Alexander Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Journey Across Three Worlds --------------------------------------------------------------- Translated from the Russian by Gladys Evans Mir Publishers, Moscow, 1973 OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2 │ http://home.freeuk.com/russica2 Original title: "Хождение за три мира" --------------------------------------------------------------- PART ONE. THE STRANGE STORY OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, TOLD ANEW ... No, this was a different Mr. Golyadkin, absolutely different, but at the same time absolutely similar to the former... F. Dostoevsky, The Double Nil admirari! Be astonished at nothing! A proposition borrowed from the philosophy of Pythagoras ___________________________________________________ WHO AM I? I was returning home by way of Tverskoi Boulevard, walking up from the Nikitskie Vorota. It was somewhere around five o'clock in the afternoon, but the Saturday crowds usually teeming the streets at this hour by-passed the boulevard, and the side-alleys were as deserted and quiet as they are in the morning. The September sky, utterly cloudless of a sudden, gave no hint of the nearness of autumn. Not one yellow leaf rustled underfoot and, after last night's rain, even the faded late-summer grass between the trees seemed as luxuriantly green as in May. I strolled leisurely along an alley, hesitating at every bench with the vague idea of sitting down. Finally I did, stretching out my legs; and the very same second I felt as if everything around me was slipping off somewhere, fading out and spinning in circles. I don't usually have dizzy spells, but now I gripped the bench so as not to fall. Everything opposite me on the boulevard - trees and passers-by - vanished in a lilac-tinted mist. Exactly like in the mountains when clouds creep to your feet and everything around disintegrates and melts into the thick, wet, cottony flakes. But this was no rain: a pure dry mist swooped down, lapped all the green from the boulevard, and then vanished. Literally vanished. In the blink of an eye, the trees and bushes were back again, like a repeated sequence in a colour cinerama film. The bench opposite, with its deep seat, was again in place and the girl in the blue coat - so almost listed missing - sat there with her book. Everything looked, ostensibly, as before; but only ostensibly - some inner voice instantly doubted it. I even looked around me to check my impressions and contentedly reflected: "Nonsense, it's all the way it was. Exactly...." "No, not exactly," reflected that other inner voice. Was it another voice? I was arguing with myself, but my conscious mind seemed to be split in half for the argument was more like a dialogue between two utterly unidentical and dissimilar egos. Any thought that arose was at once countered by another which intruded from somewhere or from somebody by suggestion, but was aggressive and masterful. "The benches are the same." "They are not. On Pushkin Boulevard they're green, not yellow." "The alley walks are the same." "These are narrower. And where's the granite kerb?" "What kerb?" "And there's no lawn." "A lawn?" "Beside the court. There used to be a tennis-court here." "Whe-ere?" By now I was looking around with a feeling of growing alarm. The double-ego feeling disappeared. I suddenly found myself in a new and strangely altered world. When you walk along a street where everything is dear to you and familiar to the eye, you do not notice the little things, the details. But let them suddenly disappear, and you stop, caught by a feeling of confusion and alarm. The surroundings were only similar to, but not exactly the same as those I knew - I, who had strolled along the boulevard walks a thousand times or more. Even the trees, apparently, were somewhat different; the bushes weren't the same; and for some reason I called the boulevard Pushkin instead of Tverskoi. From habit I looked at my watch, arid my arm froze in mid-air. Even my jacket was different from the one I'd put on that morning. As a matter of fact, it wasn't my jacket, nor was the watch mine, and a scar curved out from beneath the band, yet only about a minute ago no scar had been there at all. But this was an old scar, healed long ago, the track of a bullet or shell splinter. I looked down at my feet - even the shoes weren't mine but a stranger's, with ridiculous buckles on the side. "What if my appearance has changed, and my age is not the same? What if I'm not ... me, at all?" came the burning thought. I jumped to my feet and ran, rather than walked, along the alley toward the theatre. The theatre stood in the same place, but it was a different one, with an altered entrance and other billings. I did not find one title I