the most final
concluding work

The next morning at Decemberists 13, Eera announced my intended trip to the 4th kilometer by Chernigov. There followed a stormy exchange of views with my parents. They opposed the very idea of the trip and demanded it's cancellation. No matter how hard I tried, they could not understand that I had promised to be there on Monday. How to survive in a world where you could not rely even on your own word?

Eventually, Eera took sides with my parents, and they continued trying to prevail upon me in concerted efforts. Only Lenochka was sitting silent aside in the far end of the folding coach-bed.

"So what? Gave him education for your own misery?" my father reproached my mother. Then he turned to me, "We've done all that we could for you. Now it's your turn. Do as we ask. Or we're not the stuff? What are our wrongs? Tell it!"

"Okay, I’ll tell!" responded I, and slammed my fist at the table top, "Why did you stop writing poetry?"

There happened a sharp change in my father's demeanor. In obvious embarrassment, he was turning his eyes away from both his wife and daughter-in-law. Even in the deep wrinkles over his forehead, there appeared never observed marks of shyness, "Well… I was young… it was the war then…"

In the way of a compromise, they decided that before leaving for Chernigov, I would go with my mother to local psychiatrist Tarasenko from whom (here my father narrowed his eyes threateningly) no one had ever a chance of getting off-hook. Then I escorted Eera to the station, and all the way there she tried to persuade me not to go to the 4th kilometer. However, my word to Tamara was out and past recalling…

In the large light building of the Konotop Medical Center, not far from the Avangard Stadium in the Central Park of Recreation, people were crowding next to each and every door, and only the door to the office of psychiatrist Tarasenko stood out by its forlorn solitude. When my mother and I entered his office, Tarasenko explained the phenomenon by the insufficient awareness of the population, while there, overseas, every fourth citizen kept visiting a psychiatrist.

Tarasenko's office was equipped with his assistant nurse and the standard medical office furniture. However, the furniture was arranged very strangely. The oddity was created by the positioning of the desk. Besides being put in the center of the room, it was also turned the wrong way, with its drawers to the door.

I was asked to get seated at the desk. My mother sat on a chair by the wall, and the present medical team of two stood on either side of me. I did not like this whole disposition intended to inflate my megalomania—you sit there like Chairman Mao, and those in white are standing around as an errand-boy with an errand-girl. So, I pushed the chair a tad bit back from the desk, turned it 90 degrees and, stretching my legs out, put one foot on the other in the attitude of a kicking back cowboy.

And now Tarasenko and his partner rushed to pull abruptly and slam back the desk drawers, with bang and crash… Getting midst so violent a company, I, naturally, pulled my legs back but kept sitting, yet with my ears pricked up: what the heck?

On making sure that I hadn't jumped out of the door, neither tried to flee climbing up the window blinds, Tarasenko stopped the test and announced that I was as healthy as a bull.

"Tell it to him!" exclaimed my mother, sobbing, "He wants to go to the psychiatric hospital in Chernigov!"

"What for?"

"His wife has sent him there!"

"Is she a doctor?"

"No!"

"Why then? People can send you anywhere. Is he her slave, or what?"

"Yes! Yes! He's a slave!"

Tarasenko once again forbade me, already as to a slave, to go anywhere, and I together with my mother left his office.

On the way to the streetcar stop, my mother asked, "Now, you see? Got convinced?"

"It does not change anything."

"If they do something to you, I'll kill her!" said my mother with a suppressed sob.

"Mom," said I, "what kind of a book have you read recently?"

Of course, I knew perfectly well that since long my mother had forsaken reading books, yet you're still supposed to forward one or another clue to politely maintain a conversation, you know…