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Translated from the Russian by Gladys Evans
Mir Publishers, Moscow, 1973
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
Original title: "Хождение за три мира"
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No, this was a different
Mr. Golyadkin, absolutely
different, but at the same
time absolutely similar
to the former...
F. Dostoevsky, The Double
Nil admirari! Be astonished at nothing!
A proposition borrowed from the philosophy of Pythagoras
___________________________________________________
I was returning home by way of Tverskoi Boulevard, walking up from the
Nikitskie Vorota. It was somewhere around five o'clock in the afternoon, but
the Saturday crowds usually teeming the streets at this hour by-passed the
boulevard, and the side-alleys were as deserted and quiet as they are in the
morning. The September sky, utterly cloudless of a sudden, gave no hint of
the nearness of autumn. Not one yellow leaf rustled underfoot and, after
last night's rain, even the faded late-summer grass between the trees seemed
as luxuriantly green as in May.
I strolled leisurely along an alley, hesitating at every bench with the
vague idea of sitting down. Finally I did, stretching out my legs; and the
very same second I felt as if everything around me was slipping off
somewhere, fading out and spinning in circles. I don't usually have dizzy
spells, but now I gripped the bench so as not to fall. Everything opposite
me on the boulevard - trees and passers-by - vanished in a lilac-tinted
mist. Exactly like in the mountains when clouds creep to your feet and
everything around disintegrates and melts into the thick, wet, cottony
flakes. But this was no rain: a pure dry mist swooped down, lapped all the
green from the boulevard, and then vanished.
Literally vanished. In the blink of an eye, the trees and bushes were
back again, like a repeated sequence in a colour cinerama film. The bench
opposite, with its deep seat, was again in place and the girl in the blue
coat - so almost listed missing - sat there with her book. Everything
looked, ostensibly, as before; but only ostensibly - some inner voice
instantly doubted it. I even looked around me to check my impressions and
contentedly reflected: "Nonsense, it's all the way it was. Exactly...."
"No, not exactly," reflected that other inner voice.
Was it another voice? I was arguing with myself, but my conscious mind
seemed to be split in half for the argument was more like a dialogue between
two utterly unidentical and dissimilar egos. Any thought that arose was at
once countered by another which intruded from somewhere or from somebody by
suggestion, but was aggressive and masterful.
"The benches are the same."
"They are not. On Pushkin Boulevard they're green, not yellow."
"The alley walks are the same."
"These are narrower. And where's the granite kerb?"
"What kerb?"
"And there's no lawn."
"A lawn?"
"Beside the court. There used to be a tennis-court here."
"Whe-ere?"
By now I was looking around with a feeling of growing alarm. The
double-ego feeling disappeared. I suddenly found myself in a new and
strangely altered world. When you walk along a street where everything is
dear to you and familiar to the eye, you do not notice the little things,
the details. But let them suddenly disappear, and you stop, caught by a
feeling of confusion and alarm. The surroundings were only similar to, but
not exactly the same as those I knew - I, who had strolled along the
boulevard walks a thousand times or more. Even the trees, apparently, were
somewhat different; the bushes weren't the same; and for some reason I
called the boulevard Pushkin instead of Tverskoi.
From habit I looked at my watch, arid my arm froze in mid-air. Even my
jacket was different from the one I'd put on that morning. As a matter of
fact, it wasn't my jacket, nor was the watch mine, and a scar curved out
from beneath the band, yet only about a minute ago no scar had been there at
all. But this was an old scar, healed long ago, the track of a bullet or
shell splinter. I looked down at my feet - even the shoes weren't mine but a
stranger's, with ridiculous buckles on the side.
"What if my appearance has changed, and my age is not the same? What if
I'm not ... me, at all?" came the burning thought. I jumped to my feet and
ran, rather than walked, along the alley toward the theatre.
The theatre stood in the same place, but it was a different one, with
an altered entrance and other billings. I did not find one title I knew on
the list of its repertoire. But in the dark glass doors, unlit from inside,
a familiar face was reflected. It was my face. So far, it was the only thing
in this world that was mine.
I was only now aware that my head ached. I rubbed my temples - it still
ached. I remembered that somewhere near by, on the square I believed, there
should be a chemist's shop. Perhaps it had been spared, if I were lucky. The
square was already visible through the flashing interstices between the line
of cars passing by, and I hurried ahead, continuing to glance behind me in
confusion and alarm. I could not exactly recall the buildings that lined
Pushkin Boulevard, though these did not appear to be different - except the
lamps over the doorways weren't the same eye-smacking ones and, what's more,
the street numbers were changed.
Where the green river of the boulevard flowed into the square, I was
literally turned to stone: its mouth was empty. Pushkin was gone. For a
moment, I thought my heart stopped beating. The naked stone bald-spot in
place of the monument frightened me now, rather than alarmed. I closed my
eyes, hoping the delusion would pass. At that moment, somebody passing by
bumped into me, perhaps accidentally, but so hard that I was spun round on
my heels. The delusion really did disappear. I saw the monument.
It stood far back in the square. Pushkin looked just as thoughtful and
severe as ever, his winged cloak negligently thrown over his shoulders - an
image dear to me from childhood. Even if it were in a different spot, it was
Pushkin! I began to breathe more freely, though behind the monument I could
see an utterly unknown building, quite modern, with the huge letters ROSSIYA
across its facade. Hotel or cinema? Only yesterday, there had been a
six-teen-storey building here, with the Cosmos restaurant on the ground
floor, and flats above. Everything was similar, yet dissimilar, familiar
down to the smallest detail, yet it was the details most of all that altered
the familiar look. For instance, I found the chemist's shop in the same
spot, the salesgirls stood behind the counters wearing the same white
smocks, identical queues crowded round the cashier's booth, and in the
optical section they were still selling eyeglasses with the same ugly,
uncomfortable frames. But when I asked a girl for some pyrabutan for a
headache, she gave me a puzzled grimace.
"Pardon?"
"Pyrabutan."
"Never heard of it."
"Well, for a headache."
"Pyramidonum?"
"No," I muttered vaguely. "Pyrabutan."
"There's no such thing."
My stupidly foolish look drew a pitying smile.
"Take these 3-in-one tablets." And she threw a small packet on the
counter - a box I'd never seen before.
In my trouser pocket I found a handful of silver coins - the money
could hardly be told from ours. Later, sitting on a bench by the Pushkin
monument, I made a thorough search of all the pockets in the suit bestowed
on me by a whim of fate. The contents would have stumped any detective.
Besides some change I found a few one- and three-rouble notes that were
quite different from ours, a crumpled tram ticket, an excellent fountain
pen, and an almost new pocket-notebook with only a few pages torn out. There
were no documents or identification cards to give me a hint as to what or
who my double was.
I no longer felt any fear: there remained only a sharp, nervous
curiosity. I tried not to dwell on how long my intrusion into this world
would last, or how it would end - all kinds of conjectures, even the most
terrifying, could be made on the subject. But what was I to do while I was
on this free trip into the unknown? I wouldn't be let into a hotel. Where
could I spend the night, if my sojourn was a long one? Perhaps at home, or
with friends - after all, the owner of the suit must live somewhere, and he
probably had friends. The cream of the joke would be if they turned out to
be my friends. What if the whole thing were a dream? I slapped the bench as
hard as I could - it hurt! So it wasn't a dream.
For a brief moment I thought I saw a face I knew. Sauntering past went
a broad-shouldered, brawny fellow carrying a cine-camera. I recognized the
tuft of hair falling over the forehead, the massive shoulders and iron neck.
Could it be my neighbour, Zhenka Evstafyev, from flat 5? But why did he have
a cine-camera? He had never snapped a picture with any kind of camera in his
life.
I jumped up and ran after him.
"Excuse me," I stopped him, staring at the familiar face. "Aren't you
Zhenka? ... Evgeny Grigoryevich?"
"I'm afraid you're mistaken."
I blinked my eyes in perplexity: the likeness was perfect. Even the
timbre of the voice matched.
"Well, am I like him?" laughed the stranger.
"It's amazing."
"It happens," and he shrugged and went his way, leaving me in a turmoil
of confusion.
It still seemed to me that all this was some kind of game, or a trick
of fate. In a moment Zhenka would come back and we should have a good laugh
over it. But he didn't.
Later, when I recalled this day, what came to mind first of all was the
feeling of perplexity and confusion. And one thing more - the unbearable
loneliness of being in a city where I'd known every stone from childhood,
yet which had wholly changed during a few seconds of dizziness. I gazed at
the faces of the passers-by in the vain hope of seeing one I knew. What for?
Probably he wouldn't have recognized me any more than Evstafyev had ...
besides, what could I say to anyone who did?
And exactly that happened.
"Sergei! Sergei Nikolaevich!" A medium-tall, grey-haired man hailed me.
He was wearing a suede zippered jacket. (I had never seen this man before.)
"Come here a minute."
I got up. My name really was Sergei, and even Sergei Nikolaevich.
"Just listen to the latest." He took me confidentially by the arm and
said softly: "Hang on to yourself. Sichuk stayed behind."
"What Sichuk?" I asked, surprised. "Mikhail?"
"Who else? We've only one Sichuk. All the worse for us."
I had known Mikhail Sichuk during the war at the front. Now he worked
either as a photographer or as a news cameraman. We weren't friendly, and
never got together.
"What do you mean - stayed behind?"
"What do I mean? He was touring Europe on the Ukraine. You get it,
don't you...?"
I didn't get it at all. But, sensing the circumstances, I acted
surprised.
