And then came out, withdraw from me, my mother – prototype of Maria and thickening waiting in the dark.
…The candles were melting.
Stern figures of a king and queen disappeared in the cigarette’s blue smoke. …to death awarded.... six!
Enough! Enough for tonight!
Tartar began to sing his Asian: “ala-la-la”. I looked at the curtain, at the glow in the glass door. – Andryusha has disappeared. Tagabat and the watchmen are drinking their wine. I throw over my shoulder mantle and come out from the king’s house. I am walking through silent streets of this fey town.
The town is dead. Citizen know, that we will have gone before these four days pass, that our counterattacks are hopeless: soon our carts will squeak toward the neverland. The town was waiting. The darkness.
The king’s manor on the east looks like a dark woolly figure, now it is black commune’s court martial.
I turn around and look at it, and then suddenly recollect, those six souls on my conscience.
…Six on my conscience?
No, it’s lie. Six hundred, six thousand, six billion – the darkness on my conscience!!!
- Darkness?
And I squeeze my head.
…And again in my mind I see the whole dark history of civilization, and people wandering, and centuries, and time…
Then I, wearied, lean on the gates passionately blessing that moment, when I met doctor Tagabat and the watchman with the deformed skull. Then I’m turning out and prayer fully watching the east woolen figure.
…I’m lost in narrow streets. And finally I come to the lonely house, where my mother lives. The yard smells like mint. Behind the barn lightning rages and I can hear the rumble of strangled thunder.
The darkness!
I go in, take off my mantle and light a candle.
… - Are you sleeping?
But mother didn’t sleep.
She comes to me, takes my exhausted face in her withered old palms and bows her head on my chest.
Again she says that I am, her restless son, and have sorely tortured myself.
And I feel on my arms her crystal dewdrops.
I:
- Oh, mother, how I am tired!
