It’s good to lie there full and pensive, like Indiana Jones at the end of the film. Forgetting misfortunes and calamities, musing at leisure: «What next? What adventure comes after?»
I remembered the voice that had brought me here. This is the place of my suffering? Ha-ha-ha! I’d gladly suffer on this sofa for years, as long as the fruit never ran out, the tub kept foaming, and the girl smiled once in a while. If there’s another surprise waiting in the wings, I don’t mind. I’ll consider it as it comes. I’ve earned this, I’ve paid my dues.
Suppressing a belch, I got to thinking.
What is this place? Why, and for what purpose?
I began reassembling my memories. The carriage. The sands. The tank crew. The grenade. The thought of rescue that made me trudge off who knows where. The men in the jeep. If Anton was to be believed, they were taking me to a quarry to shift rocks. They never got me there. The jeep was blown up. I became a free man, tied up though I was. My luck was running at a terrifying strength, but I didn’t value it. Then I wore through the ropes and fell asleep. In the morning a thirst for action seized me. I seethed with energy and set off for parts unknown. I had never met anything like it before. As far back as I could remember I had been a doubting neurasthenic, a sensible coward, but in that moment I turned into a fearless idiot. Exactly. I was visited by the certainty of an oligophrenic. The ability to think, to analyze and to foresee is chaff and dust against the decision: «This is what I do!»
How was that even possible?
My whole life I’d had complexes about everything. I was scared, I suffered and agonized, doubted myself and everyone else, believed in nothing, was certain of nothing, but then something strange happened. Someone flipped a switch, and my skull got fed a steady current instead of an alternating one. I remembered the exact moment I stood up, looked left, right, forward, back, and, without a shred of hesitation, decided: «That way!» That became possible under some outside influence, I’m sure of it. Just as sure as I am that the same outside force flashed something on the horizon — a glint of water, or something else, unclear, ephemeral as a sunset breeze in Honolulu, a place I’ve never been. But damn it, I went trudging off toward that Honolulu. I wandered into the sands, where I lost my strength and my mind all over again, got ready to part with my life. What stopped me?
I remembered. The redheaded woman, who liked me…, or rather, liked my pants. And I myself got in the way too, magnified a hundred times over. Everything before that point could be twisted into some crooked, unconvincing interpretation, but that… That couldn’t have happened, because it could never happen. I’d been hallucinating, lost my mind. Then it came back.
I patted myself on the head. Found no signs of mental damage, went back to my memories.
What conclusions could I draw? None, except that I’d nearly died of thirst and exhaustion three times, been scared half to death ten times, and once nearly died of despair and hurt, back when I ended up in the cage. Those were the strongest feelings. And after all that, they go and announce: «Here is the place of your suffering.»
Ha! Nothing more to say. I’m ready to suffer like this for as long as they want, as long as I don’t have to wander around the desert like a self-assured log of wood.
So?
So!
