Page 114

[Alexandr Korol]

But she tried to explain it to me in a way like, “You know, after all that, it’s almost like it won’t even matter anymore.” And she said that, on the contrary, evil is approaching. Then we talked some more, just casually, about nothing in particular. And I walk outside, standing between the house and the car, while my friend Vlad went to get some water for the herbal tea we were supposed to drink. And that woman comes outside, walks up to me, looks at me, and says:

– Do you want the keys from up there?, – pointing her finger upward.
– Yes.
– Alright. Just don’t tell anyone, do you understand?
– I understand.

And then Vlad walks by and sees and hears all of it. And that’s it — the state, the vacuum, time, “cosmos” — as if everything was erased. We get in the car. I say to him:

– Did you see that?

And he’s silent. I say:

– Did you see it?
– Alex, enough... Let’s not talk about it anymore.

And the whole ride he just sat there with me, not saying a word, in some kind of shock, in a trance, and turned the music up all the way so he wouldn’t hear me. And I said to him:

– When we get back to Petersburg, you’re going to tell all our friends that I’m not crazy, that all of this is real.

But he got really scared that day. And that was summer. Then, about a month or two later, came that moment in September when the first messenger, Nadezhda, came to me. And that’s when I realized — it was those “they” who decided to pass me the “keys to paradise.”