The Wolves of Eternity, page 49
‘Some might say that life at that time sounds rather boring. There was no sex, not even any movement. All these things did was lie at the bottom of the sea. They didn’t involve themselves in each other’s lives, there was no interaction. They were a bit like babies, you could say, lying side by side without yet having learned to play with each other. And maybe they didn’t have much of a career, existing only for twenty million years before becoming extinct. Because, as we know, twenty million years is the blink of an eye in the history of life. Why did they die out? Perhaps their fractal-modular architecture effectively ruled out their chances of developing further. At any rate, after them, though still in the Ediacaran Period, a quite different group of creatures emerges, among them this.’
I moved on to the next slide and glanced at the time. Only a few minutes left.
‘This is Dickinsonia. It looks like a doormat, right? This thing could be up to a metre and a half in length, or as small as a coin or a button. Quite a number of fossil imprints have been found of it, and for many years they were something of a mystery. Is it an animal? Is it a plant? In the world of evolutionary biology, we’re talking about the Holy Grail here. But a few years ago the mystery was finally solved, and by a Russian doctoral student. It could have been me, it should have been me . . .’
I smiled as the comment elicited some laughter.
‘Unfortunately for me, however, the student in question was a young man by the name of Ilya Bobrovsky. He found a fossil of Dickinsonia here in Russia that was something more than just an imprint in stone, it actually contained organic remains, molecules. Ilya managed to analyse them. They turned out to contain cholesterol, which is found only in animals. Like Charnia before it, Dickinsonia had no eyes, no mouth or limbs, but the evidence suggests that it could move about on its own. It’s the first animal life form we know of that could do this. But there was something else about it, too, perhaps even more significant: bilateral symmetry. Meaning that its right and left sides were the same. And this of course is something that has turned out to be an incredibly efficient body form. Every animal now living on earth is made in the same way, and most of those living in the sea.
‘Why did life suddenly become so advanced?
‘That’s what we’ll talk about next time.’
I closed my laptop, pulled out the cables and put everything into my bag, making sure not to look up and encourage attention. Students were always coming up to me after the lectures to ask questions or discuss a matter, even to give me compliments. Often I’d stay behind, however tedious it was to me, but now all I wanted was to get back downstairs to my office and wind down a bit.
I could see the troublemaker out of the corner of my eye, making his way forward, and so I slipped out through a side door that led into a corridor, at the bottom end of which was a lift. I wasn’t happy with the way the lecture had gone, it had been too messy by far and I hadn’t got round to saying half the things I’d wanted. It was supposed to have given a systematic outline of the Ediacaran Period and how it began, and then presented the various life forms that had been present. Instead, it had been incoherent, all over the place.
The lift door opened at once and I stepped inside and pressed the button before checking myself in the mirror. In the glaring light, the line between my foundation and my natural skin colour was clearly visible. The difference was at least a couple of shades.
How annoying. I’d be aware of it the rest of the day now.
I rubbed my thumb across my throat a few times. I’d have to remember that firewood for Papa. I could just as well get it done straight away.
The lift stopped and the door opened. I got my phone out as I went down the corridor. No sooner had I turned it on than it pinged with notifications, one after another. Sasha had called. Oksanka had sent another six texts. Whatever she had to say, she always divided it up, which sometimes had me scared that something terrible had happened when I saw how many she’d sent. There was something from Aeroflot, then a text from one of my private students, Gregori, to say he couldn’t make it on Monday. And one from Vasilisa.
How about coffee?
I stopped in my tracks and wrote back.
Great. When?
Now? she replied straight away.
Where are you? I typed.
Canteen, she wrote back.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was so typical of her. I hadn’t heard from her in over a year and now all of a sudden here she was.
I stopped by the office and dumped my bag before going down to the canteen, where I caught sight of her immediately, though she was sitting facing the other way. Her big, round figure was easily recognisable, as was the fur coat.
‘Vaseshka,’ I said.
She jumped up and we hugged. She stood as if to take me in for a moment with her hands on my shoulders.
‘You’re looking good as ever,’ she said.
‘You too,’ I said.
‘You don’t have to lie, she said. ‘But I shan’t complain.’
I smiled and sat down.
‘How are you?’ she said.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘And you?’
‘Oh, not bad.’
She took off the big coat and draped it over the back of the chair next to her, pushed up the sleeves of the thin white lambswool jumper she was wearing, then planted her elbows on the table, her hands clasped in front of her. Staunch, and yet not entirely unquivering. She looked so robust and healthy, but the body deceived, I knew. The soul inside it was erratic, inconstant.