knew on the list of its repertoire. But in the dark glass doors, unlit from inside, a familiar face was reflected. It was my face. So far, it was the only thing in this world that was mine. I was only now aware that my head ached. I rubbed my temples - it still ached. I remembered that somewhere near by, on the square I believed, there should be a chemist's shop. Perhaps it had been spared, if I were lucky. The square was already visible through the flashing interstices between the line of cars passing by, and I hurried ahead, continuing to glance behind me in confusion and alarm. I could not exactly recall the buildings that lined Pushkin Boulevard, though these did not appear to be different - except the lamps over the doorways weren't the same eye-smacking ones and, what's more, the street numbers were changed. Where the green river of the boulevard flowed into the square, I was literally turned to stone: its mouth was empty. Pushkin was gone. For a moment, I thought my heart stopped beating. The naked stone bald-spot in place of the monument frightened me now, rather than alarmed. I closed my eyes, hoping the delusion would pass. At that moment, somebody passing by bumped into me, perhaps accidentally, but so hard that I was spun round on my heels. The delusion really did disappear. I saw the monument. It stood far back in the square. Pushkin looked just as thoughtful and severe as ever, his winged cloak negligently thrown over his shoulders - an image dear to me from childhood. Even if it were in a different spot, it was Pushkin! I began to breathe more freely, though behind the monument I could see an utterly unknown building, quite modern, with the huge letters ROSSIYA across its facade. Hotel or cinema? Only yesterday, there had been a six-teen-storey building here, with the Cosmos restaurant on the ground floor, and flats above. Everything was similar, yet dissimilar, familiar down to the smallest detail, yet it was the details most of all that altered the familiar look. For instance, I found the chemist's shop in the same spot, the salesgirls stood behind the counters wearing the same white smocks, identical queues crowded round the cashier's booth, and in the optical section they were still selling eyeglasses with the same ugly, uncomfortable frames. But when I asked a girl for some pyrabutan for a headache, she gave me a puzzled grimace. "Pardon?" "Pyrabutan." "Never heard of it." "Well, for a headache." "Pyramidonum?" "No," I muttered vaguely. "Pyrabutan." "There's no such thing." My stupidly foolish look drew a pitying smile. "Take these 3-in-one tablets." And she threw a small packet on the counter - a box I'd never seen before. In my trouser pocket I found a handful of silver coins - the money could hardly be told from ours. Later, sitting on a bench by the Pushkin monument, I made a thorough search of all the pockets in the suit bestowed on me by a whim of fate. The contents would have stumped any detective. Besides some change I found a few one- and three-rouble notes that were quite different from ours, a crumpled tram ticket, an excellent fountain pen, and an almost new pocket-notebook with only a few pages torn out. There were no documents or identification cards to give me a hint as to what or who my double was. I no longer felt any fear: there remained only a sharp, nervous curiosity. I tried not to dwell on how long my intrusion into this world would last, or how it would end - all kinds of conjectures, even the most terrifying, could be made on the subject. But what was I to do while I was on this free trip into the unknown? I wouldn't be let into a hotel. Where could I spend the night, if my sojourn was a long one? Perhaps at home, or with friends - after all, the owner of the suit must live somewhere, and he probably had friends. The cream of the joke would be if they turned out to be my friends. What if the whole thing were a dream? I slapped the bench as hard as I could - it hurt! So it wasn't a dream. For a brief moment I thought I saw a face I knew. Sauntering past went a broad-shouldered, brawny fellow carrying a cine-camera. I recognized the tuft of hair falling over the forehead, the massive shoulders and iron neck. Could it be my neighbour, Zhenka Evstafyev, from flat 5? But why did he have a cine-camera? He had never snapped a picture with any kind of camera in his life. I jumped up and ran after him. "Excuse me," I stopped him, staring at the familiar face. "Aren't you Zhenka? ... Evgeny Grigoryevich?" "I'm afraid you're mistaken." I blinked my eyes in perplexity: the likeness was perfect. Even the timbre of the voice matched. "Well, am I like him?" laughed the stranger. "It's amazing." "It happens," and he shrugged and went his way, leaving me in a turmoil of confusion. It