"At the last foreign port he stayed behind, skipped - the scum! Either
in Turkey or West Germany: don't know which way they were heading, to or
from Odessa."
"The scoundrel," I said.
"There'll be trouble."
"For whom?"
"Well, those who vouched for him, and so on," laughed the man in the
suede coat. "Fomich is fit to be tied; he made a beeline for head office. It
has nothing to do with you, of course."
"I should hope not," I said.
The unknown released my arm and gave me a friendly jab on the back.
"You look a bit sour, Sergei. Or maybe I'm butting in?"
"In what way?"
"Are you in throes of composition ... or waiting for somebody? Why
aren't you at the editorial office?"
I was not attached to any editorial office. I had to break off the
conversation somehow - it was getting a bit too hot to handle.
"Business," I said vaguely.
"You're up to something, old fellow," he said with a wink. "Well, so
long."
He vanished from my life as quickly as he had come into it. And like a
man thrown for the first time into deep water begins to learn the motions of
a swimmer, I also began to find my bearings in the unknown. Curiosity got
the better of fear and alarm. What had I found out so far? That here my
appearance was the same, and my name too. That Moscow was Moscow, only
different in detail. That there existed an Odessa, Turkey and a Germany.
That the S.S. Ukraine, as in our world, made runs around Europe. That I was
connected with a certain editorial office, and that in this world Mikhail
Sichuk was also a rotten bit of scum.
So I was not much surprised when, going down the steps towards the
Rossiya cinema - as I had already guessed, the building was a cinema - I ran
into Lena. I was bound to meet somebody who knew me, both here and from
whence I came.
Elegant as ever, Lena was walking along in her usual absent way, but
she knew me at once and was even a bit embarrassed, or so I thought.
"Is that you? Where are you coming from?"
"Just off a camel. Well, how are things over there?"
"Where?" she asked, surprised.
"At the hospital, of course. Did you just get off?"
She was even more surprised.
"I don't understand, Sergei. What are you talking about? I've only been
in Moscow three days."
I had seen her this morning in the office of the Head Doctor when I was
telephoning the Brain Institute. Before that, we met every day or almost
every day when I happened to be in the therapeutic department. So I was
silent, painfully seeking a way out of what was a clearly critical
situation. The road into the unknown certainly teemed with pit-falls.
"Sorry, Lena, I'm getting awfully absent-minded. And besides ... it's
so unexpected, meeting you...."
"How are you getting along?" she asked, with what seemed to me a
metallic note.
"So-so," I answered cheerfully. "I manage to get by."
She was silent a long time, taking a good look at me. Finally, she said
dryly: "What an odd conversation. Very odd."
I realized she would leave me in a minute, and my only chance of
finding a place to put down anchor here, for at least twenty-four hours,
would disappear with her. My incursion into the unknown could scarcely last
longer than that. I had to take a stab at it. And I did.
"Look, I've got to talk to you, Lena. I really have to. Something's
happened, you see...."
"What, exactly?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"I can't talk about it on the street." I hurriedly searched for words.
"Where are you ... living now?"
She was slow in answering, apparently weighing something or other.
"At present I'm at Galya's."
"Where's that?"
"As if you didn't know."
I certainly did not know. I didn't even ask what Galya she meant. But I
had to make her agree. It was my last chance!
"Please, Lena...."
"It's awkward, Sergei,"
"My God, what nonsense!" I cried, thinking of the Lena I knew.
But this was an utterly different Lena, who watched me guardedly, not
at all like a friend.
"Well then ... come on," she said at last.
We walked in silence, hardly exchanging a word. Apparently, she was
nervous but tried not to show it; and withdrawn, perhaps even regretting her
bargain. From time to time I caught her giving me a searching, suspicious
glance. What was she suspicious or afraid of?
I immediately recognized the house in Staro-Pimenovsky Alley. My wife
had lived here once, before we became acquainted. Incidentally, her name is
Galya too.
To my disgust, my knees began trembling.
"What are you looking like that for?" she asked.
I continued to look silently around the room. Like everything else in
this unknown world, it was both like and unlike. Or maybe I had simply
forgotten.
"Whose room is it, Lena?"
"Galya's, of course. What strange questions you ask, Sergei. Haven't
you been here before?"
I had difficulty swallowing. Now I would give her another strange
question.
"But hasn't she ... moved?"
Lena gave me a somewhat frightened glance; she moved a bit away as if I
had said some monstrous absurdity.
"Have you never met?"
"Why do you ask?" I countered, uncertainly. "Of course we have."
"When did you see her last?"
I burst out laughing and blurted out: "This morning. At breakfast."
But I immediately regretted saying it.
"Don't lie. What are you lying for? She's been at the institute from
yesterday afternoon. Worked all night. And she's still not back."
"Can't a fellow joke?" I replied, foolishly, realizing I was getting in
more and more of a muddle.
"Strange way of joking, I'd say."
"Maybe we're not talking about the same person?" I put in, trying to
improve matters.
She wasn't even angry, she merely frowned like a doctor who sees,
without quite understanding, the symptoms of a disease under observation.
"I'm talking about Galya Novoseltseva."
"Why 'Novoseltseva'?" I asked, genuinely surprised.
The cold eyes of a doctor now looked at me with professional interest.
"You've lost your memory, Sergei. They were already registered to marry
when war broke out."
"Never mind," I muttered, wiping a perspiring brow. "I only
wondered...."
"What I'm doing here with the woman who stole my chap, right?" she
laughed, losing for a moment the curiosity of a professional doctor. "Even
then, I didn't feel hurt, Sergei. Imagine the luck - my chap left me. But
now ... why, it's even funny. It was so long ago.... And my next after that
- you know..." she sighed. "I'm not lucky in love, Sergei."
It is hard to map out every step you take in an unknown world. And I
put my foot in it again, forgetting where I was and who I was.
"Who's in your way now, with Oleg?"
"Sergei!"
There was so much horror in that cry, I involuntarily shut my eyes.
"Something's wrong with your memory, Sergei. One doesn't forget things
like that. Galya received the official death notice as far back as
forty-four. You couldn't help but know that."
What did I know, and what didn't I? Dare I really tell her?
"You're either pretending," she said, "or you're sick. And I think
you're sick."
"Then go ahead and ask me what day of the month it is, and the year,
and so on."
"I still don't know what I should ask you."
"So tell me the diagnosis," I shot back, getting angry. "Gone crazy,
that's all!"
"That's not the medical term for it. There are various kinds of psychic
disorders.... What did you want to talk to me about?"
By now I had no desire to. If I told her the truth, she would send me
off to the lunatic asylum at once. I had to wriggle out of this somehow.
"You see, the thing is..." I began a hurried improvisation. "A simply
deplorable thing happened.... The most deplorable...."
"You've already said that. But what?"
"As a matter of fact, I've left home. Left my wife. I shan't go into
the reason. But I need shelter. Just for the night. Nox lodgus, vulgaris, to
put it coarsely...."
I fell silent. She said nothing either, only examined her fingertips.
"Haven't you any friends to go to?"
"To some I can't, and with others it's inconvenient. You know how it
is, sometimes...." I tried not to look at her.
"What if you hadn't met me?"
"But I did."
She was still wavering. "It's awkward, Sergei."
"Why?"
"Can't you see that for yourself?"
"You know what?" I was getting angry again. "Call a psychiatrist. At
any rate, I'll get put up for the night."
I looked into her eyes: the professional-doctor look had disappeared.
Now there was only a frightened woman. The incomprehensible is always a bit
terrifying.
"The room isn't mine," she spoke gently. "We'll wait for Galya."
"And what if she spends the night at the institute again?"
"I'll phone her. The telephone's in the hall. Take a seat while you're
waiting."
She went out, leaving me alone in a room where everything seemed
familiar, down to the least detail. I had left this room to go to the
Registry Office to be married. From this room? No, not this one. The whole
thing was something like in similar triangles: certain lines coincide,
others don't.
I picked up a pencil from the table and wrote in my notebook:
If anything happens to me, advise my wife, Galina Gromova, 43
Griboyedov Street. Also inform Professors Zargaryan and Nikodimov at the
Brain Institute. Very important.
I underlined the words 'very important' three times, pressing so hard
that the pencil broke.
So whatever else I intended to write remained unwritten.
After putting the notebook away in my pocket, I realized I had flubbed
again. My Zargaryan and Nikodimov would never get this letter. And here, in
this world, Galya Gromova bore a different surname.
A ring sounded from the front hall, and through the half-open door I
heard the click of a lock. Then Lena cried: "At last. I was just ringing you
up."
"What's the matter?" asked a voice - agonizingly familiar.
"Sergei Gromov's here."
"Well, that's fine. We'll have tea."
"But look, Galya ... he's sort of strange...." Lena lowered her voice
to an inaudible whisper.
"What's wrong, is he crazy?" were the words that reached me.
"I don't know. He says he's left his wife."
"Lord, what nonsense. He's playing a joke on you, Lena, and you fall
for it. I saw her only half an hour ago."
The door was flung open. I leaped to my feet, but couldn't move. My
wife stood in the doorway.
The same face, the same age, even the hairdo was the same. Only the
ear-rings were unfamiliar, and I'd never seen her wear that kind of suit
before. I stood speechless, repressing my excitement by sheer force of will.
"What did you make up all this for?" asked Galya.
I was silent.
"I just saw Olga. She's gone home and expects you for supper. She said
you were going to take her to see the Leningrad Ballet."
I was silent.
"What kind of joke is this? And to play it on Lena. What for?"
