On the Wings of Hope: Prose (Chosen)

Dejavu

Kirill was pursued by some ill fate. Or maybe a healthy and kind one. It was quite difficult to find out, because when you have already sailed away from old coasts and haven't moored to new ones, and only a boundless blue sea of life is lying ahead of you with no signs of tempting far-away coast, – it's really hard to tell when, actually, something out of an ordinary will surface itself on your course of sailing, and extremely harder to find out whether it was for good or for bad. City just like a city, sea as a sea. The sea was a cold one, however, and the city was rainy – but even the great Peter wasn't powerful enough to change that... except, perhaps, for Saint Peter – yet even that is not a fact by all means.

And what really disturbed Kirill, who like any other true IT specialist was devoting almost all of his life to own metal computer friend, were the cases of so-called "déjà vu", which became frequent recently. A strange word, and no less strange phenomenon, which has been annoying Kirill for several last month already, precisely like a sea iceberg standing on the path of his ship, the most significant and invisible part of which was, as it usually goes, inaccessible for common human sight, being hidden either in the depths of memory or in the waters of destiny.

This wonder of nature manifested itself variously. It could be a dream in which he, being dressed in the exotic black cylinder and dress coat, was traveling along familiar streets of St. Petersburg with some excessively unusual titles in an old Slavic language, as if they were given names only recently by willful Peter the Great himself. Or he could be rushing through some sort of cellars in these dreams, vainly trying to locate his companions, who have been recently seized and taken away from there. Or he could come to some Anichkov Bridge and stand idle like captivated for ten or so minutes, so that people, hurrying for their works, start looking askance at him as if he was some kind of a madman.

"And what if I am truly going crazy?" he was thinking from time to time when current streams of objective and subjective realities mixed up to such an extent that it was no longer possible to distinguish them from one another. "No way, just don't get enough sleep," he calmed himself down over and over again.

And it could happen that he starts discussing the architecture of some new software module with his colleagues and analysts, begins to argue, turns angry and blurts out something in the spirit of: "Fuck off to Admiralteyskaya Embankment in a post-chaise!" And then he stands with his mouth wide opened and cannot answer even to himself – why is that a post-chaise and Admiralteyskaya, anyway?

And the other day he even went to a roof of St. Isaac's Cathedral with some kind of Chinese tourist group and started performing "Kalinka-Malinka" dance with imagined music in the face of the stupefied public under the gaze of tens of smartphones cameras. And we should actually admit it, that he danced such nicely, that these Chinese even applauded him upon finishing of this creative rush as if he was doing all that specifically to amuse them. He didn't try that in any sense – even had no real dancing experience in his life – well, not this particular life, in any case.

Is that even normal, aye? The computer has replaced him both friends and a girlfriend for many years, which weren't noticeable even on the horizon of his life, and he dances on roofs of buildings during own day offs! Perhaps, nature itself mixed in something special into this autumn air of St. Petersburg city, forgetting to warn weather forecasters and all the others, less skilled in respect of knowledge of her possible surprises, residents of the cultural capital? And, possibly, Kirill just got bothered with going down the stream of a small sea of his private life and decided to discover new depths of his creative potential? Unfortunately, we were not told about his true motives – and we are absolutely uncertain if he himself gave any thought to it.

Yet déjà vu, most likely, perfectly knew it – and decided to surrender to Kirill once and as a whole. So here and now he was standing, looking at the "Admiralty spike", glorified by a classical poet, and different, almost alive images were rushing before his eyes.