Applied Asymptotology

"A rogue dream—a phantom; the goal's beyond our grasp, the throwback's doomed, while past—a memory chimera, a monster caged and clasped."

"Ophelia drowning in the river of borsch"

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OPHELIA
What means this, my lord?
HAMLET
Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.
OPHELIA
Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

A rogue dream—a phantom; the goal's beyond our grasp, the throwback's doomed, while past—a memory chimera, a monster caged and clasped. Boom! The cork rockets with a rumble straight into the ceiling and punches a square white panel. And there a kitty has been hiding; he squeals and scampers and begins to dash above the ceiling in primordial panic until one of the panels beneath him caves in and the kitty flies right onto our kitchen table, muzzle and front paws plunging into an immeasurable pot of borsch, the enormity of which could have solved planetary hunger almost forever. Everyone laughs, picks up the borsched Meowbius and carries him to the bathroom to wash while he licks sour cream off his muzzle. If he'd pulled such a stunt in my parents' house, they'd have grabbed him by the tail and carried him to the vet while he mewed, scratched, begged and tried to convince them of his innocence, that he was just doing his job, just catching the universal Mouse above that ceiling as he was destined to, or even exaggerated and said that there were swarms of them, those little grey parasites, who at night drum on the ceiling with hundreds of their little paws and don't let you, my esteemed and dear owners, sleep, but my parents wouldn't listen, having brought him to the vet, they’d get him castrated right there, still holding him by the tail, so he wouldn't be so rowdy no more. A castrated village cat as a metaphor—lazy, fat, with eyes either like those of an Alexandrian philosopher or a Tibetan monk, having convinced himself of the superiority of mind over phallus, living his best life where he needn't kowtow to his libido, but can simply eat, sleep, meditate on flies. But a metaphor for what? Think on it later.

—And you... when were you last time in Tulubaika?

Slavoslav Slavoslavovich is now a balding, paunchy copper. His blue eyes have turned navy, as if dyed to match his uniform, and his golden mop got tired of sitting on his head and scattered all over his body. I want to have a proper chat with him, but there's nothing to talk about. Not because he's bald and paunchy, and not even because he's a copper (though such treachery, I must admit, is hard to forgive, even harder not to joke about, and impossible to get out of your head), but simply because from past to present too many chaotic moments have occurred, which, as in an old black-and-white Disney cartoon, magically lined up into a huge interpersonal wall, propped up on both sides by rusty cast-iron pillars. We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control. We live in different strata of reality. I've been to Berlin and seen the wall, and he hasn't, which is a shame. He probably can't even leave the country, which is also a shame. We speak different languages, using the same words, syntax, intonations. Life—morphology, a birdly fall into the ocean, but not for fish. To die? Oh no—to reach the depths. What depths? Depths of understanding existence through the study of forms. For there, in the darkness pitch, down at the bottom—a window, in the window—transcendental visions, perhaps a fat learned cat, waving its paw at sparrows, lies, no longer round and round he walks at the chain’s end, a chimera-thought turns over he in his wee noggin and a ponderation ponders on how young he was, how he among tall grasses leapt, with dew all wet. Hop-skip, hop-skip, homewards pantherly I bounce to the call of rustling wraps, mug cobweb-covered, quick-quick-quick, for dry cat food won't wait, will never eat itself. For who am I but not the most dangerous animal on this planet, a violent creature filled with hateful thoughts and a lust for blood and boxes empty?

What to say?

—Can't remember. Ages ago, I reckon. And you?

We're calculating the distance to a place that barely exists. It's sort of there, but sort of not, and quantum mechanics has nowt to do with it. Let's take a ruler. A trophy Opel Kapitän sets off from point A to point B, but halfway to point B, the engine coughs tubercularly and the car stops. The driver gets out, fixes it, continues the journey, but after travelling half of the remaining half, the car stops again, and so on, half after half. The task: knowing the speed, distance, repair time, and everything else (see note), calculate when the trophy Opel Kapitän will reach point B.

—Every year I plan to, but never quite manage it,—Slavoslav Slavoslavovich replies, shrugging.—Work...