I could find no words to answer her. Everything was ruined. What
explanation would satisfy them? The truth? Who, in my position, would dare
to tell the truth?"
"Lena says you're sick," Galya continued, giving me a searching look.
"Maybe you are really sick?"
"Maybe I am," I repeated.
I did not know my own voice: it seemed alien and far away.
"Well then," I added, "you must excuse me. I guess I'll just run
along."
"Where?" asked Galya, with a start. "We won't let you go alone. I'll
take you home." She looked out the window. "My cab's still there. Run after
it, Lena. Maybe you'll manage to hold it."
Now we were alone.
"What does all this mean, Sergei? I don't understand it," said Galya.
"I don't either," I replied.
"But even so?"
"You're a physicist, I believe, aren't you, Galya?" I threw out at
random.
She was sharply alert. "So what?"
"Can you picture the notion of a plurality of worlds? Worlds existing
side by side? Being at the same moment both mysteriously remote and yet
amazingly close?"
"Let's suppose that. Such hypotheses do exist."
"Then just suppose that one of these worlds right next door is similar
to ours. That it also has a Moscow, only a wee bit different. Perhaps even
the same streets, but with other ornamentation. Sometimes, the very same
house but with a different street number. And that you are there, and I, and
Lena - only our relationships differ...."
She still didn't get it. But I had got fed up with the spiritual
masquerade long before. So I dared to open up.
"Let's suppose that in that other Moscow your name isn't Galya
Novoseltseva, but Galya Gromova. That six years ago you and I left this room
to be married at the Registry. And today a miracle happened: I broke through
the membrane barrier ... and looked into your world. There you have a devil
of a problem for our limited brains."
Now she looked at me with real fright. Probably she was thinking along
the lines of Lena: a sudden madness, raving.
"All right, let's leave it lie," I said wryly. "Take me wherever you
wish, I don't care. And don't be scared - I won't choke you or kiss you.
There's Lena waving at us. Come on."
Even in this world, Galya must have possessed her usual control. A
minute later she was quite calm and collected.
"I hope we won't start in on science fiction in front of the cabby?"
she asked, on the way to the taxi.
"So you consider it scientific?" I couldn't resist saying.
"Goodness knows!"
I could not read anything special on her face. Her behaviour was
ordinary, that of a clever woman - Galya's way with people who were
strangers and yet whom she found interesting. Attentive eyes, respectful
attention to a companion, unconsciously coquettish, mocking.
"Why do you have Pushkin's monument in the middle of the square?" I
asked, as we drove past.
"Where do you have it?"
"On the boulevard."
"You're lying about everything. Just as you lied about our going to the
Registry. And why did you say six years ago?"
"Fate," I laughed.
"Where was I six years ago?" she wondered, thoughtfully. "In the spring
I was in Odessa."
"So was I."
"Why do you lie? You never even came with us."
"In your world I didn't, but in ours - on the contrary."
"That's funny," she said, pronouncing every syllable. And added with a
critical look at me: "But you don't give the impression of being a lunatic."
"Nice to hear it," I wanted to say, but I didn't. A dark squall hit me
right in the face. Everything went black.
"What's wrong?" I heard Galya's frightened cry, and then her hurried,
excited words: "Driver, driver, pull up somewhere by the pavement. He feels
bad...."
I opened my eyes. The mist of bewitchment was still swirling round
inside the car. And through this fog a woman's face was staring at me.
"Who is it?" I asked hoarsely.
"Do you feel bad, Sergei?"
"Galya?" I said, surprised. "How did you get here?"
She did not answer.
"Did something happen to me there ... on the boulevard?" I asked,
looking around me.
"Yes, it did," said Galya. "We'll talk about it later. Can you go home,
or do you need a doctor?"
I stretched, shook my head, and sat up straight. Clearly I could do
without a doctor. While we rode, I told Galya about walking along Tverskoi
Boulevard, about my dizzy spell, and how I tried to talk to myself in the
midst of a lilac fog.
"And afterwards," Galya asked, with sudden interest - before that she
had been listening now with distrust, now with indifference. "What happened
afterwards?"
I shrugged in bewilderment.
"Don't you remember?"
"I don't remember."
I really didn't remember, and only on returning home did I find out
from Galya what had happened at her place.
"It was delirium," I said.
With her love for expressing things precisely, Galya now corrected me:
"For delirium, it's very consistent. Like playing a well-rehearsed role.
People don't rave like that. Besides, delirium is a symptom of illness, yet
you don't give mo that impression."
"But the fainting spell on the boulevard?" broke in my wife, Olga. "And
in the taxi?"
As a doctor she searched for a medical explanation. But Galya was as
doubtful as before.
"Then what happened between the fainting spells?"
"Some kind of somnambulistic state."
"What do you think I am - a lunatic?" I told her, offended.
"If it was a dream, then it must have been a day-dream," put in Galya
with amusement, insistent on accuracy. "Besides, we saw the dream and not
Sergei. Speaking of dreams, do you still have them?"
"What have dreams got to do with it?" I burst out. "I fainted, and I
didn't see any dreams."
I realized only too well that Galya never played jokes on anyone. So
her story about my wandering around like a sleepwalker - the only way my
behaviour could be described - seriously alarmed me. Before, I had never
fainted or walked along the edge of a roof in the moonlight, nor had loss of
memory. However, I could find no explanation of the event that answered to
common sense.
"Maybe it was the result of hypnosis?" I suggested.
"Then who hypnotized you?" Olga frowned. "And where? At the office? On
the boulevard? Nonsense!"
"Right. Nonsense it is," I agreed.
"Are you, by any chance, writing a science-fiction story?" Galya asked
suddenly. "Your very intelligible observation about the plurality of worlds
even aroused my interest.... Can you imagine, Olga?" she laughed. "Two
adjacent worlds in space, like similar triangles. Both there and here -
Moscow; there and here, a Sergei Gromov. But you weren't there- - instead,
he was married to me."
"So the secret's out," joked Olga. "And the sleepwalker, of course, is
a visitor from another world in Sergei's likeness."
"He explained it to me like this. Moscow, he said, was the same, only a
little bit different. Pushkin's monument is on the square in our world, but
on the boulevard in theirs. I almost burst out laughing."
Olga, apparently, was thinking hard. "And you know what might explain
things?" she asked, suddenly animated, still seeking a rational explanation
even as I was. "Look here, didn't Sergei know that the monument had once
been moved? He did. So perhaps this information, stored away in his memory,
became fixed in his delirium? Some stimulation triggered the signal - and
there you are: the myth about an adjacent, similar world."
These arguments only annoyed me.
"It makes me sick listening to you. Some kind of new variant of
Stevenson's tale. A regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Only which is Jekyll
and which is Hyde?"
"It's perfectly clear who," parried Galya. "You wouldn't hurt yourself
in choosing between them."
Olga did not understand, and asked: "Who are you talking about?"
"About international imperialist spies, Olga," I said jocularly.
"Parachuted here from an unidentified plane."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Look, there is a certain English writer, Stevenson by name.
Usually, you read his stuff when you're a teenager. However, even doctors
do. For them, by the way, his story is almost like a course in psychiatry,
for Jekyll and Hyde, in reality, are the same man. To be more exact, a
quintessence of the good and evil inherent in one person. By drinking an
elixir that he discovered - medically speaking, a particular combination of
sulphanilamide and antibiotics - the noble Dr. Jekyll turned himself into
the scoundrel Hyde. Is that precise enough for you?" I asked Galya.
"Quite. Search your pockets, maybe Hyde left some clues behind during
his temporary transmutation."
I dug into my pockets and threw on the table a packet of headache
tablets.
"That must be one clue. I certainly never bought them."
"Perhaps you put them there?" Galya asked Olga.
"No. More than likely he bought them on the way home."
"I didn't buy anything," I put in angrily. "And, for the record, I
didn't go into the chemist's."
"That means Hyde did. Is there anything else he left?"
I mechanically felt the inside pocket of my jacket.
"Wait. This notebook doesn't belong here." I pulled it out and opened
it. "Something's written here. Where are my glasses?"
"Give it here." Galya grabbed the notebook and read aloud: 'If anything
happens to me, advise my wife, Galina Gromova, 43 Griboyedov Street. Also
inform Professors Zargaryan and Nikodimov at the Brain Institute. Very
important.' "The 'very important' is even underlined," she laughed. "And
Galina Gromova, that's me, of course. I already told you his delirium was
consistent. Only why Griboyedov Street? There's Staro-Pimenovsky, and now
it's Medvedev Street."
"But have we a Griboyedov Street?" asked Olga. "Somehow, I never heard
of it."
"There is," I interrupted. "It used to be Maly Kharitonevsky. Only
there's no building on it with that number. Apparently, Hyde had in mind
some avenue, rather than street."
"But who's this Zargaryan?" Galya said, full of curiosity. "I know of a
Nikodimov. He's a physicist, a rather famous one, by the way. Only he's not
at the Brain Institute, but at the Institute of New Problems in Physics. But
who this Zargaryan is, I really don't know."
"But Sergei didn't write this!" cried Olga suddenly. "It's not his
handwriting ... though the 'v' has the same flourish and the down stroke in
the 't' is the same. Look for yourself!"
I found my glasses and read the note.
"The handwriting's similar. I wrote that way as a student. Working on
the paper spoiled my writing. I don't write like that now."
I rewrote the lines in the notebook. They differed greatly from the
first.
"Ri-ight," drawled Galya. "No need for a handwriting expert. But
perhaps the handwriting changes when you're in a somnambulistic state."
