(Fragment of the story)

An obstinate girl, thin and scorching like the last wind lived in a high town over the old river, which seemed knew no doubts. As a fruit of an ancient and spontaneous coupling of mentally and geographically different peoples, she had those natural forms, features, which all tribes and peoples call beauty with magnetism, even in the most wicked its manifestation. I wonder if beauty is universal, because even a rooster... a peacock, and the smell, and the colour, and the voice of apple-blossom...; and Violet honey of evening dresses of girls who look like models, but have scattered souls. Ravens seem choosing their couple by beauty, and swans and deer. Only lot of flower pollination depends on the freakish wind; there is the only one choice for women-flowers – to accept or not the pollen of handsome and not so much men-flowers. Apple trees also attact bees by beauty.
There grew an old cemetery in the high town over the eternal river. Haggard crosses seemed to take a run for flight, but they couldn’t, and stayed assuming different poses like people under the ashes of Vesuvius. In spring when hens were singing, and it was sunny, the cemetery seemed merry, tipsy and kind. There one could meet ill with love people, and birds and mice building nests. Somebody was stealing garlands. Birch trees which were here, were choked with their own juice in March, but sometimes local citizens, – whose genetic roots are here in the nature – gnawed them. They gnawed and howled almost like wolves. Their gums were bleeding, and the blood smelt through with asphalt, was diffusing with birch-juice, and was sparkling like a cloud of an Indian summer, and stuck to blossom.
In the cemetery chapel, under its foundation, oaken idols were living, and the grass had a taste of soap and gas, because people gathered here, people ill not only with love but also with asphalt decease, whose the only aim and idea was to survive... Intellectual blackguards and chivalrous peasants were either lying or wandering, like molecular legions. Fields and all were scattered around like a presented Gypsy shawl. Minutes seemed to be like scared pigs here. It was easy to kill them one by one, but later, later they will bury us, choosing a compulsory flight but not a free downfall.
Some French sorrow was flowing from Lyuba, as from the girl who was forming her body. Her spirit was reflected in her face, which never seemed cruel, aggressive, or full of pain, but was always normal and childish. It expressed high and the highest level of spiritual condition whose freedom, and freedom of fire began already to press. Whom it loved those it burnt; it was a fire-man, who loved only itself, like a kind fairy, like molecules which attracted the opposite, rather different than they were themselves.
She was rather thin like a wine vine, with thick coral lips, and eyes full of light. She was pouring the sand on the shore where traces of former gulls, people, waves, winds, rains were fluttering, like little fish. There were stars up and down. It was wild and strange. It seemed that the sand wanted to outwit even Demiurgeous: it didn’t think about anything, it didn’t want to get to know the world, it consciously passed by conflict situations, but it was dragging and laughing with pain, which is not the Way by itself, but the Way is passing through it, spicy and Milky Way. If you put fingers together – you have the handful of sand: but time is running.
Valleys, like traces of noble sphinx didn’t strive for height, because they were deep enough and had sweet spring existence. According to the principle of geographical determination: creatures which are in this or that space, time in its genetic understanding can’t be essentially separated, exactly speaking, take off from the environment – the fish is on the dry land, the man is at the sea... The main aim of the person is to become like God, at least little part of the Creator, he is everywhere the same – for all races, peoples, tribes. If you think over – the imagination about gods is rather different. Somebody can think that he is left or chosen. Everything, what is chosen, and is genius, scares. Everything what is left, at last, scares as well..., as coming closer to death, on which only sexuality draws taboo. Existence only at some instants is equal to thinking. There is no ideal. And that is blissful who doesn’t want perfection but unity, where one can understand: defects of the neighbour are our defects, even without any projection. In this unity – from the level of elementary parts to mega-Galaxies – everything is eternal, everybody are eternal... And a priest, whose house is larger and more magnificent than his church, and a maniac-killer, and a humble mother-martyr, whose five sons did not return from the War, and an artist, who uses the way of writing for easy understanding of both children and Martians, and cranes, but all the rest is an artful writing, word-mixture, murdering of psychology by philosophy – and vice versa...

***

There was a Medieval Castle on the bank of the eternal river, ill and proud, with roots-basements, holy trees on the shoulders, and hair of dead bodies in the basements. Putrid hair. It was such an ancient castle, that it seemed, it would feel giddy only because it was on the Earth, which was going round its Star, and the Star was going round as well... And one can notice the star when it is falling.
– Life is interesting with its faults, – neighbour-Jew said to Lyuba, when she was going to drawn in the river because of unhappy love. – When you have that, what people call happiness, believe me, you will want a little... not exactly grief, but trouble. Everything is created in such a way.
After that incident that aged teacher of the local school – Josyp Radcovych – became a real spiritual friend for the girl, an adviser in getting to know the world through the world of literature, philosophy, history, intuition...
