No one wants to live forever, but everyone wants to live all over again. Me too. I never wanted an eternal life if only so that  death should not appear as an utopia. But I would agree to living my life all over, for I have grown to trust the established truth. It seemed to me that the world is ruled by the great source.
        For example: �Happy End�.
        My life stumbled on that very night when I dreamt for the first time that a glass was falling off a table all day long. It wasn�t just that glasses kept falling off the table - no: one and the same glass is falling for a very long time. Falling all day long.
        A beautiful, blue glass.
        And it is falling just as beautifully. As if it weren�t falling but being suspended in space. As if nothing at all is happening to it. Not only to the glass, but to all of existence. As if nothing is happening to life itself due to the simple reason that nothing at all could happen to it. And � most importantly � as if that nothing is happening very, very slowly.
        This dream recurs quite often now.
        That�s why, even if I do begin living my life all over again, I will live it without expecting any resolution. And with the knowledge that the Creator could not have had any other goals but to ensure the presence of at least something beautiful. For, beauty is nothing other than absence of goals.
 

        Gena Krasner arrived in New York at the same time as I did. But - from Yalta in the Crimea, and settled down three blocks away from me.
        Unlike me, he had a skill - an obstetrician-gynaecologist - but, just like me, he had brought along his wife and daughter to America. Both him and I, and our daughters were the same age, while our wives were colleagues as well - experts on ancient philology. With the help of a Jewish charitable organisation, they became colleagues in the States also - maids in the same Manhattan hotel.
        They became friends. At dawn, they met in the subway and dragged themselves to work together: it was less dangerous that way. They came back late, exhausted and sad: �Is that why we moved here?!�
        They stopped complaining not earlier than I told them a joke about a Jew who was incapable of deriving pleasure from the present and felt disappointed even in the future. He would peek out at every station and sigh: Oy vei! At the last station, when they asked him why he was suffering all the way, he confessed: �But I�m not in the right train!�
        Neither Lyuba, Gena�s wife, nor mine, had any chances of switching to the �right� train, but they began to react differently to their misfortunes after this joke. Although Lyuba would still sigh, she would say different words at that: Oy vey, I wish March would get here fast, that is the day of Gena�s �test�!
        Gena sat at home from morning to morning and �gnawed at his English�. He passed the other two tests that had to do with his profession easily, but he had a feeling that English was going to be a disaster - and he would fail. And without it - although he did work as an obstetrician all his life in Russia - they would not even let him perform abortions on illegal immigrants, not to mention receive births from full-fledged American women.
        All through January Lyuba cursed February - because it distances the arrival of March. And my wife got angry at the Jewish philosophy because it possesses a long history and, therefore, did not allow me to finish my book about it by the day when she was ordered to come to the hotel at an earlier hour.
        Still, according to my classification of Jewish philosophy, she belonged to the sect of Hasidic Stoics, neglected the present for the sake of the future, and every morning, would Lyuba that as soon as I hand my book to the publisher, everything will be much better. Almost like in the past. Like in Georgia. Where, by the way, the list of the fastest growing things start not with the subway crime-rate like it does in New York, but with fig-tree.
        Each time, however, while examining the faces of passengers on the train, Lyuba would express to my wife doubts that -- when published -- my book will immediately open the list of best-sellers. My wife would not agree because, in her words, I was trying to present a very light-weight version of the Jewish philosophy. Nevertheless, she admitted that New York is not Georgia at all, where the amount of fee paid to the author for a book was determined not by the number of its generally imbecile readers, but by the number of words in the manuscript. Just normal words!
        True, she would also admit that even in Georgia they paid you for your words not as simply and easily as they do for your figs. Only if those words are brought to the publisher in some kind of order and totality. Not separately. Not if they were loose like the are in dictionaries. Although, of course, in dictionaries all the words are arranged alphabetically.
