Мракобесие: начало

“Joey, dear, please, let’s go to the dance together today!”

The young man indulgently looked at the girl who had been begging him to go to the party for half an hour already and turned his thoughtful look at Georgie.

“Hey, pimply!” He called out, ignoring the pleas of a classmate who had long been making plans to get this quite a catch everyone considered Joseph to be.

‘I shouldn’t respond,’ the grown-up George was repeating to himself over and over, “Otherwise, he’ll stomp me out completely. Not responding is also not a way, or he will beat me again. God damn these teen pimples! He just started forgetting about me.’

“I’m talking to you!” Joey angrily kicked him with his foot, hiding his hands in the pockets of imported trousers his father brought from another work trip.

As always, Georgie assessed the scene from under his brows. There were six of them again. They became older, stronger and learned how to build strategical chains. So now the brave guys were approaching him from all sides. For a teacher who just entered the room, it would seem that the guys were just standing in groups, talking about something, relaxed.

“I’m paying my attention to you, by the way!” Joey resented in anger. “And you’re turning up your nose at me! You got some nerve, kike!”

Attention? Georgie raised his head in surprise. Here’s how he sees his bullying from the very first grade. And the worst thing is, he believes himself!

With a bitter look, Georgie stared at his copybook, tracing out each letter deliberately slowly. He knew that the teacher wasn’t a guarantee of his safety, but only a delay in reprisal. But he still didn’t understand why he was so angry with him because he didn’t do anything wrong to them.

“If God has no time to look after me, then maybe his opponent will give me a minute ...” Georgie said once and got some from his mother for that and for a rather long time was forced to listen to Uncle Pete’s mockery who had recently become his stepfather.

Aunt Sima, Uncle Peter’s former wife, was still wondering why he got six of one and half a dozen of the other. To be honest, Georgie didn’t understand himself what a prominent military man found in his mother who wasn’t much to look at when he had such a beautiful woman in his wives. But Uncle Peter always answered with confidence that beauty is only skin deep and that a wife should be obedient.

George looked at the offworlder again. Thoughtfully looking at him, he gradually returned from his memories to reality. The guest was patiently waiting and seemed to understand that his arrival stirred up a wasps’ nest in his soul. ‘And what does that change? There are no ifs in history,’ George thought sadly, looking straight in the guest’s eye. Perhaps, it makes sense if it changes something in the present, where he remained Siegelman for everyone even when he changed his last name without telling his mother and went to live in another city, where nobody knew him yet.

“God sometimes says that the call needs to be checked by time, and I decided to agree with him, believe him at least once...” quite philosophically the guest answered the question he had already forgotten. “But He, obviously, as indeed happens quite often, turned out to be wrong. Wishing to be followed, we disregard those who were calling us, we lose them. However much you pursue them after, it’s all for nothing. You ca

ot make people wait without any explanation. They freeze from waiting.”

“But as far as I understand, both you and God are almighty. Isn’t it easy for you to turn to your side those who you need?” The owner of the apartment asked timidly, afraid to anger him.

“Firstly, it’s a meaningless and endless work, because, as you’ve noticed yourself, we are both equally powerful. But secondly, voluntary proximity is more important than enslavement.”

“Alright, let’s say I understood you and agreed regarding the soul. But what do flowers have to do with it? Wouldn’t they grow without your intervention? After all, at other apartments they do.’

“Why not, they would grow... Because other flowers are growing thanks to me as well. God is too busy for indoor plants. He created them, but soon forgot about them and put people in charge of care, releasing himself from responsibility for his own creation as he did in relation to people. He is too busy to pay attention to all sorts of little things like human passions, sufferings and desires...” The guest said with a hint of irony, making it clear that he somehow saw what George was remembering.

When the young man was completely desperate to find friends and work, and Uncle Peter gave up trying to teach him to hit back because his mother’s intelligent upbringing prevailed, Georgie realized that it was time to run away from himself. And he ran. But not from himself, there’s nothing you can do... He ran away from the enemy, from everyone who knew him in childhood so that nothing would remind him of those bad days of helplessness and vulnerability. He started his life from scratch. But every single day he continued to be scared. He was scared of meetings and acquaintances, friendship and love, career growth and improvement. He changed jobs three times before he got into Rudinstein’s office, having nothing to count on. He left the first three places barely realizing that Joey was waiting for him there too. Even if with another face and name, but everything happened again.