Josyp Moyseyovych had what to teach her. For his fifty years old he gathered the profound and big archives, the library, but his inside spiritual potential, which would hardly neglect even a great artist -was the most important. Josyp Moyseyovych showed nobody his first attempts to put his pen to paper, and... it was the exception from the rule: a bad writer – a good critic – a teacher. He was simply Yosyp Moyseyovych Radkovych. And everybody knew it – from naive to atheistic, those who read «Tevye-milkman» or didn’t read it at all...
Somebody carried his own cross, – the word – vertical line, – is horizontally united to the action, – somebody carried the neighbour’s... if only was carrying. Somebody's scars on the hand continued his lot's lines. Somebody's lot's lines save his palm from the scar. Somebody mixes up waste material boxes in Space with Unidentified Flying Objects; somebody mixes up the Comet with street lamps.
Radkovych had an aquarium with one shy fish who ate all its neighbours. In the Red Sea all fishes seem shy...
Stepan Victorovych Roskoshnyy – a radio journalist, and Trohym Valerianovych Shtepa's family, whose neighbour – Borys Tsuhan studied at a musical college, and wanted to become a genius, and the son Lyonya... were Lyuba's and Yosyp Moyseyovych's neighbour’s... the closest neighbours. The genesis of these people is very interesting, isn't it? Where did church adventurers and well-known bee- keepers who bought for honey sweet and quiet places on the Social-chicken ladder come from? Each commodity has its customer.
«Lyonya Shtepa both goes to church, and buys icons for a song from old women, and speaks with different confessions, and is good to all... He cares for God, and doesn't forget about himself», – some people muttered.
«But Mykola Romaka, who sells honey, and has a propensity to science, – the more studies, the more stupid he becomes», – the other people laughed. But all public opinion made no difference for both Borys and Mykola. They trotted to their, as it seemed to them, not boggy light, learning flexibility from the tongue, making no idols, but smiling skilfully to general idols even then, when Lyuba Verbych was only learning how to go by bicycle, and like a boy came to love techniques. The bicycle didn't go over the eternal river, because it had stuck in the sand, that a local antiquary, with whom Lyonya Shtepa was on friendly terms with was taking for clocks. The antiquary was old, delicate, and quiet, like a child. He always did everything right, even if he shouted at something, he did it in a sweet way. A girl-student from a technical school was his tenant. So, sometimes, even unnoticeably for himself, he liked to peep, to smile almost without craft, almost like a boy. Like a youngest brother to his elder sister.
Lyonya Shtepa, who sometimes paid a visit to this aged man was interested in this roomer, who was older than he. Life defended itself from them. And they all defended themselves from it in different ways: one – with blush, the other – with aggression.
The old iron, which was the delicacy for time and the twisted obstacle, rested on the bank of the eternal river like clothes of the dead child.
Yachts' corps, bridge constructions, and other metal wares were carried here by pupils.
The wind helped the water to lick the nearest iron skeletons, and they were turning yellow, turning yellow... the iron bread of sorrow.
And further, and further... there exactly grew a mystical Castle of the XX century – the atomic power station with large and high tubes, with knights in the coats of mail, with basements, strange colours and smells. This Castle scared even the most convinced realists. The deer and the cranes also passed it by.
It seemed sometimes, that the elephants of the new civilisation screamed there... growing mouldy.
This Castle was praised in poems and rhymes of modern poets. The applause didn't scare them. It was planted around with decorative snowball trees by arrogant artists. Bombastic, high-flown reporting was presented from this Castle by well-known communist of the recent modernity – Stepan Victorovych Raskoshnyy. Real artists wrote about grass and Stars then, and after the explosion of the atomic Castle, and when it became empty. Terrible revenge blew from it. Knights were fighting with molecules. Clowns were fighting with autumn in the heart...
Arrogant artists and a journalist Roscoshnyy started with the same eagerness, but only did the opposite – they cursed the Castle built by their generation, mixing snot with ink.
Somebody had the opposite superstition: if a black cat crosses the street-that's for happiness, «I want to live in the apartment #13 only». That's a sphere of psychology but not a sphere of spiritual philosophy.
Everything is praying and grinding. The break up... when the Great Empire was destroyed, Stepan Victorovych Roskoshnyy bent. He changed his colour like a salamander, like bacon in a journey... It’s high time as Chapek told «to start war against salamanders», because if for example Mongolians come tomorrow, such luxurious bacons in a journey will help their Shaman. They aren't even enemies for the enemies. Fascists gave a rank not higher than lance-corporal to such salamander – colonels, – for they could serve cudgelling their own people...
Patriots of the Earth – Gypsies, also wandered along the eternal river. Kind gypsies and wicked. Some sang songs around the fire, the other were stealing children and clipped them forcing to beg. Not only once, blue-eyed, blond girls and even armless boys, who could hardly have any Gypsy roots were, found in Gypsy camps.
