The wind whips the trees. The bus licks people off the stops.
I don't want to go to work.
September 20. Gray asphalt. Gray clouds. The motorcycle swallows up miles like noodles. A kid stops by the road, and I can tell from his position that he's decided to be a motorcyclist on a red bike when he grows up. Be a motorcyclist, kid; just don't become a researcher.
I keep accelerating. The speedometer says over ninety. The wind is lashing my face. Here comes a dump truck, hogging most of the road, of course. Those bastard truckdrivers, they don't take bikers for people. Always trying to ride us off the road. Well, I'm not yielding to this one!
No, there was no crash. I'm alive. I'm writing down how I tore around glassy — eyed today. I have to write about something. The truck veered to the right at the last second. I watched in the rear view mirror as the driver pulled over and ran into the road, waving his fists at me.
Actually, if I had crashed, what difference would it make? There's a spare Krivoshein in Moscow. I can't describe my repulsion and disgust for everything right now. Including me.
How he shook, how he hugged my feet — the strong, handsome “not me.” And I could have foreseen it and spared him. I could have! But I thought: “It'll work like this. What the hell! After all, he's not me.”
And it was so interesting, good, beautiful. We dreamed and talked, worried about the good of mankind, swore a vow. What shame! And in the work, I overlooked the fact that I was creating a man. I thought about everything — exquisite forms, intellectual content — but that it might hurt or scare him never entered my mind. I just decided that there was no informational death in the experiment — and fine. But death was a violence that I performed on him over and over.
How did it happen? How?
The white posts along the highway reflect the motor's hum: but — but — but — but how did it happen? But — but — but — but how? The speedometer reads 110, the gray stripes of earth and trees whiz by. At this speed I could escape from pursuers or save someone, getting there in time! But I have no one to run away from and no one to save. I did have someone to save, but I had to do some honest thinking there… and I didn't.
I can master heights, elements, with my brain and brawn. It's easy with the elements. They can be mastered. But how do you master yourself?
I just went over the diary — and I'm frightened by how low and self — serving my thoughts are! Here I am discussing how troubles befall people because they are unprincipled, that they think they can live off to the side, not get involved, and a few pages later I cleverly make sure I'm off to the side: don't get mixed up with Harry Hilobok, let him get his damn doctoral dissertation…. Here I'm thinking about how to derive benefit from my discovery, and here I call myself to do cruel acts with reference to wars and murders in the world. Here I (or me and the double, it doesn't matter) lower myself to the level of an ordinary engineer, who can't handle such difficult work — a moral insurance in case it doesn't work; and when it does work, I compare myself to the gods. And I wrote all this sincerely, without noticing any contradictions.
Without noticing? I didn't want to notice them! It was so pleasant and convenient that way: preen, lie to myself with an open heart, adjust ideas and facts to fit my moral comfort. So it turns out I thought more about myself than about humanity? It turns out that this work, if evaluated not from a scientific but a moral position, was nothing more than showing off? Of course, where would I find the time to worry about my guinea pigs!
What kind of a man are you, Krivoshein?
September 22. I'm not working. I can't work now. Today I rode down to Berdichev for some reason and by the way, I understood the hidden meaning of the mysterious phrase that was printed out one day. Twenty — six kopeks is what it costs to fuel up to get from Berdichev to Dneprovsk: five liters of gas, two hundred grams of oil. I've unearthed another discovery!
Where is Adam now? Where did he go?
And that creature that the machine tried to create after the first double: half — Lena, half — me. It, too, must have suffered the horrors of death when we ordered the computer to dissolve it? And my father. Oh damn! Why am I thinking about that?
My father… the last cossack in the Krivoshein line. According to family tradition, my forefathers come from the Zaporozhian cossacks. There was a brave cossack whose neck was damaged in battle — and there you get the Krivoshein line. When Empress Catherine broke them up, they moved to this side of the Volga. My grandfather Karp Vasilyevich beat up the priest and the head of the village when they decided to get rid of the village school and set up a church school. I haven't the slightest idea what the difference was between them, but my grandfather died at hard labor.
Father took part in all the revolutions, and served under Chapayev in the Civil War.
He fought in the last war as an old man, and only the first two years. They were retreating in the Ukraine and he led his battalion out from an ambush in Kharkov. Then because of wounds and age, they transferred him to the rear, as a commander on the other side of the Urals. There, in the camp, a soldier and peasant, he taught me how to ride, how to take care of a horse and saddle it, how to plow, mow, shoot from a rifle and a pistol, dig the earth, and chop brambles with a machette. He also made me kill chickens and pigs by stabbing them under the right shoulder blade with a small flat knife, so that I wouldn't fear blood. “It'll come in handy in life, sonny!”
Shortly before his death he and I went down to his homeland in Mironovka, to see his cousin Egor Stepanovich Krivoshein. While we were sitting in his cottage drinking, Egor's grandson rushed over:
“Cramps, they dug out a body from the clay in Sheep's Gully where they're digging the dam!”
“In Sheep's Gully?” my father asked. The old men exchanged a look. “Let's go see.”
The crowd of workmen and onlookers made way for the two old men. The gray, chalky bones were piled up in one spot. Father poked the skull with a stick, and it turned over, revealing a hole over the right temple.
“Mine!” father said looking at Egor Stepanovich triumphantly. “And you missed. Your hand shook, huh!”
“How do you know it's yours?” the other demanded sticking his beard into the air.
“Have you forgotten? He was coming back to the village. I was right on the side of the road, you were on the left….” and father drew a picture in the clay to prove his point.
“Whose remains are these, old men?” a young foreman in a fancy shirt demanded.
“The captain,” father explained, squinting. “In the first revolution the Ural cossacks were quartered here, and this here was their captain. Don't bother the police with it, sonny. It's been over a long time.”
How marvelous it was to lie in wait in the steppe at night with father's gun, waiting for the captain — both for the principle and the fact that the bastard ripped up men with his bayonet and raped girls! Or to fly on horseback, feeling the weight of your saber in your hand, taking measure: I'll chop that one over there, with beard, from his epaulets all the way through!
The last time I fought was eighteen years ago, and it wasn't a fight to the death, only to the school bell. I never galloped in the days of old. All my bravado comes on a bike facing down a truck.
And I'm not afraid, father, of blood or death. But your simple lessons never did come in handy. The revolution continues through different means, with discoveries and inventions — weapons more dangerous than sabers. And I'm afraid, father, of making mistakes.
Liar! Liar! You're preening again, you low — life! You have an ineradicable streak of showing off. Oh, it's so pretty: “I'm scared of making mistakes, father,” and all about the revolution. Don't you dare!