Alexander Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Journey Across Three Worlds

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     Translated from the Russian by Gladys Evans
     Mir Publishers, Moscow, 1973
     OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2 ║ http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
     Original title: "Хождение за три мира"
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        PART ONE. THE STRANGE STORY OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, TOLD ANEW ...


     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

     ___________________________________________________

        WHO AM I?

     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.

        THE NEXT MOVE INTO THE UNKNOWN

     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."

        WHO IS JEKYLL AND WHO HYDE?

     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.

        THE SHEET FROM THE NOTEBOOK

     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
print anything  you can get hold of.  And I'd advise you  to start  off with
Zargaryan. He's easier, more approachable. Just the fellow you want...."
     I thanked him and hung up the receiver. The  information wasn't  beyond
Zoya's  level. An  anti-world,  telepathy....  Should  phone Galya  for more
accurate information.
     "Hello, this is me - the sleepwalker. Are you up already?"
     "I get up at six in the morning," Galya cut me off. "I'm  interested in
one little detail of  your  Odyssey. Why  did you  tell Lena you'd left your
wife?"
     "I can't answer for Hyde's doings. I want to explain them. Listen hard,
Galya. What's the essence of the idea of a neutrino generator, and how is it
connected with the condensing of biological currents?"
     "Nikodimov and Zargaryan?" laughed Galya.
     "As you see, I found something out, at least."
     "You found out rubbish, and you're talking rubbish. Nikodimov renounced
the  idea of  the  neutrino  generator  long  ago,  that is, the  way it was
formulated by Zemlicka. Now he's working on the  fixation of the power field
set  up by the activity of the brain ... something like a  single complex of
the electro-magnetic field that arises in the brain cells.  You see,  I also
discovered something."
     "Zargaryan is a physiologist. What's his tie-up with Nikodimov?"
     "Their  work  is  top  secret.  I  don't know  the inside story, nor if
there's any future in what they're doing,"  admitted Galya. "But one  way or
another,  it's connected with codifying the  physiological neuronal state of
the brain."
     "What?" I asked blankly.
     "The brain," Galya stressed, "the brain,  my dear. Your  Hyde connected
these  names with the  Brain Institute, and  not by chance. Though ...  from
what  aspect  to  view  all  this.... Perhaps,  it's  even a problem of pure
physics."
     She was thinking hard: the membrane  in the receiver carried  her heavy
breathing.
     "The key is here, Sergei," she concluded. "The more  I think about  it,
the surer I am. Find the scientists, and you'll find the key."
     The scientific research  over,  there was still the ordinary search. We
began it with Zoya.
     She  answered  the  call  at  once.  Yes,  she knew both Zargaryan  and
Nikodimov. The latter only by name: he was  like a ground-hog who never came
near receptions.  But she was personally acquainted with Zargaryan. Had even
danced with him at an evening social. He was very interested in dreams.
     "He's interested in dreams," repeated Olga to me, putting her hand over
the mouthpiece.
     "What??" I cried,  and reached for the telephone.  "Zoya darling.  It's
me. Right you are, in person,  your secret worshipper. What were you  saying
just now about dreams? Who's interested? It's very important."
     "I told Zargaryan about a strange dream I had," responded Zoya, "and he
was  terribly interested,  asked all about the details. And what  details  -
frightful, but utterly.  And he listened,  and told me I  should come to him
every week and be sure to relate all  my dreams. He needed it for  his work.
But you know yourself, I'm no fool. I know what kind of work he meant."
     "Zoya," I groaned, "beg him to give me an appointment."
     "Are you mad?" cried Zoya, terrified. "He can't stand reporters."
     "But  you won't tell him  I'm from  a paper. Simply say  that a man who
sees strange dreams wants to see him. And the strangest thing of all is that
these dreams  are repeated,  as if tape-recorded.  Repeated year after year.
Zoya,  try  to tell  him  all that.  If you  fail,  I'll try  to contact him
myself."
     She rang back in ten minutes.
     "Just imagine, it worked. He'll see you today after nine o'clock. Don't
be late. He doesn't like it," she chattered on without a break, just  as she
usually did in her  office at the  institute. "He was interested right away,
and  immediately asked how clear  the dreams  were, what  was the degree  of
recall, and so  on.  I said you would tell him about the clarity yourself. I
also told him you worked with me. Don't give me away."

