Anastasia Novykh. Birds and a Stone

   “Run forward!” Rebrov croaked.
   “Forward is forward... I don’t mind really,” and Chmil went on ironically, “Eh, so it be! After all, as the saying goes, one should experience everything in life... Hey, what if I visit that granny myself? I would find everything out, and you’ll wait in the department till we sort out our relationship...”
   “Life isn’t all beer and skittles...” Rebrov tried to respond likewise with a joke, choking with rapid running.
   A block of nine-storey apartment buildings remained behind at once. There began labyrinths of small private houses.
   “Where are you, Chmil?” Rebrov called to senior lieutenant.
   “Why? The street is on that side!” he pointed.
   “No... there,” Major waved and started to run in the front, showing the way.
   Awaken by the patter of their feet, dogs set up restless barking all through the neighbourhood. Finally, there appeared the needed street, and the necessary last house at the corner, located on the crossroad. Rebrov ran up to the wicket and stopped, drooping over it and trying to recover his breath. Chmil also bent, leaning his hands against his knees and catching his breath.
   “It’s truly hard… to keep pace with you,” he said, puffing.
   Chmil raised his eyes at Major who got fishily quiet. Rebrov stopped dead, holding his breath and staring at something inside the yard. And, should he not lifted his hand showing “Attention!”, Chmil would really think he passed away. There was light in the side and front windows of the house, probably in one and the same room. People’s shadows showed up behind the curtain.
   Rebrov opened the wicket silently and entered the yard together with Chmil. A dead dog was lying in a small dark puddle. Chmil squatted down and touched the sticky liquid with his finger. “Blood”, he nodded assent.
   “Approach from the left,” Major whispered, pointing at the side window.
   Chmil nodded again. Bending down and making short dashes along desolate outhouses, he reached a low fence separating the yard from a little flower bed near the house, faced by the side window. Despite his impressive figure, the senior lieutenant jumped over the fence almost noiselessly and disappeared in the dark.
   Rebrov wiped sweat from his forehead, pulled his gun out of the holster, released the trigger lock and approached the door. His heart was throbbing inside his chest, resounding in the whole body. His breath was quickened. His hands were trembling of the fast running and extreme overstrain. His throat was parched. He seized the handle and slightly pulled the door. The latter yielded easily because it appeared to be open. Rebrov opened the door a little as accurately as he could and entered the house inaudibly. Moving ahead in the dark almost by touch, he stumbled on something soft and carefully squatted. In a faint beam of light coming from under the next room door he discerned an old woman’s hand. He felt the pulse. It was default, however the body was still warm. “Apparently, the lady’s taken on the first attack,” flashed through Rebrov’s mind. “And it’s happened very recently...” Major overstepped the corpse, holding the grip of his gun tighter, and started noiselessly moving towards the ribbon of light.
   Having reached the next door, he again slowly pulled it. This room was a communicating one. The light was switched on in a neighbouring premise on the left. There was exactly from where the child’s cry was being heard. Male voices were brutally demanding money. Muted knocks and groaning wafted. Rebrov squatted near the doorway and peeped out carefully. Two armed gangsters in black masks were beating the house owner who was lying on the floor, fastened down, and were demanding to show them a place where the money was kept. One of them had an automatic gun hanging over his shoulder, the other one held a pistol in his hand. A third bandit was standing on the left, holding an axe and watching the action of his pals. There was a boy behind him who was tied to a radiator next to the window. He was plaintively crying, screwing up his eyes with fear. A woman was lying on a couch to the right, bound with a linen rope and gagged.
   Rebrov frantically tried to think out what to do next. But, all of a sudden, the gangster with the automatic gun grasped the man’s hair and, pointing to the child, yelled: “Watch, you rubbish!” He beckoned to his pal, and the latter lifted the axe against the child’s fragile body. The boy let out a deafening squeal...
   Rebrov as if got discharged. Not taking a single instant to ponder, he made a dart, shouting out some standard phrases and not even hearing his own voice. The only thought frantically pulsating in his mind was to rescue the child at any cost. At that moment he felt as if a bright sizzling ray pierced him from behind in the back of his head. It seemed to have exploded inside his body, generating multiple shivers like after a mighty discharge of electric current. From that very moment, Rebrov’s perception pattern completely changed. Thoughts disappeared. Lucidity and absolute peace set in. Time seemed to slow down.
