Page 696

[Alexandr Korol]

— On the personality. Not on the soul. When they put pressure on your ego.
— Well, all right — when they put such moral pressure on me, I often simply run
away and leave.
— And what, you didn’t leave?
— I wanted to, but out of respect for you I restrained myself.
— Well, there you see. That’s your devil, who inside you wants to run away, because
he feels that he doesn’t even have the strength to fight with me now. Because my
whole life, I say, I’ve been fighting with this devil. Right now he’s sitting inside
you. Want to argue? Go ahead. I’ll chew it all over for you, break all the illusions.
With illusions it won’t work. And in there it’s all built on illusions: that you’re
this way, that it’s this, that.
— All right, let’s be specific: so you decided that I’m supposed to drop my whole
life and traipse off who-knows-where, because some voice told you something
there. And what if it tells you something bad — what, will you do that too? You’re
not normal.
— Sima, you’re telling me this on emotion right now, you’re defending yourself,
saying some nonsense. This isn’t even you, not you and not that wisdom of yours
that’s inside you. Let’s talk to the point. First of all, I proposed that you go there
and back for two weeks, and I’d have taken you there and brought you back. That’s
one. But you didn’t agree. Why?

She blinks, can’t answer.

— You see, and how you overdo everything: that I’m calling you off somewhere,
as if not letting you say goodbye to your parents. Don’t. I don’t do that, there’s no
need to exaggerate this. It’s your demon making it up like that right now. Next.
You say you’re afraid that some voice will tell me something and I might pull off
something. You know, and your parents know, how I live, what a responsible
person I am, and everyone knows this. That I’m the only one with a head on
my shoulders, that if something breaks down for someone, if someone falls
ill — I’m the only one who saves everyone. And you know that I’ve never lost
anything, never broken anything, and always build everything, for everyone and
for myself. No, there’s no better example than this one. So don’t just say now, on
emotion, defending yourself, that something might suddenly come into my head