still seemed to me that all this was some kind of game, or a trick of fate. In a moment Zhenka would come back and we should have a good laugh over it. But he didn't. Later, when I recalled this day, what came to mind first of all was the feeling of perplexity and confusion. And one thing more - the unbearable loneliness of being in a city where I'd known every stone from childhood, yet which had wholly changed during a few seconds of dizziness. I gazed at the faces of the passers-by in the vain hope of seeing one I knew. What for? Probably he wouldn't have recognized me any more than Evstafyev had ... besides, what could I say to anyone who did? And exactly that happened. "Sergei! Sergei Nikolaevich!" A medium-tall, grey-haired man hailed me. He was wearing a suede zippered jacket. (I had never seen this man before.) "Come here a minute." I got up. My name really was Sergei, and even Sergei Nikolaevich. "Just listen to the latest." He took me confidentially by the arm and said softly: "Hang on to yourself. Sichuk stayed behind." "What Sichuk?" I asked, surprised. "Mikhail?" "Who else? We've only one Sichuk. All the worse for us." I had known Mikhail Sichuk during the war at the front. Now he worked either as a photographer or as a news cameraman. We weren't friendly, and never got together. "What do you mean - stayed behind?" "What do I mean? He was touring Europe on the Ukraine. You get it, don't you...?" I didn't get it at all. But, sensing the circumstances, I acted surprised. "At the last foreign port he stayed behind, skipped - the scum! Either in Turkey or West Germany: don't know which way they were heading, to or from Odessa." "The scoundrel," I said. "There'll be trouble." "For whom?" "Well, those who vouched for him, and so on," laughed the man in the suede coat. "Fomich is fit to be tied; he made a beeline for head office. It has nothing to do with you, of course." "I should hope not," I said. The unknown released my arm and gave me a friendly jab on the back. "You look a bit sour, Sergei. Or maybe I'm butting in?" "In what way?" "Are you in throes of composition ... or waiting for somebody? Why aren't you at the editorial office?" I was not attached to any editorial office. I had to break off the conversation somehow - it was getting a bit too hot to handle. "Business," I said vaguely. "You're up to something, old fellow," he said with a wink. "Well, so long." He vanished from my life as quickly as he had come into it. And like a man thrown for the first time into deep water begins to learn the motions of a swimmer, I also began to find my bearings in the unknown. Curiosity got the better of fear and alarm. What had I found out so far? That here my appearance was the same, and my name too. That Moscow was Moscow, only different in detail. That there existed an Odessa, Turkey and a Germany. That the S.S. Ukraine, as in our world, made runs around Europe. That I was connected with a certain editorial office, and that in this world Mikhail Sichuk was also a rotten bit of scum. So I was not much surprised when, going down the steps towards the Rossiya cinema - as I had already guessed, the building was a cinema - I ran into Lena. I was bound to meet somebody who knew me, both here and from whence I came. Elegant as ever, Lena was walking along in her usual absent way, but she knew me at once and was even a bit embarrassed, or so I thought. "Is that you? Where are you coming from?" "Just off a camel. Well, how are things over there?" "Where?" she asked, surprised. "At the hospital, of course. Did you just get off?" She was even more surprised. "I don't understand, Sergei. What are you talking about? I've only been in Moscow three days." I had seen her this morning in the office of the Head Doctor when I was telephoning the Brain Institute. Before that, we met every day or almost every day when I happened to be in the therapeutic department. So I was silent, painfully seeking a way out of what was a clearly critical situation. The road into the unknown certainly teemed with pit-falls. "Sorry, Lena, I'm getting awfully absent-minded. And besides ... it's so unexpected, meeting you...." "How are you getting along?" she asked, with what seemed to me a metallic note. "So-so," I answered cheerfully. "I manage to get by." She was silent a long time, taking a good look at me. Finally, she said dryly: "What an odd conversation. Very odd." I realized she would leave me in a minute, and my only chance of finding a place to put down anchor here, for at least twenty-four hours, would disappear with her. My incursion into the unknown could scarcely last longer than that. I had to take a stab at it. And I did. "Look, I've got to talk to you, Lena. I really have to. Something's happened, you see...." "What, exactly?