When the scientist woke up, he was already at Vasily Nikolaevichs house. They were rescued by a forester who lived nearby and helped them get out. Now in Vadims eyes that fervor did not burn, that enthusiasm did not burn, and no, he did not lose interest he was scared, he abandoned and buried his idea in a grave that is deeper than any hole on Earth, he buried it in his soul as far as possible so that he would never remember it again.
Finally, a solemn day has come, which Vadim used to think would be one of the happiest in his life. Before the speech, he met his friend Gleb Valentinovich, the one with whom they were waiting in line to defend their masters thesis.
Vadim Alexandrovich! How glad I am to meet you again! Are you trying to be a doctor?
You guessed right, Gleb Valentinovich, but we havent seen you since the magistracy.
Exactly. After all, I worked for a long time after that. Right now, only on the candidate.
Are you worried?
Why should I worry when everything is paid.
Im sorry, what do you mean?
I will definitely be a candidate, even if I dont say anything. I paid them to take me in. I trust you even with my innermost secrets, because we have not worked side by side for two years in vain, right?
Im sorry, but Im a little surprised by your act.
«You dont look it.» Excuse me, but why are you so sad, dear friend? Something happened? If youre worried, it wont be difficult for me
No, you dont need to. And Im sad because I buried my most grandiose idea.
Well, this is also not a problem, you just need to pay and they will accept any of your whims, Vadim Alexandrovich. At least announce the number «pi» again!
Thank you, but Id rather kill myself along with my idea than act so meanly with my honor! And now, allow me to leave.
Whatever you say, Mr. Honesty! Gleb grinned.
Vadim felt an unprecedented disgust for this man, after what he heard. Finally, he waited for his entrance and solemnly began his speech, which this time was by the very appearance of Vadim Alexandrovich much sadder than all the previous ones:
Ladies and gentlemen Today, I will present to your attention the work «Table of the narrative system», it is devoted to the definition of the style of narration. It is very simple and consists in he spoke his report without interest.
When the performance was over, few people asked questions. This topic was already trodden and was an easy way to pass, which really annoyed Vadim, who was a real scientist in his heart. So he received his degree and was proudly called Doctor of Philology, Professor of Tomsk State University Vadim Alexandrovich Vavilov.
So ten whole years have passed, Vadim has just turned forty-four years old, and the ticket for the liner has even risen in price, but at the same time he began to receive much more salary as a professor. Over time, he forgot about his pain and happily continued his work in his new position, giving lectures and sometimes conducting research. There was an era of cable television, DVD players, discs and cassettes were sold in stores, new stores were built or opened for them. Vadim himself already had his own TV, it was colored and showed old channels.
He looked at life as a trinket, a native of the pure Soviet principles of work and get, he tried to instill it in the yard boys who behaved like bandits in the area. Of course, he was bypassed, some laughed.
Vadim Alexandrovich continued to teach students, and sometimes children, and released more than a dozen from the walls of the university. It has been transformed with the age of new technologies. Now these computers and an electronic database have appeared, Vadim has been learning for a long time from their new young candidate of information sciences how to understand these computers and the Internet. Anatoly Romanovich seemed to be a ray at that time, only twenty-four years old, and he knows so much about computers, and explains it well, although Vadim turned out to be a bad student and in general it was difficult for him to do this.
He took antidepressants once, when it was already impossible to see nightmares in front of his eyes anymore, and now this jar still lies in a larger plastic box that contained everything necessary for first aid, for the cure of diseases. With Vadims immunity, some kind of flu or runny nose were not so terrible. And Vadim Alexandrovich did not put the apartment in order, but left everything as it is, even though the salary was already quite sufficient.
A month later, in June, when Vadim did not need to appear at the university and all these exams were passed, the man bought a ticket for a liner that would sail across the Atlantic Ocean to Florida and back with a plane flight through Europe. Of course, it was a very expensive journey, but most of the time Vadim will finally sail on a ship, and even if not as it was in his dreams, but this thrill, this thought, like a corpse, will come to life again, at the sight of the black depths of the ocean. At the same time, now he could quite afford to realize his dream.
The flight to Lisbon in Portugal will be here in one week. The professor was given a corresponding brochure with a guide to Florida, in which they will be at most two days and back to the pier, to the ship. He could already feel the sound of the surf, this wind with drops of sea water and the song of seagulls that fly near the land of islands and continents.
The man often imagined this moment, in colors, probably, this is the only image that he remembered so fondly. He took his time-worn briefcase, which would serve his master to death, and packed into it the most necessary things for the trip. A toothbrush, toothpaste, some ready-made food, clothes and money, a couple of tens of thousands of rubles. Oh, this is the time before you go on trips, to distant wonderful lands, to people who speak a different language and whom you fiercely despised during the Cold War.
Vadim literally trembled and beat a fraction every day, an hour turned into years. The man literally had nothing to do, he lived without communication, because even though he worked with Vasily Nikolaevich and others, he did not communicate with them heart to heart and for almost twenty-odd years he forgot what it was like to talk to people longer and reveal his soul to them. Vadim talked to the boys in the yard, but it was just a couple of sentences that practically did not change from year to year.
He couldnt wait to diversify his life somehow, and he often asked himself what would happen next, for example, in another ten years, or would he already go crazy by this moment and die without waiting for a ray of light in the wilderness in which he has been living for a long time. He often returned to the events of the past, it was an integral part of him, from which he had no right to refuse because of resentment against his mother, who still glowed in his chest, he nurtured and cherished this beast, or what does hatred for a person turn into? The professor felt that it was not a beast and not emptiness, but pure hatred, like burning lava and like acid that eats everything, and it smells no better than rotten food.
July 2009.
A week passed and Vadim Alexandrovich, despite the old bones and back pain, was ready to jump on the walls with happiness. He instantly dressed in his old coat, which went out of fashion back in the seventies, shoes and a hat to cover his graying hair from the raging winds. Taking the briefcase, the keys to the house, Vadim looked around his poor home. It has not changed in any way in all twenty-two years of living, only the TV appeared, and the radio broke down and thats all. All the same old walls, dusty bookshelves, kitchen, sofa with a broken spring. He sighed and left his abode, quickly descending the concrete stairs.