        THE KEY

     Zargaryan lived in the south-west of town  in a new apartment building.
He opened the door himself, silently listened to my explanation, and just as
silently led the way  into his office. Tall and lithe,  black hair bristling
in a crew-cut, he reminded me of the hero in an Italian neo-realistic novel.
To look at, he wasn't more than thirty.
     "Do  you  mind my asking what  led you to  me?" His  eyes pierced right
through me. "Yes, of course, I know  it was strange dreams and so on ... but
why did you particularly ask for a consultation with me?"
     "When I tell you everything,  the answer to that won't be necessary," I
said.
     "Do you know anything about me?"
     "Until last night, I'd no idea you existed."
     He thought a moment and asked: "Exactly what happened last night?"
     "I'm  sincerely  glad  that we  begin  our  talk  with  that,"  I  said
decisively.  "I  did not come to you  because  I was worried by  dreams, nor
because you  are a Martin Zadeka as, for instance, you are regarded by  Zoya
at the  Institute of  Information.  By the way,  I  don't work there, I'm  a
journalist."
     I immediately noticed a  grimace of dissatisfaction on Agrarian's face,
and continued.
     "But I didn't come to you for  an interview. I'm not interested in your
work. To be  more  exact, I wasn't interested. And I repeat once  more  that
until last night I had never even heard your name, but none the less I wrote
it down in my small notebook while in a state of unconsciousness. "
     "What   do  you  mean  by  a  state  of  unconsciousness?"  interrupted
Zargaryan.
     "That's not exactly  the  right  term. I  was  fully conscious,  yet  I
remember  nothing  - what  I did or  what  I  said. I simply  wasn't  there,
somebody else acted in my place. It was he who wrote this in my notebook."
     I opened the notebook and passed it to Zargaryan. He read it and looked
at me rather strangely, peering from frowning brows.
     "Why is it written twice?"
     "I wrote it  the second time, to  compare the handwriting. As you  see,
the first was not written by me, that is, it's not my handwriting. And  it's
not the handwriting of  a  sleepwalker, or  a lunatic,  or of somebody  with
amnesia."
     "Does your wife live on Griboyedov street?"
     "My wife lives with me on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. And there is no house on
Griboyedov street  with that number. And the  woman mentioned in the note is
not  my  wife, but simply  an  acquaintance, a school friend.  Besides,  she
doesn't live on Griboyedov."
     Once more he read the note and pondered.
     "And did you never hear of Professor Nikodimov either?"
     "No more  than  I  heard  of  you.  Even now  I only know that  he's  a
physicist,  something  like  a  ground-hog  who  is never  to  be  found  at
receptions.  That  detail,  I'll have you  note,  is from the  Institute  of
Information."
     Zargaryan smiled, and I immediately noticed that he wasn't a severe man
at all, but a good-hearted and perhaps even a gay fellow.
     "Along  general  lines  the  portrait  bears a certain resemblance," he
said. "Keep shooting."
     And I talked. I can tell a good story, even with  a dash of humour, but
he listened without any outward show  of interest. However, when  I  reached
the place about the plurality of worlds, he raised his brows.
     "Did you read that anywhere?" he asked quickly.
     "I don't remember. In passing, somewhere."
     "Go on, if you don't mind."
     I concluded my story by reminding him of Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde.
     "The  queerest thing  is that this mystical-phantom  business  explains
everything, and I can find nothing else that makes sense."
     "You think that's the queerest?" he  asked vaguely, once  again reading
the lines in the notebook. "They refused to let us bring  up this problem at
the Brain Institute, but it was raised all the same."
     I looked at him blankly.
     "Have  you  been precise in  everything you  have told me?" he suddenly
asked,  with  another  piercing  glance. "Two worlds like similar triangles,
right? With a Moscow in both, differing only in ornamentation.  And hero and
there you and your friends. Is that it?"
     "Exactly."
     "There  you  are  married  to a  different  woman, live on  a different
street, and in  some  way or  other are  connected  with  a  Zargaryan and a
Nikodimov, of whose existence here you were completely unaware. Right?"
     I nodded.
     He stood up and walked around  the room, as if  to hide his excitement.
But I saw how wrought up he was.
     "Now tell me about your dreams. I think  there's  a  connection between
all this."
     I described my dreams. This time he stared with unconcealed interest.
     "That means another life, eh? A certain street, a road down to a river,
a  shopping  arcade. And all very clear-cut, like in a photograph?" He spoke
slowly, weighing  every  word,  as  if thinking  aloud.  "And  you  remember
everything afterwards. Clearly, including all details?"
     "I even remember the mosaic on the pavement."
     "And  it is all uncannily  familiar, even to  trivial  things? It seems
you've been there a hundred times and probably lived there, but in real life
there was nothing of the kind?"
     "In real life, nothing of the kind," I repeated.
     "What do the doctors say? You must have sought advice."
     It seemed to me that he said this with a shade of cunning.
     "What  do  the doctors  say..." I spoke  scornfully.  "Stimulation  ...
inhibition. Any fool knows that. In the daytime the cortex is  in a state of
excitation, at night an inhibition process sets in. Irregular, with islands.
These islands keep working, paste together dreams from day-time impressions,
like in a cutting room." Zargaryan laughed.
     "Or staging a series of attractions, like in the circus."
     "But I don't believe it!" I grew angry. "The devil they are! There's no
staging about it, everything is unchangeably fixed down  to minute  trifles,
to the leaf on a certain tree, to the screw in  a window-frame. And all this
is repeated, like  showings in  a  cinema. Once  a  week  I'm  sure  to  see
something I dreamed before. Yet  they still insist that  you  dream  only of
what you've seen or experienced during your waking hours. And nothing else!"
     "Even  Sechenov  wrote about that. He even  examined the blind, and  it
turned out that they dream only of what they saw when they had their sight."
     "But I never saw them,"  I repeated  stubbornly. "Not in real life, nor
in the cinema or in paintings. Nowhere! Is that clear? I never saw them!"
     "But what if you did?" laughed Zargaryan.
     "Where?" I cried.
     He did  not  answer.  He  silently  took out a  cigarette, lit it,  and
suddenly recollected me.
     "Oh, excuse me. I didn't offer one to you. Do you smoke?"
     "You haven't answered me," I said.
     "I will answer you.  We have  ahead of us a long, interesting talk. You
can't  even imagine  what a  find  this  meeting is for  Nikodimov  and  me.
Scientists  wait  for years for such  moments. But I'm lucky: I only  waited
four years. Can you give me another couple of hours?"
     "Of course," I agreed, confused and still in the dark.
     A sudden change came over  Zargaryan. His excited, undisguised interest
slightly  embarrassed me. What was there  special  in what  I had told  him?
Perhaps Galya was right, and the key to the puzzle of all that  had happened
was right here?
     But Zargaryan was already telephoning somebody.
     "Pavel Nikitich?  It's  me.  Do  you intend  staying much longer at the
institute? Wonderful.  I'm going to bring a certain person over, right away.
He's with me now.  Who? You'd never guess. The one we've been dreaming about
all these years.  What  he's told me confirms all  our  ideas.  And I stress
that. Everything! And  even more.  It's hard to  take  it  all in  - my head
spins. No, I'm not drunk, but a drink is called  for. Later on. We're on our
way, so wait for us."
     He hung up and turned to me.
     "D'you realize what a refractor is for an astronomer? Or  an electronic
microscope  for  a virologist?  And  for me,  that's  the kind  of  valuable
instrument you are. For Nikodimov and me. I'll give Zoya a royal present for
this.... After all, it was she who gave you to me. Let's go."
     I was as much in the dark as before.
     "I  hope  you're not going to give mo injections  or cut me up? Will it
hurt?" I asked, sounding like a patient on his way to see a surgeon.
     Zargaryan burst into laughter, as pleased as punch.
     "Why should it hurt, my dear man?" ho said,  adopting the accent  of an
oriental trader. "You'll sit in a chair, fall asleep for half an hour or so,
look at dreams.  Like in the cinema." Dropping the accent, he  added: "Come,
Sergei Nikolaevich, I'll drive you to the institute."

