June 22, 1993
Tuesday
9:30 AM
The cold and the dark were left far behind. I slid along a plane lit up with flares of light and flashes of lightning, tumbled out into nowhere, flew a-a-a-aah! – down a soundless black corridor... what is this?... the scream stuck in my throat, my eyes flew open and stamped a wondrous marvel into my brain – gates blazing with gold and diamonds. For nought point two seconds I studied that jeweled magnificence, and hop!... I was rid of the body-sucking sensation of free fall and crashed into a stream of soft light that turned out – it cannot be! – to be material. The light braked my fall into nowhere, enveloped me and carried me out to a shore covered with tropical thickets and voiced by the surf.
Africa?
I snapped my eyes open and saw the ceiling of room forty-four, first building, MEPhI dormitory. Familiar down to the smallest detail. Ugh!
I’d woken up in my own bed. The nightmare was over.
The first feeling was relief. Sunbeams, fluffy with dust, broke through the holes in the curtains. Plasma at a distance of a hundred and fifty gigameters promised weekdays, moneyless and merry as always. Though something had to be decided about the moneylessness. I regretted that the night’s fairy tale was over and that no happiness would come along served on a little platter.
«But what if the sands, and the girl, and the gentleman were all real?» I puzzled. «Maybe I really had been knocking around on the other side of life. What now? Would I stop being pathetic, take on some marketable shine... start a whole new life?»
Something inside me churned, bubbled, and — as if that weren’t enough — pounded my skull like a hammer: «From now on it won’t be like before, it’ll be like this! Wait for it! Like this! Like this! Like this!»
The sun shone outside the window. Its rays cheered me on: «No more foul weather. Bad luck, be gone! Everything’s going to be fine! It can’t be any other way...»
Muttering nonsense mantras, I tossed and turned, and... a sunbeam blinded me, sliced my eyes with a razor of bright light. I squeezed them shut, buried my face in the pillow... and heard a hoarse voice:
— Romka, cut it out sawing logs. Up and at ’em!
Who’s here?!
I lifted my head. An unfamiliar guy stood in the middle of the room, chasing a sunbeam around with a little mirror.
— Who are you? — I asked.
— Don’t recognize me? Happens, — he winked amiably.
— I don’t know you.
First time I’d ever laid eyes on him!
— Man, you’re dense, Peskov, — the guy held up a sheet of paper with a rust-brown handprint on it. — Recognize this?
Of course I did. That paper had been handed to me right before I left that cold world.
«So, so, so. Looks like I really did sell my soul. What’s going to happen to me? Am I about to croak?» I started to panic.
— Chill! No pissing yourself, no shitting bricks, no freaking out! You’ll live well, just not long, — the stranger reassured me. — You’ll get everything, and then some! Let’s shake hands. Hi! My name is George Coffin. In Russian that’d be Georgy Chaykin. Or Zhorik.
— What do you want?
— I don’t need anything in this life anymore, Roma. I’ve been sent here so you can get a few things before you kick the bucket. So, what’ll it be? I never made it through the whole contract.
— I don’t want jack shit.
– Well, not quite sod all, – Georgy-Zhorik gave a snort. – What’s the password? The boss said nothing special. How does it go? M-mm… Ah! I remember! «My life has had everything in it.» Heh-heh. Simple, no invention. «Life is shit!» would be sharper. Admit it. All right, don’t wrinkle your swede. You’ll get the dough, and where to put it you’ll work out yourself. Money can buy everything except one thing. As the saying goes – keep your eyes on death, poor singer and horseman. So stop crushing the mattress... Going to do your exercises? No? All the better. We start in a quarter of an hour...
«Roll out where? Why? What’s the sudden panic about? Who even is this guy?! And where had I heard those last words of Valera’s before?» — a flock of questions, big and small, descended on me. My head buzzed and refused to think straight.
Grunting, I got up off the cot, scratched my belly.
Ow! Son of a gun! A flash of pain made me yank my hand back from the scar I’d accidentally scratched. I sighed: «Not a dream, not delirium! Well, how about that!»
What now?
Having composed no explanatory or intelligible answer, I circled about in search of clothes: the «Rock in the Struggle for Peace» t-shirt, jeans and socks. In passing I took a look at Zhorik.
He looked five to ten years older than me. Hard to tell. Maybe the reddish stubble covering half his face was hiding his age. Couldn’t say.
Build-wise he was taller and heavier than me: something around a hundred and eighty centimeters and over a hundred kilos. Gray hair that hadn’t seen a comb or scissors in six months piled up and stuck out every which way.
His clothes were ill-fitting and absurd, as if lifted whole from a dumpster and thrown on some collective farmer fresh off the bus from outside Tutayev.