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "I can't talk about it on the street." I hurriedly searched for words. "Where are you ... living now?" She was slow in answering, apparently weighing something or other. "At present I'm at Galya's." "Where's that?" "As if you didn't know." I certainly did not know. I didn't even ask what Galya she meant. But I had to make her agree. It was my last chance! "Please, Lena...." "It's awkward, Sergei," "My God, what nonsense!" I cried, thinking of the Lena I knew. But this was an utterly different Lena, who watched me guardedly, not at all like a friend. "Well then ... come on," she said at last. THE NEXT MOVE INTO THE UNKNOWN We walked in silence, hardly exchanging a word. Apparently, she was nervous but tried not to show it; and withdrawn, perhaps even regretting her bargain. From time to time I caught her giving me a searching, suspicious glance. What was she suspicious or afraid of? I immediately recognized the house in Staro-Pimenovsky Alley. My wife had lived here once, before we became acquainted. Incidentally, her name is Galya too. To my disgust, my knees began trembling. "What are you looking like that for?" she asked. I continued to look silently around the room. Like everything else in this unknown world, it was both like and unlike. Or maybe I had simply forgotten. "Whose room is it, Lena?" "Galya's, of course. What strange questions you ask, Sergei. Haven't you been here before?" I had difficulty swallowing. Now I would give her another strange question. "But hasn't she ... moved?" Lena gave me a somewhat frightened glance; she moved a bit away as if I had said some monstrous absurdity. "Have you never met?" "Why do you ask?" I countered, uncertainly. "Of course we have." "When did you see her last?" I burst out laughing and blurted out: "This morning. At breakfast." But I immediately regretted saying it. "Don't lie. What are you lying for? She's been at the institute from yesterday afternoon. Worked all night. And she's still not back." "Can't a fellow joke?" I replied, foolishly, realizing I was getting in more and more of a muddle. "Strange way of joking, I'd say." "Maybe we're not talking about the same person?" I put in, trying to improve matters. She wasn't even angry, she merely frowned like a doctor who sees, without quite understanding, the symptoms of a disease under observation. "I'm talking about Galya Novoseltseva." "Why 'Novoseltseva'?" I asked, genuinely surprised. The cold eyes of a doctor now looked at me with professional interest. "You've lost your memory, Sergei. They were already registered to marry when war broke out." "Never mind," I muttered, wiping a perspiring brow. "I only wondered...." "What I'm doing here with the woman who stole my chap, right?" she laughed, losing for a moment the curiosity of a professional doctor. "Even then, I didn't feel hurt, Sergei. Imagine the luck - my chap left me. But now ... why, it's even funny. It was so long ago.... And my next after that - you know..." she sighed. "I'm not lucky in love, Sergei." It is hard to map out every step you take in an unknown world. And I put my foot in it again, forgetting where I was and who I was. "Who's in your way now, with Oleg?" "Sergei!" There was so much horror in that cry, I involuntarily shut my eyes. "Something's wrong with your memory, Sergei. One doesn't forget things like that. Galya received the official death notice as far back as forty-four. You couldn't help but know that." What did I know, and what didn't I? Dare I really tell her? "You're either pretending," she said, "or you're sick. And I think you're sick." "Then go ahead and ask me what day of the month it is, and the year, and so on." "I still don't know what I should ask you." "So tell me the diagnosis," I shot back, getting angry. "Gone crazy, that's all!" "That's not the medical term for it. There are various kinds of psychic disorders.... What did you want to talk to me about?" By now I had no desire to. If I told her the truth, she would send me off to the lunatic asylum at once. I had to wriggle out of this somehow. "You see, the thing is..." I began a hurried improvisation. "A simply deplorable thing happened.... The most deplorable...." "You've already said that. But what?" "As a matter of fact, I've left home. Left my wife. I shan't go into the reason. But I need shelter. Just for the night. Nox lodgus, vulgaris, to put it coarsely...." I fell silent. She said nothing either, only examined her fingertips. "Haven't you any friends to go to?" "To some I can't, and with others it's inconvenient. You know how it is, sometimes...." I tried not to look at her. "What if you hadn't met me?" "But I did." She was still wavering. "It's awkward, Sergei." "Why?" "Can't you see that for yourself?" "You