Vasily Torpaev - Look at the sky

The middle of the night. I am approaching my house. On the one hand, I was almost indifferent and calm. On the other hand, I could not resist to the feeling of incomprehension inside me. How come? You do a man so much good, engross yourself in the work and the thoughts about the work, do your best and is that all to finish in a jiffy? Because of what? Because of alcohol?! And Alexander? Who did he allow himself to turn into?…I felt like yelling and crying… How many inconsistencies I had in my head!…It seemed strange indeed, Alexander had always told me that he was pious and went to church and all that was supposed to help us. Though, I must admit, I was skeptical about religious traditions and rites but since it helped Alexander, very often I would also attend worships with him and even fast to be on the same page with him… And now all of a sudden you were falling from that page and hitting the ground, it hurts… Is this fair?

Today is warm and sunny. I am standing on the bank of the river and looking into the distance. Several days have passed since we returned from Tomsk. I did not call Alexander on principle because actually I had no reason to explain myself to him. I waited till a genuine and kind man with whom we had been striving for our success for half a year already would be reborn in Alexander. The telephone rang – I could not hear Alexander’s voice at first. He apologized to me, saying that he himself did not know how that could have happened to him. He said that he had gone to church, had a talk with the priest and that the priest had forgiven him for that bad behavior (!) and added that we should proceed with our affairs…

It seemed that the call was kind of salvation. I agreed. Though thoughts like flies continued whirling in my head. “Ha-ha, – I thought – is it possible indeed that an ordinary priest in a church can forgive a man for bad behavior? Even not knowing what that man had actually done? If so, then such kind of behavior is acceptable, isn’t it? Not clear”

Gradually I was forgetting that incident and we continued working with renewed vigour. I wanted very much to get my labour and time spent bring results. For all that time I could not forget professor Butanovich, the way he worked with the pendulum. From time to time I conducted experiments with the pendulum at home. The professor as well as the books and the Internet told me that it was not allowed to ask the pendulum (or the subconcsiousness, or the “information forces”, or the “Earth’s poles” – still I did not whom I talked to) about whatever I wanted. I was not allowed to ask questions which had obvious answers, or to use the received information to cause harm to anybody or for profit. And I asked questions about the future, asked for permission to undertake some actions, wondered about the prospects of my and Alexander’s project. The pendulum did give me answers. It seemed to me that every time I talked to the pendulum the impulses making the pendulum sway in my hand became more and more sensitive to me. Sometimes, however, the replies differed from those that I expected from the pendulum, or over time they even tended to change. How was I supposed to explain that? It seemed as if either the future events were inclined to change depending on the present or it was just a big delirium of mine associated with the way I lived, saw and heard… I did not know why but right now the pendulum did not give me “yes” to the question about the eventual success in my and Alexander’s affairs. I never told Alexander about my experiments and the answers I got from the pendulum.

Let me skip some moments from my life. I am in Moscow now, in the capital of Russia. One more thing has been done. One more coin was dropped into the moneybox. I am holding the documents in my hand: a charter, a certificate, a bank statement, a tax statement. Yes, our dream seems to have come true! We have officially registered a commercial enterprise! With an office in Moscow! Two founders – Vasily Torpaev and Alexander Smelov. 42% of the authorized capital stock belong to me. For me it was like a holiday! Alexander and I had been living in Moscow for a month already and nothing reminded us of that unpleasant incident form the past, but… That very evening, however, when we were invited to celebrate the successful registration of the enterprise that alcohol-involved incident repeated with a much stronger effect. It happened in the presence of our future partners – well-known and esteemed people. Alexander’s metamorphosis from an intelligent man into the “state of nothing” took him only half an hour from the beginning of the event. For half an hour Alexander managed to get drunk and already was off to the races: he swore, crashed into the tables with dishes upon them, pestered the people around us, shouted obscenities at those people on whom, maybe, our future activity and the realization of our projects depended… A sound of a broken glass and the imminent scandal were enough to get us kicked out of the restaurant. Throwing us out they threatened us not to appear there ever again and promised to tell others of the incident just to warn them to keep away from us… Within thirty minutes all what we had done so far was practically cancelled: tremendous efforts and time spent for the project’s sake.

“Why?…” – I asked one and the same question to myself recalling the answers the pendulum had given to me a month before.

“Quit it all and go back to your family, – I thought, – right now, rush to the airport…”

I felt that I had no power and opportunities left. The exasperating point was that I simply could not tell anyone why all of a sudden everything had got ruined – neither to my family nor to my friends. The emotions were inside me, but in public I had to look as though the things were good. And they were, indeed. Until then…

The middle of autumn. The weather in October is unexpectedly warm in Perm Region. I still could not understand what all those events that were happening to me could mean. The talented people whose acquaintance I was lucky to have made continue to believe in me and Alexander but it seems that the rumours about the incident in Moscow had reached their ears too. Alexander called me once and told me that it had been his fault and he was sorry and promised that nothing of the kind would ever happen again…

My attitude towards him was not the same as it was when we had started our cooperation, and he is well aware of that, but at the same time Alexander knows that it was not easy to me either and that at his “invitation” I had left my former job. Yet, I do not know whether he cares for my life, for the lives of those who believed in us?…All of a sudden Mr. Smelov has put forward a new idea:

– Let us, – he says – go to the professor and ask him using his skills in geology, topography and the capabilities of the pendulum, of course, to search on the map for, say, old hoards, lost caches which could be hidden not too far from here. We would find, say, a small pot of gold or silver and use it as a seed capital.

“Where would such a mad idea finally take us, I wonder” – I thought.

We called professor Butanovich and told him of our idea. It turned out, however, that for weeks professor had been marking on the map the places of hidden old hoards asking the pendulum to tell him how much and what exactly was there in the hoards, what kind of coins they were – golden or silver, how deep in the earth they were buried, whether they were accessible or not in case the territory of burial had been turned into a private property and, say, a house had been built on it, etc.

I understood that searching for buried treasures was not quite what Alexander and I had always planned to do but considering the desperate situation of mine I could not back down: either I had to go till the end or to publicly admit that I was a complete idiot to have committed myself to a crazy alcoholic-hermit.