         Once, towards the end of February, Lyuba -- out of the nostalgia for the native language or the respect for the best hopes of her colleague -- asked my wife to give her something to read �of her husband�s�. Even if it is just the opening chapter. She complained, there�s nothing to read in Russian about wisdom-loving Jews. My wife answered that even the opening chapter consists of exclusively English words.
        �What?! English?!� Lyuba screamed out, and the next morning, the Krasners, all three of them, came by with a bottle of French brandy. They came and fell into feet: save us, they wailed, and get us out of this mess, you are our only hope! God and you! No, in the reverse order: you and God!
        The plan for salvation was a criminal one, but romantic: just for one day in my life, for the day of the English test, I was to become Gena Krasner. All I needed to do for that was to substitute Gena�s photograph with mine on the examination ticket.
        If Krasners knew me better, they could have behaved with more pride, and - most importantly - do without the brandy: I would have gladly done it for free. And - for a series of reasons, out which two were the most principal ones: my unyielding attraction for transformation and my contempt of local physicians, who are frightened by the competition of the newly arriving immigrants, and who are united in their zeal to make it difficult for them to acquire licenses.
        Wishing to flatter me, Gena started philosophising. Why, for instance, he assured me carefully, is it necessary to demand of obstetricians the knowledge of the English language at the level of scribes? They should ask something else: do you know where children come from in America? From the same place as in Yalta or not?
        Until his resettlement to America, Gena received births and performed abortions for 20 years and was educated enough to understand, in addition, that it is not necessary to engage in idiomatic English with creatures, as they are -- in sweat and blood -- crawling into this world. Let�s suppose, a Russian obstetrician made a mistake in his language: are the sons of bitches going to crawl back in?! And as for abortions, he sighed, - a minimal knowledge of the language is pretty sufficient while performing them or even the act which makes them necessary. Right?
        Right, I said, and, in a week, went to take the test instead of him.
        Gena was right not just in his calculations, but in his premonition as well.    A disaster stroked.
 

        I mean, I wrote everything correctly, signed �Krasner� and handed the writing with the examination ticket to the chairman of the commission, a stately Hindu in a tussore tunic. But this stately Hindu glanced at the ticket and exclaimed:
        �So, you are Dr. Krasner! Finally!� and he embraced me like a compatriot.
        It turned out that the Hindu - although not a compatriot - lives on the same floor with the Krasners and knows Lyuba and Irina very well, but he has never met me, that is Gena.
        �I am constantly sitting at home, studying!� I answered for Gena.
        �Good for you!� the stately Hindu commended me and glanced at the manuscript. �You write well and speak bearably. Lyuba was complaining about your English in vain! They are right in my homeland when they say: Russians are modest people! And what�s your speciality, if I may ask?�
        I said that my speciality was psychiatry. The calculations were simple: the Hindus don�t use any birth control methods and multiply readily, and therefore it�s dangerous to confess that I am an obstetrician: definitely, there�s at least someone in his family who is at least a bit pregnant! As for the psyche, it�s a different matter with the Hindus: they safeguard themselves with Yoga.
        The miscalculation turned out to be tragic: the Hindu, standing on his tip-toes and attempting to seem even more stately than he was, announced to me that this evening he is going to visit with his son in law, who for the second month cannot make up his mind to strip his own wife, the Hindu�s daughter that is, of virginity, because she herself cannot make up her mind either. He promised twenty dollars and a national souvenir: an ancient Indian love guide.
        An hour later, during a feverish meeting in �McDonald�s� between my family and the Krasners, it was agreed that Gena is not going back to his house and is spending a night in the apartment of Lyuba�s girlfriend who had left town to visit her fiancee in Canada, and who left her keys for Lyuba to feed the cat. And as for me, the psychiatrist Krasner, I move for a day or two, until the crisis expires, to Lyuba�s and Irina�s.
        The Krasners felt uneasy, and they hinted that after my release they�ll buy another bottle of brandy - this time, a better one. Lyuba promised not to interfere with my work and walk in noise-proof slippers in the apartment. She also promised to reschedule her off-day tomorrow and go to the hotel, while Irina gladly volunteered to visit her classmate.
