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[Alexandr Korol]

— Imagine, two years ago you write to me again: “Hi, how are you? Who are you?”

And she is again in shock. Why? Because — I don’t remember exactly, a day after this or a day before this — some barely acquainted person asks her again whether she knows me. And she says: “Yes, he wrote to me.” That guy is in shock. And he gifts her my book, so that she would read it. Can you imagine? She again does not understand what is happening at all. Who am I? Why am I writing to her now for the second time, and on top of that, two times in a row, in these periods, people talk to her about me? And the second time, they even gift her the book. And so she is filling me in on all of this. I get into it, and I say to her:

— Listen, do you want a funny thing? I have, seriously, only written to people I know in all this time, not to a single outside person. But for some reason I could not restrain myself and decided to write to you. Just couldn’t restrain myself at all. Don’t think anything, because I don’t need the world of people, I am in my own “cosmos” and I don’t need any relationships, you don’t worry about this at all. I am in my own “corridor” and so on. But I just feel some kind of connection, that’s why I am writing, and I myself don’t know what for. Well, I don’t know how to explain this. I will try, of course… I am a writer, all my life all I have done is try to pick the words for what I feel. The feeling is as if you are a sister to me, or some kind of relative. I don’t know how to call this correctly — love or being in love, but it’s just crazy warmth. I am writing to you, and the chest is burning. I don’t know what this is.

So, also she has… It’s not even a lifestyle, but everything is like an exact copy, the way I always described it: my type of girl, what she ought to be doing, how she ought to look. And I laugh:

— Probably you were made by the CIA.
— Why? — she asks.
— Well, how else can one get to Korol? The simplest way to influence the tsars and the kings is through a woman. — Here you have been produced in order to influence me, — I am joking, of course, laughing. — But this is very suspicious.