Vita Nostra

“Good. I have a task for you to perform.”

Sasha opened her mouth.

“It’s a simple task. Very simple. Every morning, at five o’clock, you will go to the park for a jog. Run as much as you can—two laps in the alleys, three laps. When you’ve jogged enough, find thick bushes and urinate on the ground. It’s better if you drink enough water beforehand to avoid any sort of issues. Every morning at five o’clock.”

“Why?” Sasha whispered. “Why do you need this?”

Rain slid down her cheeks, mixing with tears. The dark man did not answer. Drops of rain hung on his glasses, reflecting the distant streetlights, which made his eyes seem multifaceted.

“Once a month you can have some time off during your period. Four days … is four days enough?” Sasha was silent.

“Watch the alarm clock. Missing a day or being late even once is a tremendously bad idea. The sequence of actions cannot be altered: plan ahead, drink enough water.”

“For the rest of my life?” Sasha burst out suddenly.

“What?”

“Do I have to run … for the rest of my life?”

“No.” The man seemed surprised. “I’ll tell you when to stop. Well, now go home, you’re freezing.”

Sasha was shaking.

“Come on,” her companion said gently. “Everything will be just fine … Of course, as long as you demonstrate enough discipline.”

A lone streetlight burned near the park entrance. Under the iron pole where a town clock hung a long time ago, an old man with a dog lingered, the first and only passerby at this time of day. His eyes slid indifferently over Sasha.

She ran through the pouring water. Jogging paths curled around the central flower bed in the middle of the park. Sasha chose the shortest path. Not watching her feet, she flew right into the puddles; cold water splashed from under her sneakers and washed over her sweatpants, right up to the knees. Sasha gritted her teeth and kept running. Water under her feet gurgled just like the contents of her stomach: she had drunk more than a quart of water before leaving the house. The feeling was unbearable. One more lap. One more.

She slowed down and stopped. The park was completely deserted. A lone streetlight shimmered through the half-naked branches. Stepping over wet leaves, Sasha crawled into the bushes that drenched her with raindrops and, cursing everything under the moon, fulfilled the last obligation of the ritual. She bitterly thought of herself as a dog being taken for a walk.

The short crawl into the bushes brought relief, a quite legitimate one, considering the amount of liquid she had poured into herself. She felt a bit less miserable and even managed to stop crying. At half past five she unlocked the door of her apartment with her own key, crept into the bathroom leaving wet footsteps, hid her jogging suit and squishy sneakers under the sink, and turned on the hot shower.

A minute later she threw up. The coins flew onto the bottom of the bathtub, yellow disks on white enamel. Sasha washed her face, took control of her breathing, and collected the coins in her hand. Four coins, the round symbol on one side and a zero on the reverse. They looked very old, as if for many years they were kept in locked chests, an unidentified treasure …

Fifteen minutes later Sasha fell asleep in her bed, a deep, dreamless sleep, the kind she hadn’t experienced in a long time. When Mom came to wake her up an hour later, she claimed to be sick and stayed in bed.

… And why would she bother with school?

Her tutor called in the afternoon, and Sasha lied about being sick. The tutor, displeased, asked to warn her in advance should that happen again.

Later that evening she was supposed to attend prep courses at the university. Sasha did not go. She lay on her bed, textbooks thrown aside, and thought, What’s the point?

Because clearly the world did not work the way she imagined before. The visible connection between different events—objective laws, consistent patterns, accidents, and regular days—all this simply served as a Chinese screen for another existence, invisible and incomprehensible.

If the man in the dark glasses exists—really, truly exists—if his hands hold dreams, reality, accidents … What is the purpose, then, of going to school? Entering a university? When at any moment everything could disappear, be destroyed, simply because Sasha’s alarm clock did not go off on time?

Mom returned from the office; she asked worried questions, took Sasha’s temperature, and shook her head in despair.

“Did you overexert yourself already? It’s a bit early, it’s only October, and the school year is just starting. I told you to go for a walk on Sunday! Go to the movies, call your classmates. You do have friends, don’t you?”

“Don’t worry.” Sasha’s answer sounded prerecorded. “I’ll be fine.”

She added to herself, “Of course, as long as I demonstrate enough discipline.”

Before bed, she set up three alarm clocks: her own, Mom’s electronic one, and one more, an old one, her grandmother’s. Throughout the night she fell into chunks of sleep, woke up in cold sweat, and glanced at their faces: one in the morning, quarter to two, half past two …

At half past four she was almost glad she could get up.