know what?" I was getting angry again. "Call a psychiatrist. At any rate, I'll get put up for the night." I looked into her eyes: the professional-doctor look had disappeared. Now there was only a frightened woman. The incomprehensible is always a bit terrifying. "The room isn't mine," she spoke gently. "We'll wait for Galya." "And what if she spends the night at the institute again?" "I'll phone her. The telephone's in the hall. Take a seat while you're waiting." She went out, leaving me alone in a room where everything seemed familiar, down to the least detail. I had left this room to go to the Registry Office to be married. From this room? No, not this one. The whole thing was something like in similar triangles: certain lines coincide, others don't. I picked up a pencil from the table and wrote in my notebook: If anything happens to me, advise my wife, Galina Gromova, 43 Griboyedov Street. Also inform Professors Zargaryan and Nikodimov at the Brain Institute. Very important. I underlined the words 'very important' three times, pressing so hard that the pencil broke. So whatever else I intended to write remained unwritten. After putting the notebook away in my pocket, I realized I had flubbed again. My Zargaryan and Nikodimov would never get this letter. And here, in this world, Galya Gromova bore a different surname. A ring sounded from the front hall, and through the half-open door I heard the click of a lock. Then Lena cried: "At last. I was just ringing you up." "What's the matter?" asked a voice - agonizingly familiar. "Sergei Gromov's here." "Well, that's fine. We'll have tea." "But look, Galya ... he's sort of strange...." Lena lowered her voice to an inaudible whisper. "What's wrong, is he crazy?" were the words that reached me. "I don't know. He says he's left his wife." "Lord, what nonsense. He's playing a joke on you, Lena, and you fall for it. I saw her only half an hour ago." The door was flung open. I leaped to my feet, but couldn't move. My wife stood in the doorway. The same face, the same age, even the hairdo was the same. Only the ear-rings were unfamiliar, and I'd never seen her wear that kind of suit before. I stood speechless, repressing my excitement by sheer force of will. "What did you make up all this for?" asked Galya. I was silent. "I just saw Olga. She's gone home and expects you for supper. She said you were going to take her to see the Leningrad Ballet." I was silent. "What kind of joke is this? And to play it on Lena. What for?" I could find no words to answer her. Everything was ruined. What explanation would satisfy them? The truth? Who, in my position, would dare to tell the truth?" "Lena says you're sick," Galya continued, giving me a searching look. "Maybe you are really sick?" "Maybe I am," I repeated. I did not know my own voice: it seemed alien and far away. "Well then," I added, "you must excuse me. I guess I'll just run along." "Where?" asked Galya, with a start. "We won't let you go alone. I'll take you home." She looked out the window. "My cab's still there. Run after it, Lena. Maybe you'll manage to hold it." Now we were alone. "What does all this mean, Sergei? I don't understand it," said Galya. "I don't either," I replied. "But even so?" "You're a physicist, I believe, aren't you, Galya?" I threw out at random. She was sharply alert. "So what?" "Can you picture the notion of a plurality of worlds? Worlds existing side by side? Being at the same moment both mysteriously remote and yet amazingly close?" "Let's suppose that. Such hypotheses do exist." "Then just suppose that one of these worlds right next door is similar to ours. That it also has a Moscow, only a wee bit different. Perhaps even the same streets, but with other ornamentation. Sometimes, the very same house but with a different street number. And that you are there, and I, and Lena - only our relationships differ...." She still didn't get it. But I had got fed up with the spiritual masquerade long before. So I dared to open up. "Let's suppose that in that other Moscow your name isn't Galya Novoseltseva, but Galya Gromova. That six years ago you and I left this room to be married at the Registry. And today a miracle happened: I broke through the membrane barrier ... and looked into your world. There you have a devil of a problem for our limited brains." Now she looked at me with real fright. Probably she was thinking along the lines of Lena: a sudden madness, raving. "All right, let's leave it lie," I said wryly. "Take me wherever you wish, I don't care. And don't be scared - I won't choke you or kiss you. There's Lena waving at us. Come on." WHO IS JEKYLL AND WHO HYDE? Even in this world, Galya must have possessed her usual control. A minute later she was quite calm and collected. "I hope we won't