        �I know your classmate!� Gena retorted, angry more at the fate than at the "classmate". �Stay home, you whore!�
        In the evening, surrounded by an idyllic family situation, sitting over a cup of Georgian tea, which my wife had provided me with for the �time of my incarceration�, and nibbling sugar cookies Yalta style that Lyuba had baked, I prescribed optimism for the Hindu newlyweds. I made it clear that optimism is borne out of that simple fact that tomorrow circumstances can not get any worse than today, and added to this recipe a series of moralistic but gay stories on the theme of the wedding night, topping it off with the most exciting Arab fairy tale from the �One Thousand and One Nights�.
        Later on, everything happened as if in a drunken stupor, especially as, besides the tea, my wife, that is not Lyuba Krasner, not the temporary one, but the real, that is the eternal wife from the temporarily abandoned home, returned through my new daughter, through Irina Krasner, a bottle of French brandy. She wanted to stress that during the times of disaster, decent people among immigrants are called to help one another without looking back at presents. Especially, at cheap ones.
        Since the Hindus, however, drank only tea, Lyuba and I drank the whole bottle ourselves - while we played the role of loving spouses - and in the alcoholic trance of transformation, our night, as we had anticipated, turned out to be not only espousal, but a wedding one as well, that is, decorated by intricate Arabic lace and the brightest Indian colors.
        Lyuba sneaked off to work before I woke up.
        At dawn, I dreamt of a burning giraffe, who behaved himself more extravagantly than in the Dali�s painting: first of all, he was lying naked, without a cover on a king-size bed in the middle of freezing Queens, and although he was flaming with the same blindingly-orange fire of Hell, he, keeping his eyes shut, pretended that he is unable to wake up. Secondly, he would not allow himself to moan from pain or cringe from the vile smell of scorching flesh. In addition, he realised that he was burning because of a shrill hangover and the deathly shame for the committed sin...
        Having been waken up, but still embarrassed to open my eyes, I started to pick out in my head the best justifications for my action and after long hesitations, stopped at the most obvious one: I - am not I, but Gena Krasner, who is married to Lyuba, and that�s why I turned out to be in her bed - on my very own, Gena�s, territory.
        The infallibility of this excuse provided me with the strength to get up and proceed to the bathroom.
        But it didn�t come to a hot shower. As soon as I accidentally remembered the nightly scenes - especially the last one, my flesh flamed up in a hilly flame of annihilating shame: no one, ever, among my noble tribe of Georgian patriarchal Jewry has ever behaved that way with his own wife, with the parent of his very own descendants!
        Suffocating in the flames, I turned on the blue faucet greedily - and that very instant, a shrill scream pierced out of my chest: my scorching flesh suddenly started to hiss under the icy stream and twisted from the unbearable pain.
        Irina tore into the bathroom, jerked the curtain aside, observing me from head to toe, smiled, and asked in a sing-song:
        �Are you here for lo-o-ong?�
        �I�m taking a shower,� I mumbled and embarrassed, attempted to cover my groin, for which reason I threw both knees up simultaneously and tumbled down into the empty bathtub.
        �Sho-o-we-er?� Irina stretched out, continuing to smile. �Without water? There can�t be any shower without water!�
        I too remembered that there can�t be a shower without water. And the water was not running. And I was dry...
        I came to after a long while. Not before returning to the manuscript on Jewish wisdom that was waiting for me. I had to edit a chapter about the �The Remarkable Nazarene�. I reread it and stroked off someone else�s words: �If Christ wishes to die for our sins, should we really disappoint him by not committing them?�
        Then I recalled Irina�s arrogant glance that was pinching me in the bathroom. All day long she gave me the same glance, which, as it turned out later, predicted the unexpected, although then, it seemed to me, that having guessed what had transpired between myself and her mother, the young woman was trying to find the right words to express her indignation.
