VASSILY P. AKSYONOV
47
But oh how successfully my work progressed at the time! In the
morning I would leave the hotel in my springy track shoes and begin
to run up the asphalt-covered grade that led from the lower to the
upper level of the park. During the minutes just before dawn, when
the dark-blue crest of the horizon in the East charts its domain with
special clarity because the sun is about to burst out from behind it at
any moment, my brains were teeming with all sorts of good ideas. I
saw page after page of my opus, "Repercussions at the Quasi-Dis–
crete Level," dance before my eyes. And all my whole steam engine
warmed up quickly, skillfully and synchronically-the lactic acid in
my muscles oxydized and broke down, oxygenated hemoglobin
stretched my fallen alveolae, and my esthetic gland, not to be caught
napping in this burst of energy, gladly awoke and took in everything
ecstatically: the tea-rose bushes that secretly and lovingly beckoned
from under the stone walls where they had cornered a bit of light,
the secret and slightly wanton swaying of the billowing
Persian lilac, and the naively euphoric smell of the dew-drenched
wisteria. What lines I managed to write then, what marvelous lines!
"The system inclined towards collapse does not possess, strictly
speaking, a discrete spectrum of energy. Particles which fly off dur–
ing its collapse travel into infinity!" What lines!
I took breakfast right at my work table; I would eat a couple of
cold, boiled eggs prepared in advance, drink some instant coffee,
and read my new sentences through the window to Historic Titan .
He would usually screw up his tiny barbaric eyes (a strange mixture
of genes from a steppe nomad and a Swiss clerk) and stare at me in a
thoroughly indecisive manner. Nonetheless, it was my impression
that he condescendingly approved: Write, I say, write on. What is
there, huh, to keep you from writing with your swanky gold Mont
Blanc pen on the pristine page. Write, but don't forget about the
people who compensated for their passion to write with prison bread
and water.
The countless replicas of Historic Titan can be divided into two
basic types: majestic images and lifelike images. Yet that Historic
Titan of mine, secreted among Pompeii 's blooming flora, was nei–
ther one nor the other. Some nameless sculptor had captured him in
this emigre pose, it seems, while he was strolling casually and
mindlessly. He'd probably had his quota of such empty days when
he was making history : times when the movement falters and splits