There were funny, like excessive respect local officials, with their shabby folders and mothers-pious before Rope. There lived Lovers of the excellent jokes, and even their makers – real geniuses. For the greeting «Glory to Allah» somebody answered «Glory to Sy!»* It smelt like stones.
White almost blue foam of waves tickled romantic, always young features of the motherland. That's the way of drunk good-natured persons to speak.
Everything had the illness of growing. And that is blissful who had in this illness intoxicating freedom up to both the despair and adjuring over-flaw, because «you'll never see wise men, if you subdue pranks in children» – said old Russo.
Lyuba Verbych was growing «a free child». In her children's company you could hear, for example, the phrase: So isn’t the bruise vanishing? Thrash the dog into the eye, follow it and watch what grass it will be eating, and you can use the same medicine...» Elements. Market. Even not a theatre, as Shakespeare said, but a Market...
Life is a Market. An the period of break up it became clear, that the soul like a big varenyk, of the refined, Ukrainians with great difficulties goes into the embroidered banks of the independence.

-------------------------------------------
*Glory to Jesus Christ (Ukrainian dialect)

As a rule it (the soul) is drove into there by both far and near neighbours and friends. It’s well -known. It's also known that the spark or the sand arises between two stones.
The bank of the eternal river was a crimson field of a battle between Mongolians, tartars and Europe, communists and fascists, now... Oh, Oh, Oh if to fall from the horse then from the black horse. Blissful stones make cottage cheese from us now: Won't we become a spark which... But now we wonder for a while, like fallen in love with the forest. We have a soul, which is the instrument of the suffering. We have what to suffer for. We make balls from the Atlantic wind. It's painfully and sweet. It is even salty.
A little bit of white mysticism, a little bit of naive detective story, space lyric poetry, singing philosophy, practical psychology – and two pairs of traces some of them are of a human being. When one pair vanishes, that who marked the other pair carries the person in the arms...
Lyuba Verbych came more often and often to her friend. Recently, he offered the science his version of interpretation of some places of «A word about Igor’s regiment». He insisted, that Galilea and Galicia are words with a common roof... When Lyuba once at the lesson of Literature proclaimed either with irony or with respect to her teacher: «How can it be unknown where Christ was from twelve till thirteen years old?..
In Galicia! In Galicia..». – But she didn't drive at Yosuph Moyseyovych. Her classmates quickened. – Somebody said, that «Galilee is like Galicia...»
These words were reported to the radio-journalist Roskoshnyy, who was always well-informed, especially in affairs of his spiritual (inner) non-sympathy, softly speaking, not antipathy but similarity. Though Stepan Victorovych still had some business in KGB, so everything connected with gods and devils had to be reported. Especially now, when Great Empire, like a large dead sea, is living at the time of rising mule from the bottom, and also at the time of bone rising of old ships; harmonious ghosts of green, because of time, amphora coins with the profile of Land Masters.
When the Sand is rising to the top – time is going backward. It was so thirty years ago. The sea calmed down jelly-fish were dead. Numerous of them were thrown on the shore...
Roskoshnyy didn't want to become a jelly-fish, that's why he always struggled to be better, the best, first from... the worse. Sense of irony was absent in him, and he always made others suffer, and suffered himself hating and meditating...dreaming to become a racy being a mongrel. But its somehow more humane when a racy becomes a mongrel. Some people's soul changes through the body, body of others changes through the soul... At last – the general unity on the molecular level makes all us responsible for all and everything – up to Nothing. Molecule, energy (the wind) plus God. That’s all. Elements of Mendeleyev table plus something else, and somebody, Fear and Love. It’s the day of joy in the cell of the prisoners sentenced to death.
It is a great misfortune to peoples, who have many Roskoshnyy, and those people are blissful who have such exceptions. If Gypsies are elements, then such lickers... It’s good, that everything what is necessary, as every psychological practice, is summed up by philosophy.
Even those people to whom they serve, don’t like such people – as it is in the parable about a man and God: the man brought many sacrifices to God, but he burnt his household with lightning; the man restored everything; brought sacrifices, but God burnt it again. «Why are you so unjust? – cried out the man at last. So... you understand, I don’t like you, I don’t like...» was the answer. And you can nothing do about it.
The main principle of Roskoshnyy creature is to live without principles, it means only to Survive, but not to Live... a butterfly lives little, but how bright it is, and a person lives much, exactly speaking lives long. A real Ukrainian principles. All neighbours are in heaven, so am I worse? – is working. Enemies make big crosses from the frozen tears of mothers, children, our grandfathers, from the tears of stone old women, who are carrying the arc of «Chumatsky Way» on their back.