—And how is it there now, d'you know?

—Oh, they say it's good...

—That's good that it's good.

—Yeah... Good is always not bad... Raining much these days, they say.

—Well, there'll be mushrooms then.

—There will be... For sure…

—I could do with frying some chanterelles right now.

—Or pickling them... Or going fishing...

—Nah, I don't like fishing.

—You used to.

Oh, I used to like all sorts of things, Slavoslav Slavoslavovich. I wouldn't even go mushroom picking myself now, I'd buy them from an old lady on the road—to support the local gross product per capita, 'cause you can't order that sort of thing on any Amazon.

Slavoslav Slavoslavovich finishes wiping the bottle with a towel decorated with firebirds. The birds absorb the bubbles of cava and fly off tipsy to winter in Tahiti, whoosh!—and they're gone. There they fling, stay to live, have kids, and never return, neither to Tulubaika nor to the surrounding townships.

—I still go... Both winter and summer... Mm…—continues Slavoslav after a long pause.

—Where to?

—Fishing, of course...

—Ah, fishing.

—Yeah, there's a little lake not far from here... Not the Tulubaika one, but still decent... We could go... Caught an ide recently,—Slavoslav Slavoslavovich says modestly, but with a hint.

—A big one?

Slavoslav Slavoslavovich smirks, as if I'd doubted his fishing abilities, and in the air, in addition to the alcoholic fumes, there hangs the sensation of an unstarted tale about the ide, a tale that no one will ever begin or finish, but nevertheless a tale that lingers, begging with all its being to be let out, and we, mere mortals, don't let it, for we don't need it—we already know what kind of tale it is, for tales like these can be told with just one look, so much so that Tolstoy himself would thin out, our dear Leo Nikolaevich, may he rest in peace and no war. Our dialogue with Slavoslav Slavoslavovich is built exclusively on such tales. They are the pillars of creation of the universe of our communication, unshakable strongholds, understood with just a brief stoic nod, man to man.

—You bet! A whopper of a beast. Want to see the video?

Some tales express their essence through a phone screen, just as stoically, phone to phone.

Go on then, I think, I'd like to see this ide, and Slavoslav Slavoslavovich immediately draws his phone from its sheath and shows me a video of that ide thrashing about on the grass in hysteric waterlessness. Bloody enormous, indeed.

—It's a big 'un, you speak true, Slavoslav Slavoslavovich.

He nods and starts the video again.

—Thought the line wouldn't hold, but luckily we managed. Had to call a lorry, though. The whole village ate that ide afterwards.

—Fish soup?

—Nah, tiddlers'd be enough for fish soup... Smoked.

The smoky flavour on my tongue, a whiff of smoke in my nose, and my mouth's turning into a saliva reservoir. I watch the ide flap its tail to and fro, bouncing, and think, I'd like to give this a like, man to man, I must, so I scan for the heart icon, find it at the bottom of the screen and immediately tap it. Slavoslav Slavoslavovich nods approvingly.

—I feel sorry for it,—I say,—the king of the lake waters.

—Sorry not sorry, but what can you do—it's nature. A cat wouldn't feel sorry for it.

—Well, we're no cats, you and I, we're humans, oh-ho-ho what humans we are.

—We're worse. A cat's at least honest in its instincts. A cat's an unprincipled hunter. To it, a mouse, an ide, or borsch—it's all the same, all prey. But we... Eh...