 

        By the end of the day, Gena called. He asked to tell his wife that her friend has quarrelled with her fiancee and is returning to her cat, and he, Gena, has no idea where to go now.
        My wife called as well. She asked me whether these hard conditions slowed the free flow of my creative thinking. I answered calmly, but the still-hissing giraffe reacted differently to the question: it started flaming again and shuddered sacrificially. Hanging up, I decided that I was returning home as soon as Lyuba comes back from work.
        Something else took place. Before she came, the Hindus, excited and exhilarated, tore into the apartment with a carafe of wine and delicacies. The son-in-law took me aside and, suffocating from pride, described the final scene of his yesterday�s battle with the demon of sexual uncertainty.
        As I expected it, Lyuba returned later than usual. In the midst of the feast, although Irina and I were the only ones partying nervously. In addition - besides the apparent reasons - we were nervous also because the Hindus were in no hurry to leave, gnawed on cashews, chattered away in Hindu, and awaited the arrival of new patients whom they recruited among the neighbors.
        Indeed, an illegal immigrant from Mexico announced himself, and started to complain not about the immigration authorities but about his mixed feelings for the daughter of his American fiancee.
        Then a North Korean came who was suffering from nostalgia for South Korea.
        I prescribed them all the same optimism, qualifying it now as the presence of spirit. Both of them demanded from me to be more specific. I had to announce that one should be striving not to become someone else, but rather to change himself.
        Because of the exciting shame for yesterday and just as exciting a fear for today, Lyuba kept pouring herself Spanish wine from a full-bellied carafe. There was nothing to talk about: any word would have sounded silly. Finally alone, without Irina who went to her room, and without the guests that went home, we, without agreeing upon it, tore to visit a soap opera family on television, and avoiding each other�s glances giggled louder than the fictitious audience, who represent an indestructible class of hopeless idiots.
        Then, after having pretended that we are remembering each name in the list of credits for the rest of our lives, Lyuba and I, again without exchanging a word, turned towards each other and started playing cards, mixing up the rules of one game with those of another. We played for a long time, until it became as deserted in the carafe as in the street behind the window. Then, once again without a word, we went from the living room to the bedroom.
        And the same thing as the day before happened, with the essential correction that it followed cheap red wine, not French brandy.
 

        The next morning, Irina was waiting for me at the bathroom entrance. Declaring that her heart belongs to the movie-star Travolta, she unexpectedly offered me the rest. Without waiting for my answer, she added, that she can�t sleep for two nights in a row now and threatened to make my and Lyuba�s secret known, if the same secret does not tie myself and her.
        Grinding my temples and suffocating from the similar feelings told to me by the Mexican, I, suppressing the fear and excitement inside me, promised, in a business-like manner that the secret will transpire starting tomorrow, on Monday, when Lyuba will go to the hotel. Not being able to hide my curiosity, I asked the young girl several irrelevant questions and found out that she did not despise me, but on the contrary, respected me. And due to an unexpected reason, at that: from what she understood, I had never limited my own daughter�s freedom, who was her age, and even let her fly to Spain to visit her girlfriend.
        �My folks - are pigs and monsters! � Irina confessed.
        She told me that a week ago, she met a great Salvadoran, who looked like Travolta, but she didn�t have time to give herself to him, because sniffing out her intention, Gena and Lyuba flew into a rage and locked their daughter in the apartment.
        �They have me under arrest!� Irina was indignant. �And I can�t live without freedom: I am young... I want every day to be a Sunday, not just on Sundays... I want a life that is only good, and not good and bad at the same time!�
        Once finally in the bathroom, I locked the door behind me and lowering myself onto the toilet bowl, asked myself a long-time question: why is it that the nature needed to perfect people, myself, for example, to such a degree that they, myself again, for example, grow nauseous from their own uncleanness - both moral and bodily?! Why is it that the dirtiest of all the roads - is the road to oneself?!