"I wouldn't know," said Olga. "Somnambulism's in the field of
psychiatry. It's a sort of psychic upset that comes like lightning. I can't
explain it any other way. And I don't like all this, not at all."
"Nor do I," Galya conceded.
She read and reread both memorandums in the notebook. Her face
reflected not only concentrated thinking but repressed anxiety. Galya's
clear, logical mind did not want to give in to the inexplicable.
"I simply can't explain it. Either scientifically or logically, from
the standpoint of common sense, so to say. A person of absolutely sound mind
- and suddenly he turns sleepwalker. Of course, a fainting fit is
understandable: a doctor could find an explanation. But this raving about a
plurality of worlds - that's more like something out of a science-fiction
story. And then his asking for a night's lodging, for a roof over his head,
when the man has his own private flat."
"Apparently my Hyde was looking for shelter," I laughed. "He couldn't
go to a hotel, d'you see."
"Here's what I don't like. The hypothesis about Hyde explains it all.
But I prefer dealing with pure science, rather than science fiction. Though
everything about it is fantastic. Now why, Sergei, did you ask to go to
Lena's? You didn't know she lives with me."
"That's new to me, even now. I've not seen Lena for ten years. I can't
even imagine what she looks like."
My adventure in Galya's story surprised me more than anything else.
Lena and I never met, never corresponded. We'd probably even forgotten each
other's existence.
"Is she an old flame?" asked Olga.
"All of us went to school together before the war," replied Galya. "We
were all going to enter the medical faculty. But nothing came of it: Sergei
and Oleg went to the front, and I got a yen for physics. Only Lena went in
for medicine. By the way, she really was in love with you, Sergei."
"With Oleg," I said.
"All the girls ran after him," sighed Galya. "But I had the worst fate:
I won and lost." She stood up. "Peace be to thy house, but it's high time I
left. The council of detectives is closed and Sherlock Holmes proposes to
make an excursion into the realm of physics."
"Psychology, you mean to say."
"No, I mean physics. I'm interested in Zargaryan and Nikodimov, and
what they're doing in the Institute of New Problems in Physics."
"Whatever for?" asked Olga in surprise. "I should apply to a
psychiatrist."
"And I would choose Zargaryan. Who is he? What is he engaged in? Is he
connected with Nikodimov? And if he is, then in what field?" Galya turned to
me: "Did you ever hear of either name?"
"Never."
"Maybe you read about them somewhere and have merely forgotten?"
"I've never seen the names anywhere, nor have I forgotten."
"And that's the most interesting point in all your somnambulistic
story. Physics, my dear, physics. The Institute of New Problems in Physics.
New, remember!" And Galya turned to Olga. "You know what? Call Zoya and find
out about Zargaryan. She knows everybody."
We decided to call Zoya in the morning.
I fell asleep at once, and slept soundly right through till morning.
Dreams, I might say, are a peculiarity of mine that sets me apart from
other mortals. It wasn't by accident that Galya asked if I still had dreams.
I have them. They repeat themselves, persistently, and are almost unchanged
in content, oddly like fragments of travelogue films.
Naturally I also have ordinary dreams in which everything is confused
and foggy, both as to proportion and distortion, like in a Fun House mirror.
My recall of such dreams is so vacillating and short-lived that they are
hard to recapture and describe. But the dreams I'm talking about I shall
remember all my life, and I can describe them just as precisely as I can my
flat.
They are always in colour, and the colours are as true and harmonious
as in nature. In one I see a spring-time meadow appearing out of the night
mist, flowering as profusely as in real life. Arid I even remember the
designs on a girl's cotton-print dress that flashes for a moment through the
sunny dream. Nothing special happens in these dreams: they do not frighten
or alarm me, but have something alluring about them, like getting a tiny
peep into somebody else's life.
The one I see most frequently shows a corner in a strange city, the
view of a street which I've never actually seen though I can remember all
the details: the balconies, shop windows, the lindens along the pavement,
the iron grilles. I can call them all to mind as clearly as if I had seen
them but yesterday. I can even recall the passers-by, for they are always
the same, even the black cat with white spots that runs across the road. It
always crosses at one and the same corner, near one and the same house.
Sometimes I see myself in an arcade surrounded by shops off galleries
like in Moscow's GUM department store. But the arcade has only one storey
and branches off into numerous side alleys that run lengthwise and
crosswise. For some reason I am always waiting by a stationery shop, or
slowly strolling past a shop-window displaying draperies and miraculously
lit by a sort of odd iridescent lighting. I have never seen this arcade in
real life, yet I not only remember the windows but even the shape of the
goods, the tall glass archways and the coloured mosaic on the pavement.
Sometimes the dream carries me into the interior of a town flat which I
have never been in, or else into an idyllic village landscape. Often there
is a road running between naked earthen slopes sparsely scattered here and
there with patches of dusty grass. The road runs down to a blue strip of
water, gay with golden water-lilies. Sometimes a woman in white walks ahead
of me, sometimes an old man with a fishing-rod; but neither of them ever
turns round and I never overtake them. I see only a strip of water,
embroidered with duckweed and water-lilies; but for some reason I know it is
a pond and that the road will now turn right along the bank, and that I ran
here as a small boy - though neither the pond nor the road belongs to my
real childhood.
It was these dreams that awoke Olga's doubts of my psychic balance and
made her so insistent that I consult a psychiatrist. But I was more inclined
to follow Galya's advice. The ill-starred sheet from the notebook with the
names of Zargaryan and Nikodimov gave me no peace, because I was absolutely
sure I had never, under any circumstances, hoard of these particular names.
As for subconsciously absorbing them from talk overheard in the underground
or on the street, naturally I didn't believe that. A normal memory preserves
what is overheard in the conscious mind, not in the subconscious.
"All right, I'll call Zoya," Olga agreed.
Zoya worked in the Institute of Scientific Information and, according
to her, knew all the 'big shots'. If Nikodimov and Zargaryan belonged to
this highly-attested category, in one minute I should get an earful of a
good dozen anecdotes about their way of life. However, I didn't need
anecdotes, but precise information as to their particular fields arid latest
activities. I had to make sure that they wore my Nikodimov and Zargaryan.
I decided to ring up Klenov first of all. He is head of the science
department at our editorial offices. I'd known Klenov from the time we were
at the front together.
"I need some dope, old man. The exact whereabouts of two giants:
Nikodimov and Zargaryan."
Laughter came from the receiver.
"Even yesterday I thought you were a bit off your rocker."
"When was that?" I asked, surprised.
"When I bumped into you in Pushkin square. About six o'clock. When I
told you about Mikhail.."
I licked my overdry lips. So Klenov had seen Hyde and talked with him.
And had noticed nothing. Very interesting.
"I don't remember," I said.
"Don't play games. About Mikhail stopping behind, don't you remember?"
"Where did he stop off?"
"In Istanbul. I already told you once. He asked for political shelter
at the American Embassy. "
"He must be crazy!"
"He's got all his buttons, the snake. They should have kept an eye on
him. They say 'the human heart is a mystery'. They should have guessed his
little plan before it was too late. Now we're writing a collective letter
not to let him come back when he comes crawling to us on his belly. What's
up with you? You honestly don't remember?"
"Honestly. My mind is a complete blank about yesterday from around five
in the afternoon to ten in the evening. First I fainted, and I don't
remember a thing about what happened afterwards - what I did or what I said.
I came to when I was being brought home. Must be a souvenir of that
concussion I got near Dunafoldvar, remember?"
As if Klenov didn't remember the time we forced the Danube. Oleg was
with us. And Mikhail Sichuk, incidentally, was there too. Only he was
foresighted enough to get into the rear: headed the editorial office of a
front-line newspaper. For about a minute we were both silent. What we went
through at the Danube wasn't to be forgotten. Then Klenov spoke.
"You should get some advice from a professor. I can arrange a
consultation, if you like. I know a few good specialists."
"No need of that," I sighed. "Better if you can tell me what Nikodimov
and Zargaryan are doing in science."
"You hoping for a feature? You won't get anywhere. Nikodimov answers
such attempts with the method of Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger. He
dropped one reporter from Science and Life down the waste chute."
"Don't worry yourself about my nearest future. Just give me all you
know. Who is this Nikodimov? And no jokes, if you don't mind. I need it
bad."
"Look, he's a physicist, with a very wide range of interests. Puts out
works on the physics of fields of attraction. Interested in electric
magnetism in complex media. At one time, working with Zemlicka, he brought
out the concept of a neutrino generator."
"With whom?"
"With Zemlicka. A Czech bio-physicist."
"And the general idea - can you tell me?"
"I'm an ignoramus here, of course, and I heard it from ignoramuses -
but, in a general sense, it's something like a neutrino laser, which cuts a
window into anti-worlds."
"Are you serious?"
"What do you think? That it looks a bit shady? That's how it was
regarded, by the way."
"And Zargaryan?"
"What about Zargaryan?"
"Is he tied up with Nikodimov right now?"
"You already know that? Congratulations."
"Is he a physicist too?"
"No, a neurophysiologist or something like that. As a matter of fact,
his field is telepathy."
"What, what?" I screamed.
"Te-le-pa-thy," repeated Klenov didactically. "There is such a science:
mental telepathy."
"I doubt it. They gave that up in the Middle Ages. No such science."
"You're behind the times. It's al-read-y a science. Condensers of
biological currents, and all that kind of thing. Satisfied?"
"Almost," I sighed.