     FAUST'S LABORATORY

     The institute was off the highway in an oak grove which, in the dark of
this starless night,  looked  to me like an enchanted wood  out  of  a fairy
tale. The  gnome-like hushes, trees with clawing branches, black tree-stumps
peering out of the grass like wild animals from across the  roadside ditch -
all seemed to be luring me into a romantic yet  sinister gloom. But in place
of the tumbledown hut perched on chicken-legs - the typical witch's abode in
Russian fairy tales - there rose at the  end of the alley a round ten-storey
building with the occasional lighted window. Some of them blinked,  flashing
in spurts as if gigantic Jupiter lights in a film studio were being switched
on and off.
     "Valery Mlechin casting spells over  wireless light-transmission," said
Zargaryan, catching my glance. "You think that's  us up there?  No. Our labs
are up under the very roof on the opposite side."
     An express lift  whisked us to the tenth floor, and we stepped out into
a circular corridor with a  moving passage that carried us with it. It moved
softly, soundlessly, at about escalator-speed.
     "It  works  automatically  as  soon  as  you  step  on  it,"  explained
Zargaryan, "and  is stopped by putting  your foot  on one of these  frosted,
illuminated regulators."
     Slightly  convex  milky-white  transparent tiles  were  set  every  two
metres, one after another, along  the  plastic  ribbon  of the corridor.  We
floated past white, sliding doors bearing large  numbers. Opposite room 220,
Zargaryan stepped on the regulator.
     We stopped, and  the door slid open instantly revealing the entrance to
a large, brightly lit room. Zargaryan nudged me towards a chair.
     "Amuse yourself for ten minutes  while I talk with Nikodimov. First, it
will save  you  from  repeating  your  story; second,  I  can  put  it  more
professionally."
     He approached  the  opposite wall: it slid  open and immediately closed
behind him. "Photoelectric cell," I thought to myself. The equipment in this
institute answered the  most  up-to-date demands of  scientific  design  for
working comfort. A description  of the corridor alone would have sent Klenov
into  ecstasy: it wasn't for  nothing he had  promised to back me 'soul  and
body'.
     However, except for the  sliding walls,  the room  where  I waited held
nothing very remarkable. A modern  desk  of clear plexiglas on nickel-plated
steel  legs;  an  open  wall  safe resembling an  electric  oven;  concealed
lighting, and a foam-rubber sofa-bed with cushions. Here you could spend the
night in comfort if you were delayed. Along one wall I  saw a monstrous pile
of yellow, semi-transparent  tape-ribbons  along which  thick, jagged  lines
ran: something like  those on cardiograms. The coloured plastic floor,  with
its  extravagant  designs,  made the  room seem  elegant,  but  the  ascetic
book-stands and the wall diagrams, also of plastic, returned it to the realm
of  the  strictly  serious.  There  was one  diagram of  the cortex of  both
cerebral  hemispheres,  marked  with  metal   arrows   crowned   with  coded
inscriptions in Greek and Latin letters. Another that hit the eye had only a
mass  of  strange  metallic  lines  flanked by  a  handwritten  inscription:
Biocurrents  of  Sleeping Brain. Sheets  of paper were pinned up bearing the
typed text: Length and Depth of Sleep -  laboratory observations  at Chicago
University.
     The books on the stands were in complete disorder, piled on top of  one
another,  lying  open  on  telescopic  shelves.  These, apparently,  were in
constant use.  I picked one up: it was  a work by  Sorokhtin on the atony of
the  nerve  centre.  There  were  piles of  books and  brochures  in foreign
languages and, it seemed to me, they all dealt with some kind of irradiation
following  stimulation or  inhibition. I found one book by Nikodimov, in  an
English  edition,  whose  title  was  The Principles  of Codifying  Impulses
Distributed Through the Cortex and  Subcortex of the Brain. Whether I got it
right or not, I don't know, but I immediately  regretted that we journalists
lacked  the training necessary to at  least come close to  understanding the
processes taking place on the peaks of modern science.
     At this moment the wall slid open,  and  Zargaryan  called me: "You can
come in now."
     The room I found myself in was the  acme of laboratories, gleaming with
stainless steel  and nickel plating. But I had no  chance to get a good look
at  it. Zargaryan  was  already introducing  me  to an  elderly  man  with a
chestnut-coloured  beard touched with silver, and  hair to match worn longer
than was  usual among scientists - more suitable for  a professor  of music.
His aquiline nose related him to the hawk, but somehow he reminded me of the
Faust I  had seen during my youth in  an opera staged by  a  company on tour
from some remote country district.
     "Nikodimov," he said,  smiling as he  caught my roving eye. "There's no
use looking. You  won't understand anything in  any  case,  and explanations
would be lengthy. Besides, there's  nothing  very remarkable here - anything
of  interest  is in the  floor  beneath us:  the condenser  and  operational
controls. And here is  a  screen by which we fixate the  fields, in  various
phases,  of course. As  you see,  an  elementary  jumble of  electric plugs,
switches and levers. Like something out of Mayakovsky, right?"
     I cast a sidelong glance  at the  chair  behind the  screen, over which
hung a helmet resembling an astronaut's but with  coloured wires attached to
it.
     "He's  scared,"  said  Nikodimov,  winking  at  Zargaryan.  "What's  so
terrifying about it? Surely a chair...."
     "Wait," interrupted Zargaryan cheerfully. "Don't explain: let him guess
for himself. See, old fellow,  it's like a barber's chair, but no mirror. Or
maybe a dentist's chair? But no drill. Where  can you  find such a chair? In
the  theatre,  the cinema?  No again.  Perhaps in  the pilot's  cabin of  an
aeroplane? Then where's the joystick or wheel?"
     "Looks more like an electric chair," I said.
     "Naturally. An exact copy."
     "And you'll put the helmet on me, too?"
     "What do you think? Death in two minutes!" His eyes twinkled. "Clinical
death. Then we resurrect you."
     "Don't frighten him,"  laughed  Nikodimov, and turned to  me. "You're a
journalist?"
     I nodded.
     "Then I  beg you ... no write-ups. Everything  you'll  find out here is
not  ripe for  printing yet. Besides, the experiment might prove a  failure.
You might see nothing and we'll have to write it off as a loss. Well ... but
when it is ready, the story will certainly be yours. I promise you that."
     Poor Klenov. His hopes for an article vanished like a dream.
     "Do  your experiments have a direct relation to my  story?"  I dared to
ask.
     "Geometrically  direct,"  interrupted  Zargaryan.  "That's  only  Pavel
Nikodimov's cautiousness, but I tell you straight: there's no possibility of
failure. The proofs are too clear."
     "Ye-es," drawled  Nikodimov,  thoughtfully.  "Pretty  good  proofs.  So
Stevenson's story happened to  you? Is  that how you explain it? Jekyll  and
Hyde?"
     "Of  course  not. I don't  believe  in  reincarnation,  or  transformed
bodies."
     "But even so?"
     "I don't know. I'm looking for an explanation. From you."
     "Wise of you."
     "So there is an explanation?"
     "That's right."
     I jumped to my feet.
     "Sit down,"  said Zargaryan.  "No,  go and sit in the chair  you're  so
scared of. Believe me, it's much more comfortable than Voltaire's."
     To put it mildly, I was rather hesitant. That devilish chair positively
terrified me.
     "All explanations only after the experiment," continued Zargaryan. "Sit
here. Come, where's your nerve gone? We won't pull any teeth."
     I  sank  deep into the chair, as if in  a feather  bed.  A  feeling  of
special lightness came over me, almost like weightlessness.
     "Put  out  your  feet,"  said  Zargaryan.  Apparently  he  was  the one
directing the experiment.
     The  soles of  my feet rested on  rubber clamps.  On my head I felt the
soundlessly  lowered  helmet.  It  gripped  my  forehead  lightly,  and  was
unexpectedly comfortable, like a soft, felt hat.
     "Is it too loose?"
     "Yes, a bit."
     "Make yourself comfortable. We shall now regulate it."
     The  helmet became tighter. But I felt no  pressure:  its supple lining
seemed  to fuse with my skin. I had the feeling  that an evening  breeze had
stolen through  the  window  and  was  pleasantly  cooling  my  forehead and
ruffling my hair. Yet I knew the window was closed and my head was enveloped
in the helmet.
     Suddenly the light went out. I  was surrounded  by a warm, impenetrable
darkness.
     "What's up?" I asked.
     "It's all right. We are isolating you from light."
     How  were they  isolating me? With a wall,  a cowling, a  hood of  some
kind? I touched my eyelids: the helmet did not cover my eyes. Stretching out
my hand, I could feel nothing.
     "Drop your arm. Sit still. You will sleep now."
     I settled more easily in  the chair,  relaxed my muscles. And truly,  I
felt  sleep  coming over me, an imminent  Nirvana drowning all  my thoughts,
recollections, intruding words. For some  reason, I remembered  a  four-line
stanza:

