78
PAl~
TISAN REVIEW
as he thought - fur. Get rid of it immediately! A hot shower! He sat
down at the mirror again .
. . . What a vile world. Women, children, old people, dogs ..
Yellow, heaving swill. Flesh is nauseating. The flesh of others is nauseat–
ing. Only what's mine is ravishing, pure, transparent. I am fleshless and
sexless. I don't play your games. Get your muck out of here.
Serafim looked into the dark mirror. On both sides of the glass was a
pure, living flame. Heavenly countenance. Candles! Heavenly counte–
nance. But only I am permitted to admire this marvelous, inhuman sight!
Turn your nasty faces away from me!
To go to work Serafim was obliged to ride the bus. He tried not to
look at the swinish snouts, the camellike muzzles, the hippopotamus
cheeks. People are all vile! And all of them, base, revolting, are staring at
Serafim with bug eyes, grinning their grins. Yes, I am magnificent! Yes,
my face shines with an unworldly light! Yes, golden curls! Snow-white
wings! Angelic eyes! Part, crowd! Stand aside - Serafim goes here!
He looked in the mirror once more. Serafim's countenance swam up
from the dark depths, wavering in the warm flame. A rosy glow, the re–
flected light of white wings behind his back. To gaze forever ... Who
are you, my beauty? Serafim sank into the divine reflection. Time to go
to bed. Tomorrow would be a hard day. He blew out the flames, folded
his wings together, and hung in the soft twilight.
For the Montgolfier brothers' jubilee, the district was planning a
mass flight of thirty kilometers. Serafim was also participating. He had to
collect various papers: a bilirubin blood test, a general urine analysis, and
a certificate of residency. ''I'll fly higher than all of them," thought Ser–
afim while the nurse drew his delicate blue blood through a tube.
"Higher than the crowd, higher than the human throng, higher than
their base passions.
I,
a child of the ether, will spread my blinding, silky,
snow-white wings like a million white humming birds. Oh, how mag–
nificent my triumphant flight will be!"
He strolled leisurely along the drying spring path, carrying his curly
golden head high. The quacking word ZHEK - the housing office -
squatted on a brown plaque. Get the residency certificate.
He pushed open the door and entered. Two old ladies were asleep
in a room without curtains furnished with rows of chairs. A middle-aged
lecturer slowly read from a notebook covered with oilcloth:
"According to the absolutely apocryphal legend, god-the-father,
who doesn't exist, supposedly fertilized the so-called virgin Mary by way
of the non-existent holy spirit; the result of this fraudulent conception,
according
to
the mendacious allegations of the clergymen, was the
mythical figure of Christ, who is totally alien to us. These unfounded
fabrications ... "