"If you're going into the attack, I'll back you body and soul. We'll
Translated from the Russian by Gladys Evans
Mir Publishers, Moscow, 1973
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
Original title: "Хождение за три мира"
---------------------------------------------------------------
No, this was a different
Mr. Golyadkin, absolutely
different, but at the same
time absolutely similar
to the former...
F. Dostoevsky, The Double
Nil admirari! Be astonished at nothing!
A proposition borrowed from the philosophy of Pythagoras
___________________________________________________
I was returning home by way of Tverskoi Boulevard, walking up from the
Nikitskie Vorota. It was somewhere around five o'clock in the afternoon, but
the Saturday crowds usually teeming the streets at this hour by-passed the
boulevard, and the side-alleys were as deserted and quiet as they are in the
morning. The September sky, utterly cloudless of a sudden, gave no hint of
the nearness of autumn. Not one yellow leaf rustled underfoot and, after
last night's rain, even the faded late-summer grass between the trees seemed
as luxuriantly green as in May.
I strolled leisurely along an alley, hesitating at every bench with the
vague idea of sitting down. Finally I did, stretching out my legs; and the
very same second I felt as if everything around me was slipping off
somewhere, fading out and spinning in circles. I don't usually have dizzy
spells, but now I gripped the bench so as not to fall. Everything opposite
me on the boulevard - trees and passers-by - vanished in a lilac-tinted
mist. Exactly like in the mountains when clouds creep to your feet and
everything around disintegrates and melts into the thick, wet, cottony
flakes. But this was no rain: a pure dry mist swooped down, lapped all the
green from the boulevard, and then vanished.
Literally vanished. In the blink of an eye, the trees and bushes were
back again, like a repeated sequence in a colour cinerama film. The bench
opposite, with its deep seat, was again in place and the girl in the blue
coat - so almost listed missing - sat there with her book. Everything
looked, ostensibly, as before; but only ostensibly - some inner voice
instantly doubted it. I even looked around me to check my impressions and
contentedly reflected: "Nonsense, it's all the way it was. Exactly...."
"No, not exactly," reflected that other inner voice.
Was it another voice? I was arguing with myself, but my conscious mind
seemed to be split in half for the argument was more like a dialogue between
two utterly unidentical and dissimilar egos. Any thought that arose was at
once countered by another which intruded from somewhere or from somebody by
suggestion, but was aggressive and masterful.
"The benches are the same."
"They are not. On Pushkin Boulevard they're green, not yellow."
"The alley walks are the same."
"These are narrower. And where's the granite kerb?"
"What kerb?"
"And there's no lawn."
"A lawn?"
"Beside the court. There used to be a tennis-court here."
"Whe-ere?"
By now I was looking around with a feeling of growing alarm. The
double-ego feeling disappeared. I suddenly found myself in a new and
strangely altered world. When you walk along a street where everything is
dear to you and familiar to the eye, you do not notice the little things,
the details. But let them suddenly disappear, and you stop, caught by a
feeling of confusion and alarm. The surroundings were only similar to, but
not exactly the same as those I knew - I, who had strolled along the
boulevard walks a thousand times or more. Even the trees, apparently, were
somewhat different; the bushes weren't the same; and for some reason I
called the boulevard Pushkin instead of Tverskoi.
From habit I looked at my watch, arid my arm froze in mid-air. Even my
jacket was different from the one I'd put on that morning. As a matter of
fact, it wasn't my jacket, nor was the watch mine, and a scar curved out
from beneath the band, yet only about a minute ago no scar had been there at
all. But this was an old scar, healed long ago, the track of a bullet or
shell splinter. I looked down at my feet - even the shoes weren't mine but a
stranger's, with ridiculous buckles on the side.
"What if my appearance has changed, and my age is not the same? What if
I'm not ... me, at all?" came the burning thought. I jumped to my feet and
ran, rather than walked, along the alley toward the theatre.
The theatre stood in the same place, but it was a different one, with
an altered entrance and other billings. I did not find one title I knew on
the list of its repertoire. But in the dark glass doors, unlit from inside,
a familiar face was reflected. It was my face. So far, it was the only thing
in this world that was mine.
I was only now aware that my head ached. I rubbed my temples - it still
ached. I remembered that somewhere near by, on the square I believed, there
should be a chemist's shop. Perhaps it had been spared, if I were lucky. The
square was already visible through the flashing interstices between the line
of cars passing by, and I hurried ahead, continuing to glance behind me in
confusion and alarm. I could not exactly recall the buildings that lined
Pushkin Boulevard, though these did not appear to be different - except the
lamps over the doorways weren't the same eye-smacking ones and, what's more,
the street numbers were changed.
Where the green river of the boulevard flowed into the square, I was
literally turned to stone: its mouth was empty. Pushkin was gone. For a
moment, I thought my heart stopped beating. The naked stone bald-spot in
place of the monument frightened me now, rather than alarmed. I closed my
eyes, hoping the delusion would pass. At that moment, somebody passing by
bumped into me, perhaps accidentally, but so hard that I was spun round on
my heels. The delusion really did disappear. I saw the monument.
It stood far back in the square. Pushkin looked just as thoughtful and
severe as ever, his winged cloak negligently thrown over his shoulders - an
image dear to me from childhood. Even if it were in a different spot, it was
Pushkin! I began to breathe more freely, though behind the monument I could
see an utterly unknown building, quite modern, with the huge letters ROSSIYA
across its facade. Hotel or cinema? Only yesterday, there had been a
six-teen-storey building here, with the Cosmos restaurant on the ground
floor, and flats above. Everything was similar, yet dissimilar, familiar
down to the smallest detail, yet it was the details most of all that altered
the familiar look. For instance, I found the chemist's shop in the same
spot, the salesgirls stood behind the counters wearing the same white
smocks, identical queues crowded round the cashier's booth, and in the
optical section they were still selling eyeglasses with the same ugly,
uncomfortable frames. But when I asked a girl for some pyrabutan for a
headache, she gave me a puzzled grimace.
"Pardon?"
"Pyrabutan."
"Never heard of it."
"Well, for a headache."
"Pyramidonum?"
"No," I muttered vaguely. "Pyrabutan."
"There's no such thing."
My stupidly foolish look drew a pitying smile.
"Take these 3-in-one tablets." And she threw a small packet on the
counter - a box I'd never seen before.
In my trouser pocket I found a handful of silver coins - the money
could hardly be told from ours. Later, sitting on a bench by the Pushkin
monument, I made a thorough search of all the pockets in the suit bestowed
on me by a whim of fate. The contents would have stumped any detective.
Besides some change I found a few one- and three-rouble notes that were
quite different from ours, a crumpled tram ticket, an excellent fountain
pen, and an almost new pocket-notebook with only a few pages torn out. There
were no documents or identification cards to give me a hint as to what or
who my double was.
I no longer felt any fear: there remained only a sharp, nervous
curiosity. I tried not to dwell on how long my intrusion into this world
would last, or how it would end - all kinds of conjectures, even the most
terrifying, could be made on the subject. But what was I to do while I was
on this free trip into the unknown? I wouldn't be let into a hotel. Where
could I spend the night, if my sojourn was a long one? Perhaps at home, or
with friends - after all, the owner of the suit must live somewhere, and he
probably had friends. The cream of the joke would be if they turned out to
be my friends. What if the whole thing were a dream? I slapped the bench as
hard as I could - it hurt! So it wasn't a dream.
For a brief moment I thought I saw a face I knew. Sauntering past went
a broad-shouldered, brawny fellow carrying a cine-camera. I recognized the
tuft of hair falling over the forehead, the massive shoulders and iron neck.
Could it be my neighbour, Zhenka Evstafyev, from flat 5? But why did he have
a cine-camera? He had never snapped a picture with any kind of camera in his
life.
I jumped up and ran after him.
"Excuse me," I stopped him, staring at the familiar face. "Aren't you
Zhenka? ... Evgeny Grigoryevich?"
"I'm afraid you're mistaken."
I blinked my eyes in perplexity: the likeness was perfect. Even the
timbre of the voice matched.
"Well, am I like him?" laughed the stranger.
"It's amazing."
"It happens," and he shrugged and went his way, leaving me in a turmoil
of confusion.
It still seemed to me that all this was some kind of game, or a trick
of fate. In a moment Zhenka would come back and we should have a good laugh
over it. But he didn't.
Later, when I recalled this day, what came to mind first of all was the
feeling of perplexity and confusion. And one thing more - the unbearable
loneliness of being in a city where I'd known every stone from childhood,
yet which had wholly changed during a few seconds of dizziness. I gazed at
the faces of the passers-by in the vain hope of seeing one I knew. What for?
Probably he wouldn't have recognized me any more than Evstafyev had ...
besides, what could I say to anyone who did?
And exactly that happened.
"Sergei! Sergei Nikolaevich!" A medium-tall, grey-haired man hailed me.
He was wearing a suede zippered jacket. (I had never seen this man before.)
"Come here a minute."
I got up. My name really was Sergei, and even Sergei Nikolaevich.
"Just listen to the latest." He took me confidentially by the arm and
said softly: "Hang on to yourself. Sichuk stayed behind."
"What Sichuk?" I asked, surprised. "Mikhail?"
"Who else? We've only one Sichuk. All the worse for us."
I had known Mikhail Sichuk during the war at the front. Now he worked
either as a photographer or as a news cameraman. We weren't friendly, and
never got together.
"What do you mean - stayed behind?"
"What do I mean? He was touring Europe on the Ukraine. You get it,
don't you...?"
I didn't get it at all. But, sensing the circumstances, I acted
surprised.