   He saw a gunpoint aimed at him, but felt no fear. There was only lucidity of mind and cold intention. His eyesight was concentrating unusually and clearly fixed how the bullet was flying out of the gangster’s gun barrel. Rebrov mechanically deflected his head from the bullet flight path. And only afterwards he saw the fire bursting from the round black outlet.
   He glanced at the right shoulder of his adversary. Strangely, Rebrov neither his clothes nor even his skin, but just a shoulder joint being torn by a bullet. He pulled the trigger mechanically. And, in an instant, the bullet pierced his adversary precisely in the target point set by his eyes. Acting almost automatically, Rebrov took a jump incredible for his age towards the gangster with the axe and stroke the gangster’s chest with his left foot as if he practiced Oriental fighting techniques during his entire life. His adversary heavily knocked against the wall, then bounced back off it like a ball and fell to the floor, having dropped the axe.
   Rebrov slightly turned his head to the right. The third bandit, having let go the man’s hair, was already raising himself and aiming the automatic gun at Major. Rebrov acted rapidly, easily and coherently as if he had been practicing these movements for years up to automatism. He kicked off the gun aside and then held it down with his right foot. Carrying on with the movement, halfsquatted, he turned his entire torso and struck a mighty blow from behind the gangster’s ear with his left elbow. The bandit collapsed unconscious, having fallen straight on the house owner. Rebrov shifted the gun into his left hand and started to pick up the automatic gun with the right one. At that moment, he fixed something strange with his side vision.
   Major turned his head. In the Further in the communicating room, near the doorway where he had stood a second ago, he saw a transparent shining silhouette. Its features were further becoming clearer and more distinct, and finally an image of a beautiful face appeared. The creature’s gaze was penetrating deep into the soul with any hindrance, illuming its most secret stratums with its light. Rebrov felt he could neither endure the power of this gaze, nor he was able to turn away from its delightfully pleasant and kind gravity rejoicing his heart.
   However, in a second, to Rebrov’s ineffable amazement, his side vision worked in such a way as if he looked straight at what was happening sideways. Rebrov discerned in the smallest detail how the window was shattering to pieces, how a wood log was flying into the room, having broken the window frame, and how the senior lieutenant Chmil’s robust figure was tumbling in afterwards. Wondering at such an unusual quality of his vision, Major hardly tore his eyes from the shining face and looked at the window which strangely appeared to be intact. But suddenly the glass indeed shattered to pieces, and the scene recorded by Rebrov’s mind accurately recurred in reality. Chmil flew into the room like a hurricane. But, seeing Major alive and unhurt as well as the gangsters lying around him, he stopped taken aback. Having overcome his numbness quickly, the senior lieutenant began to tie the bandits’ hands.
   Rebrov was in the same state of absolute peace. He again glanced towards the communicating room which attracted most of his attention. But the room was already empty and gapingly dark. Only a slight dissipating light was fluently moving away, shimmering from the corridor. Rebrov moved to follow it without hesitation.
   The world was changing its outlines with his every step. The further Rebrov was moving away from the bright light, the more focused and condensed the space around him was becoming. Having entered the darkness of the corridor, he seemed to plunge into a slowly revolving tunnel. Round “walls” and “floor” were in an amorphous condition. Putting it more precisely, “walls” and “floor” were notions from Rebrov’s past. Now he saw something like various by configuration and subdued light congestions of atoms and molecules which were changing their shape as if being animate and were copying imprints of his steps. Rebrov’s hand freely penetrated the “walls” of this mass. Though his hand turned to be not a hand, but a streaming flow of multicoloured energies enveloped with same ultimate particles as the corridor “walls” and “floor”.
   In the front, he saw strangely grouped atoms and molecules mixed up with scattering light of fading energies. “The old lady”, flashed in his head. A slight luminescence was surrounding her body. In the head area, in its very middle, a little jelly-like paste was pulsating with golden-reddish light. A small glaringly bright clot was hanging poised above the body. Rebrov somehow comprehended that the clot of energies and the pulsating jelly-like paste piece were a single whole constituting the very essence of a human residing in a corporal shell. It seemed to him this small beaming Something was a living indeed, perennial creature. He felt its invisible gaze at himself along with tension and some soul-oppressing yearning. And he understood what it was without any words. “Everyone’s alive, alive”, Major uttered in his mind. The creature perceived his thoughts precisely. It burst with smooth, incredibly warm play of colours, duplicating these tints on the jelly-like paste and leaving a similar appeasing and placatory sensation in Rebrov’s heart. And it suddenly dawned upon Rebrov that there was no death existing as such!