«But, however, – the instinct is more important than the truth» – Radkovych said to
Lyuba.
She said:
– It means if the boy likes me, it only seems to me, it is only the instinct, I can't guess the secret of it...
– Do you understand, that the beauty – is the perfection of forms and the volume of the content inside the system, but not its relation to other systems? Because, when the women of different tribes and nations were shown pictures of the same men, they chose the same as the most handsome . The intuitive feeling of the beauty... It can be pointed but never can be inculcated. That is the way, how deaf play the piano, they only learn notes, and keys. It’s not for nothing, that the ritual, spiritual, earthly science of bread-cutting, and not putting it bottom up, is more natural and universal than hundreds of ball-room dances lessons or lifeless learning of manners of degenerative aristocrats. Because there are no lifeless molecules. There is only the energy and the vacuum. Energy – is life, thus – God, vacuum is something opposite. Though there isn’t practically the absolute vacuum, thus the absolute death.
– So, if the blue-eyed brunet likes me, we are, so-called molecules with the common energetic charge, which are pushed away, or with the opposite, which, as we know...
– Lyuba, don’t provoke compliments, which are told to stupid, – said Josup Moyseyovych.
The girl said bye, bye coquettishly and artistically resetting: «Stupid doesn’t need a coin. If you tell him some compliments, you’ll be able to do anything to him, what you want». She turned red, what was the result of Molecular diffusion in her blood.
...External irritation.
History is a great actor... It wasn’t clear where it was to and how: if it comes back, or if it comes to the very back – it means forward. The bigger is the pause, the greater is the actor. Once, this history will laugh at somebody like Baba Yaga. It’ll laugh at the style, clothes, which is unessential both in paradise and on the beach, will laugh at gold, glory, grief, at laugh itself, at tragedies, which will become farce – not less bloody a Han tragedies themselves. It’ll laugh at strong logic and genius madness, at micro and macro pain, tenderness which is turning into pain, at, may be, first of all, idiotic perfection. Because, try to imagine a creature, a person, who knows all languages of the world, including all the encyclopaedias under his skull, having written hundreds of volumes of drama, prose, poems, symphonies, – what are Shakespeare, Dante, Lesya Ukrainka in comparison?! There is much iron in such superman’s blood, and gold is in his sperm. Iron is increasing, and increasing in number... At last – he becomes a walking computer, who loves and hates...but what will be later? He seems to become a drunkard. Drunk like God.
Lyuba jumped out from the place of her old friend and ran at full speed home, because she was late for the rehearsal at the theatre club. She was running downstairs. It began to drizzle. Slippery grass was kissing her feet. The song was being easily sung by itself: «I am sitting on the chimney. What is it to me? What is it to me? I ate a duck with paws. It is moving... But I am sitting on the chimney. What is it to me? What is it to me?»... And, suddenly she slipped and…
– Here you are a free downfall and a compulsory flight, – laughed Lyuba in the morning on her forth day of staying in the hospital. – A Compulsory downfall and a free flight.
In the morning of the first day, the girl, almost by the coreless movement of her soul, opened her eyes. The dazzling crosses of the windows stuck to the apple of her eyes. She moved her glance to the walls as white as snow. It smelt with the medicine, which used to be the grass, the blossom, the roots.
Strangers, beds and bedside tables are all around, and – emptiness.
«Where am I? Who am I? – these words flew along veins, like boats across the Stiks. The memory was as clean, and white as this room, hands, and gulls, which flashed delicately somewhere behind the window. Somebody crying out penetrating «Gipsy! Gipsy! Gip...»
Luyba didn’t remember almost anything: neither her name not her age, nothing. Tabula Rasa. But that, what she had in thoughts, in her soul – didn’t reflect on her face, which was lightly – quiet, with the slight wind of irony.
The soul was anxious. It was the mirror of the world. It imitated, parodied, copied. The spirit stayed by itself. It’s like the sea – and a planet: the water is shaking, but the bottom moves around quietly, without any doubts. Dead bodies were carried across the word. In the neighbour campus, the newborn children were crying. The boy, who soon would be much spoken about, was among them. He – this boy – was born by the girl of thirteen years old from her farther. The girl’s mother – the wife of the father – alluded doctors timidly, that it would be better for the child not to survive. But he happened to be viable. He was trying to catch the basin, where he was put with the untied navel string. – and he was crying to the Universe that he existed. He was crying but... then he seemed to be given an injection by the most professional medical sister and he stopped without having seen his mother’s eyes, his father – grandfather, without having seen himself.
For Luyba the counting points of time began with varenyks, brought to her by some people.. an aunt and an uncle from the Far Northern town. She took some. Step by step, the voices were identified. It was strange, somehow from the memory, from the neurons beneath the brains, which were tied with genes, some smooth, unfixed, separated pictures brightened and united into one. But at first they united into the colourless, noiseless, without smell.
