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(The novel, a fragment)
Left on that party
With hope of indulgence
A.D.
In the field it is not visible zgi.
Someone calls: "Help!"
What can I?
I also am poor and small,
I was tired to death,
How I will help?
Someone calls in silence:
"My brother, come nearer to me!
Easier together.
If we can not go,
Together we will die on a way,
Together we will die! "
Feodor SOLOGUB
Therefore frighten in vain
That the worlds are immense and silent
And heavens are dead. Here, for dvermi,
Spaces are so empty and ужасны*.
Robert FROST. Spaces
* V.Toporova's transfer.
PROLOGUE
IMMERSING
Sooner or later almost each person has an impression, that
All world has gone mad. You continually hear about monstrous crimes,
Seeming senseless, bloody terror, radioactive infection and about
Thousand the people slowly dying of a leukaemia. From morning news you
Learn about explosions of the trains, the cut off heads and the ripped up stomachs
Pregnant women, that five more hundreds eighteen-year soldiers
Became yesterday gun meat... Young mothers smother babies or heat them in
nuzhnikah; invalids burn down alive; children perish under wheels of lorries...
Someone invisible pulls strings, and someone throw out from a window; to someone
Thrust a bullet in a head; someone's dirty and fleshy fingers concern the beautiful
And gentle, leaving a fat stain... It is possible to explain Something displays
Instinct of self-preservation or a bad heredity. Calms, not the truth
Whether? Mental hospitals are overflowed, however around it is too much aggression and a suicide...
Respectable fathers of families appear tyrants and murderers juvenile,
And lovely pair of pensioners — kannibalami, preferring to all to the rests
Gentle meat of schoolboys... At stations find corpses of the homeless who has frozen
Past night... All it is still very far from you and at all does not call
Shudders.
The silent poor person from the next entrance. It has appeared in improper
Place during improper time, and him have killed, having drunk then over a body a bottle
"Capital". Forty nozhevyh wounds... Attention! Your fear should remind you
About something, but you yet do not know — about what. Something comes nearer terrible. It
More close and more close. You — as a blind kitten on small island, and water all
Arrives. It means an asthma and cold wet death...
Someone has raped yours trinadtsatiletnjuju the daughter. "Spotless cleanliness,
Sacred innocence "— sounds grandiloquently, agree? Words from another
Centuries or from romantic books. However, business not in it. You seizes
Depression. Your life it is irreversible varies. Something has broken inside and never
Will not be former. Hours still go, but they only count time before approach
Twilight in consciousness... Already the constant pain does not allow to you to fall asleep. Whence
This inhuman harm has come? It seemed to you, that it was not here earlier.
Pain, the pain which is breaking off heart... How long it is possible to live with it?.
Your stocks amitriptilina promptly decrease, but reception of the psychotropic
Means means, that your brain turns to the infernal machine. You think,
What have chimeras already lodged in him? They always were there.
Then — at the best — it appears, that all it was night
Nightmare, the dream which has left a heavy deposit. There is a temptation to slightly open
Bowl. The white strip really begins? Someone teases you love. Yours
The house is filled by a sunlight or tender velvet darkness... But be
Are cautious! Perhaps, now, this minute when you easy lay
In the bed, listening as Joe Koker sings "Night Calls", your double,
Your present "I" in other world promptly comes nearer to death. It
Seconds are considered. Millstones of unknown destiny have already started to rotate inevitably...
Everything, that you can, is to cry from powerlessness or to shout from a pain.
Late. Before you will die, you are expected by continuous suffering. It is that
The ignorance price. Harm comes from a life wrong side...
Your double goes for you on a street nayward and if it is
It is crushed by something indescribable, know — your turn has come also. It is simple,
As all incomprehensible. Those who takes it for granted, perish silently and,
Can be, are born again. Is such which die, being perplexed. They
With pleasure would be still. They thought, what is it depends on them though in
The slightest degree. About the same self-confidence show cows,
Which conduct on slaughter...
But there are also those who for the unknown reason has had an opportunity to glance
In the world of eternal twilight and to plunge into warm currents of a life and ice currents
Death. It is necessary to pay for terrible knowledge expensively. A horror wind continuously
Blows from darkness, separating hair on a head from each other.
All below-mentioned is written for those who is not afraid to spoil a hairdress.
