Vladislav Cross - ON KAIF!

She merrily and quickly glanced at them and asked a rhetorical question,

“How are you?”

Having flashed with a meaningful grin to Slavka’s reply,

“How are you? We’re fine! Natasha, make us two teas, please!” she got lost in resolving some book-keeping problems.

The café was not big and composed of a shop trading with all sorts of food and drinks in a front room, and of a small room for libations, on the right side of it, with approximate dimensions 3 х 3 m., into which an arched door led and in which two tables stood with four plastic chairs, at the given moment it was absolutely empty.

The cramped room suddenly gladdened eyes, as if emphasizing by its cramped spaces, the irrepressible freedom of the Universal Ecstasy which could not be limited by walls any more!

Volodya was perfectly sober, concentrated, joyfully ready to speak with any man and about anything at all, indeed the word “to speak” stemmed from the word “to leak”, and words leaked, splashing out of him like water! He could fly away into distant fairy expanses, behind the stars, and to return at once to give an absolutely correct answer to any question, because he had no questions any more, only answers!

Natasha brought two glasses of tea, put them on the table, looked by glimpse on Volodya and Slavka, smiled and having asked, “Are you still making merry? Well, well, well, have a fun!” walked away.

“Natasha, switch on music!” Slavka shouted after her, and soon there played quiet music in Haus style.

Slavka offered, “Let’s drink some tea.”

Volodya thoughtlessly took the glass and made a gulp.

“Baaammmm!!!”

Hot wave poured him over from head to feet, having expanded to feeling of coolness, his body became as resilient as caoutchouc, swayed and hummed soundlessly, like a mute cast-iron bell into which somebody, having taken a swing, pounded with a rubber sledge-hammer.

“Baaammmm!!!”

His palms became as humid, sensitive and pure, as they, probably, may be only at infants. Volodya pressed the palms to cool surface of the table, relishing pureness, strength and freshness of tactile perception!

“Baaammmm!!!”

The melody soaked him up, as though a whirlpool, and he turned into the melody, into each of its notes, splashes, rhythms, vibrations, flows, into all of its waves!

Volodya danced amidst the small room, having shut his eyes, having entirely surrendered to the music, but under closed eyelids, in front of the mind’s eye, flash-like colorful kaleidoscope of otherworldly geometric patterns was speeding by, myriads of continuously changing and unique colorful spaces, various forms, constellations, now expanding, then suddenly contracting, vibrating on ultra-short waves, spreading with speed of light somewhere in ultraviolet!

The rhythm started to breath with his body, or his body began to breath with the rhythm of the music, and they became the unity in new Fabulous Reality! Volodya’s hands and feet moved absolutely freely in all directions, with phenomenal quickness and accuracy drawing a wizardly and incomprehensible, for outside observer, pictures!

“Baaammmm!!!”

For a moment, Volodya opened his eyes. It seemed to him that the whole eternity had passed, being sated with creation and destruction of myriads of galaxies, but a certain stone-cold sober point in him, something like an anchor, tenaciously and reliably seated in the bottom of generally accepted collective actuality into which one might always to return for determination of the material reality, knew that there still had not passed even five minutes!

Slavka sat behind the table, having hidden his eyes behind dark lens of sunglasses and blissfully smiled. Volodya sat down behind the table too, beside him and made one more gulp of tea.

“Baaammmm!!!”

The soundless humming of the invisible soft bell resounded again in whole of his body, communicating him its softness, tenderness and love!

It was such feeling as if he had just drunk a bottle of vodka in one gulp, but at the same time he had remained absolutely sober! And not simply sober, but he had turned into similarity of an Astral Galactic Supercomputer, with lightning speed calculating all the possibilities of existence, automatically programming it in the most advantageous for Volodya way, knowing everything in advance, all-encompassing, all-powerful, all-merciful, looking down on earthly surface from unearthly, lying beyond all bounds, height of the OMNISCIENCE!

Perfectly sober and adequate in the external world, inwardly he was altogether liberated, boundless and infinitely multicolored – a brilliant bee or a pearly-gold-ruby-sapphire-emerald butterfly???!!!

Volodya closed eyes. Smileys were falling in great numbers, from all sides, on a liquid-crystalline light-yellow screen in front of him, such as they are depicted everywhere – thoroughly drawn little yellow globes-giggling balls with two black points instead of eyes and with black arcs of mouths wreathed in smiles!

“They launched the smileys,” noted Slavka at once, as a matter of course.

At these words Volodya jumped out from the chair, as though thrown up by an invisible spring, and once again entirely surrendered to the music, movement of rhythms and colors. Everything around and inside raved, spinned, sparkled, extended and contracted! Time contracted and turned into distant silver fiber, under feet of the Сreator, everything disappeared in sweetness of the come true Paradise!

He sat down on the chair again and took a gulp of warm tea. Aunt Nastya came into the room with a mop and a bucket in hands, opened doors of a toilet and put them down there.

“Goodbye, guys!” Aunt Nastya told.

“Goodbye, aunt Nastya,” prosily pronounced Slavka in reply, in ordinary, a bit muffled voice, nonchalantly, just as nothing was happening, indeed, inwardly and all around, sparing Volodya from necessity to open his mouth. The scrubwoman walked out.

Slavka smiled and looking directly in front of himself, asked,

“Well, bro, do you have any suggestions?”

Volodya doubted in rationality of his suggestion at once, hardly he had vocalized it,

“Maybe let’s do the second and go into La Rocca?!”

Slavka tried to laugh instead of reply, but his parted lips delivered something only vaguely resembling laughter, but sooner sounding like humming of high voltage wire before arrival of an electrical train, “Aaaa-haaah!”

“Let’s pill up before entering!” Volodya corrected himself.

“Aaall riiight, juunkie, heeere we gooh!” Slavka creaked, having thrown his head back and staring into the ceiling with the dark lens of the sunglasses.

“They open up at eleven o’clock only, slow down!” Volodya reined his brother and having taken a pause, offered, “Let’s walk along the Oldie, maybe we will meet some acquaintances?”

La Rocca was a title of the night club in the center of the city, but the Oldie – The Old City. Volodya had not been going into night clubs because he had not liked and had not known how to dance, until this day!

The Old City was located nearby, in some 15—20 minutes of ride by tram, bus or trolleybus. But what were these 15—20 minutes for the ETERNITY which had been discovered by them in interiors of intergalactic spaceships created for them by the Gods, through good connections and on special order?! Nothing, empty sound! They happily flied to the place of destination on a tram, in light of spotlights, under camera and telecamera lens continuously following their ecstatic flight in multicolored-white imponderability, and landed directly onto the square of “Red Lettish Shooters”.

It was a wonderful June evening. Avenues of lime trees and poplars showed peaceful greenness, merry babble of birds was heard everywhere, colorful butterflies fluttered all around.