These teenagers, to whom I sincerely became attached, began to notice in me something odd because sometimes I gave out my thoughts aloud. Vasyas gone crazy, one of my friends told me, totally sure, in his turn, of my adequacy. I was then busy with the opening the minds eye and a similar remark, as I still recall it in my memory, but at that time decided to dissuade others from such a mostly evil assessment of my temperament. But more and more I heard remarks about my insanity, and the girl I was in love with at that time told me, unable to withstand the passions, that everybody mocked at me. They made such assessment not at once; I can say for sure that many people, especially close friends, were for some time undoubtedly convinced that I am a real god, including that girl whose grandmother told my granny that her granddaughter proudly asserted that Serge is a god, and probably she was very pleased that love affairs took place with such an important person. I must say, the fact that I considered myself a god, did not at all controverted the necessary idea of my normality for people who loved me. So unusual were my relations with a huge number of my friends; for almost every work assignment connected with a fairly large farm, I brought with me a whole crowd of teenagers, motivating them with a kind of special power of my inner magnetism, and the kids did the hard work for free to help his so dearly beloved friend. There were cases when over twenty people appeared in the garden fields, and everyone was stimulated by the altruism of the other and, of course, by my special attention, which helped them to feel, I think, happier, and the work seemed to them a fun game. These walks to Vasyas garden, repeated for many years and became a common thing. The nature of this phenomenon was in many respects a mystery to me, and the arisen idea of deification could become an idée fixe in such conditions, now the great organizer (in the opinion of many people) Vasya could have really be once that Krishna-boy, who cheerfully had led forward the children of his village in the pictures of Bhagavad Gita. And even after growing up to twenty years old, many of them, even the most stable and intelligent of my comrades, believed that they were friends of a real god. Some day I remembered, being already in deep depression, this suggestion to my friends mind, when Vovka expressed quite repulsive sarcasm in my direction, and he began to justify himself, saying: We believed you, thus dexterously hiding from the truth, which was the fact that, as I thought, his own maniacal attitudes were in full harmony with mine, and their union made my idea common, as also for Dimon, but these two comrades were smarter and more sober than many of the local guys and yet they got dexterously deceived.
These kinds of ideas were already believed from those books of the magician Castaneda, being in love with whom, we dreamed to go in our entire company to Mexico and find there the teacher of magic called Don Juan. This idea is evidently not much crazier than the one I was infected with, but we were all very much attached to each other, sharing the most secret thoughts and hidden dreams, undoubtedly merging in our search and reasoning into a unity, where the idea of one person could immediately become the idea of another without the intervention of any criticism, or for the sake of that other person, especially due to my deification, which assumed an important role for my great destiny and my friends. And they all believed almost out of habit, because I often took a leading position in relations with friends, who gathered in crowds in the garden to help in hard work, and heard from them no complaints, forcing them to believe that it was the best way to spend time. And if your belief is shared, it has a much greater chance of continuing to exist, and I must say that the guy who woke up the first suspicions of my madness was not from our company. And when a man is already called mad by the community, this makes him a stranger to everyone, because if you do not show your difference in comparison with the sick person, joining the almost direct condemnation, then you are treated like him, and many of them did so, at once forgetting their recent respect as a terrible mistake in their life. Like Pushkins: But truth is: be my mind not clear, a plague will merit as much fear.
Most of all I was surprised that they suddenly began to reproach me, for example, leave me alone, you know, treating me like a dog. After all, this caused a sharp, profound resentment, and besides, to me personally, it was completely unclear why suddenly such insolent anger and rudeness occurred, and most of all, it is not clear how a God can be treated by everyone in such an obviously offensive tone. I could not understand why they mocked at me, considering me crazy, while Im really so smart and cool. The girl whom fell in love with in, made me even suffer when, I repeat, she said that everybody mocked at me, I just did not believe it and decided to leave the village company with a heavy sense of insult, having already decided to visit a psychiatrist on the advise of my parents (this advice being also silly), because it was difficult already to show to those spoiled evil people the correctness of my idea. And I got into the hospital. I think it was quite simple to persuade me to go there; for me, with grief in my soul, was indifferent where to hide. Although with resentment, but still with a maniacal rise, whose whirlwind was not going to subside, I left the free community. And my views, together with the love of the ideas of my new world, together with the extremely fantastic inner movements inside me, and the terrible passion of crazy despair Already being settled in the psychiatric clinic, in this swirl of countless anxieties of those who are no longer needed by anyone, those terrible and crazy people, in their irritable and horrible company, of which I became the participant for an indefinite time. Not understanding all the horror of what was happening to me, I was seeking for my place here, but I did not tell anyone about the divine ideas, which here were completely inappropriate among all the anguish that reigned in the feelings of the people around me. I was going to somehow escape; I still did not believe that my freedom was now cut off, that I was away from my home for a long time, and the iron grills threatened the fire of my life, reminding me of this terrible limitation of will.
Of course, under such conditions it is very difficult to save ones life, and everyone here only broke down more, disfiguring, and devastated by the memories of his/her life in the free world. The main thing was that cruel irritation, distorting ones soul; I remember that many years later I dreamed of it in a nightmare, in that crowded room, crowded so tightly, standing each others presence with a great effort, experiencing a cruel incredibly agony of neighborhood with their own kind emotionally unbalanced comrades, beyond the limits of self-control. And this stay among such people brings everyone, who lives there, a strong mental injury, anger, and most importantly, as I later realized basing on my own example, entails the contamination of the symptoms of their diseases: you begin to think and feel like one whos next to you, borrowing from him even the process of abnormal behavior that had seemed to you completely alien. I remember my fear of such transformation into a man with almost no traces of sanity, whose face bears uncovered repulsive beastliness, an eerie creature, hammered and trained by local personnel. And the first time when I got to the hospital, and, running ahead, I must say that I got there many times and for a long time, frankly, half a lifetime, for the first time there was not so hard, for at least, no one hurt me, and I was treated by others with quite a respect. But life passed in the grip of irritation, pain and despair, I must say, the maniacal energy does not guarantee total comfort, but at the same time I did not calm down and was drunk and merry. But yet, which is still nice smart people. Yes, here you can meet them, gifted, talented, very interesting, highly cultured, which I had not met and certainly had not communicated in real life, even very short one. I was overfilled with delight of communicating with them; I admired those individuals: writers, translators who had more than one higher education diploma, wise, charming, even if drunk with their illness. I could be for them a sympathetic kind smart boy, whom they soon loved and began to consider as equal. In addition to the attraction, erudition and even charm, these people were exposed to torments which heavily burdened their lives. And the tortures of psychosis in some stages are enormous.