     But sleep is only a shadow-creation,
     An unstable dissimulation,
     Illusion of live animation -
     Yet not a bad prevarication.

     What kind of illusory dreams would sleep bring me this  time, good ones
or evil? The thought flashed and died away. There was a slight ringing in my
ears, as if a mosquito were buzzing on a very high note somewhere close by.
     Now voices, very clear, reached my ears, though I could not place their
whereabouts.
     "Is anything coming through?"
     "There's some interference."
     "And now?"
     "The same."
     "Try the second scale."
     "Got it."
     "And brightness?"
     "Excellent."
     "I'll turn it on full power."
     The voices disappeared.  I  fell into a soundless,  untroubled state of
non-existence, pregnant with unusual expectancy.

        THE DREAM WITH A MIRACLE

     I half  opened my eyes and blinked. Everything swirled round in  a rosy
mist. The lights  of  the chandelier  on  the  ceiling were  arched out in a
shining  parabola.  I was surrounded by  a  circle of women  all in matching
black dresses, all  with matching washed-out faces.  They cried out to me in
Olga's voice.
     "What's the matter? Are you ill?"
     I forced open my eyelids as wide  as I could. The mist melted away. The
chandelier was at first tripled, then doubled, and finally became its normal
self. The women shrank into a single figure with Olga's voice and smile.
     "Where are we?" I asked.
     "At the reception."
     "What reception?"
     "Can  you have forgotten?  At the Hungarian Embassy's reception. At the
Metropole Hotel."
     "What are we doing here?"
     "Good lord, the tickets were sent to us this morning! I just managed to
get my dress from the dressmaker. You seem to have forgotten everything! "
     I was  certain no  tickets  had been sent to us that  morning.  Perhaps
they'd  come  the evening before, on my return from Nikodimov? Did this mean
I'd lost my memory again?
     "But what happened to me?"
     "The reception room was terribly stuffy and you suggested we go out for
some fresh air. When we got to the foyer here, you suddenly felt bad."
     "Strange."
     "Nothing strange about it. It was  impossible  to breathe in there, and
your heart isn't too good. Would you like something to drink?"
     "I really don't know."
     Olga seemed  almost  like a stranger to  me  in the new dress  she  had
mentioned.  It was the first time I'd heard about it. When did she go to the
dressmaker's if I'd been home all day?
     "Wait a minute, I'll go and bring you some Narzan mineral water."
     She  disappeared  into  the reception  room, and  I  continued  to look
vaguely about at  the familiar foyer of the restaurant. I recognized it, but
that  didn't  ease  my position. I  couldn't  at  all  understand  when  the
Hungarians had sent the tickets, arid why they'd sent them. I  had no  title
of honour,  I  wasn't an academician or a master of sport. Yet Olga accepted
it as a matter of course, as something quite usual in our way of life.
     I  was  still standing  there motionless  when Olga returned  with  the
Narzan. I got the impression that she wanted to return to the reception.
     "Have you met anyone you know?"
     "All  the  chiefs are there," said  Olga, brightening. "Fedor Ivanovich
and Raisa, even the deputy minister."
     I  was not acquainted with either a  Fedor Ivanovich  or a  Raisa,  let
alone a deputy minister. But I  didn't want to risk admitting it, and merely
asked: "Why the deputy minister?"
     "It was he  who fixed it so we could all come. After all, our clinic is
attached to the ministry. He  gave the tickets to Fedor, who passed some  on
to Raisa. Probably there were a few extra tickets."
     Olga did  not work  at a ministerial  clinic, but at  a  very  ordinary
district  polyclinic.  I  knew that for a  fact.  Once she had actually been
invited to work at the clinic for  the Ministry  of Communications,  but she
had refused.
     "You go on back," I said.  "I'll take a little stroll  for  a breath of
fresh air."
     I went outside, stood at the entrance  and lit a cigarette. The  yellow
light  from the  street  lamps  was swimming  in the wet  asphalt  pavement.
Two-decker buses,  as red  as those in London, splashed  by me. I  had never
seen  such buses  before.  Between  the upper and lower deck  windows ran an
advertising strip with the painted sign:
     SEE THE NEW FRENCH FILM CHILD OF MONTPARNASSE.
     I'd never heard of it. What was wrong  with  my memory? It  was full of
gaps. In  the distance,  to the left of the Bolshoi Theatre, a gigantic neon
oblong burned against the sky.
     Flickering  letters  raced  round  it: 'Earthquake  in Delhi.... Soviet
doctors flew to India.' The latest news in lights. I couldn't recall when it
was put up.
     "Getting some air?"
     I heard a well-known  voice, turned, and saw Klenov. He had  just  come
out of the restaurant.
     "I'm leaving," he said. "There's  lots  of  liquor,  but I don't drink.
Ulcers. I've paid my respects, and now for home."
     "Between ourselves, how come you're paying respects?"
     "Well, d'you see, Kemenes invited us. He's press-attache now."
     Tibor Kemenes, a Russian-speaking Hungarian student, had been our guide
in  Budapest.  I was just  out of hospital,  and we had wandered  for  hours
around the city, so new to us. But when had  Kemenes become press-attache at
their embassy in Moscow? And how was it I only found out now?
     "Yes, people go up  the  ladder.  But you and I got stuck  somehow, old
fellow. We are the ones who keep the wheels turning."
     "Speaking   of  turning  the  wheels,  there   won't  be  any  article,
incidentally," I told him.
     "What article?" asked Klenov in surprise.
     "About Zargaryan and Nikodimov."
     He laughed so hard, passers-by turned back to stare.
     "You certainly picked an eccentric for  a subject. That Nikodimov keeps
a panther on a chain at his cottage instead of a dog. And in Moscow he drops
reporters down the waste chute."
     "You already told me that."
     "When?"
     "This morning."
     Klenov gripped my shoulders and looked me in the eye.
     "What have you been drinking, Tokay or palinka?"
     "I've not taken a drop."
     "That's easy to  see.  Why,  Saturday  night I  went  to my cottage  at
Zhavoronki, and  only returned today at five in the afternoon. You must have
been talking with me in your dreams."