start in on science fiction in front of the cabby?" she asked, on the way to the taxi. "So you consider it scientific?" I couldn't resist saying. "Goodness knows!" I could not read anything special on her face. Her behaviour was ordinary, that of a clever woman - Galya's way with people who were strangers and yet whom she found interesting. Attentive eyes, respectful attention to a companion, unconsciously coquettish, mocking. "Why do you have Pushkin's monument in the middle of the square?" I asked, as we drove past. "Where do you have it?" "On the boulevard." "You're lying about everything. Just as you lied about our going to the Registry. And why did you say six years ago?" "Fate," I laughed. "Where was I six years ago?" she wondered, thoughtfully. "In the spring I was in Odessa." "So was I." "Why do you lie? You never even came with us." "In your world I didn't, but in ours - on the contrary." "That's funny," she said, pronouncing every syllable. And added with a critical look at me: "But you don't give the impression of being a lunatic." "Nice to hear it," I wanted to say, but I didn't. A dark squall hit me right in the face. Everything went black. "What's wrong?" I heard Galya's frightened cry, and then her hurried, excited words: "Driver, driver, pull up somewhere by the pavement. He feels bad...." I opened my eyes. The mist of bewitchment was still swirling round inside the car. And through this fog a woman's face was staring at me. "Who is it?" I asked hoarsely. "Do you feel bad, Sergei?" "Galya?" I said, surprised. "How did you get here?" She did not answer. "Did something happen to me there ... on the boulevard?" I asked, looking around me. "Yes, it did," said Galya. "We'll talk about it later. Can you go home, or do you need a doctor?" I stretched, shook my head, and sat up straight. Clearly I could do without a doctor. While we rode, I told Galya about walking along Tverskoi Boulevard, about my dizzy spell, and how I tried to talk to myself in the midst of a lilac fog. "And afterwards," Galya asked, with sudden interest - before that she had been listening now with distrust, now with indifference. "What happened afterwards?" I shrugged in bewilderment. "Don't you remember?" "I don't remember." I really didn't remember, and only on returning home did I find out from Galya what had happened at her place. "It was delirium," I said. With her love for expressing things precisely, Galya now corrected me: "For delirium, it's very consistent. Like playing a well-rehearsed role. People don't rave like that. Besides, delirium is a symptom of illness, yet you don't give mo that impression." "But the fainting spell on the boulevard?" broke in my wife, Olga. "And in the taxi?" As a doctor she searched for a medical explanation. But Galya was as doubtful as before. "Then what happened between the fainting spells?" "Some kind of somnambulistic state." "What do you think I am - a lunatic?" I told her, offended. "If it was a dream, then it must have been a day-dream," put in Galya with amusement, insistent on accuracy. "Besides, we saw the dream and not Sergei. Speaking of dreams, do you still have them?" "What have dreams got to do with it?" I burst out. "I fainted, and I didn't see any dreams." I realized only too well that Galya never played jokes on anyone. So her story about my wandering around like a sleepwalker - the only way my behaviour could be described - seriously alarmed me. Before, I had never fainted or walked along the edge of a roof in the moonlight, nor had loss of memory. However, I could find no explanation of the event that answered to common sense. "Maybe it was the result of hypnosis?" I suggested. "Then who hypnotized you?" Olga frowned. "And where? At the office? On the boulevard? Nonsense!" "Right. Nonsense it is," I agreed. "Are you, by any chance, writing a science-fiction story?" Galya asked suddenly. "Your very intelligible observation about the plurality of worlds even aroused my interest.... Can you imagine, Olga?" she laughed. "Two adjacent worlds in space, like similar triangles. Both there and here - Moscow; there and here, a Sergei Gromov. But you weren't there- - instead, he was married to me." "So the secret's out," joked Olga. "And the sleepwalker, of course, is a visitor from another world in Sergei's likeness." "He explained it to me like this. Moscow, he said, was the same, only a little bit different. Pushkin's monument is on the square in our world, but on the boulevard in theirs. I almost burst out laughing." Olga, apparently, was thinking hard. "And you know what might explain things?" she asked, suddenly animated, still seeking a rational explanation even as I was. "Look here, didn't Sergei know that the monument had once been moved? He did. So perhaps this information, stored