PART THE FIRST
HAZE
THE FIRST CHAPTER
It moved from island to island — the tired fugitive with terrifying
The destiny, doomed the life most part to wander in a gloom of strangers
Spaces, — and very well knew, that from people of the duke it is not necessary to wait
Mercy. Actually its enemy was not the duke, and servants of the enemy were not people
And, possibly, at all were not live, but such they sometimes dreamt the person, and
The fugitive liked this pity, lost and such lonely creation living
In one of the microscopic worlds, full of illusions like a matter, stars,
Planets, time... The Person was almost as is lonely, as the fugitive, but
bolshego biped also would not sustain...
The person has been extremely limited; allies and enemies were represented to it
People or, at least, beings. He perceived power sources
As something material, for example, as money, walls, amulets, lakes or
Woods; the currents which were carrying away to worst, seemed to it intrigues, and rare
Well-being islets — accident.
The fugitive has been compelled to recognise, that the life biped is decked by the great
Set of scenery. Its true landscape was where easier and where
More terribly: the world without the Sun and the Moon, top and a bottom, emptiness and fullness...
Sometimes, interfering in human dreams, the fugitive imagined the black
The plain leaving in infinity, and over it — a bloody wound of a decline in
Storm clouds. Strangely enough, in it it has been concentrated its not satisfied
Thirst of rest... And still it was a severe and strong creature, much more
Strong and dangerous, than the person. Its enemies were same.
That is why people sometimes tried to sell it the souls.
That being, its pale shade so suffered from uncertainty,
Fruitless hopes and inconsistent desires so irritated the fugitive of the
Ambition, that from time to time he for a long time threw it, but then excused to it
Everything for the ignorance was considered not as the greatest sin. For the fugitive a life
Always was continuous power war against hostile and
Incomprehensible environment, and being like the duke were its integral
Part. All is very simple: game had the one and only rule —
To hold on as it is possible longer. Sense searches only reduced chances. Searches
Rescue reduced them to zero...
The fugitive did not test hatred even to the most malicious enemy — to the duke,
After all thanks to enemies nobody could count on the divine power,
For an eternal life.
The irony concluded in a duality of existence, always amused
The fugitive. And though he knew many who was fenced off by an impenetrable board from the
Insignificant allies, the fugitive was ready to come to the aid of the biped.
Once he has dared to get into human dreams...
THE CHAPTER THE SECOND
The grey-haired laid and looked, how early winter twilight is condensed. His hands
Small shivered, and dryness in a mouth has been called at all by thirst. Through a window
In the room which has become permeated with the smell of paints and a dust, the darkness slowly swam in. There has passed hour,
And bezzvezdnoe the sky became similar to the flat sheet of the cardboard which has been painted over black.
The one-room apartment Gray-haired was on last floor
shestnadtsatietazhnogo at home; its two walls were external, and in windy days
Sometimes it seemed to it, that he lives in the shabby nest stuck to a branch
Huge tree. Now this tree has become enraged shook the ice
February wind. But Gray-haired knew, the present angrily whence proceeds.
It was lop-sided on a picture which has finished two weeks ago. Now it
Has resolved to get rid of it if any more was not late. Anyway,
It has killed in him something. Since that moment as Gray-haired has put on a canvas last
Dab, it could not work. Its strange influence devastated it, and
The divergence filled with fear. As if dead, but still poisonous
Flower, picture poisoned air, deformed the presence space,
Turned out outside the dark two-dimensional belly.
The grey-haired has written it for one night in any charcoal fumes similar to the strong
Alcoholic intoxication. It personified a persuasive night nightmare —
Damnation of all its adult life. Thus he hoped to get rid from
It, however the nightmare became material and has concentrated in the rectangular
To paint pool.
He tried not to think of the Lunar Person is there was absolutely other fear,
It come from the is dirty-pink childhood, — but its Gray-haired did not try to write at all.
Any picture could not pass half-forgotten chilling horror. That nightmare
Was non-reproducible...
The exhibition was an opportunity to get rid of own creation.
Grey-haired believed that it will really take place a little. To wait remains
Not for long. He has decided, that will burn a picture if cannot sell it. For some reason
It seemed to it, that destruction of a canvas will not release its consciousness from the sticky
The webs, however the new owner will take up and its damnation.
The thought on it, at last, has allowed Gray-haired to fall asleep. Darkness has fallen,
As a curtain, and then he has again seen the room at very weak lilac
Light, only it was not clear, this light whence proceeds. Grey-haired has felt someone's
Presence, but has not had time to be frightened yet. The window blackened, and on its background grew white
Frame — half of cross. Dark-violet walls and a ceiling gleamed, as
As if have been covered by a moisture. In a dream the room became longer, has turned in
Narrowed corridor, and in the end of a corridor there was an armchair standing in a corner
Near to a window.