     Klenov waved good-bye and went off, but I stood there, deeply shaken by
his  last words: 'talking  with  me in  your dreams'. No, it  was now  I was
talking with him in a dream. In a dream too real to be true.
     Immediately I  recalled the conversation  in  Faust's  laboratory,  the
chair with the  various lead-in  wires. And  Zargaryan's  warning  from  the
darkness:  'Sit  still. You will  sleep now.' Some kind of  electronic sleep
with  artificially aroused dreams. It all seemed  as  if I were  awake, only
this real  life for some reason was turned upside down. Then why should I be
surprised? It was as plain as day.
     I  went back inside. A turbid haze of smoke hung over the tables,  like
steam, mixing  with the electric light. People were  dancing. I searched  in
vain for Olga, then  entered the adjoining  room. The  long tables, littered
with half-demolished  food and drink, were witnesses  that  the  guests  had
recently been feasting here. They had been served European buffet style, and
ate standing holding their plates, or sat on the  window-sills  covered with
folds of  the draperies. Now  only the  latecomers  remained, searching  the
tables for  drinks and snacks still untouched. Somebody, who  was  playing a
lone hand at the end of a large table, turned and called out to me.
     "Over here, Sergei. Tuck in. Palinka, just like in Budapest."
     It  was Mikhail Sichuk who, according to  another  version I  knew, had
already  managed to skip the country. Perhaps in this dream he'd  managed to
return.  Through  a hole in space or on a  flying-carpet. I didn't bother my
head over it, nor did I react to the miracle. I simply poured myself a glass
of palinka from Mikhail's bottle, and drank. I was beginning to  like dreams
that contained even real sensations of taste.
     "To our friends and comrades," toasted Mikhail, also drinking.
     "How did you get here?" I asked, diplomatically.
     "The same as you. As a hero of the liberation of Hungary."
     "Oh, you're a hero?"
     "We're  all  heroes." Mikhail  drained  his  glass  and grunted.  "It's
heroism to have survived such a war!"
     I grew angry. "Only to be a traitor, afterwards?"
     Mikhail put his glass down and pricked up his ears.
     "What are you getting at?"
     I  realized,  of  course,  that  I wasn't being  logical,  that it  was
senseless to accuse under the circumstances, but I got carried away.
     "You   went  off  on  the  Ukraine   in  real   style.  On   a   Soviet
excursion-voucher, you scum!"
     "How did you guess?" asked Mikhail in a whisper.
     "That you skipped?"
     "That I  wanted to travel,  and  went  to  a lot  of trouble to  get  a
voucher...."
     "If they'd known, you wouldn't have got it."
     "But they didn't give it to me."
     As  chairman of  the trade-union committee, I  myself had  arranged for
Mikhail's  voucher. But in this  dream everything was topsy-turvy. Perhaps I
had  gone  in his place? I had also  wanted to go,  but there hadn't been an
extra voucher. But what if  there had been? My dream tossed me around like a
chip of wood in the ocean.
     "Sit down, Sergei. Are you avoiding me?"
     Somebody caught my arm as I was threading my  way between the tables in
the banquet room. I  looked  into his face  and was  frozen dumb.  And I was
really scared.
     "Sit down, won't  you?  Let's drink Tokay. After all, it's  the best in
Europe."
     My legs gave way and I fell, rather than  sat, in a chair by the table.
Sad eyes that I knew so well stared at me. The last time I'd seen them - not
both,  but one - was in '44 on the Danube highway. Oleg lay on his back, his
face covered  with blood trickling down  from where his right eye had been a
moment earlier. Fright and grief had frozen in the other.
     Now they  both looked at me. A  curved, reddish scar stretched from the
right eye up across the temple.
     "What are you staring like that for, Sergei? Do I look so much older?"
     "I was remembering forty-four. When you ... you...."
     "When I what?"
     "When you  were killed, Oleg."  He  smiled. "Bullet was a bit off. Only
the scar's left. Had it hit a fraction more to the right - curtains. Neither
my eyes nor I would be here." He sighed. "Funny. I wasn't afraid then, but I
am now."
     "Of what?"
     "The operation. A splinter was left somewhere in my chest, memorial  of
one other wound. So  far I've lived with  that  splinter all right,  but now
they say I mustn't any longer. Have to have an operation."
     His familiar eyes with  the  long, almost feminine lashes were smiling.
The  forehead angled back into the receding hairline at the temples, so that
it looked higher than before. Deep lines nestled close to the corners of his
lips.  And yet  there  was something about this dear and familiar face  that
struck  me  as strange.  The imprint of time,  perhaps.  So Oleg would  have
looked, if  he had lived. But in  this  artificial world  of  dreams  be was
alive. If Faust had created this model, then he was a god, and I was already
beginning  to doubt which of  the two worlds was real. A treacherous thought
struck me:  what if  something  broke  down in Faust's laboratory  and I was
stuck here for good! Should I be sorry? I didn't know.
     I pinched my arm hard.
     "What for?" Oleg looked his surprise.
     "For a minute I thought this was a dream."
     Oleg laughed, and suddenly faded away into a  lilac mist. That familiar
mist.  It lapped up everything,  and went black. Zargaryan's  voice asked me
out of the dark: "Are you alive?"
     "Of course, I am."
     "Raise your arm. Can you move it freely?"
     I moved my arm in the dark.
     "Roll up your sleeve and loosen your collar."
     He pressed something cold to my chest, then to my wrist.
     "Don't be frightened. It's only a  stethoscope. We'll check your heart.
Don't talk."
     How could  he see in  the dark  through which  not one speck  of  light
penetrated? But he saw.
     "All right," he pronounced  in  a satisfied voice. "Only the pulse is a
bit fast."
     "Maybe we'll break off  the test?" The voice  of an invisible Nikodimov
came from somewhere.
     "Whatever for?  Sergei Nikolaevich has  the nerves of an  athlete.  Now
we'll show him another dream."
     "So it was a dream?" I asked, feeling relief.
     "Who knows?" Zargaryan slyly called out of the dark. "And if not?"
     I  didn't have time to answer. The darkness swallowed me  up  like  the
sea.