"At the last foreign port he stayed behind, skipped - the scum! Either
in Turkey or West Germany: don't know which way they were heading, to or
from Odessa."
"The scoundrel," I said.
"There'll be trouble."
"For whom?"
"Well, those who vouched for him, and so on," laughed the man in the
suede coat. "Fomich is fit to be tied; he made a beeline for head office. It
has nothing to do with you, of course."
"I should hope not," I said.
The unknown released my arm and gave me a friendly jab on the back.
"You look a bit sour, Sergei. Or maybe I'm butting in?"
"In what way?"
"Are you in throes of composition ... or waiting for somebody? Why
aren't you at the editorial office?"
I was not attached to any editorial office. I had to break off the
conversation somehow - it was getting a bit too hot to handle.
"Business," I said vaguely.
"You're up to something, old fellow," he said with a wink. "Well, so
long."
He vanished from my life as quickly as he had come into it. And like a
man thrown for the first time into deep water begins to learn the motions of
a swimmer, I also began to find my bearings in the unknown. Curiosity got
the better of fear and alarm. What had I found out so far? That here my
appearance was the same, and my name too. That Moscow was Moscow, only
different in detail. That there existed an Odessa, Turkey and a Germany.
That the S.S. Ukraine, as in our world, made runs around Europe. That I was
connected with a certain editorial office, and that in this world Mikhail
Sichuk was also a rotten bit of scum.
So I was not much surprised when, going down the steps towards the
Rossiya cinema - as I had already guessed, the building was a cinema - I ran
into Lena. I was bound to meet somebody who knew me, both here and from
whence I came.
Elegant as ever, Lena was walking along in her usual absent way, but
she knew me at once and was even a bit embarrassed, or so I thought.
"Is that you? Where are you coming from?"
"Just off a camel. Well, how are things over there?"
"Where?" she asked, surprised.
"At the hospital, of course. Did you just get off?"
She was even more surprised.
"I don't understand, Sergei. What are you talking about? I've only been
in Moscow three days."
I had seen her this morning in the office of the Head Doctor when I was
telephoning the Brain Institute. Before that, we met every day or almost
every day when I happened to be in the therapeutic department. So I was
silent, painfully seeking a way out of what was a clearly critical
situation. The road into the unknown certainly teemed with pit-falls.
"Sorry, Lena, I'm getting awfully absent-minded. And besides ... it's
so unexpected, meeting you...."
"How are you getting along?" she asked, with what seemed to me a
metallic note.
"So-so," I answered cheerfully. "I manage to get by."
She was silent a long time, taking a good look at me. Finally, she said
dryly: "What an odd conversation. Very odd."
I realized she would leave me in a minute, and my only chance of
finding a place to put down anchor here, for at least twenty-four hours,
would disappear with her. My incursion into the unknown could scarcely last
longer than that. I had to take a stab at it. And I did.
"Look, I've got to talk to you, Lena. I really have to. Something's
happened, you see...."
"What, exactly?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"I can't talk about it on the street." I hurriedly searched for words.
"Where are you ... living now?"
She was slow in answering, apparently weighing something or other.
"At present I'm at Galya's."
"Where's that?"
"As if you didn't know."
I certainly did not know. I didn't even ask what Galya she meant. But I
had to make her agree. It was my last chance!
"Please, Lena...."
"It's awkward, Sergei,"
"My God, what nonsense!" I cried, thinking of the Lena I knew.
But this was an utterly different Lena, who watched me guardedly, not
at all like a friend.
"Well then ... come on," she said at last.
We walked in silence, hardly exchanging a word. Apparently, she was
nervous but tried not to show it; and withdrawn, perhaps even regretting her
bargain. From time to time I caught her giving me a searching, suspicious
glance. What was she suspicious or afraid of?
I immediately recognized the house in Staro-Pimenovsky Alley. My wife
had lived here once, before we became acquainted. Incidentally, her name is
Galya too.
To my disgust, my knees began trembling.
"What are you looking like that for?" she asked.
I continued to look silently around the room. Like everything else in
this unknown world, it was both like and unlike. Or maybe I had simply
forgotten.
"Whose room is it, Lena?"
"Galya's, of course. What strange questions you ask, Sergei. Haven't
you been here before?"
I had difficulty swallowing. Now I would give her another strange
question.
"But hasn't she ... moved?"
Lena gave me a somewhat frightened glance; she moved a bit away as if I
had said some monstrous absurdity.
"Have you never met?"
"Why do you ask?" I countered, uncertainly. "Of course we have."
"When did you see her last?"
I burst out laughing and blurted out: "This morning. At breakfast."
But I immediately regretted saying it.
"Don't lie. What are you lying for? She's been at the institute from
yesterday afternoon. Worked all night. And she's still not back."
"Can't a fellow joke?" I replied, foolishly, realizing I was getting in
more and more of a muddle.
"Strange way of joking, I'd say."
"Maybe we're not talking about the same person?" I put in, trying to
improve matters.
She wasn't even angry, she merely frowned like a doctor who sees,
without quite understanding, the symptoms of a disease under observation.
"I'm talking about Galya Novoseltseva."
"Why 'Novoseltseva'?" I asked, genuinely surprised.
The cold eyes of a doctor now looked at me with professional interest.
"You've lost your memory, Sergei. They were already registered to marry
when war broke out."
"Never mind," I muttered, wiping a perspiring brow. "I only
wondered...."
"What I'm doing here with the woman who stole my chap, right?" she
laughed, losing for a moment the curiosity of a professional doctor. "Even
then, I didn't feel hurt, Sergei. Imagine the luck - my chap left me. But
now ... why, it's even funny. It was so long ago.... And my next after that
- you know..." she sighed. "I'm not lucky in love, Sergei."
It is hard to map out every step you take in an unknown world. And I
put my foot in it again, forgetting where I was and who I was.
"Who's in your way now, with Oleg?"
"Sergei!"
There was so much horror in that cry, I involuntarily shut my eyes.
"Something's wrong with your memory, Sergei. One doesn't forget things
like that. Galya received the official death notice as far back as
forty-four. You couldn't help but know that."
What did I know, and what didn't I? Dare I really tell her?
"You're either pretending," she said, "or you're sick. And I think
you're sick."
"Then go ahead and ask me what day of the month it is, and the year,
and so on."
"I still don't know what I should ask you."
"So tell me the diagnosis," I shot back, getting angry. "Gone crazy,
that's all!"
"That's not the medical term for it. There are various kinds of psychic
disorders.... What did you want to talk to me about?"
By now I had no desire to. If I told her the truth, she would send me
off to the lunatic asylum at once. I had to wriggle out of this somehow.
"You see, the thing is..." I began a hurried improvisation. "A simply
deplorable thing happened.... The most deplorable...."
"You've already said that. But what?"
"As a matter of fact, I've left home. Left my wife. I shan't go into
the reason. But I need shelter. Just for the night. Nox lodgus, vulgaris, to
put it coarsely...."
I fell silent. She said nothing either, only examined her fingertips.
"Haven't you any friends to go to?"
"To some I can't, and with others it's inconvenient. You know how it
is, sometimes...." I tried not to look at her.
"What if you hadn't met me?"
"But I did."
She was still wavering. "It's awkward, Sergei."
"Why?"
"Can't you see that for yourself?"
"You know what?" I was getting angry again. "Call a psychiatrist. At
any rate, I'll get put up for the night."
I looked into her eyes: the professional-doctor look had disappeared.
Now there was only a frightened woman. The incomprehensible is always a bit
terrifying.
"The room isn't mine," she spoke gently. "We'll wait for Galya."
"And what if she spends the night at the institute again?"
"I'll phone her. The telephone's in the hall. Take a seat while you're
waiting."
She went out, leaving me alone in a room where everything seemed
familiar, down to the least detail. I had left this room to go to the
Registry Office to be married. From this room? No, not this one. The whole
thing was something like in similar triangles: certain lines coincide,
others don't.
I picked up a pencil from the table and wrote in my notebook:
If anything happens to me, advise my wife, Galina Gromova, 43
Griboyedov Street. Also inform Professors Zargaryan and Nikodimov at the
Brain Institute. Very important.
I underlined the words 'very important' three times, pressing so hard
that the pencil broke.
So whatever else I intended to write remained unwritten.
After putting the notebook away in my pocket, I realized I had flubbed
again. My Zargaryan and Nikodimov would never get this letter. And here, in
this world, Galya Gromova bore a different surname.
A ring sounded from the front hall, and through the half-open door I
heard the click of a lock. Then Lena cried: "At last. I was just ringing you
up."
"What's the matter?" asked a voice - agonizingly familiar.
"Sergei Gromov's here."
"Well, that's fine. We'll have tea."
"But look, Galya ... he's sort of strange...." Lena lowered her voice
to an inaudible whisper.
"What's wrong, is he crazy?" were the words that reached me.
"I don't know. He says he's left his wife."
"Lord, what nonsense. He's playing a joke on you, Lena, and you fall
for it. I saw her only half an hour ago."
The door was flung open. I leaped to my feet, but couldn't move. My
wife stood in the doorway.
The same face, the same age, even the hairdo was the same. Only the
ear-rings were unfamiliar, and I'd never seen her wear that kind of suit
before. I stood speechless, repressing my excitement by sheer force of will.
"What did you make up all this for?" asked Galya.
I was silent.
"I just saw Olga. She's gone home and expects you for supper. She said
you were going to take her to see the Leningrad Ballet."
I was silent.
"What kind of joke is this? And to play it on Lena. What for?"