   Such revelation astonished him, having opened the door to a world unknown before, but yet more than real, to a world of eternity, filling his life with a totally new sense of existence. Having come outside, Rebrov found himself in a world kind of familiar, but completely different at the same time. Flows of charged particles washed his body with a gust of quite palpable living power which people call “wind”. These particles penetrated the corporal shell and saturated with their energy other particles which transmitted their power to the rest by chain, generating feelings of vivacity and freshness in the entire organism.
   The world was by no means painted in dark colours. It was shimmering with a fantastical light of life which Rebrov had never noticed before. Everything around was beaming with variegated colours. And there was no division into animate and inanimate objects. Everything was living in its own way, moving, uniting, acquiring unique scales of tints and tinges, coming apart into separate pulsating hues, transforming its states unusually...
   Stunned with what he saw, Rebrov squatted on a porch edge. And only then he noticed that he was seeing in a strange mode like a chameleon. His range of vision widened significantly. He could watch almost everything located above, below, behind and sideways without turning his head. Only a small zone located behind and below remained invisible. He needed to turn his head slightly to observe that part of space. Rebrov could not understand what had happened to his eyesight. He closed his eyes, having covered them with his hand. Yet, although his eyelids were now closed, Rebrov strangely saw his own hand with the fingers out over the eyelids. Moreover, he saw everything happening around him as if there was no obstacle at all.
   Rebrov removed his hand from his face in shock and looked at it. But then he discovered other surprising abilities of his eyesight. The more he focused his attention on his finger tip, the deeper his gaze delved into, enlarging the visible range numerous times like through a magnifying lens. Although Rebrov simultaneously felt he was holding his hand at the same distance from his eyes. He saw the patterned outline of his fingers in smallest details, in a form of quaint labyrinths. They resembled a dodging area indented with uneven ditches and flat hills. Another invisible world was disappearing behind this mysterious relief. A pink paste enveloped forked mouths of supple bluish tubes. The latter ones strongly pulsated, pushing impetuous flows of red liquid along their tangled passages with an enormous internal pressure. But inside this incredibly lively world there existed a still subtle world. Rebrov even felt a little dizzy of such a deep concentration. He mechanically diverted his look from his finger, and his eyesight became defocused again, restoring the finger in its habitual shape.
   Trying to come to his senses, Rebrov switched his attention to sounds. Yet, there he also faced a unique phenomenon. He didn’t hear sounds as usual, but rather sensed those with his entire body. Major began to study the new talents of his body with unconcealed curiosity. First, he felt dogs’ barking. These waives seemed to be a living independent force with its own energy store. Springing up and passing their extremely short lifetime, they changed the surrounding space with their vibrations. Rebrov sensed how the resilient waves were hitting his body like sea surges rolling one after another, how they were washing him like a violent undercurrent would wash an underwater stone. He senses still other, more subtle noises and the living power of those energies.
   Rebrov started focusing on various sensations with rapture. And there he revealed an absolutely marvelous picture of the universe. All the colourful hues of the surrounding space appeared to be nothing else than various energies of diverse wavelengths. Furthermore, all animate and inanimate objects were indeed energetic particles generating specific waves. Their variety and interaction impressed. The waves were bearers of diverse power and energy, moved at their own speeds, intensified each other meeting in the space, reflected, got absorbed or merged into a different energy. Observing this entire splendour, Rebrov unexpectedly made another astonishing discovery: this life wouldn’t end! There was no “death” notion in it. Energies representing the very essence of life simply turned from one state into the other, changing shapes. They existed perpetually!
   Such discoveries took Rebrov’s breath away. A prodigious joy and a boundless love for all existing swept over him. He wanted to embrace the whole world and to dissolve completely in its stunning harmony. Gripped with inspiration, Rebrov delightedly looked at the vast space of the night sky sparkling with dazzling stars. From up there he felt noises which he had never heard before. Or rather there were not noises, but some symphony which composed all sounds into one lovely melody or charmed ears by separate sounding of a magnificent solo. This music enchanted with its soft modulation, with its uncommon internal beauty.
