He was going along the street and he suddenly saw the kissing teenagers. The girl was wearing a red knit fluffy cap. The one like Katya had. When he saw her for the first time. Katya!
Quick! You only need to run quicker … The elevator, the buttons, the stairs, and more stairs … Quick! You should get safe from it all …
Sharp air struck into the nostrils, unusually fresh. Alexander was flying like in the childhood; every boy jumped from the garage in childhood. He completely transformed into the brain, one enormous brain, filled with clear thoughts, as if illuminated with the rays of thousands of suns. Clairvoyance filled him like an air balloon, and he was rocketing higher and higher! He could clearly and distinctly see many lost things: the wedding ring, which Katya was unsuccessfully searching for, that had rolled into a small crack in the wardrobe, his flippers that he had forgotten in Tikhon’s dacha of, the money stashed into the old boots, when he had been drunk …
There was some way out still! Yes! Yes! He still had the apartment, although small, but it was in the downtown. If he sold it, or signed the agreement, he would ensure splendid care to his mother, and he would be free! He could get onto any motor ship unnoticeably, without any documents, or land a job of a cook or a sailor there completely officially, as he had dreamed when a child and start his life from the scratch! He could see his own black children running towards him, who smelled of the warm sun, white-toothed and sweet-voiced with pink palms and soles – who existed in different versions of quantum physics reality. A wildish woman with bright mouth and naked jumping breasts was coming to him, holding her hands … It was that very straw he clutched at, having lost his dream. Past and future is kept sealed up in the present, in each event there are several probabilities of completion of every event and they all exist simultaneously in the space and the time, they are suspended in the skies in the state of readiness until a man makes his own choice.
These were his personal chronomirages and they were getting brighter, more distinct… He could even not leave anywhere. He could just rent an apartment and continue making his dream come true. To continue with the madness of a man, who had nothing to lose. Did not he know that the victory does come only after complete desperation and the deeper the abyss, in which you turn out to be, the more tremendous the success, that is in store for you? How unpardonably criminally he forgot about this!
He could see the enormous open cinemas, built in the anomalous zones of Russia by his old associates – scientists. He could see the person, who headed this fearless team, who was not afraid to continue his pursuits, he did not even take great credits on it – the land in the anomalous zones cost nothing … This was that very young thin scientist – four eyes who asked him that fatal question during the official procedure of protection of his thesis. This was his friend Tikhon. How could he have forgotten about simple envy, which is always there during the accomplishment of great discoveries!
He saw these halls in the open air, next to the dusty roads, near the forests and fields. Here they are being filled up by people, the tickets expensive, but there are not enough vacant places, children sit in their parents’ lap. The eyes of all those present are glued impatiently to the road. All, everything, is the way Alexander has dreamed, like he so intensely visualized. And he gave up his ambition so criminally! Now they let off artificial fog, it is thicker and denser than natural. The spectators do not have to wait long – what dramatic and magnificent spectacles they are witnessing! Real, true battles, genuine death of people, horses on fire and the grass that turned poppy-red from blood. It was a grand, astonishing and thrilling war. People have jumped to their feet, someone is shouting something with enthusiasm, and others are sobbing, howling desperately. Dexterous workers in uniforms hurriedly gather the objects, left on the battle field – these are weapons, road bags, the adornment of soldiers and horses. Everything is being bought up in seconds – those are unprecedented, unmatched souvenirs! And they do not waste away before your eyes; they do not vanish into thin air! Those leisurely movements with which the people hide their treasures into the bags and pockets can tell you without words that the scientists have found that secret code in order to unlock the safe of time.
This discovery had the most profound consequences which neither Alexander nor his superviser could forecast in their time. Television, theaters, computers became the matter of the distant past – the most powerful companies went bankrupt, millions of people remained jobless. No movie, even the brightest one matched up to the living events of the past and future years with their real death, cruelty, passion … Tremendous efforts of the scientists made it possible to let manifested not only the pictures of wars and funerals, but also of magnificent weddings of the crowned heads, it was even possible to try the leftovers of their viands. It often happened so that one event followed the other – the wedding of one epoch was changed by the air battle, which was to happen thousands years later. No sooner had the sun rays melted the whimsical flying vehicles than there appeared below a splendid ball in the court of rich grandees.