I could find no words to answer her. Everything was ruined. What
explanation would satisfy them? The truth? Who, in my position, would dare
to tell the truth?"
"Lena says you're sick," Galya continued, giving me a searching look.
"Maybe you are really sick?"
"Maybe I am," I repeated.
I did not know my own voice: it seemed alien and far away.
"Well then," I added, "you must excuse me. I guess I'll just run
along."
"Where?" asked Galya, with a start. "We won't let you go alone. I'll
take you home." She looked out the window. "My cab's still there. Run after
it, Lena. Maybe you'll manage to hold it."
Now we were alone.
"What does all this mean, Sergei? I don't understand it," said Galya.
"I don't either," I replied.
"But even so?"
"You're a physicist, I believe, aren't you, Galya?" I threw out at
random.
She was sharply alert. "So what?"
"Can you picture the notion of a plurality of worlds? Worlds existing
side by side? Being at the same moment both mysteriously remote and yet
amazingly close?"
"Let's suppose that. Such hypotheses do exist."
"Then just suppose that one of these worlds right next door is similar
to ours. That it also has a Moscow, only a wee bit different. Perhaps even
the same streets, but with other ornamentation. Sometimes, the very same
house but with a different street number. And that you are there, and I, and
Lena - only our relationships differ...."
She still didn't get it. But I had got fed up with the spiritual
masquerade long before. So I dared to open up.
"Let's suppose that in that other Moscow your name isn't Galya
Novoseltseva, but Galya Gromova. That six years ago you and I left this room
to be married at the Registry. And today a miracle happened: I broke through
the membrane barrier ... and looked into your world. There you have a devil
of a problem for our limited brains."
Now she looked at me with real fright. Probably she was thinking along
the lines of Lena: a sudden madness, raving.
"All right, let's leave it lie," I said wryly. "Take me wherever you
wish, I don't care. And don't be scared - I won't choke you or kiss you.
There's Lena waving at us. Come on."
Even in this world, Galya must have possessed her usual control. A
minute later she was quite calm and collected.
"I hope we won't start in on science fiction in front of the cabby?"
she asked, on the way to the taxi.
"So you consider it scientific?" I couldn't resist saying.
"Goodness knows!"
I could not read anything special on her face. Her behaviour was
ordinary, that of a clever woman - Galya's way with people who were
strangers and yet whom she found interesting. Attentive eyes, respectful
attention to a companion, unconsciously coquettish, mocking.
"Why do you have Pushkin's monument in the middle of the square?" I
asked, as we drove past.
"Where do you have it?"
"On the boulevard."
"You're lying about everything. Just as you lied about our going to the
Registry. And why did you say six years ago?"
"Fate," I laughed.
"Where was I six years ago?" she wondered, thoughtfully. "In the spring
I was in Odessa."
"So was I."
"Why do you lie? You never even came with us."
"In your world I didn't, but in ours - on the contrary."
"That's funny," she said, pronouncing every syllable. And added with a
critical look at me: "But you don't give the impression of being a lunatic."
"Nice to hear it," I wanted to say, but I didn't. A dark squall hit me
right in the face. Everything went black.
"What's wrong?" I heard Galya's frightened cry, and then her hurried,
excited words: "Driver, driver, pull up somewhere by the pavement. He feels
bad...."
I opened my eyes. The mist of bewitchment was still swirling round
inside the car. And through this fog a woman's face was staring at me.
"Who is it?" I asked hoarsely.
"Do you feel bad, Sergei?"
"Galya?" I said, surprised. "How did you get here?"
She did not answer.
"Did something happen to me there ... on the boulevard?" I asked,
looking around me.
"Yes, it did," said Galya. "We'll talk about it later. Can you go home,
or do you need a doctor?"
I stretched, shook my head, and sat up straight. Clearly I could do
without a doctor. While we rode, I told Galya about walking along Tverskoi
Boulevard, about my dizzy spell, and how I tried to talk to myself in the
midst of a lilac fog.
"And afterwards," Galya asked, with sudden interest - before that she
had been listening now with distrust, now with indifference. "What happened
afterwards?"
I shrugged in bewilderment.
"Don't you remember?"
"I don't remember."
I really didn't remember, and only on returning home did I find out
from Galya what had happened at her place.
"It was delirium," I said.
With her love for expressing things precisely, Galya now corrected me:
"For delirium, it's very consistent. Like playing a well-rehearsed role.
People don't rave like that. Besides, delirium is a symptom of illness, yet
you don't give mo that impression."
"But the fainting spell on the boulevard?" broke in my wife, Olga. "And
in the taxi?"
As a doctor she searched for a medical explanation. But Galya was as
doubtful as before.
"Then what happened between the fainting spells?"
"Some kind of somnambulistic state."
"What do you think I am - a lunatic?" I told her, offended.
"If it was a dream, then it must have been a day-dream," put in Galya
with amusement, insistent on accuracy. "Besides, we saw the dream and not
Sergei. Speaking of dreams, do you still have them?"
"What have dreams got to do with it?" I burst out. "I fainted, and I
didn't see any dreams."
I realized only too well that Galya never played jokes on anyone. So
her story about my wandering around like a sleepwalker - the only way my
behaviour could be described - seriously alarmed me. Before, I had never
fainted or walked along the edge of a roof in the moonlight, nor had loss of
memory. However, I could find no explanation of the event that answered to
common sense.
"Maybe it was the result of hypnosis?" I suggested.
"Then who hypnotized you?" Olga frowned. "And where? At the office? On
the boulevard? Nonsense!"
"Right. Nonsense it is," I agreed.
"Are you, by any chance, writing a science-fiction story?" Galya asked
suddenly. "Your very intelligible observation about the plurality of worlds
even aroused my interest.... Can you imagine, Olga?" she laughed. "Two
adjacent worlds in space, like similar triangles. Both there and here -
Moscow; there and here, a Sergei Gromov. But you weren't there- - instead,
he was married to me."
"So the secret's out," joked Olga. "And the sleepwalker, of course, is
a visitor from another world in Sergei's likeness."
"He explained it to me like this. Moscow, he said, was the same, only a
little bit different. Pushkin's monument is on the square in our world, but
on the boulevard in theirs. I almost burst out laughing."
Olga, apparently, was thinking hard. "And you know what might explain
things?" she asked, suddenly animated, still seeking a rational explanation
even as I was. "Look here, didn't Sergei know that the monument had once
been moved? He did. So perhaps this information, stored away in his memory,
became fixed in his delirium? Some stimulation triggered the signal - and
there you are: the myth about an adjacent, similar world."
These arguments only annoyed me.
"It makes me sick listening to you. Some kind of new variant of
Stevenson's tale. A regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Only which is Jekyll
and which is Hyde?"
"It's perfectly clear who," parried Galya. "You wouldn't hurt yourself
in choosing between them."
Olga did not understand, and asked: "Who are you talking about?"
"About international imperialist spies, Olga," I said jocularly.
"Parachuted here from an unidentified plane."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Look, there is a certain English writer, Stevenson by name.
Usually, you read his stuff when you're a teenager. However, even doctors
do. For them, by the way, his story is almost like a course in psychiatry,
for Jekyll and Hyde, in reality, are the same man. To be more exact, a
quintessence of the good and evil inherent in one person. By drinking an
elixir that he discovered - medically speaking, a particular combination of
sulphanilamide and antibiotics - the noble Dr. Jekyll turned himself into
the scoundrel Hyde. Is that precise enough for you?" I asked Galya.
"Quite. Search your pockets, maybe Hyde left some clues behind during
his temporary transmutation."
I dug into my pockets and threw on the table a packet of headache
tablets.
"That must be one clue. I certainly never bought them."
"Perhaps you put them there?" Galya asked Olga.
"No. More than likely he bought them on the way home."
"I didn't buy anything," I put in angrily. "And, for the record, I
didn't go into the chemist's."
"That means Hyde did. Is there anything else he left?"
I mechanically felt the inside pocket of my jacket.
"Wait. This notebook doesn't belong here." I pulled it out and opened
it. "Something's written here. Where are my glasses?"
"Give it here." Galya grabbed the notebook and read aloud: 'If anything
happens to me, advise my wife, Galina Gromova, 43 Griboyedov Street. Also
inform Professors Zargaryan and Nikodimov at the Brain Institute. Very
important.' "The 'very important' is even underlined," she laughed. "And
Galina Gromova, that's me, of course. I already told you his delirium was
consistent. Only why Griboyedov Street? There's Staro-Pimenovsky, and now
it's Medvedev Street."
"But have we a Griboyedov Street?" asked Olga. "Somehow, I never heard
of it."
"There is," I interrupted. "It used to be Maly Kharitonevsky. Only
there's no building on it with that number. Apparently, Hyde had in mind
some avenue, rather than street."
"But who's this Zargaryan?" Galya said, full of curiosity. "I know of a
Nikodimov. He's a physicist, a rather famous one, by the way. Only he's not
at the Brain Institute, but at the Institute of New Problems in Physics. But
who this Zargaryan is, I really don't know."
"But Sergei didn't write this!" cried Olga suddenly. "It's not his
handwriting ... though the 'v' has the same flourish and the down stroke in
the 't' is the same. Look for yourself!"
I found my glasses and read the note.
"The handwriting's similar. I wrote that way as a student. Working on
the paper spoiled my writing. I don't write like that now."
I rewrote the lines in the notebook. They differed greatly from the
first.
"Ri-ight," drawled Galya. "No need for a handwriting expert. But
perhaps the handwriting changes when you're in a somnambulistic state."