Till the evening the girl increased the size of herself.
She mentioned her favourite book of the last lime «The man and the sea» by Hemingway. When her grad-mother and friends arrived to her – she asked them to bring this book. She was absorbed... Simply. Salty. Tightly. Witheringly. She was sorry for everybody, for all what was alive...for what came to «bloom and die». She was weeping quietly. She mentioned that it was far more than books. «Concussion of the brain of the II level», – she read in her medical card, which was left carelessly among the others on the table by the medical sister being on duty in the evening.
The grape was winding behind the window. The old man – the farmer of the hospital, who had the «old harden»– was taking out horses from the shed.
Those, who weren’t seriously ill, were sucking out of their wards into the hall, and there they were washing golden bones of the whole world. Old women were knitting, men were telling, anecdotes. One of them was masterly knitting a fishing net. Some boy of Luyba’s age was obstinately repairing the hospital radio and singing.
Freshly – boiled millet porridge, fish and stewed fruit smelt from the canteen...
The groom, was cutting woods for something behind the window.
When the doctor – Trohym Valerianovych Shtepa came in everybody were hiding into their hospital wards. They tried even not to breath. Later they were getting out again – those who could and wanted.
«Did you hear? – the black-haired, a little moustached beauty with a long nose and unshaved legs of an alcoholic started to say. – I told him that his wife was a reveller but he answered «It’s better to eat the cake together, than the faeces – sorry – alone...»
– Oh, it’s not a problem, it’s not, – said the neighbour in the ward, who, no doubt, had the concussion of the brain of the highest level. – My husband and I were making love in front of the hospital in a white day, later, he happened to find a present of my lover – so, it was such a big massacre between us, there was a lot of blood... There was a sea of blood, a heap of meat. So I was taken to the hospital the way. I look now... Now he is shouting that he loves me, and it seems that I love him too. I am weeping like a fool, exactly like a fool...
– You know, I witnessed in the tram a very interesting case, a plump, blond-haired, aged woman promptly supported «the party», she was a lover of exotic «horse races».– «A boy with a spaniel got into the tram and sat down in front of me. He sat down. Let the dog sit next to him. Some people «were indignant that they were feeling the dog’s smell». A drunkard got into the tram. He was given a place not far from the dog. The spaniel moved its nose, pursed and sneezed funny. The drunkard grumbled something from his forehead. The woman, who was sitting next to me cried loudly «What is it? It’ll soon start biting everybody! Idiots! They made a zoo from the town, there is no pass! The dog cuddled up to the boy like a child. The drunkard straightened his shoulders, knitted his brows like Ivan the Terrible: «If I want I’ll burn the house!». As soon as the tram stopped, the dog ran to the exit. A sad boy followed him like a dumb».
Then there was a long pause. The men also were telling stories. A fair-haired boy, with a plain and handsome face, who was in the hospital with the hand-break, started to speak. He fell down from the horizontal bar. He was a gymnast. He was almost silent before, reading, writing, or learning something enthusiastically in English. It seemed, he was meditating. But suddenly he broke his silence:
– Old man, go ahead go ahead, tell us, how you have come to such life! – My sister greets me, when I come to see her, and only cross the threshold. I was scared at first. My latest sins were quickly – quickly swishing in my head-computer... But she seemed not to notice my face turning pale, and was already inviting me for a «wineglass» after the trip. I understood, that I was too naive, and perceived the phrase as simple truth. It was just an artistic gesture, a smile, a change of a mask. I was armed with this phrase later. Once, at about in a month, I visited my friend in a student’s hostel. So, I started with irony: «How have you come to such life?» Go ahead, tell me! The girl changed, dropped, rolled up trying to hide into half – shadowed corner of the bed:
– «You know, it happened so...»
The melancholy emptiness, confusion appeared «Why did Valya react in such a way?» – I asked quietly my friend’s friend. «Don’t you know? She is pregnant». Then I turned pale as a sheer. The atmosphere was unloaded by coffee... We laughed. Somebody clicked his tongue: «A very good phrase. I’ll be also armed with it».

***

Different sick people from different sections gathered after the treatment and dinner in the hospital garden. There was a blind musician Victor Varan, a humpbacked dwarf Yuriy Kril', a veteran of Afghanistan war with a broken spine Myhaylo Lelet. Sometimes some other patients from the neighbour madhouse happened to come here. Lately among them there was a musician Borys Syhan but last night there were two sons from the same village - Andriy Loyko and Stepan Bobryk, who were taken here by some stupid cops for fighting on the bank of the lake, having said, that they had torn each other's underwear and had been running like that.