‘So, where have you been all this time?’ I said. ‘This last year? Have you been here in the city?’
‘My grandmother died last year, did I tell you? No? She was as old as the hills, so it was no great tragedy, but took its toll nonetheless. Did you ever get to meet her?’
I shook my head.
‘I only heard about her.’
‘Well, anyway. She kept a dacha outside Bogorodsk.’
‘I remember. You went there once in a while.’
‘Yes. I moved in. That’s where I’ve been this last year.’
‘You could have phoned or replied to my texts, even so.’
‘There’s no internet there. I had no mobile phone either. I should have told you I’d be going away, of course. That it would be hard to get in touch with me. But I didn’t.’
‘No, it’s OK,’ I said. ‘It’s just like you, that’s all.’
‘Is it?’
‘It’s not the first time you’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.’
‘No, perhaps not,’ she said, and laughed.
I turned and looked at the clock on the wall behind me.
‘Are you in a hurry?’ she said.
‘No. Not at all, in fact. I’ve just given a lecture and thought I might go into town. It’s Papa’s eightieth birthday tomorrow and I haven’t got him a present yet. Why don’t you come with me? We could have lunch.’
‘That sounds like an excellent plan.’
‘Let me just pop up and get my things first.’
Back in my office, I called Oksanka as I wriggled my coat on.
‘Alya,’ she said. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ I said, now putting my feet into my boots, phone clamped between shoulder and chin. ‘I was wondering if you could do me a favour.’
‘Of course.’
‘Papa needs some firewood, only I don’t know where to get it. Can you find out for me, then send me the number?’
‘No problem. I’ll order it for you, if you like? It won’t take a few minutes.’
‘Do you mind? That’d be great, if you would.’
‘It’s no trouble.’
‘You’re an angel. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!’
I hung up, wrapped my scarf around my neck, grabbed my woolly hat, my tote bag and rucksack and went down to the canteen again. Vasya was standing waiting by the door.
‘Are we taking the metro?’ she said.
‘I was thinking we might,’ I said.
The snow was still falling outside. Everything was white and grey.
‘I wasn’t entirely sure you wouldn’t be angry with me, to be honest,’ she said as we crossed the concourse, heads lowered against the weather.
‘Why would I be angry with you?’ I said. ‘It’s not as if we’re married. It’s up to you if you don’t want to be in touch. I don’t own you. That’s not how friendships work.’
‘Not everyone would look at it like that.’
‘But I do.’
‘I know. And I’m glad. However, a lot of people might be inclined to think you didn’t care enough about your friends.’
‘What people? Who are you talking about?’
‘In general, I mean. A person who asks nothing of those around them, but lets them get on with it and do as they like. One could easily think it was down to lack of interest. It’s no big deal, though.’
‘You don’t get in touch for over a year and then you come here and criticise me for not caring? Is that it?’
‘So you are a bit angry.’
‘I wasn’t to begin with. But now I am. I don’t understand why you’d say such a thing.’
‘It didn’t come out right,’ she said.
‘No, it didn’t.’
The figures coming up the stairs of the metro across the park were dark and shadowy in all the grey and white. A bit further away, red tail lights shone from the traffic that had come to a halt at the junction.
‘You’ll be going to Samara tomorrow, then?’ she said after a while. ‘For Yegor’s birthday, I mean.’
‘Yes, we’re going this evening.’
‘You and Seva?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yegor throwing a party?’
‘You must be joking. He’s still as misanthropic as ever.’
‘He’s very fond of you, at least.’
‘He puts up with me. Admittedly, that’s saying a lot by his standards.’
We went down the steps into the underground. The grey-and-red stone beneath our feet was awash with slush melting into puddles. An elderly woman had forgotten to close her umbrella and held its protective canopy over her head as she walked in front of us. I saw the annoyance in people’s eyes when they had to dodge her.
‘What were you doing at the dacha, anyway?’ I said. ‘Were you writing?’
She nodded, and her eyes lit up the way they so often did when she got the chance to talk about herself.
‘Writing, yes. A lot. And working in the garden, weeding and planting. She’d done nothing with it for ten years at least, so it was very overgrown. Apart from that, reading.’
‘Were you on your own the whole time?’
‘Yes.’
