Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko Read Free Book Online Page B

“income” and asked what it was. Sasha lied, said it was brass, tokens for a game. No, of course it’s not casino, what are you talking about! It’s a game like checkers, everyone plays it at school.
    Mom believed her. Sasha had never lied to her before. Well, almost never.
    She came back home. The door to Mom’s room was shut. Heavy silence hung in the apartment, only snow swished outside, hitting the tin awnings.
    Sasha went to the bathroom; she turned on the hot water and took a long time watching the running stream.
    Then she vomited money. And, paradoxically, she immediately felt better.
    ***
    The heap of coins grew. Sasha stuffed them into an old sock and kept it in the bottom desk drawer, under a pile of old essays. Who knew what Mom would say if she ever found this treasure, but lately Mom had a lot of other things on her mind.
    A shaving kit was now comfortably placed on the bathroom shelf, an extra toothbrush poked out of a glass, and Sasha no longer dared to roam around the house in her underwear. The smell of men’s cologne overpowered all the other familiar smells. And Mom, who, as long as Sasha could remember, always belonged to her and her only, now shared her attention between her daughter and Valentin—and the latter, the new kid on the block, got the lion’s share.
    It was obvious that Valentin intended to “establish close contact” with Sasha. He initiated long meaningful conversations at the dinner table, and Sasha’s upbringing prevented her from leaving right away. Waiting for her were numerous textbooks, many unread chapters and unfinished papers; then, on the border of night and day, there was her run, a humiliating trip to the bushes, and the clanking of coins hitting the bathroom sink. Valentin asked detailed questions regarding her life, her plans for the future, questioned her desire to become a philologist, inquired whether she’d ever considered literary translations from English, and spoke at length about some business colleges that offered stipends and all sorts of stimulus programs for students with a high grade point average. Sasha swallowed these conversations like spoonfuls of fish oil, then hid in her room and sat there at her writing desk, mindlessly doodling in her notebooks.
    Valentin worked in the field of medical technology, something that had to do with research, or testing, or maybe sales, or perhaps all of the above. Sasha memorized nothing of his detailed stories about himself. He had two children, either two boys, or a boy and a girl, and he spoke of them at length and with gusto, stressing how much he loved them. Stunned by the hypocrisy, Sasha took her cooling tea into her room and sat there, leafing through the college brochures for prospective students. She struggled keeping her eyes open. In the heart of winter, when the days were short and dark, the lack of sleep felt like torture.
    ***
    In the beginning of February a thaw has set in, and then—in one single night—everything was frozen again. Sasha went for a run, completed the ritual, and on the way home, right near the entrance to her building, she slipped, fell and broke her arm.
    She sat quietly, enduring the pain, until Mom woke up. Mom saw Sasha’s forearm, panicked and called for an ambulance. Valentin emerged, volunteered to accompany Sasha, frowned, commiserated, babbled all sorts of nonsense, like “All things are difficult before they are easy,” and his stream of consciousness made Sasha feel five hundred times worse. The ambulance took her to the trauma center, where an old surgeon, gray from the sleepless night and cigarette smoke, silently rolled Sasha into a cast.
    “Like apples from a tree,” he said to the nurse. “They just keep falling. We should expect more harvest today. And you,” he nodded to Sasha, “you need to make an appointment with your physician. And don’t worry, stuff happens. You young ones heal fast.”
    Valentin took Sasha home in a taxi. The pain was almost gone.