away in his memory, became fixed in his delirium? Some stimulation triggered the signal - and there you are: the myth about an adjacent, similar world." These arguments only annoyed me. "It makes me sick listening to you. Some kind of new variant of Stevenson's tale. A regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Only which is Jekyll and which is Hyde?" "It's perfectly clear who," parried Galya. "You wouldn't hurt yourself in choosing between them." Olga did not understand, and asked: "Who are you talking about?" "About international imperialist spies, Olga," I said jocularly. "Parachuted here from an unidentified plane." "I'm serious." "So am I. Look, there is a certain English writer, Stevenson by name. Usually, you read his stuff when you're a teenager. However, even doctors do. For them, by the way, his story is almost like a course in psychiatry, for Jekyll and Hyde, in reality, are the same man. To be more exact, a quintessence of the good and evil inherent in one person. By drinking an elixir that he discovered - medically speaking, a particular combination of sulphanilamide and antibiotics - the noble Dr. Jekyll turned himself into the scoundrel Hyde. Is that precise enough for you?" I asked Galya. "Quite. Search your pockets, maybe Hyde left some clues behind during his temporary transmutation." I dug into my pockets and threw on the table a packet of headache tablets. "That must be one clue. I certainly never bought them." "Perhaps you put them there?" Galya asked Olga. "No. More than likely he bought them on the way home." "I didn't buy anything," I put in angrily. "And, for the record, I didn't go into the chemist's." "That means Hyde did. Is there anything else he left?" I mechanically felt the inside pocket of my jacket. "Wait. This notebook doesn't belong here." I pulled it out and opened it. "Something's written here. Where are my glasses?" "Give it here." Galya grabbed the notebook and read aloud: 'If anything happens to me, advise my wife, Galina Gromova, 43 Griboyedov Street. Also inform Professors Zargaryan and Nikodimov at the Brain Institute. Very important.' "The 'very important' is even underlined," she laughed. "And Galina Gromova, that's me, of course. I already told you his delirium was consistent. Only why Griboyedov Street? There's Staro-Pimenovsky, and now it's Medvedev Street." "But have we a Griboyedov Street?" asked Olga. "Somehow, I never heard of it." "There is," I interrupted. "It used to be Maly Kharitonevsky. Only there's no building on it with that number. Apparently, Hyde had in mind some avenue, rather than street." "But who's this Zargaryan?" Galya said, full of curiosity. "I know of a Nikodimov. He's a physicist, a rather famous one, by the way. Only he's not at the Brain Institute, but at the Institute of New Problems in Physics. But who this Zargaryan is, I really don't know." "But Sergei didn't write this!" cried Olga suddenly. "It's not his handwriting ... though the 'v' has the same flourish and the down stroke in the 't' is the same. Look for yourself!" I found my glasses and read the note. "The handwriting's similar. I wrote that way as a student. Working on the paper spoiled my writing. I don't write like that now." I rewrote the lines in the notebook. They differed greatly from the first. "Ri-ight," drawled Galya. "No need for a handwriting expert. But perhaps the handwriting changes when you're in a somnambulistic state." "I wouldn't know," said Olga. "Somnambulism's in the field of psychiatry. It's a sort of psychic upset that comes like lightning. I can't explain it any other way. And I don't like all this, not at all." "Nor do I," Galya conceded. She read and reread both memorandums in the notebook. Her face reflected not only concentrated thinking but repressed anxiety. Galya's clear, logical mind did not want to give in to the inexplicable. "I simply can't explain it. Either scientifically or logically, from the standpoint of common sense, so to say. A person of absolutely sound mind - and suddenly he turns sleepwalker. Of course, a fainting fit is understandable: a doctor could find an explanation. But this raving about a plurality of worlds - that's more like something out of a science-fiction story. And then his asking for a night's lodging, for a roof over his head, when the man has his own private flat." "Apparently my Hyde was looking for shelter," I laughed. "He couldn't go to a hotel, d'you see." "Here's what I don't like. The hypothesis about Hyde explains it all. But I prefer dealing with pure science, rather than science fiction. Though everything about it is fantastic. Now why, Sergei, did you ask to go to Lena's? You didn't know she lives with me." "That's new to me, even now. I've not seen Lena for ten years. I can't even imagine