   Rebrov enjoyed the harmonious sounding of the outer Space. He clearly felt some inner inseparable connection between himself and the wonderful universe. He had a feeling as if he knew exactly where and what is located: where there was a red-hot star, where there was a planet, where there was simply light of a long ago transformed energy of some extinct form. And in certain dark zones of the Space he distinctly sensed the existence of galaxies and planets, invisible for a human eye, which had perfectly real and similar life prototype. Rebrov felt not just his unity with the Space, but some inexplicable connection of every atom of his body with each electron of heavenly bodies. He understood at an unknown level of his consciousness that, if he stayed in this astounding state of deep penetration into mysteries of the universe, something totally other-worldly would be eventually revealed to him. And, at that very instant, he felt very bad. It seemed he would become unconscious any moment. Rebrov lowered his look to the earth, making efforts to come to his senses.
   The operations group arrived. People began scurrying about at the doorway. Rebrov’s nostrils got struck with smells of blood, gun powder, gasoline, mixture of male and female perfumes with the acrid stink of the duty department and a dozen of some characteristic smells of the house. Cars from the prosecutor’s department, the organized crimes department and the ambulance arrived. Active movement started in the yard.
   Rebrov watched fussing people in detachment. They looked like mighty sources of various waves emanating from them. Those waves rapidly filled the space around the house with their energy vibrations. Major for the first time saw that a human occupies a much bigger volume than he could have imagined. A human body by appearance resembled a swarm of tiny bees moving in various groups in their own directions. That swarm of atoms and molecules mixed with internal energies was encircled with an opaque mist around twenty centimetres thick. The mist was covered with an unusual half-metre luminescence from above. And this entire cocoon intensively radiated energies which were exactly the ones to fill the space around at an unbelievable speed.
   Rebrov was patted on the back, was asked something, and he answered not drawing his inner look from contemplation of what was happening. A doctor came up to him and asked whether he was wounded. And then Major turned and paid attention to this man. The fact was that he had grasped the question much faster than the man had time to pronounce it. Yet, simultaneously Rebrov perceived also other, much more powerful mental waves as if different people were speaking inside the doctor about totally discordant matters, with an obvious superiority of negative ones. At that, Major was feeling the doctor’s thoughts so distinctly as if that all was taking place in his own head.
   Finally, the bustle came to an end. Rebrov was sent home by the authorities. He got into a militia SUV together with other colleagues who had volunteered to accompany him. The engine scarcely began to roar when Major switched to another perception. His attention was attracted by the operating engine. Oddly to say, Rebrov viewed what was happening inside it. He clearly saw how the shimmering gasoline was sprinkling and mixing with the air, how the spark was igniting that mixture, how the explosion was occurring. The explosion force pushed the piston, the latter transmitted energy to the crankshaft. Through the crankshaft, the energy flew to the wheels, and the wheels were turning, clinging to the road asphalt. And it seemed the converting energy which was moving the SUV should have been bringing Rebrov closer to his house, but, strangely enough, he instead felt his house approaching him.
   Major observed this whole enigmatical world with unconcealed surprise. He seemed to have become double. On one hand, this all was new for him, although on the other hand he felt he had already seen this all: the outer Space, the atoms, the waves. He was familiar with that world!!!
   As a precaution, Rebrov told nothing about his fabulous sensations to his colleagues in order not to be called insane. Although, looking at the real surrounding beauty of the transformed world, he realized somewhere deep inside that it was the human world to be considered insane due to its emotional filth and bodily needs.
   Having got home, Rebrov quietly entered his apartment so as not to wake the family. He even didn’t switch on lights because he could perfectly see in the dark. As a matter of fact, there was no darkness as such. The world was playing with manifold light spectrum. Each Major’s step or touch to anything generated a new surge of wave vibrations and their interaction.
   Rebrov made up a couch in the sitting-room and lay down, or rather sank, like a stuffing in a puff pastry, into a similar unusual environment of atoms and molecules moving along various trajectories. He felt a state of blissful relaxation and tried to close his eyes. However, even when he shut the eyelids, he could still see the volumetric picture of the room with all the living movement of the “immovable property”. Rebrov grinned to himself: “How am I now supposed to sleep?” Not having an idea of what to do, he started to examine the wonderful independent life of his apartment. Later on, all the last night’s events began scrolling in his mind on their own in a reverse order. And, once his thought came up to the stunning penetrating gaze of the light creature’s face, a bright blinding flash flared in front of Rebrov’s eyes, and he fell into profound sleep.