Their relatives who came by horses visited them and spoke about the village: only that could survive there – who was healthy; that there was a natural household; that schools were closed where there were less than hundred children; that syphilis appeared in the village; that much ground wasn't sowed; that there was more game, fish, because collective farmers and people didn't have chemical fertiliser to spoil everything, what was alive. It was so. Peasants increase horses and pigs in number, cut trees around  the more they can, the more they can carry and bite. Nobody strive for the city: there is nothing to do for those, who is there. Step by step, but with confidence, people go to another world  they decay into molecules, which don't disappear, but transfer from one kind into another like an energy which unites them, which fills the space among them like a begging without navel, whose name isn't mentioned. But the earth is to the earth, a soul is to a soul...
The cars were going around the hospital, raising the dust, and the trees near white fences seemed to be made of iron. The trees were talking to each other by the wind and gestures, the earth paid with gold and its children, who were sacrificed, sacrificed with the hope for resurrection. It seemed that parents were burring their children. The old church was sleeping like a bell behind the fence, the church which used to be a stock, but it didn't become a church again. It was still standing, fascinated by the evil magnetism, where cops were kissing, lesbians were drinking milk of one another, where the poets were selling themselves to the politicians, where the politicians were full of hate to each other.
 In any case, the buttock can’t take a breast!  told to all a steady and full of optimism dwarf Yuriy Kril' meaning either the death and himself, the death and all, or everybody and everything.
Mychaylo Lelet and Victor Varan were often asked the same banal question: if it was possible to cure them somewhere in the wide world. They always answered: «There are many millionaires with diamond eyes and platinum spines, who can’t see and walk... There are no miracles. For the present there are things the medicine can do nothing with them.
It was hopeless and hard to all. It blew with lemon freshness. Not a big deal. In order to jump  we need to squat, in order to jump over  we need to go back and run fast.
Lyuba was biting her hair, listening to the life shining through her inside. She like a sponge was absorbing it in order to give it back rounded, more pressed, more perfect.
It seemed, that there was no end of this pulse, even then when I won't be here ...when I'll be in Earth, in the air, in grass, in people's memory, in the memory of the animals, trees, of the Universe, which has somewhere its own «black box».
The company of the soldiers passed by the hospital singing songs of the neighbour people: «Why do we write with blood on the sand?! Nature doesn't need our letters...» All people of the zone hospital were divided into those, who wanted to die, who wanted to live, who spent their time looking at one point...In accordance with it there was one more division, almost parallel to it. One wanted to return home as quickly as possible, the other had nowhere to hurry. A friend came to Lyuba Verbych. She was almost healthy. Only when she was physically active, she had a terrible headache. When she was calm  everything was great. Some information she gained from books, some was taken from the life, she also tried to obtain it from herself. Each of them was valuable. Though it is more interesting to study people than books.
When it was raining outside it seemed that all seasons were poured together. Rain was spiting like meat in the frying pan. It was pleasant. A Creature needs so little for the living calmness: fire, water, an apple...and child's laughter. It is so easy to be happy, but only few people can answer the question «How are you»  using the words. «I am fine». Because for giving this answer you could be taken to the madhouse. When you answer: «Like others»  it means that you are «Bad». But life continued. Somebody was hanged with triumph. Somebody was creating art masterpieces. Thieves and prophets, rough winners and tender losers, those who trusted communism, and those who believed in light future beyond the grave life  everybody weren't safe.
Here you can see a drunk with flowers, there you can see woman's eyes grew dim during sex. Everything is coming to its beginning. Everything caught the virus entitled «the end of the century»  Eschatology.
People smile while meeting. Animals also greet each other in rituals. At least if you want the child not to put his fingers into the socket, don't remind the child about it, don't make any idea, because it will become real for sure. Don't make any idea if you don't imagine how it will come true. Everything bad will come itself. It's better to think that everything is wonderful. A man copies natural principle of ruling, and directs it against the nature, it means that against himself. Everything is wonderful. Only we are sorry for the state  thought Lyuba. She tried to knit, but it didn't help, reading didn't help either. The head was free. There was something more important than dead theoretical schemes.
And now poor motherland was coming back to each who blinked to it, and it was confused and tender «Slaves, sideboards, Moscow filth, Warsaw rubbish...»
It's enough! Enough! Enough! It's time to boast ourselves. It's enough to whimper. On the level of the person and wider creations, accumulation of molecules, atoms, kernels like micro copies of macro worlds according to the principle-everything is in everything: the building of the atom is the building of the visible and invisible Universe. May be, some creatures also live on electrons but they are still invisible for microscopes like far galactic-atoms for telescopes, like souls for surgeons and priests.