what she looks like." My adventure in Galya's story surprised me more than anything else. Lena and I never met, never corresponded. We'd probably even forgotten each other's existence. "Is she an old flame?" asked Olga. "All of us went to school together before the war," replied Galya. "We were all going to enter the medical faculty. But nothing came of it: Sergei and Oleg went to the front, and I got a yen for physics. Only Lena went in for medicine. By the way, she really was in love with you, Sergei." "With Oleg," I said. "All the girls ran after him," sighed Galya. "But I had the worst fate: I won and lost." She stood up. "Peace be to thy house, but it's high time I left. The council of detectives is closed and Sherlock Holmes proposes to make an excursion into the realm of physics." "Psychology, you mean to say." "No, I mean physics. I'm interested in Zargaryan and Nikodimov, and what they're doing in the Institute of New Problems in Physics." "Whatever for?" asked Olga in surprise. "I should apply to a psychiatrist." "And I would choose Zargaryan. Who is he? What is he engaged in? Is he connected with Nikodimov? And if he is, then in what field?" Galya turned to me: "Did you ever hear of either name?" "Never." "Maybe you read about them somewhere and have merely forgotten?" "I've never seen the names anywhere, nor have I forgotten." "And that's the most interesting point in all your somnambulistic story. Physics, my dear, physics. The Institute of New Problems in Physics. New, remember!" And Galya turned to Olga. "You know what? Call Zoya and find out about Zargaryan. She knows everybody." We decided to call Zoya in the morning. THE SHEET FROM THE NOTEBOOK I fell asleep at once, and slept soundly right through till morning. Dreams, I might say, are a peculiarity of mine that sets me apart from other mortals. It wasn't by accident that Galya asked if I still had dreams. I have them. They repeat themselves, persistently, and are almost unchanged in content, oddly like fragments of travelogue films. Naturally I also have ordinary dreams in which everything is confused and foggy, both as to proportion and distortion, like in a Fun House mirror. My recall of such dreams is so vacillating and short-lived that they are hard to recapture and describe. But the dreams I'm talking about I shall remember all my life, and I can describe them just as precisely as I can my flat. They are always in colour, and the colours are as true and harmonious as in nature. In one I see a spring-time meadow appearing out of the night mist, flowering as profusely as in real life. Arid I even remember the designs on a girl's cotton-print dress that flashes for a moment through the sunny dream. Nothing special happens in these dreams: they do not frighten or alarm me, but have something alluring about them, like getting a tiny peep into somebody else's life. The one I see most frequently shows a corner in a strange city, the view of a street which I've never actually seen though I can remember all the details: the balconies, shop windows, the lindens along the pavement, the iron grilles. I can call them all to mind as clearly as if I had seen them but yesterday. I can even recall the passers-by, for they are always the same, even the black cat with white spots that runs across the road. It always crosses at one and the same corner, near one and the same house. Sometimes I see myself in an arcade surrounded by shops off galleries like in Moscow's GUM department store. But the arcade has only one storey and branches off into numerous side alleys that run lengthwise and crosswise. For some reason I am always waiting by a stationery shop, or slowly strolling past a shop-window displaying draperies and miraculously lit by a sort of odd iridescent lighting. I have never seen this arcade in real life, yet I not only remember the windows but even the shape of the goods, the tall glass archways and the coloured mosaic on the pavement. Sometimes the dream carries me into the interior of a town flat which I have never been in, or else into an idyllic village landscape. Often there is a road running between naked earthen slopes sparsely scattered here and there with patches of dusty grass. The road runs down to a blue strip of water, gay with golden water-lilies. Sometimes a woman in white walks ahead of me, sometimes an old man with a fishing-rod; but neither of them ever turns round and I never overtake them. I see only a strip of water, embroidered with duckweed and water-lilies; but for some reason I know it is a pond and that the road will now turn right along the bank, and that I ran here as a small boy - though neither the pond nor the road belongs to my real childhood. It was these dreams that awoke Olga's doubts of my psychic balance and