* * *

   Major woke up when it was already noon. His eyesight was usual as it had been before. Nevertheless, Rebrov felt himself a completely different person as if a total positive revolution had taken place inside him. His body strangely was not aching at all. On the contrary, it was full of strength as if a second adolescence began. His entire organism had become light and vigorous.
   Nobody else was home. His daughter left for the college; his wife, most probably, went shopping. Whistling a cheerful melody, Rebrov made some body exercises which he had not done for quite a while. He lifted dustladen dumb-bells and went to the shower in excellent mood. Having washed himself, still singing, he squeezed a shaving cream from a tube as usual and began to apply it to his two-day bristle with a shaving-brush. And suddenly Rebrov saw himself in the mirror and froze. His hair having started to turn grey fifteen years ago, were now umber. The netting of little wrinkles vanished from his face. Undereye bags and skin yellowness disappeared. The face incomprehensibly regained its natural healthy colour. Yet, the main thing was about his eyes. They not only became rich brown in colour, but also reflected such power and brilliance that were not in Rebrov’s nature even when he was young. Major squatted on the bathtub board and then jumped up again peering into his own reflection. He tried to conceive: what metamorphoses had happened to his organism? But then he stopped tormenting himself with such “trifles”. After all, it was merely a body.
   Having finished the morning treatments, Rebrov went to the kitchen and made a habitual tea. Taking a sip, he strangely felt the true aroma and taste of this flavoured water for the first time in his life. It whetted the healthy appetite. Having rummaged in the nearly empty fridge, he took out some food remains, created sandwiches out of those and started eating with pleasure. Rebrov ate his breakfast with pleasure for the first time in many years. Crooning the same cheerful melody, he got dressed and went to the district department to report on his “unauthorized heroism”.
   Walking the habitual road which he had been going along for a number years, Rebrov got more and more certain that an amazing world was around him indeed, and that he was a part of this natural miracle. Rebrov walked and didn’t feel his own body. Colours around were much brighter and richer as if muddy scales had fallen from his eyes. He saw the genuine, living surrounding beauty. He heard how actually birds were signing. Even in sparrows’ chirping he distinguished an unpretentious dispute. He began to comprehend this world at a nonverbal level.
   Rebrov came up to a bus stop. Waiting for his bus, for the first time in life he drew attention to a rind of a tree nearby. Thin, elegant curves alternated with thick, bulging parts, charmingly playing with chiaroscuro of each vein. And all these together constituted a magnificent, enigmatic picture looking like a mysterious labyrinth drawn by an invisible hand from the roots to the very top. There was a whole life inside, a whole destiny outside... So many various events took place for other creatures near this tree and owing to it...
   Major thought, “Yes, everyone is assigned own place in this life. And everyone in this life is a perpetual destiny-creating element... Strange... Striking... And why these mysteries of being have revealed to me?” He simply couldn’t get rid of this question.
   The bus arrived at that moment, and a door opened in front of him. “Prove,” Rebrov heard an unnaturally loud fervent voice of a young woman behind him. Major turned back, having thought for some reason that it had been said to him. But, seeing a hugging young couple who didn’t pay any attention to him and simply enjoyed their happiness, he got a little confused and entered the bus.
   Rebrov barely squeezed inside not to block the way to the exit and stopped near sitting old ladies peacefully chatting with each other. The unfamiliar girl’s word was echoing in his mind. And, all of a sudden, one of the old ladies uttered a phrase with, as seemed to Rebrov, the same unusual intonation, “To God that…” Major was somewhat surprised with such concurring sound frequencies. The words sank into his heart. And, no matter how attentively he listened to their conversation afterwards, he heard nothing like this anymore.
   Rebrov alighted from at his bus stop, puzzled. The words which had been pronounced by different people lined up on their own in his head: “Prove to God that…” Passing by a theatre, Major habitually glanced at playbills and immediately drew closer attention to those. Among the overall nonsense there was an unusually written phrase “you are Human”. Rebrov turned away for an experiment. Then he looked at the gaudy playbill again. And right away his eyesight accurately seized the same words as if that information was the most important for Rebrov at that moment. He shook up his head, being slightly taken aback because of his new discoveries, and continued walking his way.
   Only a short distance of about two hundred metres remained to the district department, and there was a park on the way. Rebrov was walking leisurely, pondering over the unusual phrase which had formed. “Prove to God that you are Human... Prove to God that you are Human”, the words were scrolling in his mind. Suddenly, a sonorous child’s voice loudly uttered close nearby, “...and God will have faith in you”. Major gave a start and even turned around with astonishment.