State doesn't need sacrifice of masses so much as it needs sacrifice of upper classes. Fatih's law for example. But meanwhile in this transitional period as in hundreds previous periods pagans priests, transformed Olympic gods went out, transformed into Olympic gods, opened boxes of Pandora. The angels of Light shuddered and started the game with time and space. Thieves and prophets in a word. In general, the easier division into ill and healthy existed. Theoretically there were no the last ones, because everybody and everything become older but practically...One want to leave as many tracks of his existence as he can, the other only few. One are creators of the material of the spirit or the spirit of the material, the others are supernumeraries... Who is more important? The orchestra isn't an orchestra  if the violin or the trumpet sings out of tune, a note earlier or later. Even a pause needs height... It is so in music. A Genius Violin can hardly help a false trumpet.
Life in the hospital is unhappy but funny. Here it would seem that instead of culture the only matter was to survive. The idea of Goethe suits here: «The time will come when people will stop to make God happy and he will annihilate them for the second time in honour of the second creation».
A hospital like a church or an army or a prison is a locked up zone.
Existential being in it can’t pass unnoticeably for the man’s experience...
Unforgettable is the smell of the underground and new hay.
 Lysoha!  somehow aristocratically Lyuba called the cow, when she was taking it out to the grass or taking it back to the shed, where the ground smelt like in spring or in autumn, it means, like everything.
The observatory, where Lyuba had been working for three years without the salary, recently got a new telescope of the extraordinary power.
Lyuba received it as a gift from her grandpa from America before his death. Lyuba could see everything very far. Nobody could see so far on earth.
Hidden from all foreign delegations, crafty scouts and special services, it was far more perfect than the best American’s one «You are hiding something like a woman is hiding a plug», sincerely and cynically told Hlib to Lyuba. She didn't open a secret even to him. I am very offensive for the state  Verbych was making jokes bitterly, and went to milk the cow, because it was the only way to survive at the time of deep economic and spiritual crisis of the country, which was so powerful thousand years ago.
Academicians and poets were growing bread or were sold cheap into the slavery.
Geniuses were washing pigs of self-satisfied bourgeois’s. Lyuba didn’t go anywhere inspire of having many proposals of the world employers.
She didn't enter anything inspire of being invited by different orthodox world religions. She was tempted to join them by their calmness, money, glory, trips, by everything what can feed hungry and thirsty with Love people.
But she was planting her field watching the stars, taking out the cow to the grass, and learning destinies of the comets up to... She was also setting music and drawing.
Her nostalgias romanticism was competed with healthy scepticism of Hlyb. Lately somebody is making love to me. It may be that some woman is masturbating thinking obstinately about me. Come on, grow your appetite».  Lyuba was smiling understandingly. Her own sexuality was spreading into a tender pain she was creative. It means that she was fanning or keeping her feelings.
She was natural on orgies of scientific noble people, among butterflies and cows, among stars and fire balls. When she met a person she loved, she lit a cigarette as if she wanted to make her thin and tender body longer.
This sinful wish was like a storm in the monastery garden and its realization seemed impossible and unreal. The sand of time was painfully pulling and was licked by foamy waves of earthly being, indifferent to the nationality, confession, skin and hair colour; it’s even unimportant if you are a man or a bird or grass... We all consist of the same molecules, of the salty loam. It's salty because our Creator couldn't but weep creating us and creating everything for us. To weep like to smile.
Tired and pale she was wandering in her inside. She was howling to her star ill with love. She was crying in her loneliness and smiled in public. She tried to like her defects, because by her own mistakes she came to the conclusion that there was no other way to overcome them. A black-haired and a bearded man like a cat, who was a professor Hryn and his wife Varvara sometimes visited her native settlement, which was not far from the observatory. He was cutting woods for his elderly parents. Knowing what he was doing he always smoked exotic pipe. He liked to use parables in his speech: «Bad things usually spread on those places where light people are flabby. Is it an elephant's merit that it's big or is a butterfly guilty that it's small? It's only possible to take pictures of the moment, but what about the eternity?
Only those who are tender can fly  like birds in feathers... Each nation wants to cover itself with a blanket...
When he drank a little he stood like a rooster beating his thin chest and gave a talk: «I am an aesthete! There is not any greater magic for me than my dear wife's hair, greater mysticism than night thunderstorm in her soul!» Lyuba believed him, listened to him as to the old Radkovych who left for Israel but returned quickly back because of homesickness. Verbych didn't visit him for a long time, because she didn't have money for the train. She wrote to him sometimes. He sent her brief answers about countrymen – whose archaeology was common and boring to death. He wrote without any fear that the letter can be taken by any strange hands or even state hands. It was a brave, reckless risk of a person whose life experience was big enough to be parallel in different worlds and to stay practical: «It seems to me that sick organism of the young state now needs the operation with a laser and a scalpel.
Otherwise the death is inevitable. Because either neighbours who wish us the best» will come again, and will rule us or our uncles from behind the ocean. The privatization wasn't put into practice in time. The plants and factories are fully plundered. Now, let God forgive us we need a national dictator and may be even the execution of the biggest criminals!