In November the weather suddenly improved. Unexpected, conditionally autumnal, but quite tangible warmth returned. The sun came out every day—not for long, but it was generous enough. Dried-up leaves rustled underfoot and smelled fresh and tangy, sad but not without hope.

Sasha would wake up at four twenty-nine, one minute before the alarm clocks’ roll call. She deactivated them one after the other, like mines, pulled on a warm jogging suit and a jacket, and walked to the park. In one month, she’d learned all the minute details of the path. She knew where the asphalt was touched by erosion, the places where puddles collected after the rain, knew all the slopes and all the flat spots. Running along the dry alleys, jumping over the piles of leaves gathered by the park rangers, she used the time to repeat her English dialogues, plan that day’s chores, and silently sing a song that she’d heard on the radio the day before. Finishing the third and then the fourth lap around the flower bed, she knew for sure that nothing bad could happen to her, or to Mom. From that, she derived bitter, detached, autumnal joy.

Unexpectedly, “the days of rest” spent without the morning jog turned out to be the most excruciating in the last few weeks. Sasha continued to wake up at half past four, and lay without sleep until seven, listening to the waking-up sounds of her building: the rumbling of the dump truck, the din of the elevator, fights between the street cleaners. The ritual was broken; Sasha imagined her fate stretched out like a thread, pulling, drying, about to break. Every day she got more and more nervous, until the morning finally came when she could pull on her sneakers and, leaving footsteps on the frosted grass, walk into the November sunrise.

Then Valentin arrived.

Sasha came back from school for a minute, to drop off her bag, grab a bite to eat, and run to her lesson. A stranger sat on the bench near the entrance to her building. She said hello (she always said hello to anyone sitting on that bench) and only then recognized the pale-skinned, thin nonstranger.

“Hello,” said Valentin. “I noticed no one was home.”

“Mom will be back by six,” said a bewildered Sasha. “And I … um.”

“I’ll wait.”

It was half past two. Sasha glanced at her watch, then at Valentin.

There was no hope that he would leave. She did not feel too optimistic about Mom chasing him away. Plus, how could she make any decisions regarding Mom’s fate according to her own desires?

“You can call her at the office,” she said frostily. And added, a little too late, “How are you feeling?”

She woke up at four twenty-nine, turned off the alarm clocks, shuffled over to the kitchen, and gulped some tea from a thermos. She got dressed and went into the hall; then she left and locked the door.

Last night Mom and Valentin had stayed up in the kitchen, talking softly for a long time. Sasha had gone to bed early (she always did these days, the lack of sleep was getting to her), covered her head with a pillow to avoid inadvertent eavesdropping, shut her eyes, and tried to fall asleep. But sleep had evaded her. Sasha thought of life as a collection of identical days. To her, existence consisted of days, and each day seemed to run like a circular ribbon—or, better yet, a bike chain, moving evenly over the cogs. Click—another change of speed, days became a little different, but they still flowed, still repeated, and that very monotony concealed the meaning of life …

She was probably falling asleep. Never before had she had thoughts like that, not in a conscious state.

A long time ago, when Sasha was little, she wanted to get herself a daddy. Not the one who left and now lived someplace else, without a care in the world, but a real one, one who would live with them, in the same apartment. Audaciously, Sasha tried to convince her mother to date any one of the more or less suitable men they encountered; to her, life “with a mommy and daddy” symbolized true happiness.

That was years ago. Now Sasha’s heart ached when she thought of her mother and Valentin. He’d lied to her once, he would probably do it again. Mom realized it, but she still spoke softly to him in the kitchen over a cup of cool tea; they sat, heads almost touching, and talked, even though it was already past midnight …

Nocturnal frost made the puddles sparkle. Through her woolen socks and the soles of her sneakers, Sasha could feel how cold the ground had become overnight. Her daily training made running easy. A lone streetlight burned near the park entrance. The old man with the dog lingered, and Sasha nodded to him, as if greeting an old acquaintance. He nodded back.

Somebody was in the park. That somebody stood on the path, shifting from foot to foot, wearing a jogging suit, a windbreaker, and sneakers, like Sasha herself. She had to come almost face-to-face with him before she recognized him.

It was Ivan Konev—Kon—a classmate.

“Hey. Shall we run?”