   “Is it correct, granny?” a five-year-old boy prattled, happily smiling and shaking hand of his grandmother who was sitting on a park bench.
   “Correct, correct, my dear,” the touched old woman answered and kissed her grandson’s forehead.
   This scene and mainly these words simply staggered Rebrov deeply in his heart. The ready sentence forthwith assembled in his mind: “Prove to God that you are Human, and God will have faith in you”. Something Existent was communicating to him as a totally living being. It gave him the answer to his vital question by using signs. Suddenly, it dawned upon Rebrov: it had always been like this! That Existent neither appeared from anywhere nor disappeared, but it was constantly beside him throughout his entire life. Yet, being like blind, he had never noticed that support and those signs which his Destiny had been generously showering on him. Everything was so simple, wise and clear... “Prove to God that you are Human, and God will have faith in you…”

* * *

   Rebrov entered the district department and was surprised with his own new discoveries and observations. When some people were talking about his last night’s action, they seemed to be trying on that “blanket”. They regarded the situation though a shroud of envy. Others were proud of themselves for working with a person who would always lend a helping hand. Several others were rejoiced over benefits of the grown unraveling statistics and over the reward they were to obtain for such a subordinate. Still others secretly laughed at Major, considering him “a duffer” and “a loser” who voluntarily “put his ass under fire for the sake of some shopkeeper’s family”. And only individuals, being his true friends, were candidly happy for the fact that everything had turned out all right and their friend was alive and unhurt. Rebrov seemed to be feeling people from their inside. In an incomprehensible way he sensed what they were really thinking. It appeared that out of a hundred percent of all greeting words only ten percent conformed to sincere, pure intentions. The remaining ninety percent were indeed from the evil one. Oh, humans, humans... Nevertheless, such circumstance made Rebrov rather laughing than angry because each of his colleagues fondly believed his thoughts were known only to himself. But that was precisely where Rebrov viewed a holistic illusion, feeling he was surrounded mostly by clones of the Ego legion very few of whom were truly individuals alighted with the truth of their spiritual world.
   Rebrov looked at life from another visual angle. Passing by “the monkey house”, he thought: was there a real difference between the inner essence of department officers and detainees? None, both were same people. Previously, Rebrov had regarded detainees as potential criminals, as dregs of human society, whereas now he first looked at them with humane eyes. They were same people with their own souls, inner world, good and bad intentions, imperfections, weaknesses. And the external difference was merely in the fact that once they had given in to provocation of their negative side which in its turn inevitably engrossed them with generated circumstances. After all, no one including the department staff was insured against such lot since it’s all about the internal holistic battle of good and evil inside each person.
   Surprisingly, people with extremely malicious cast of mind avoided Rebrov that day, as if they were afraid to whiten themselves with something buoyant and kind and to shake their life position once chosen. There appeared to be not many of such inner wicked ones in the district department, though there were only few candidly kind, too. Rebrov viewed the majority of people as standing on the border between good and evil. They inclined to where a thought would tempt them, behaving like drunkards swinging from one extreme to another. Nonetheless, they persistently clambered to the neutral zone, as if fearing to lose sight of this important life landmark. But the people didn’t see the volumetric picture like Rebrov who could grasp everything at once, for they were creeping in a circle.
   Major sat in the duty room to write a report, but, being regularly distracted by congratulators, he was able to finish only towards evening. People came in one by one. They just seemed to be never tired of talking to him. They were telling their life stories, jokes, sundry trifles only in order to prolong being near Rebrov. In the evening when the bosses had left, in the duty room there gathered a big noisy company. If previously officers hurried home after work, that day no one wanted to leave. Everybody laughed, jested, cheered Major up and “blessed” him for new feats. Men inspired each other with cheerful laughter, finding peace of mind. And the most unbelievable thing was that they neither drank that night nor even thought of alcohol. As the saying goes, when a soul sings a body is thoroughly delighted.
   Rebrov returned home way after midnight. Going to bed, he still could not calm down after the day’s rich impressions. And he felt he continued to change inside all along, although he didn’t have time to conceive and to explain everything with common logic. He now simply trusted his intuition. Rebrov was sure – it knew nearly everything about the world. When he was writing the report that day, his intuition suggested those were his last report papers in the district department though his logic asserted rather the counter. “Well,” he thought, “we shall see what we shall see”.