Otherwise the Ukrainians will settle again in a new places  slaves, bondmen, footboards... Roskochnyy is a real bacon in a journey. Now he is angry with everybody and everything...Nobody wants to buy him or even to take him free of charge. That who betrayed ones will betray again. Trohym Shtepa doesn't join any party. He is only treating people how he can . He created even his centre of those who are incurably ill which exists for money of the liquid native patrons. Evil tongues chatter which that a man has many sins from his youth if he prays in such a way by his actions even not by a word on the thresh old of the old age...
But even the best prostitution can’t satisfy all. Shtepa's son  Lyonya (people say that he is illegitimate) is a clever boy. He joined the church affairs and changes his faith in accordance with better feeding. Very easy. Without any pain.
Borys Tsyhan is rushing everywhere and in his soul, he is writing music of revolution and is drawing in his playbills: «The genius is coming out in public of course it's not new.
Ihor Sjevjeryanin was already not long ago. And there into inside we have to hurry slow in art. We have to be hungry and to love. Some more news. The old antiquary died. He died in the poverty and in loneliness.
Almost all the intelligentsia of our town is selling. It is strange but it is possible to get the opinion that each person is buying from herself because nobody produces anything, but everybody are selling foreign goods making copies of the strange customs, language, culture which at last can’t be wellcopied.
Something more. Some spicy news:  the son of our good and kind priest married Lilya Verhum  humpbacked lady from the birth, daughter of some professor, who gave up his job and moved closer to the ground to the nature. The priest was arguing much with his son but nevertheless he married the cripple who also couldn't give birth to children, and even was raising it and being proud of it. Nobody can do anything to it. Let God help them. It's important at that time not to mix beating of your heart with the horse stamping, whom you are waiting for and the horseman whom you hope to meet. But where is the horse using witch you can run away from yourself, entirely we live how we can. The most important things are health and belief that a man is «invincible goes far to the sea»... The future of the past. The past of the future. A magic muzzle of uranium atom lead are beyond everything. And the child who is killing ants with sport interests. Our cemetery is growing. Childbirth houses are empty. It's hot time. It's only pleasant to watch the fire but... to be in it, or even close to it... There is only one word everything what is corporeal is to the body, everything what is spiritual  to the spirit.
Earlier or later we all grow up from our body, like from the children's clothes.
Somebody grows more and somebody less. That's true that sometimes it is unhappy to live, but funny. The person only smiles, it means...Oh! Too much philosophy? Come to us as quick as you can.
Love yourself! Love yourself! Only then you will love others, and other will love you. Not all of course, because the more real is a person the bigger is the contrast between her friends and enemies. Jesus Christ  for example. Keep yourself! Your Yosyp Moyseyovych.
7 of July 1997

Lyuba was gathering such letters in the iron brief case. Sometimes in the evening she was rereading them. It was interesting. She wanted to fast and pray. Especially when there was no light and gas, when the warm meat of the candle turned into the fire and smoke, molecules, atoms... and human spirit became itself. The space was silent. It was possible to weep easily. Hlyb came and they were making love. When it bored them they went to the telescope and watched the stars, or fed fishes in the aquarium.
Comfort created by them at last was locked up and strived for the opposite – for the storm. It was harder to create their own storm, but for taking part in the general war for example it was necessary to have courage and the natural made up position. To deceive ourselves or others... our own spermatozoon.
Immature wish and need to find the way out of the charmed circle destroyed. Hlyb's murder sudden murder like other ones. The hospital again. The reanimation. The white smell of music of turned away glances of the doctors.
Who had done it? What for? Lyuba was crying silently.  I'll kill! I'll kill everybody!  She squeezed her fists, as if she was holding a gun. She was a Master of Sport in shooting.
It's not always that one can be killed for something. It happens that he can be killed for everything. He could encroach on the «person», because of the bloody-dark envy, because a person is a bright individuality on the complete greyness, and rotted grief  answered Trohym Valerianovych Shtepa. It was the moment effect and as a result there is not living being.
 But not everyone is capable to this moment effect  said Myhaylo Lelet wheeling his carriage to Shtepa, Lyuba and to the yellow like wax Hlyb. When you are shooting into the target but not into the living being but when you are standing eyes to eyes  it's rather different...
 Abortions... an accident, they are accidents. O, God!  a humpbacked dwarf Yuriy Kryl' came up to them.
A blind musician victor Varan liked his guitar. They were singing songs: «The boat is sailing quietly along the sea. The girl is singing a song in the boat, and a Cossack hears and his heart is stopping short... The youth will never come back. it will never come back...»
And one can believe truly that grief is eternal inner world. A thin, pure, ringing grief.

Translated by Nadiya Pavlyuk