‘It sounds marvellous, if you ask me,’ I said, standing back against the wall on the platform and putting my bag down between my feet. A minute and a half until the next one came.
‘It was. But it was cold as well. The place is hardly insulated at all. The walls are little more than the bare planks.’
‘I’ve no idea how you manage. I certainly wouldn’t be able to.’
‘A basic matter of wrapping up warm, that’s all. I’m used to sitting with my coat and scarf on indoors.’
‘Financially, I meant. I’m assuming your books haven’t made you rich.’
She laughed.
‘God, no. But I do odd jobs for various publishers. A bit of translating here, a bit of proofreading there. And I hardly ever buy a thing.’
She looked at me.
‘How about you?’
‘I do buy things, yes,’ I said with a smile. ‘Not much, though.’
I recognised a face in a group of young people standing a bit further along. A student of mine. Then I realised the others were familiar too. They’d all just come from my lecture.
I turned away from them and gave Vasya a smile as our eyes met.
‘I’ve started writing prose,’ she said. ‘Not a novel, more like a very meandering essay. You know the way a dog goes sniffing off, distracted by every scent?’
‘Sounds interesting,’ I said. ‘What’s it about?’
‘I’m not sure, really. It’s not finished yet. But the part I’ve just been working on is about Fyodorov and his Common Task.’
‘Fyodorov?’ I said, my eye drawn by the group of students again. The troublemaker had joined them now and was already holding forth. He saw me and sent me a snide-looking smile and a little nod. A couple of the others turned to see who he was looking at.
‘Haven’t you heard of Fyodorov?’
‘I don’t think I have,’ I said as the light in the tunnel came on and a faint rumble grew to a crescendo, the train sweeping then into the station like one of the sandworms in Dune. I picked up my bag and stepped forward.
‘He was a philosopher, very reclusive, though he worked for a period as a librarian at the Rumyantsev Museum in the late nineteenth century. He believed that humanity needed to work together and channel all its resources into bringing back to life every person who ever died.’
The train came to a halt and we got on. We found two seats next to each other. Thankfully, the students had gone into the carriage in front.
‘I’ve definitely never heard of him,’ I said. ‘He sounds like a proper lunatic. Why are you writing about him?’
‘He turned up.’
‘And now you’re having a sniff?’
She laughed.
‘That’s it, yes!’
The train pulled away. The passengers on the row of seats facing us all sat with their heads down, staring at the phones they held out in front of them in the palms of their hands. It looked like it had been choreographed.
‘I think you might be able to help me out,’ she said. ‘Fyodorov didn’t just think it was possible to revive the dead, he also of course believed in eternal life. What sets him apart there though is that he wasn’t coming at it from a religious angle. For him, it was nothing to do with God or Jesus. He believed science would make it possible. So naturally I thought you might enlighten me a bit. I’m thinking of the practicalities. I know there’s a lot of research into ageing and that a lot of scientists think it’s quite feasible that we can halt the processes of ageing, am I right? Genetically, I mean.’
‘Is this why you came to see me?’
She laughed sheepishly.
‘Not entirely,’ she said. ‘But it gave me an excuse to see you.’
‘Does it need an excuse?’
‘No, of course not. Only now it’s two birds with one stone, isn’t it? All I need really is a few suggestions for reading. I could get there myself, eventually, but that would take time, I’d have to sift through all sorts of rubbish first.’
‘I can send you some links,’ I said without looking at her.
‘Would you? Thanks ever so much,’ she said. ‘You’re a good friend.’
* * *
*
I first met Vasya when we were in our first year at university studying philology. It was impossible not to notice her. Rather more difficult to actually like her. She gave off a strange blend of uncertainty and pre-eminence, as introverted as she could be overbearing, and once I got to know her I discovered her to contain many more such dichotomies, of which perhaps the most obvious, or obtrusive, had to do with a complete lack of boundaries and extreme self-regulation. She could have periods where she would eat just about anything she came across in quite unbridled fashion, and from there go to the opposite extreme entirely. I remember once she came to dinner at some friends of ours and produced a set of scales from her bag, having decided, she announced, that from then on she was going to weigh everything she ate. She seemed not to notice the general astonishment this gave rise to at the table, but set up her scales as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It was much the same when it came to parties: either she’d be drunker than anyone else by far, or else she wouldn’t come and instead would stay in on her own, drinking tea and wallowing in her solitude the way she often did, when she’d refuse to open the door if the bell rang, even if it was one of her friends who’d come to see her.