        A DREAM CULMINATING IN HYSTERICS

     Out of the darkness burst a stream of light, flooding a white operating
theatre. On the table lay a prostrate body covered to the waist with a white
sheet.  The dissected  chest  exposed to  view  the  scarlet, bleeding inner
tissues and the pearly whiteness of  ribs. The patient's  eyes were  closed,
his face bloodless and  still. There was  something familiar about the face:
it  seemed I'd  seen only recently those  deep  lines at the  lips  and  the
curving, rosy scar on the right temple.
     My  hands were holding a probe buried in  the open  chest. I was in  an
operating  gown and  white linen cap, my  nose  and  mouth  covered  with  a
surgical mask. The people opposite me  were dressed as I was. I knew none of
them, but seemed to recognize the eyes of a woman  standing at the patient's
head.  Her eyes were  riveted  to  my  hands, and were  so  full of alarming
tension  that it seemed as if a taut string  were  stretched between us.  It
rang thinly the deeper the probe went into the opening.
     Suddenly  I remembered all  that  had occurred  up to  this moment. The
squeal  of brakes from  the car stopping at the entrance,  the granite steps
wet  with rain, the well-known vista of a street I  had often dreamed about,
and then the respectful smile of the cloakroom attendant catching my coat on
the fly as I went by, the slow rise of the lift and the shining whiteness of
the  operating theatre where I put  on my gown and scrubbed hands and arms a
dreadfully long time.  I  remembered perfectly that it was I - yes, I -  who
began the operation, opening the chest with a scalpel along  the line of the
scar while my hands with professional, habitual skill cut, split and probed.
All  this  flashed  into  my  conscious mind  with the speed  of sound,  and
disappeared.  I  had forgotten  everything. The habitual  skill of my  hands
turned into a frightened tremble  and  with  sudden terror I realized that I
didn't know what to do next, or how to  do it. Any further delay would  mean
murder.
     Without realizing what  I did or  why, I  withdrew  the  probe from the
wound  and dropped it.  It gave out a hollow tinkle. In the  eyes  above the
muslin masks, I read one and the same question: 'What's happened?'
     "I can't," I almost groaned. "I'm ill."
     Walking on strangely cottony legs,  I went to  the door.  Half  turning
round, I saw somebody's back  bent over the patient in my place, and a quiet
bass voice gave a command to the head nurse: "Probe!"
     "Run!" my thoughts raced. So that nobody would see, so that I would see
nobody. No longer to read what I had managed to read in all those wide-open,
surprised and accusing eyes. I could not feel my legs under me. I ran like a
storm  through  the scrubbing  surgery and  into  the  hallway  between  two
right-angled  corridors,  flinging myself  down on white, shining  enamelled
seat.
     "Just now,  with  these very  hands, I killed  Oleg," I told  myself. I
gripped my temples with icy hands, groaned and perhaps even cried aloud.
     "What's wrong ... Sergei Nikolaevich?" I heard a frightened voice.
     The  man  who  addressed me wore  an  operating  gown like myself,  but
without the  cap,  revealing  a  bald,  naked skull and  he  asked uneasily:
"What's wrong? How did the operation go?"
     "I don't know," I said.
     "How's that?"
     "I  threw it up ... left...." I scarcely opened my  mouth. "I came over
ill."
     "Who's operating then? Asafyev?"
     "No idea."
     "That's not possible!"
     "I know  nothing.  I don't even know who you  are! Who  are you, what's
your name, where am I, for heaven's sake?" I screamed.
     He shuffled from foot to foot, staring at me with amazed eyes, empty of
comprehension. Then he ran to the door through which I had just stormed.
     I looked after him and  stood up. I tore off my gown, ripping the ties,
wiped my  hands  and threw the gown on the floor. The cap  followed.  In the
depths  of the  corridor stretching  before me I saw  a flash  of white -  a
doctor or nurse-in high heels that tapped on the parquetry. She  disappeared
in  one  of  the  rooms. I  mechanically  headed in  her direction,  passing
identically white doors. They  led into consulting  rooms  of doctors, whose
names were printed on cards  framed in white plastic. 'Dr. Gromov, S.  N.' I
read. My office. Well then, in you go!
     Klenov  sat  by  a  wide  Italian  window  behind my  desk,  reading  a
newspaper.
     "So  soon?"  he asked with restraint,  but a  restraint  that rang with
alarm and fear.
     I was silent.
     "He's alive?"
     "Why are you here?" I countered.
     "You  told  me  to  wait  here, yourself!"  burst out  Klenov.  "What's
happened to Oleg?"
     "I don't know."
     He leaped up. "Why not?"
     "I felt bad ... almost lost consciousness."
     "During the operation?"
     "That's right."
     "Who is operating then?"
     "Don't know." I tried not to look at him.
     "But  why  are you here now? Why  aren't you in  the operating room  at
least?" screamed Klenov.
     "Because I'm not a surgeon, Klenov."
     "You're mad."
     He didn't  push  me  aside, he  charged  me with his  shoulder  like  a
hockey-player and ran into the corridor. And I sat inanely on a chair in the
middle of the room, couldn't even drag myself as far as my desk. "I'm  not a
surgeon," I had told Klenov. Then how could I have started the operation and
conducted it  to the critical  moment  without arousing anybody's doubts? So
that was possible in  dreams. Then  where did the fear  come from, this near
terror  of what had  occurred?  You see, Oleg,  the operation,  Klenov and I
myself were  only shades in  a world of dreams, and I knew it. "And if not?"
Zargaryan had asked. And if we're not!
     Then the desk telephone rang, but I  turned away. It  went on  ringing.
Finally I grew tired of it.
     "Sergei, is that, you?" came a voice. "How was it?"
     "Who's speaking?" I barked.
     "Don't yell. As if you didn't know me."
     "I don't. Who is this?"
     "But it's me, Galya! Who else?"
     Galya is excited,  and quite  rightly  so, I  thought. But  why  is she
phoning? If anyone should be waiting here, she should be. Instead of Klenov.
     "Why are you silent?" she asked, surprised. "Was it a failure?"
     "Look...." I  faltered. "I can't tell you anything definite. I felt bad
during the operation. An assistant is finishing...."
     "Asafyev?"
     Again that Asafyev, I thought. How  do  I know whether it's him or not?
And does it matter, since this is only a dream?
     "Probably," I said aloud. "I couldn't tell. They're all in masks."
     "But you don't trust Asafyev. Even this morning you said he's a surgeon
for convalescents."
     "When did I say that?"
     "When we were having breakfast. Before the car came for you."
     I knew  perfectly  well that I hadn't  had breakfast with  Galya. I had
been at home. I had no car. But why argue, if it was all a dream?
     "And what  happened to you?"  she  continued. "What do you mean ... you
felt bad?"
     "Weakness. Dizziness. Loss of memory."
     "And now?"
     "What about now? Are you asking about Oleg?"
     "No, about you!"
     I even marvelled. Where did Galya get such callousness from? Oleg lying
on the operating table, and she asks what's wrong with me!
     "Complete atrophy of  the memory,"  I  said  angrily.  "I've  forgotten
everything. Where I was this morning and where I  am now, who you are, who I
am, and why I'm a surgeon if one look at a scalpel makes my flesh creep."
     Silence from the receiver.
     "Are you listening?"
     "I'll come to the hospital at once," said Galya, and hung up.
     Let her  come. Did  it  matter when, where or  why?  Dreams  are always
illogical, yet for some reason I was able to think logically even in dreams.
The resolve to run away, ripening from the moment I left the operating room,
was finally taken. "I'll leave a note of some  kind for decency's sake,  and
go away," I thought.
     On  the top sheet of the pad lying on the desk above some papers I read
the  heading: 'Professor  Sergei Nikolaevich Groinov,  D. Sc. (Med.)'.  This
brought to mind my sheet from the notebook on which my hypothetical Mr. Hyde
had scribbled the mysterious, cluo-like inscription. It had turned out to be
the key to the puzzle. True, I hadn't yet solved the  puzzle itself, but the
key  was  in the lock. 'And if not?'  Zargaryan had answered  in reply to my
query whether it was a dream. What  if I were  just  as  much  of  an unseen
aggressor  to Prof. Sergei Gromov as my Hyde of  yesterday had been  to  me?
Shouldn't  I  follow  his  example  and  leave  a  similar kind of  clue  or
explanatory note?
     I was already writing on the professor's pad:

     You  and I are doubles, though we live in different worlds, and perhaps
even  in  different  times.  Unluckily, our  'meeting'  happened  during  an
operation. I couldn't finish it: in my world I have  a different profession.
Find the scientists in Moscow: Nikodimov and  Zargaryan. They, probably, can
explain to you what happened at the hospital.

     Without reading over what I had written, I went to the door, caught  by
a  single impulse  - to go  anywhere at all, so long as it was  out  of this
Hoffman-like devilry. Too late: the devilry was already at the door.
     Before I could open it, Lena entered. She was still wearing the cap and
gown she had worn in the operating room, but no mask. I retreated a step and
asked in the trembling tone others had applied to me: "Well, how was it?"
     She had scarcely aged at all  since the last  time I saw her  after the
war:  that must  have been ten years  ago. But I was more  tightly connected
with the Lena of this dream, for our professions joined us.
     "We removed the splinter," she said, barely moving her lips.
     "And Oleg?"
     "He'll  live." After a moment's  silence,  she  added:  "You counted on
something different?"
     "Lena!"
     "Why did you do it?"
     "Because a  terrible thing happened. Loss  of memory. I suddenly forgot
all I knew, everything I had learned. And even professional skills that were
part of me. I couldn't, I didn't have the right to continue the operation."
     "You're lying!"  Her lips  were  clamped together so  tightly they were
white.
     "I'm not."
     "You're lying. Are you improvising this on the spot or did you think it
up earlier? Do you think anybody  will believe your  story? I shall demand a
special commission of experts."
     "Go ahead," I answered with a sigh.
     "I've already talked with Klenov. We'll write a letter to the papers."
     "You won't. I'm not lying to anybody."
     "To anybody? But I know why you did it. From jealousy."
     I even laughed.
     "Jealous of whom?"
     "And he even laughs, the scum!" she screamed.
     Before I could catch her arm, she  hit  me in the  face so hard that  I
almost lost balance.
     "You scum!" she repeated, choking with  tears, and close  to hysterics.
"Murderer! ... If it wasn't  for Volodya Asafyev,  Oleg would now be dead on
the operating table. Lying there dead, dead!"
     A sudden darkness cut short her screams.