        Nevertheless, after a couple of minutes, revelling in the generosity of a warm and caressing shower, I recalled with relief an also long-time truth that I had affirmed: just like the majority of people, I, on the whole, am a decent person, and the road leading to me does not break off, but passes through my flesh and consciousness and proceeds further towards other people like me - not better.
        Well, let�s suppose, some new characters had arisen along that road - the Krasners from Yalta. I didn�t arise on their road, they did - upon mine. Why should I, let�s say, feel self-conscious in front of Gena? Everything is - if one thinks about me - very decent: I passed English for him; without this he would have never have become himself, an obstetrician-gynaecologist, Gena Krasner; in exchange he loaned me himself for several days.
        Or, let�s take Lyuba Krasner, the wife. In essence, everything is fine with her as well: after all, who am I, Gena Krasner to her, - am I not her lawful husband? And should I really worry: oh no, I am no Krasner, all of this is a farce; you are - you, that is a man, who temporarily is pretending to be him, Dr. Krasner. But what does it all mean, after all - �I�, �not I�? First of all, what is �I�? Is it not the same conditionality as �not I� or �he�? And it is not eternal or absolute - that conditionality, I mean! And is not everything around a breakable projection of our changing moods and thoughts?
        Indeed, if one thinks about it, this world is full of things that we tell apart from each other by giving each a conditional definition. It is enough to forget this definitions or consciously disregard them, it is enough to shuffle the words inside our heads - and the world, everything around, changes instantly!
        Words and definitions rule over the universe! Why is it, for instance, that I could not be called - and therefore be - Gena Krasner, and accordingly, sleep with Lyuba? The stately Hindu in a tussore tunic was not surprised - was he? - when he found out that I - is Gena Krasner. The others weren�t surprised, were they? And who in this world would have not believed it from the very beginning if I was not I, but Dr. Krasner? Everyone would have believed it! Even myself!
        Indeed, everything with me is not worse than with other decent people! I am no worse, let�s say, than my own wife, Lyuba Krasner. And what about Irina? Perhaps, her heart does belong to Travolta, but isn�t everything else for strangers at her age? And who am I to her, if not a stranger? Because her mother, Lyuba, she is no wife of mine, is she? After all, I am not Gena, not Dr. Krasner, not the obstetrician, am I? And besides, I was not the one threatening, - she was; and very seriously at that! It is also clear that Irina decided on that because of her love for freedom, or out of her striving for rebelliousness, and if there is a rebel - then, there are unbearable conditions. And, according to my reasoning, it is a sin not to support rebelliousness in a human being, because in the end, as a result of smoothing its edges, this feeling provides the decisive shifts in history!
        Right after I reached the shifts of history, I turned the faucet off, sighed deeply, looked into the mirror hanging from the sweaty shower stand, and seeing that my conscience is no longer tearing me apart, grew fond of myself and said:
        �Not bad at all!�
        Then, wiping the mirror with my hand and shifting it to the side, I observed myself in profile, as a result of which, I sensed the state of heavenly lightmindedness and recalled a thought of unknown origin which I had grown to like long time ago: The wisdom of a snake enslaves us, while the lightmindedness of God frees us...
        I was whistling a tune from am old movie on my way out of the bathroom:
                Turning and swirling is the blue balloon,
                Turning and swirling right under the moon,
                Turning and swirling - nowhere to fall,
                Cover your dreams with a red and black shawl...
 

        That whole day we, the Krasner family, spent together. Each of us felt easier. I called my wife and said that it would not be such a bad idea to get Lyuba�s recipe for the Yalta-style cookies. I suggested to her to bake an experimental batch of the cookies even before my comeback. Lyuba, however, snatched the telephone out of my hands and swore to my wife that the recipe, indeed, is so simple that no test is required.
        Lyuba�s conversation with Gena, however, did not go as well. He called before I called my wife and first complained about the cat, who keeps growling at him after the arrival of its owner from Canada. Then he confessed to his wife that her friend is also very angry. Not at him, though, but at her Canadian fiancee, whom she intends to punish in the form of seducing Gena to her bed.
