse. Were you worried that we’re in Germany?’
No, I was not worried. Now I can simply consider that I know our location for certain. Essentially, that was not very clear until today.
‘And where is Nurse Valentina?’
‘She has the day off.’
After putting in the drip, Geiger takes my temperature. It’s 38.1.
‘And so,’ I ask, ‘there are no other nurses?’
‘You’re insatiable.’
I do not need another nurse. I just do not understand what kind of establishment this is where there is one doctor, one nurse, and one patient. Then again, anything is possible in Russia. ‘In Russia’… that must be a common phrase if it has even been preserved in my destroyed memory. It has its own rhythm. I don’t know what is behind it, but I do remember the set phrase.
I already have a few of these phrases that have surfaced out of nowhere. They probably have their own histories, but I’m uttering them as if for the first time. I feel like Adam. Or a child: children often utter set phrases without yet knowing their meaning. Anything is possible in Russia, uh-huh. There is condemnation in that, perhaps even a verdict. It feels as if it is some sort of disagreeable boundlessness, that everything will head in an all-too-obvious direction. How much does that phrase concern me?
After thinking, I announce the phrase to Geiger, as a German, and ask him to evaluate it. I follow the movement of his lips and brows – people sampling wine look like this. He inhales noisily as if in answer, but he exhales just as noisily after pausing. As a German, he decides to keep silent, in order, let us suppose, not to traumatize me. Instead, he asks me to stick out my tongue, which, in my view, is justified in its own way. My tongue still operates independently to a significant degree: it pronounces what it is accustomed to pronouncing, as happens with talking birds. Geiger has apparently understood everything about my tongue so asks me to stick it out. He shakes his head when I do. My tongue does not gladden him.
Geiger turns as he approaches the door:
‘Oh, also… If you’d like for Nurse Valentina to lie next to you, even, let us suppose, under the same blanket as you, just say so, don’t be shy. That’s fine.’
‘You know yourself she’ll be completely safe.’
‘I know. Although,’ he snaps his fingers, ‘anything is possible in Russia, is it not?’
At the moment, not everything… I sense that like nobody else.
FRIDAY
I had no strength for all those days. Nor do I have any today. Something strange is spinning in my head: ‘Aviator Platonov.’ Another set phrase?
I ask Geiger:
‘Doctor, was I an aviator?’
‘As far as I know, no…’
Where was I called an aviator? Perhaps in Kuokkala? Precisely! In Kuokkala. I shout to Geiger:
‘That moniker is linked to Kuokkala, where I… where we… Have you been to Kuokkala, doctor?’
‘It has a different name now.’
‘How is that?’
‘Well, now it’s called Repino… The important thing is to write down your recollection.’
I’ll write it down, but tomorrow. I’m tired.
SATURDAY
My cousin Seva and I are on the Gulf of Finland. Seva is my mother’s brother’s son: that explanation of the kinship sounded terribly complicated to me when I was a child. Even now, I don’t say it smoothly. Of course ‘cousin’ is a little easier to say but it’s best of all to say ‘Seva’. Seva’s parents have a house in Kuokkala.
He and I are flying a kite. In the evenings, we run along the beach at the very edge of the water. Sometimes our bare feet graze the water and the spray sparkles in the setting sun. We imagine that we’re aviators. We’re flying together, me in the front seat, Seva in the back. It’s deserted and lonely there in the cold sky but our friendship warms us. If we perish, at least we are together; that draws us close. We attempt to exchange remarks there, up high, but the wind carries our words away.
‘Aviator Platonov,’ Seva shouts to me from the back. ‘Aviator Platonov, the locality of Kuokkala lies ahead!’
I do not understand why Seva is addressing his colleague so ceremoniously. Maybe in order that Platonov not forget he is an aviator. Seva’s high voice (it always remained that way) carries along the entire locality we are flying over. Sometimes it merges with the screeches of seagulls and they become almost indistinguishable from one another. To tell the truth, this shouting of his irritates me very much. Glancing at Seva’s happy face, I cannot find the strength within to ask him to be quiet. Essentially, it is thanks to his strange birdlike timbre that I remember him.