In an armchair someone sat — in the beginning Gray-haired saw only not clear silhouette.
Then the knowledge which did not have a source, has spread in it like the liquid
To ice. It was his mother who has died eight years ago.
He has seen it of nothing expressing, yellow, wrinkled person. Such it
Laid in a coffin, and such it has remembered it. Now she has been dressed in black, and on
Head will pull ostroverhy a hood from under which locks were beaten out
Lilovo-white hair.
— Go to me! — the dead woman has called, and Gray-haired has obeyed, therefore
That torture by an immovability has appeared even more terribly vision. Its voice was not
Air vibration — is faster, attribute of a dream, a phantom from the same
Subconscious tomb.
It has risen from the begun to creak bed and has made some steps on
To direction to an armchair. Even the most insignificant details — smells, subjects,
Sounds — were dreadfully real. A cold rake walked on it
To interiors. Finitenesses froze, were softened, turned to the pliable
Cotton wool... For three steps to an armchair it has stopped, because could not any more
To move.
"WHERE YOU CALL ME, MUM?!."
His nose has caught a sweetish smell of death. In dim eyes of mother not
There were neither caresses, nor regrets, condemnation.
— Go to me... — the unbodied voice from the improbable has again rustled
And a hopeless flour. Grey-haired has blinked. Tears dimmed eyes.
"IN WHAT YOU PLAY WITH ME, MUM? TO ME IT IS TOO BAD..."
It has lost mother only for an instant. His eyelids were closed,
Were opened, and it has silently begun to whimper for animal fear.
The person sitting in a being armchair any more was not the person of his mother. It
Has seen a head, friable, as the dough, with deep failures instead of eyes, unsteady
Twisting crack of a mouth and web of moving wrinkles — a head Lunar
The person... In the childhood he named it so because the person was dazzling
And is deathly-white as if the moon, but at all because it was shined with the night
Star...
— Start up me to itself, — the atavistic nightmare, and Gray-haired not has asked
Has noticed, how the despair has tumbled down it on a floor and has returned in a germ pose. It
Has heard frequent deaf knock is his head fought about linoleum — and
Has felt taste of blood, but not a pain.
Not clear figure was pulled to it from an armchair, having covered with the shade. Something
Vainly tried to make the way through a firm shell of its horror and, at last, has left,
Having left Gray-haired shout in the centre, dispersing in darkness like circles on
To water...
* * *
After a week he, reeling, came back home. There has come thaw.
The small sleet watered its growing bald head, but Gray-haired was hot.
Besides, it stirred up. He has drunk too much cheap port. Such
In the image he tried to note disposal of a picture and participation in an exhibition,
That else recently it seemed by miracle. It was its first exhibition, which it
Waited without hope half of forty-year life.
Grey-haired for a long time has understood, that has lost. It has reconciled to eternal disorder,
Lack of money, loneliness... His mother has died in hospital. At it was not
Money and communications to delay her death. Long before their this relation
Have hopelessly deteriorated. Mother could not excuse it failure. Its pictures were
Noncommercial — too gloomy, too phantasmagoric. They not
Suited offices and offices; refuges would be an ideal place for them
Singles-misanthropes. Grey-haired said to nobody, that almost all pictures
Dreamt. It needed to reproduce only them in reality, and it did it with
Tremendous accuracy...
It continued to work even then when job has appeared absolutely
The senseless. Painting was unique rescue from emptiness. In it
To apartment there was no TV, almost does not remain to furniture. Often enough it
Went to bed the hungry. Sometimes it experienced difficulties of that to it
There was nothing to put on. It was in the very bottom...
In addition to it often dreamt same, persuasive and bessjuzhetnyj a dream.
The dream repeated almost without changes for many years on some times in
Month and eventually has finished Gray-haired to frenzy...
He lived on suburb Saltovki — the huge city doss house combining
In itself ugliness of an urbanization with all delights of a "sovok" life. This
The melancholy labyrinth could not be bypassed for a week. Is dirty-white houses
Were built by long lines of gravestones; behind shone windows was illusory
Heat — actually emptiness there nested. Metal designs in
Court yard looked, as the skeletons of the prehistoric animals which have been washed up by a rain from
Permafrost. Black clumsy fingers of the sickly trees landed hastily and
Already never risen, stuck out along sidewalks. The teenagers who were going to
In suspicious and dangerous flocks, listened to a gangsta-rap and laughed loudly, as
Hyenas ("GIVE we WILL argue, THAT I WILL disconnect YOU, the UNCLE!"). People came back
Home, to hide, but very few people from them thought of it.