        �Don�t you dare!� - Lyuba squealed. �She is a dissident! And she had gonorrhoea!�
        �Then, why the hell did you kick me out to this place?!� - Gena blurted.
        �Because�, Lyuba exclaimed again, �I am always the one who has to take care of everything! And because you don�t know the language, while decent people have to sit here instead of you only to be nice to us!�
        �All right, enough!� Gena cried. �Why the fuck did we come here in the first place?!�
        �But you were the one who dragged it upon your own ass!� Lyuba squealed again and asked my forgiveness for the vulgarity of her language. �Wasn�t it you who drilled my brain about happiness and freedom?!�
        �That�s enough!� Gena was in a rage. �Let�s just think of a way to get out of this fucking mess!�
        However, no one in our happy family of Krasners had any intentions of getting out of it.
 

        One more week passed. I did not leave the apartment. During the day I kept working on my book of Jewish wisdom and satisfied Irina�s passion for freedom, and in the evening, received patients, after which I temporarily revived Lyuba�s hopes for happiness, drowning along with her - just as temporarily - in the heavy Eastern melodies of Gena�s record collection and in the magical images of Arabic fairy tales soaked in the caressingly viscous massage oil, which Lyuba, at the risk of loosing her job, stole from her deluxe suits in the hotel.
        My wife from the previous life behaved peacefully, because it was from her that I first heard about the universal therapeutic possibilities of optimism and the presence of spirit.
        With Gena, it was bit more difficult. One evening, when we, the Krasners, were having dinner with the new patients and our Hindus, Gena, enraged by vodka and jealousy, tumbled into the room with Lyuba�s friend, whom he introduced to the guests as a dissident and his wife. He was behaving wildly but Lyuba assured everyone that I was going to cure him: it�s just his first visit.
        I took Gena to the kitchen and reminded him that it would be reasonable on his part to limit himself until he gets the papers that he passed the English exam. Limiting meant keeping away from me - that is his own house, otherwise, I said, you won�t see any local license.
        To the guests� surprise, Gena calmed down: returned to the table and started drinking vodka in silence, which Lyuba�s friend kept pouring into his glass as insistently as Lyuba kept pouring it into mine. In addition, against the background of everyone�s laughter, the dissident asked the women present, including Lyuba, about sexual inclinations and passions of the husbands present, including me, - and against the background of her own laughter, she told about Gena�s. When there was no more vodka in the bottle, Gena suddenly cursed in a foul manner addressing all the states of America and banged his fist against an empty plate. The plate shattered to pieces, and blood burst out of the fist. Handing him a napkin, I ordered Gena to leave the premises. He started sobbing and left, but that night no one could sleep in the Krasner family.
        The next morning I went to the publishing house and spent all day there. On my way home, I decided to discuss with Lyuba and Irina some ways of peacefully getting out of this �fucking farce�: it�s time for each of us, I wanted to say, to return to our really own life...
        In the entrance I was squashing my head in my palms, not letting my mind to wander away from the polished sentences of the farewell monologue. Although I realised that the process of getting out of this situation - of any situation at that - should be a humorous one, practised by people with the aim of disinfecting unpleasant truths, I was, nevertheless, overwhelmed by incomprehensible sadness of parting with the lecherous existence, a parting of a careless he-dog with careless bitches, from whom he is torn away precisely when the passions of the flesh become a condition for knowing the unpredictable knowledge of men. The sadness was especially deeper, as I realised that, first of all, I would have to part with my own self: another step back into my life meant returning to the real world - insulting with its blandness.
        Getting out of the elevator and stepping up to the plate with the name �Gennadi Krasner�, I, therefore, still did not know - what exactly to say to a strange woman by the name of Lyuba and her daughter, Irina. Perhaps, I�ll utter something just as sad as I seemed to be to myself. Perhaps, I�ll tell them that there is more justice in the stupor of passion than in the rules of life. All of us, people, live according to those rules - do we not?- and, alas, we do not live well. We try every day - do we not? - and yet we hardly manage...