"I wouldn't know," said Olga. "Somnambulism's in the field of
psychiatry. It's a sort of psychic upset that comes like lightning. I can't
explain it any other way. And I don't like all this, not at all."
"Nor do I," Galya conceded.
She read and reread both memorandums in the notebook. Her face
reflected not only concentrated thinking but repressed anxiety. Galya's
clear, logical mind did not want to give in to the inexplicable.
"I simply can't explain it. Either scientifically or logically, from
the standpoint of common sense, so to say. A person of absolutely sound mind
- and suddenly he turns sleepwalker. Of course, a fainting fit is
understandable: a doctor could find an explanation. But this raving about a
plurality of worlds - that's more like something out of a science-fiction
story. And then his asking for a night's lodging, for a roof over his head,
when the man has his own private flat."
"Apparently my Hyde was looking for shelter," I laughed. "He couldn't
go to a hotel, d'you see."
"Here's what I don't like. The hypothesis about Hyde explains it all.
But I prefer dealing with pure science, rather than science fiction. Though
everything about it is fantastic. Now why, Sergei, did you ask to go to
Lena's? You didn't know she lives with me."
"That's new to me, even now. I've not seen Lena for ten years. I can't
even imagine what she looks like."
My adventure in Galya's story surprised me more than anything else.
Lena and I never met, never corresponded. We'd probably even forgotten each
other's existence.
"Is she an old flame?" asked Olga.
"All of us went to school together before the war," replied Galya. "We
were all going to enter the medical faculty. But nothing came of it: Sergei
and Oleg went to the front, and I got a yen for physics. Only Lena went in
for medicine. By the way, she really was in love with you, Sergei."
"With Oleg," I said.
"All the girls ran after him," sighed Galya. "But I had the worst fate:
I won and lost." She stood up. "Peace be to thy house, but it's high time I
left. The council of detectives is closed and Sherlock Holmes proposes to
make an excursion into the realm of physics."
"Psychology, you mean to say."
"No, I mean physics. I'm interested in Zargaryan and Nikodimov, and
what they're doing in the Institute of New Problems in Physics."
"Whatever for?" asked Olga in surprise. "I should apply to a
psychiatrist."
"And I would choose Zargaryan. Who is he? What is he engaged in? Is he
connected with Nikodimov? And if he is, then in what field?" Galya turned to
me: "Did you ever hear of either name?"
"Never."
"Maybe you read about them somewhere and have merely forgotten?"
"I've never seen the names anywhere, nor have I forgotten."
"And that's the most interesting point in all your somnambulistic
story. Physics, my dear, physics. The Institute of New Problems in Physics.
New, remember!" And Galya turned to Olga. "You know what? Call Zoya and find
out about Zargaryan. She knows everybody."
We decided to call Zoya in the morning.
I fell asleep at once, and slept soundly right through till morning.
Dreams, I might say, are a peculiarity of mine that sets me apart from
other mortals. It wasn't by accident that Galya asked if I still had dreams.
I have them. They repeat themselves, persistently, and are almost unchanged
in content, oddly like fragments of travelogue films.
Naturally I also have ordinary dreams in which everything is confused
and foggy, both as to proportion and distortion, like in a Fun House mirror.
My recall of such dreams is so vacillating and short-lived that they are
hard to recapture and describe. But the dreams I'm talking about I shall
remember all my life, and I can describe them just as precisely as I can my
flat.
They are always in colour, and the colours are as true and harmonious
as in nature. In one I see a spring-time meadow appearing out of the night
mist, flowering as profusely as in real life. Arid I even remember the
designs on a girl's cotton-print dress that flashes for a moment through the
sunny dream. Nothing special happens in these dreams: they do not frighten
or alarm me, but have something alluring about them, like getting a tiny
peep into somebody else's life.
The one I see most frequently shows a corner in a strange city, the
view of a street which I've never actually seen though I can remember all
the details: the balconies, shop windows, the lindens along the pavement,
the iron grilles. I can call them all to mind as clearly as if I had seen
them but yesterday. I can even recall the passers-by, for they are always
the same, even the black cat with white spots that runs across the road. It
always crosses at one and the same corner, near one and the same house.
Sometimes I see myself in an arcade surrounded by shops off galleries
like in Moscow's GUM department store. But the arcade has only one storey
and branches off into numerous side alleys that run lengthwise and
crosswise. For some reason I am always waiting by a stationery shop, or
slowly strolling past a shop-window displaying draperies and miraculously
lit by a sort of odd iridescent lighting. I have never seen this arcade in
real life, yet I not only remember the windows but even the shape of the
goods, the tall glass archways and the coloured mosaic on the pavement.
Sometimes the dream carries me into the interior of a town flat which I
have never been in, or else into an idyllic village landscape. Often there
is a road running between naked earthen slopes sparsely scattered here and
there with patches of dusty grass. The road runs down to a blue strip of
water, gay with golden water-lilies. Sometimes a woman in white walks ahead
of me, sometimes an old man with a fishing-rod; but neither of them ever
turns round and I never overtake them. I see only a strip of water,
embroidered with duckweed and water-lilies; but for some reason I know it is
a pond and that the road will now turn right along the bank, and that I ran
here as a small boy - though neither the pond nor the road belongs to my
real childhood.
It was these dreams that awoke Olga's doubts of my psychic balance and
made her so insistent that I consult a psychiatrist. But I was more inclined
to follow Galya's advice. The ill-starred sheet from the notebook with the
names of Zargaryan and Nikodimov gave me no peace, because I was absolutely
sure I had never, under any circumstances, hoard of these particular names.
As for subconsciously absorbing them from talk overheard in the underground
or on the street, naturally I didn't believe that. A normal memory preserves
what is overheard in the conscious mind, not in the subconscious.
"All right, I'll call Zoya," Olga agreed.
Zoya worked in the Institute of Scientific Information and, according
to her, knew all the 'big shots'. If Nikodimov and Zargaryan belonged to
this highly-attested category, in one minute I should get an earful of a
good dozen anecdotes about their way of life. However, I didn't need
anecdotes, but precise information as to their particular fields arid latest
activities. I had to make sure that they wore my Nikodimov and Zargaryan.
I decided to ring up Klenov first of all. He is head of the science
department at our editorial offices. I'd known Klenov from the time we were
at the front together.
"I need some dope, old man. The exact whereabouts of two giants:
Nikodimov and Zargaryan."
Laughter came from the receiver.
"Even yesterday I thought you were a bit off your rocker."
"When was that?" I asked, surprised.
"When I bumped into you in Pushkin square. About six o'clock. When I
told you about Mikhail.."
I licked my overdry lips. So Klenov had seen Hyde and talked with him.
And had noticed nothing. Very interesting.
"I don't remember," I said.
"Don't play games. About Mikhail stopping behind, don't you remember?"
"Where did he stop off?"
"In Istanbul. I already told you once. He asked for political shelter
at the American Embassy. "
"He must be crazy!"
"He's got all his buttons, the snake. They should have kept an eye on
him. They say 'the human heart is a mystery'. They should have guessed his
little plan before it was too late. Now we're writing a collective letter
not to let him come back when he comes crawling to us on his belly. What's
up with you? You honestly don't remember?"
"Honestly. My mind is a complete blank about yesterday from around five
in the afternoon to ten in the evening. First I fainted, and I don't
remember a thing about what happened afterwards - what I did or what I said.
I came to when I was being brought home. Must be a souvenir of that
concussion I got near Dunafoldvar, remember?"
As if Klenov didn't remember the time we forced the Danube. Oleg was
with us. And Mikhail Sichuk, incidentally, was there too. Only he was
foresighted enough to get into the rear: headed the editorial office of a
front-line newspaper. For about a minute we were both silent. What we went
through at the Danube wasn't to be forgotten. Then Klenov spoke.
"You should get some advice from a professor. I can arrange a
consultation, if you like. I know a few good specialists."
"No need of that," I sighed. "Better if you can tell me what Nikodimov
and Zargaryan are doing in science."
"You hoping for a feature? You won't get anywhere. Nikodimov answers
such attempts with the method of Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger. He
dropped one reporter from Science and Life down the waste chute."
"Don't worry yourself about my nearest future. Just give me all you
know. Who is this Nikodimov? And no jokes, if you don't mind. I need it
bad."
"Look, he's a physicist, with a very wide range of interests. Puts out
works on the physics of fields of attraction. Interested in electric
magnetism in complex media. At one time, working with Zemlicka, he brought
out the concept of a neutrino generator."
"With whom?"
"With Zemlicka. A Czech bio-physicist."
"And the general idea - can you tell me?"
"I'm an ignoramus here, of course, and I heard it from ignoramuses -
but, in a general sense, it's something like a neutrino laser, which cuts a
window into anti-worlds."
"Are you serious?"
"What do you think? That it looks a bit shady? That's how it was
regarded, by the way."
"And Zargaryan?"
"What about Zargaryan?"
"Is he tied up with Nikodimov right now?"
"You already know that? Congratulations."
"Is he a physicist too?"
"No, a neurophysiologist or something like that. As a matter of fact,
his field is telepathy."
"What, what?" I screamed.
"Te-le-pa-thy," repeated Klenov didactically. "There is such a science:
mental telepathy."
"I doubt it. They gave that up in the Middle Ages. No such science."
"You're behind the times. It's al-read-y a science. Condensers of
biological currents, and all that kind of thing. Satisfied?"
"Almost," I sighed.
"If you're going into the attack, I'll back you body and soul. We'll