At Gray-haired all was on the contrary. Now he was afraid of that place, where it
Overtook dreams. Therefore the last some days he almost also did not sleep.
Small needles were stuck into eyeballs, forcing eyelids to be closed.
The heavy fog in a head was impenetrable and inactive.
At an entrance it was dark and it is empty. As always, plentifully smelt sweet
Refuse chute. Near to a lift door there were inscriptions "SEPULTURA",
"Fuck me, Gosha!" And "Vote for communists!", made with the help
Spray. If grey-haired was sober or felt better, it
Would pay attention that the silence at an entrance was unnaturally
The deep. It was not audible neither vocal murmurs, nor sounds of radio or
Telecasts.
Now it most of all would like to substitute a head under a stream of the cold
Waters, and then to lay down. It has entered into a cabin of the lift and began to rise in the weakening
Light of the fixture. At an overload Gray-haired became even worse; in a mouth has appeared
Bitter smack...
Suddenly the lift has sharply stopped on the sixth floor. Shutters were moved apart, and
The huge unbodied palm of horror has pressed down Gray-haired to a plastic wall.
On a platform there was his mother, looking in emptiness before itself.
The pause lasted some instants, but Gray-haired they have seemed minutes.
Then mother has entered into a cabin, moving, as the got doll, and a nightmare again
Was more tremendous the plausible. In ringing silence and it is sickening
Shaken box Gray-haired has stretched a hand to that which was dead already
Eight years. It has touched its clothes, has felt the fabric invoice, and this sensation
Has paralysed it.
"WHAT FOR YOU COME, MUM?"
The woman it is indifferent looked at it; its pupils were absolutely
Are motionless. Door shutters have slammed behind her back, and a cabin without everyones
The reasons began to rise upwards. Light in it has almost grown dim.
Large drops of sweat slid on the person Gray-haired. Each of them seemed to it
Ice ball, which he dreamt to swallow somehow to fill
The disgusting emptiness formed on a place of a stomach. With what not
The comparable smell crept in its nostrils, and Gray-haired has understood, that just about it
Will turn inside out. In a head there were no thoughts, he did not try to search at all
Explanations to this terrible silence.
The cabin has stopped on the fifteenth floor. Mother left on deserted,
Badly shined platform. Grey-haired has had time to notice, that behind windows on a ladder
Too there was no light. The dark figure began to turn around to throw on it
Last sight...
The grey-haired has felt, that its trouser-leg is humidified. The lunar person stretched to
To it a hand — a shining brush without nails and folds, as if cast from soft
Porcelain. In its empty eye-sockets two balls for Ping-Pong could fail.
Then its shape began to be dissolved in a sticky mix of sweat and the tears, closed up
Eyes Gray-haired.
"LEAVE ME ALONE, THE CREATURE!!!"
The head with indiscernible lines remained to hang over a ladder, as
Small phantom of the moon. Despite a shock, Gray-haired nevertheless it seemed,
That not clear force wished to warn him about something. Or to withdraw behind itself...
At all not understanding, that does, it has pressed the button of the sixteenth floor.
The closed shutters have separated it from a nightmare, and a second later a lift cabin
zavisla between floors. The fixture has gone out. Grey-haired felt buried
Alive.
But the menacing silence lasted not for long. The scraping sound, and a floor was distributed
Has trembled under his feet. It was not design self-damage under weight
Human body. Someone or something broke out a floor from below...
In full darkness Gray-haired has seen phosphorescing fingers, pronikshie
Through a crack between a floor and cabin walls. Each of them was time in three
To its thickness of the own. The four-fingered palm with a crash has unbent a corner, and Gray-haired
zaskolzil to edge.
He knew, that walls smooth and is useless to try to seize for
Something. Breaking nails, it has touched the panel with buttons and has recollected the button
Call of the dispatcher. Resting one foot in a wall, it has reached it and
Has pressed, but has not heard a hissing background. Instead from dynamics was heard
Voice already familiar to it also has crept in his ears insinuating whisper.
— Start up me... — indescribable blackness has asked, and Gray-haired has cried,
As if the child driven to despair.
During this instant the cab floor has failed and has failed in mine depth nearby
Forty metres. After it the gravity has inevitably carried away Gray-haired. It
Wet palms zaskolzili on plastic, but were any more in a condition to keep
The body poured by lead.
The unbent aluminium corner cut half-and-half his face, has broken out a teeth
Also has pulled out a gum part. Its shout has choked after the first blow about a wall
Mines. The falling sound has appeared deaf person and mismatched a damage rate
The fragmentary leather bag filled with blood and broken bones, which
Once was the person.
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