        Or, vice versa, I�ll say something light to them, as light - lighter than the world - as I seemed to myself now. I�ll say that there was love between us, because love, as the gay poet said - is not a sorrowful moan of violins, but a screech of bedsprings. Or I�ll say something that will be unclear to me myself, and therefore will allow not only to explain what went on, but keep an interest towards it. For example: the only way to express the limits of the possible - is, you know, to exit it and enter the realm of the impossible.
        Or, may be, I thought, I shouldn�t say anything at all, because any words, and not only these - are never your own, but someone else�s. They�re someone else�s, no one�s experiences and guesses. Or even, may be, I just won�t say anything to them. I�ll take my blue notebook and books, look at them with a glance you have when you�re not thinking of anything and leave. Just as simply and quietly, as simply and quietly all three of us lied - without descending to lying, but merely supercharging in ourselves the most delicate of pleasures: openness to self-deception.
        But is this luxury of silence accessible to me? Is it accessible to anyone at least? Or, perhaps, it is just as inaccessible as it was inaccessible for everyone not to be born? I got entangled, and as always in cases like this, felt that if I don�t stop thinking - it would get worse.
        Shaking my head and throwing all the words out of it, I sighed deeply and poked my finger into the doorbell. The sound was unexpected -- that of a nightingale's chirp.
        However, they wouldn�t open the door. Now, I fell upon the doorbell with my fist. The nightingale started choking and  threw up its head in the naive hope that I would let it breath. I did the opposite: pushing on that button harder and harder. After several minutes, the doorbell burned out - and it became quiet. I had nothing to listen to now, and in the midst of the panic which now overwhelmed me, it suddenly became clear to me that I was not to see Lyuba and Irina again.
        This thought left me helpless. Its very content seemed to me suddenly extremely unfair. For a while, my consciousness sticked to a tiny spot of ink on the door, but, afterwards, in my blurred despair, I started breaking in the door with my shoulder...
        Finally, the semi-naked Hindu, who now seemed less stately, stepped out of his apartment. Pitying me and getting confused, either due to the absence of tussore tunic upon him or due to some other higher reason, he, for no apparent reason, walked me to the side. His son-in-law appeared too. He put his hand in my shoulder and shook his head to show me his sympathy.
        Then, the Hindu informed me carefully that my family along with the dishes and medicine books was kidnapped by yesterday�s patient with the cut fist. The son-in-law said he called the police, but as usual, it came too late, cursed at all the immigrants in general and didn�t compile a report.
        Both of the men suggested that the yesterday�s patient had a lot of money, but -- although I was not yet rich -- justice will eventually prevail.
        Apparently, I seemed very disconcerted to them -- and the men found it necessary to add that justice will prevail for the simple reason of all of us living here, in America. I, as a matter of fact, pride myself, until today, with not strangling the Hindus right there, but, instead, just turning myself around and leaving without a single word.
        Since that day, I haven�t seen any of the Krasners, but I missed them often.
        Lyuba no longer appeared in the hotel. Anyway, even if she had not quit her job, she could not have come across my wife there, because that very day I insisted upon her return to the state of an unemployed ancient philologist. I explained this demand to her by expressing my strong suspicion that a boom was about to enter her field. She gladly agreed to quit the hotel job, but asked me to motivate my bold prognosis. I referred her to the news of the day: In the state of Alabama, some finalist of the local Wheel Of Fortune contest had shot dead the winner of the competition on the ground that the latter - as opposed to him -- was familiar with the name of Homer.
        Eight years later, I read an announcement in a Russian newspaper congratulating the obstetrician-gynaecologist Gena Krasner with his new position as an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Baltimore Memorial hospital. The announcement also said that he is writing a book �on a curious topic: universal therapeutic possibilities of transformation.