        A DREAM FULL OF ANGER

     I seemed to  be blind and deaf, and my body was pressed  to the parquet
floor  as if  paralysed. I could  not even stir, and felt nothing except the
coolness of the waxed floor against  my  temple. How many hours, or minutes,
perhaps seconds,  this feeling  lasted I don't know. I had lost all sense of
time.
     Suddenly the blackness  before my  eyes faded like  Indian ink does  on
Whatman  paper when  you use it to  spread a dull grey wash over an outlined
space. The space here was outlined by the walls of a narrow corridor  lit by
a few dim electric bulbs and terminating in a steep stairway loading up to a
rectangle of daylight. I  was  standing  now, pressing  my face against  the
waxed wall-panels, holding on  to the handrail that ran the whole  length of
the corridor.
     As before, Lena was looking at me, but her expression had  changed into
deep sympathy.
     "Are you sea-sick?" she asked. "Nauseous?"
     I  certainly  felt a  bit under the weather, especially when the floor,
swaying  like  a swing,  suddenly slipped from under my feet and my  stomach
twisted in spasms.
     "It's the pitching of the ship," she explained. "We're turning into the
harbour."
     "Whereabouts are we?" I said, failing to grasp what she meant.
     "We've already reached Istanbul, Professor. Come and take a look."
     "Where?"
     I still could not catch on to what was happening.
     A  new  devilish  metamorphosis.  Out  of  one  dream into  another.  A
Technicolor scene from a fairy tale.
     "Come  up on deck. You'll feel better where there's a breeze," and  she
pulled me  after  her. "Incidentally, let's see  what Istanbul  looks  like.
Though one can hardly make anything out - it's raining."
     The  rain  did not actually fall, but hung around us like a lustreless,
hazy  netting.  Through  this  net,  the shoreline panorama seemed  made  of
shapeless,  abstract patches  with  the  outlines  here and there of murkily
gleaming minarets  and  cupolas,  some blue and others green.  Clouds teemed
above it all, bunting and overtaking each other.
     "We'll need our raincoats," frowned Lena, with a hand above her eyes to
ward off the fine  wet spray. "Can't go ashore like this. What cabin are you
in, seven? Wait for me by the ship's ladder or on shore. All right?"
     Now I  knew  the  number  of my  cabin.  Well  then,  let's  go  for  a
mackintosh. A trip through foreign seas and countries is always interesting.
Even in the rain, even in a dream.
     Entering my  cabin, I found  Mikhail  Sichuk busy by  his  bunk. He was
hurriedly pocketing some papers and packets, and did not seem at all pleased
with my appearance.
     "Is it raining?" he asked.
     "It is," I answered  mechanically, trying  to puzzle out why  my dreams
persistently  confronted me  with the  very  same personages. "What are  you
stuffing in your pockets?"
     This seemed to embarrass Mikhail.
     "Oh,  that ...  just souvenirs  to  exchange.  So  it's raining..."  he
mumbled, avoiding my eyes.
     "That's bad. We'll all be bunched in a group, holding on to each other.
Otherwise we'll get lost...."
     Then I remembered what Mikhail had done in real life. In this very same
Istanbul. In reality, and not in a dream.
     "What's the name of our ship?" I asked.
     "What? You've forgotten?" grinned Mikhail.
     "Sclerosis. Can't remember, somehow."
     "The Ukraine. What of it?" He looked at me with suspicion.
     Everything fell into place.  This dream, in time, was a month  ago. All
the better. I could change the course of events.
     "Nothing  special," and  I even yawned to put him off  the track. "It's
raining. Suppose we don't go."
     "Not go where?"
     "Ashore.  They'll  make  us  walk half the  day in  the rain:  mosques,
museums.... Wishing we were home. Let's  settle down in the bar over a glass
of beer."
     "Isn't that the limit!" laughed  Mikhail. "The last foreign port and we
go to the bar."
     "Why the last? We still have Varna and Constanta to see. Very beautiful
cities, by the way."
     "Socialist," drawled Mikhail scornfully.
     "And you, of course, must have capitalist towns? "
     "I paid good money out. I want my money's worth."
     "Thirty pieces of silver," I said. "Judas money."
     Incidentally in that other dream in the Metropole, I'd already put this
to Mikhail.  And all  for nothing. The  shot had misfired. He never  got his
excursion-voucher,  and  so never took  the trip.  But now I'd caught him in
time.
     "Look, I  know  what  you're planning,"  I went  on. "Two  words  to  a
policeman at the  first bus stop, and off in a taxi to the American Embassy.
Quiet, don't deny it! And at the embassy you'll beg for political shelter."
     For a moment Mikhail was turned into a pillar of  salt, like Lot's wife
immortalized  in  the Bible. But only  for a moment. Realizing that somebody
had looked into his soul, into  its secret depths, a  quiet terror came  and
went in his eyes. He was a damned good actor.
     "Rubbish," he said, with a show of good-heartedness, and reached out to
take his raincoat off the hanger.
     "I am not joking, Sichuk," I said.
     "What does that mean?"
     "It means I know the dirty thing you  intended to do, and I'm going  to
stop it."
     "That's interesting, but how?" he burst out.
     "It's  all very  simple. Till we  leave  port, you don't go out of this
cabin."
     "Might as well  warn  you, I'm  not a good subject for hypnosis. So get
out of my way," he declared insolently, and began putting his coat on.
     I sat  on the  edge of the  bunk nearest the  door. Then  I  wrapped my
handkerchief round my  left hand. I'm left-handed, and punch  with  my left.
There's  no curve to  the punch, and it  has  all  the power  of my  arm and
shoulder muscles behind it, and the whole weight of  my body. I learned this
from Sazhin,  the USSR boxing champion in the light-heavyweight class.  That
was in the late forties. I was younger then and glad of his help. I would go
to him  at the  training  gym after work, right from  the editorial  office.
There, in a sheltered corner, I would  correct his notes -  he  was going to
turn journalist. Then I would ask him to show me a few tricks.
     And  he did. "You'll never make a  boxer, of  course," he told me. "Too
old, and  no talent.... But  if you ever  get in a fight, you'll be able  to
take  care  of yourself. Only see you don't  break  your knuckles. Wrap your
hand up."
     Mikhail at once noticed my manipulation and became curious.
     "What's that for?"
     "So I don't skin my knuckles."
     "What? You're joking?"
     "I've already told once I'm not joking."
     "One yell from me...."
     "You  won't yell," I interrupted him. "Or it'll be  the  worse for you.
I'll tell everything you plan doing and ... curtains, as they say."
     "Who's going to believe it?"
     "They'll believe it.  Once they're  tipped off, they'll  start thinking
out the how's and wherefore's. You won't be let ashore."
     "But I can accuse you of the same thing."
     "Then they won't let either of  us go. And when we get home, it'll  all
be straightened out."
     Dressed in his hat and coat, Mikhail sat opposite me on his bunk.
     "You're crazy. What gave you the idea I was going to skip?"
     "I saw it in a dream."
     "I'm asking you straight."
     "What  difference  does  it  make?  The important  thing  is,  I'm  not
mistaken. I can read it in your eyes."
     "I'm a Soviet citizen, Sergei."
     "You're not. You're the scum of the earth. I found that out even at the
front. Knew you were a coward, a bad lot. Only I never managed to expose you
in time."
     Red  spots came  up  on Mikhail's cheeks.  His fingers played nervously
with his  coat buttons, doing them up and undoing them. He must have finally
realized that his well-worked-out plan could fail.
     "I won't  yell, of course.  I don't want  a row." His  voice  took on a
tearful note. "But, honestly, this is all nonsense. Sheer nonsense."
     "What's in your pockets?"
     "I told you. All kinds of stuff: pins, badges, photos."
     "Show me."
     "Why should I?"
     "Then don't. Lie down on your bunk, and stay there."
     He got up and walked to the door. I put my back against it.
     "Let me out," he said through his teeth, grabbing my shoulders.
     He  was  stronger than  I,  but  out  of  cowardice didn't realize  it.
However, without any manifest hesitation, he came straight for me.
     "Let me out," he repeated, pulling me toward him.
     I gave him the knee, and he flew back. Then,  crouching, he  tore at me
trying to smash his head under my chin.
     But it didn't  connect, and I let fly at his face with a straight left,
landing right on his  mouth. He swayed  and crashed to the floor between his
bunk and  the wash-basin. A red trickle ran from his cut lip. He  touched it
with his fingers, saw blood, and screamed: "He-elp...." And broke off.
     "Go ahead, yell," I told him. "Yell louder. You don't scare me."
     His eyes narrowed, radiating spite alone.
     "All the same, I'll skip," he hissed. "Next time."
     "You  be man enough to announce that  at home. Officially, so  that all
can hear.  Say it plainly, that you don't  like our system, our society. Beg
for  a  visa  from some  embassy or other. You think you'll be held? Oh  no.
We'll be glad to chuck you out. We don't need human scum like you."
     "So why don't you let me go now?"
     "Because  you're crawling  out  quietly.  By  a  fraud. Because  you're
letting everybody down who trusted you."
     Mikhail jumped up and  rushed me again, his  mouth stretched in an ugly
grin. He wasn't thinking now of getting