A group of scientists, altogether they were three people, literally walked in golden slippers. Tikhon, who ruined his thesis, had palatial mansions in many countries of the world. Yachts, personal aircraft, blue ponds, palm trees – the luxurious, unbelievable life, everything just the way Alexander had pictured to himself.
The past and the future did not exist; there was one continuous, eternal present. Pitilessly the angels, fanned out with a crunch of the versions of reality before him, which exist in the skies, and flew away in horror. Alexander closed his eyes tight not to see, how he, nevertheless, would manage to realize his dream. He orchestrated these miracles, which will occur … it is even ridiculous to say … it cannot be … oh, how could he. And Katya was together with him again. Indeed, as Dostoyevsky already noticed, there usually lives an absolutely ordinary person next to the genius, the golden mean, very often a sly or a very practical one, but – surprising as it may seem – the one who sincerely and passionately believes in the wild dream of his partner, in spite of the common sense, and sometimes does so even more ardently than the genius himself. And he is always nearby prepared to suffer any privations, but only until the dream is living. And this is the inexplicable riddle, the secret of life. Could Alexander have not known, not read about this?! Was not it him who had written in his youth, in the diary,” that the potential realization of any dream was kept at the very moment of birth”? How could he have forgotten about this?
In reality there simultaneously existed not one, not two or three, but many more versions of his phenomenally successful or absurd, prosperous or strange, but Life. Life. He suddenly saw the expression of the eyes of Verochka, his laboratory assistant. He realised, how she looked at him all those years – with such a hope. How could he not notice such obvious things?
Did not he know that in order to achieve lucidity of mind and to find the way out, you needed energy, only additional energy? Had not Nikolai Valerevich had 15-hour sleep and stuffed himself with vitamins to bursting point before he needed to make a new scientific breakthrough? Had not he made him, Alexander, his right hand, do the same at some critical moments of his studies? How could he being exhausted and fatigued from the sleepless nights, tired, drained and worn-out as an old sick elephant, have entrusted his crazy mind, that had long since betrayed Alexander, – with deciding his fate!
The mind incapable of thinking clearly, deprived of lucidity always chooses the wrong way…
And this pain, which he had endured on earth, that was so excruciating, agonizing, which kept gnawing and tearing up his throat and seemed so unbearable, that he would pay any price to stop it, was one thousandth of what he was experiencing now, helplessly trying to catch at the air! The problems, which he had previously encountered, now, in the light of the irrevocability, given that it was the point of no return, seemed even not problems, but altogether only the tasks which he could cope with and which he, one way or another, had to solve. The life, which seemed so unmerciful, ruthless and unfair to him, only just as usual implemented its law of pendulum – it is necessary to languish long enough to deserve future happiness. And not as long as you – a capricious and egocentric creature want, but as long as you are destined by from above, like milk mushrooms in cold salting soak in salt and spring water for exactly forty days. And everywhere, in every place, in every spot, near and far, and for thousands of miles – there was only spiritual nonage and immaturity of human souls of people, who were only craving for pleasures and shunning hardships, that were surrendered by difficulties and rejected their dreams! As the sun reveals the true essence of things in the daytime, so now – in the rays of the clarity of his mind there flew with him only monsters: dwarfs and hunchbacks, cadavers blinded by pride and vampires deafened by their greediness, only leprous beasts – and no human face, absolutely none …
And despite all the hardships, trials and tribulations Life is the most precious and the most important thing in the whole world! Mom, was it really necessary to jump from the roof in order to understand this? And if only it were now possible to choose, he would have crawled along the frozen earth for thousands of miles just to beseech the Almighty only to be given one more year, day, minute of his Life! Billions of brightest stars came down him from the skies. Envelopped in their flames, he did not feel pain, he only felt the fierce desire to live, this unprecedented, insatiable thirst for life and the irreparableness of the terrible misfortune, the awful tragedy, when the blazing skies began to loudly shut all the exit doors, one by one, right before his wide open eyes …
“Sashenka[1], aren’t you hurt? Don’t cry, wait, I’m coming!” – His mom was shouting and hurriedly running towards him, young, merry, her legs healthy and beautiful …
October, 2011
Перевод Натальи Орловой
Translated by Nataly Orlova
[1] “Sashenka” is the affectionate diminutive for Alexander.
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