Chapter 6

More than a week of emptiness—nothing stirs Kostya's mind, nothing inflames his feelings. Only old books, read a thousand times over, fall into his sight and hands. They can tell him nothing new anymore, even if they sometimes distract him from a certain serene yet terrifying void. But nothing else dilutes this monotonous existence; in such periods of life, time stretches unbearably long—a week feels like a month, a month like a year. No work, no friends, no money, save for the pitiful kopecks Kostya still received from the exchange. The day before yesterday, or perhaps earlier still—Kostya had stopped keeping track of the days, for they all seemed the same to him—a small sum of money arrived. He decided to go to a café today with Henry.

Heavy snow had fallen again. Over the past week, Kostya had gone outside only in the evenings, and only for five minutes, to smoke a single cigarette. It seemed that without this gesture, without this small habit, Kostya would have gone mad.

"Life is a prison." Kostya had once written in his diary: "Living in this world, we are in fact serving a sentence. For the most part, this life is as monotonous as the four walls of a prisoner's cell. In rare moments one manages to experience something besides boredom, but such moments occur in prison too. In essence, the difference is not great."

From Liza, as before, there was not a word. Against his will, Kostya asked himself questions: "Where is she? With whom does she spend her evenings now? What does she feel? Why doesn't she call? Was I truly so indifferent to her all these years of our friendship? Or did it happen after some particular moment? When exactly did I become tiresome to her, repugnant and uninteresting?" In truth, the answers to these questions, whatever they might be, held no significance. Only the outcome mattered, which consisted in the fact that Elizabeth was not beside him at this moment. And the how and why—these were merely meaningless questions that could change nothing.

Kostya finished another chapter of his second book. He cast it aside. He picked up his telephone and dialed Henry's number:

"Hello, how is young life treating you?" asked Kostya.

"Oh, you know..., it isn't," Henry replied in his usual manner.

"Let's go sit in a café, have a drink—my mind is bursting from boredom," Kostya said vexedly into the receiver.

"All right, let's do it. Meet in twenty minutes near your place," Kostya's friend agreed to the proposal.

The friends entered a café called "Constellation." "What shall we order?" asked Henry, opening the menu handed to him by the waiter.

"Let's have wine, and for food some potatoes or some kind of salad—I'm not particularly hungry," answered Kostya. Wine was, perhaps, his favorite alcoholic beverage. He and Henry often gathered precisely over a bottle of wine. "In vino veritas"—Truth in wine—Kostya loved to repeat.

Henry had not yet managed to order what was proposed when Kostya changed his mind and asked him: "Or perhaps vodka?" Kostya had nothing to lose, and his mood was fitting, and there wasn't enough money to waste on trifles.

"You know it's all the same to me what to drink," Henry replied, thereby agreeing with Kostya.

The young men drank one glass each of the ruinous beverage.

"Ah... a necessary spiritual poison," Kostya remarked contradictorily, grimacing as he washed down the spirits. "You know, I recently wrote down a new aphorism: 'The merits of the past are worth nothing if they do not correspond to a person's present conduct,'" Kostya quoted himself.

"But why should that be?" Henry disagreed. "If a person has written a book, then he has written it all the same. No one else but he could have done it. Or if a person fought all his life, was some kind of test pilot, then he will still deserve respect now."

"Even if he has now drunk himself into ruin and drags out a pitiful, futile existence? There are many such people in reality. Who looks upon them now with the same eyes that looked upon them when they were important people? Who values a person for his past merits?" In truth, Kostya was pondering the situation that had befallen him. He wanted to know whether he himself still meant anything at all in this life. Could one value him for what he once did, given that his present conduct did not correspond to his past achievements?

"No, that's not so. Whatever the case may be, merits are merits. I say again: if a person has written a book, then never, no one would have written the same book in his place. Even if a person who fought, covered in medals, has drunk himself into ruin—if needed, he can be washed up, set on his feet, given a rifle, and he will lead an army of greenhorns. That's not a correct aphorism," Henry continued to disagree.

Kostya was glad to hear this; he had wanted to hear precisely objections to this aphorism of his. But still he felt some small irritation—he knew he was right, for he had felt this contempt upon himself.

"Henry, but these are only your personal thoughts. In the eyes of society, only the present matters. They won't even sit down next to an alcoholic, even if he was the Pope himself in the past."

"There I don't argue with you. Everyone couldn't care less," Henry finally agreed.

"Then one need only add to this aphorism 'In the eyes of society': 'In the eyes of society, the merits of the past are worth nothing if they do not correspond to a person's present conduct,'" Konstantin uttered once more, but now the amended aphorism, accepting its truth without much joy.

"Yes, perhaps that's better, but you should write as you think. And what do you yourself think?" asked Henry.

"I don't know," Kostya answered, almost honestly.

After the third glass, Kostya became very talkative and began:

"Here's another thing, Henry. This week I watched a film. There's this guy, twenty-nine years old, a successful banker, heaps of money, spent a lot of time on his career, and in the evenings he parties in bars—alcohol, drugs, girls, the whole business. But in his soul there's anguish; everything is too little for him, always too little. In truth, this path is a path without end—there will always be too little. For such people, a career is only a means of filling the emptiness in their souls, which something or someone once left them. It is an endless chase after ephemeral happiness."

"That's always the way—everyone always wants more...," Henry agreed with Kostya's reasoning.

"Yes... but there are people who at least derive some pleasure from life. For instance, people who are the opposite of careerists. They don't strive to be the best; they drink, engage in protests, or perhaps make mischief. They live as they like, occupy themselves with what gives them pleasure. Be they hippies, goths, punks, whatever—it doesn't matter... they know what they want. They are not those who run with all their might toward an endlessly elusive happiness."

"Well... what are you getting at?" asked Henry.

"What I'm getting at is this: from this point of view, try to answer the question—who lives more correctly? If some derive pleasure from life and others do not? Who can even answer the question of what it means to 'live correctly'? What is normal and what is not normal? And can the opinion of the majority have even the slightest significance here?" Konstantin finished his thought.

"Of course not," Henry confirmed. "I have always said, and will continue to say, that in this life no one owes anyone anything. This is our life, and we have the right to live it as we wish."

Kostya spoke a little more about a book by Hugo he had recently read, and then fell into thought. In this café, the three of them had once sat together.

"What are you thinking about?" asked Henry.

"'I am bored, Devil...,'" Kostya quoted words from Pushkin.

"'What is to be done, Faust?...,'" Henry began to continue the verse, but Kostya interrupted him:

"Don't, Henry... it's time to go home. That's enough for today," Konstantin ended the conversation.