More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The street sign bore the real name, but it was plain and insignificant. It happened so often—beautiful things had stupid names, and the other way around.
Sasha slumped at the edge of the cot, laden with the firm conviction that something terrible had just happened. Something unidentifiable, inexplicable, some unknown threat—and thus, her terror grew in a geometric progression.
He fell silent, surprised and even confused, his own words like cockroaches running from the bright light.
Reading the barbaric combinations of half-familiar and alien words, she felt something brewing inside her: within her head, a wasp nest was waking up, and it droned and hummed in distress, searching in vain for an exit.
That which we are forced to learn has meaning. We do not comprehend it. But it is not just brainwashing, not just cramming: meaning seeps in through this sluggish mess just like a three-dimensional image rises out of dots and squiggles; it is not a “horse,” and definitely not a “fir tree.” Chances are this science cannot be described by a single word. Or even two words. Perhaps words that describe this science, this process, do not even exist.
She continued reading anyway, hoping for another eruption, but the lines stretched like rusty centipedes, leaving footprints in her brain, and their meaning eluded her.
Sasha blinked: her pupils unfolded and snapped shut again, like a camera lens, then went back to normal.
Several times during the last eighteen months Sasha had heard the crackling sound with which the threads that held together the familiar world ripped apart. She thought she was used to it.
The door frames had a lousy habit of slithering out of her reach like a marinated mushroom escaping the fork. That’s why Sasha first felt for the door with her hands, found the obstacles on the right and left sides, and only then exited the room.
And Sasha, back on the periphery, would be slowly transforming into a new creature herself. Into an unknown entity. Perhaps into something life-threatening. She would transform silently. And it was a good thing that Mom had Valentin and that she would have that baby, because the girl who had been born and grown up in this home no longer existed . . .
The CD contained silence. Deep, dense, devouring everything in its sight. Trying to devour Sasha as well; Sasha had panicked and struggled, like a fly on a strip of flypaper, using all her strength to stay on the edge, terrified to fall into this soft all-encompassing nothing, resisting this grave alien silence.
Silence came and stuffed Sasha’s ears. It came very close, and was deafening, all-encompassing, ready to pull Sasha inside itself, to envelop and digest. It was revolting and terrifying. Twisting out of its grasp, Sasha tore the headphones off; the drunken voices singing heart-wrenchingly and off-key behind the wall now sounded to her like a choir of angels.
They were shouting, perhaps even threatening. Sasha looked through them and listened to the silence.
“Please don’t be so pessimistic. If I were an eighteen-year-old girl, I’d never lose heart, never despair.
The paroxysm of curiosity was similar to the sharp sensation of hunger.
Sasha reached for him. Embraced him. Not with her arms. Yegor became a part of her. She took him, perhaps even stole him. On the bench in the middle of the yard in front of the dorm. In front of everyone.
“Am I no longer human?” “And why is it so important to you?”
“‘What’s in a name? that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.’ In other words, the essence of an object does not change depending on its name. This is a common misconception, not unlike the ‘world is flat’ belief. By verbally identifying an object, by giving it a name, we alter it. And at the same time we prevent it from changing. A name is like a forked stick that we use to hold a snake on the ground.”
For tonight, she planned a lot of work, but the thought of a salami sandwich had just appeared and now refused to depart.
me
“I can’t stop,” Sasha whispered. “I cannot—not be.”
“Fear is a projection of danger,” he continued, “genuine or imagined. The thing you wear around your neck is a phantom fear, the kind you get used to . . . kind of like a familiar sprain. Nothing happened. But you believe in trouble, and that is why you lived through these minutes as if through a real tragedy.”
I would study. I would work hard if you were nice to me!” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t have, Sasha. Only a strong incentive takes you over the edge. Only motivation.” “But there are other stimuli. Love. Ambition . . .” “There are none equal to fear,” he said, almost with regret.
To live is to be vulnerable. A thin membrane of a soap bubble separates one from impenetrable hell.