I try to absorb the philosophical substrate or its absence. I rummage through my vocabulary in search of a word in response, shaking my head for a long time, vibing to the music playing from the next room. According to ancient beliefs, our parents listened to this music, and now we listen to it, too. What cringe was has become nostalgia, and so it is with everything. There, behind the wall—endless ghostly laughter and voices of several more classmates, mixed into one voice babbling something in an incomprehensible language, even more incomprehensible than the one Slavoslav Slavoslavovich speaks. Let them sit there, behind the wall, we're fine here. The kitchen is the temple of any party, the kitchen is where truth flows. Had I my will afree, human with a speck of divinity, I'd transform with one wave of my hand all gatherings, parties, entertainments, hell—the whole world—into a small table pushed against the wall in the kitchen with three chairs around it and people casually consulting each other about crises of various grades—existential, spiritual, creative, financial, political, ecological, even approaching midlife ones. We'd sit thus in the wafting wisps of a wakened, wined wonder and talk, talk about this and that, about everything, about the fifth, the tenth, the sixth, the seventh, the eleventh, the infinite or finite, in particular about how to achieve harmony of cosmos and chaos in the process of cooking borsch, and why borsch might be the key to understanding dialectical materialism and metaphysics awhole. Real borsch, like real life, isn't cooked by the book, but by intuition, by eye and by avos’, and the most correct dialectic is when your head cracks along the welding seams in the morning. The main thing is to remember that in a true dialectical borsch there's always room for thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. And, of course, sour cream—where would we be without it? For smetana is the symbol of unity and struggle of opposites, Gogol once said to Hegel. Only in such a kitchen confessional, in this cabal of souls desperate and splattered with borsch, can something real, something alive be born.

Here Alephtina finally returns, alone and without Meawbius, looks at us, at the ceiling, at the pot, shakes her head.

—Please eat the borsch.

—With the cat?—I ask.

—What do you mean "with the cat"? Should we throw it out now?

—Well, there's no need to throw the cat out...—Slavoslav Slavoslavovich smirks.

—Our cat's clean, we wash him every week.

—And he licks his cat balls every day.

—He doesn't have balls, don't worry. He's got nothing to lick.

—He licks anyway, thoroughly, with hope. You never know? They might come back.

—He probably doesn't even know they're gone. That's how you live your life, with balls, and then—bam!—no balls, but the habit remains,—adds Slavoslav Slavoslavovich.

—Maybe they both exist and don't exist until he looks "down there". This sort of thing often happens with cats,—Alephtina giggles.

As a child, Alephtina read Borges and thought that "Aleph" was about her. With age, however, she understood something else, that Aleph was, is, and will be about Tulubaika. At the moment when this Truth unfolded before her like a peacock's tail with eyes of a biblically accurate angel, Alephtina decided to abandon her previous endeavours and become a scientist. Now Alephtina is an asymptotologistess, with an applied bent, studying ley asymptotes, a special type of ley lines, world-connecting curves, which one can approach indefinitely without ever reaching them. In Tulubaika, according to widespread theories, there is a place where these lines intersect at one point, thus forming the most unreachable point on the planet.

—For a function f(x), the line y = g(x) is an asymptote if lim[x→∞] |f(x) - g(x)| = 0,—Alephtina explains, while I ladle borsch into bowls, and Slavoslav Slavoslavovich dilutes our cava poured into faceted glasses in Russian Railways teacup holders with moonshine made to an ancient Tulubaikan recipe, left to us, they say, by the Mongols themselves.—But in the case of Tulubaika, we're dealing with a multidimensional space, where each dimension represents a separate aspect of reality. Imagine a function T(x₁, x₂, ..., xₙ), where n tends to infinity. Tulubaika might be a point containing all points of the universe, a kind of singularity in this multidimensional space.

Alephtina takes a deep breath and continues:

—In mathematical terms, this is a place where the function of being T(x) doesn't just tend to infinity, but undergoes a discontinuity of the second kind. In other words, lim[x→Tulubaika⁺] T(x) ≠ lim[x→Tulubaika⁻] T(x), and both these limits can be equal to infinity, but with different signs. Just imagine!

Slavoslav Slavoslavovich grunts into his moustache, which he doesn't have and never has had, and pours more moonshine into the cava.

—Moreover,—Alephtina continues, helically stirring the borsch in her bowl,—if we consider Tulubaika as an attractor in the dynamic system of our reality, we'll see that it possesses a fractal dimension. Tulubaika's Hausdorff dimension isn't an integer, which explains the impossibility of fully comprehending it. Formally, this can be expressed as: D = lim[ε→0] (log N(ε) / log(1/ε)), where N(ε) is the number of n-dimensional cubes with side ε needed to cover Tulubaika. And in practice,—she adds, sipping her borsch,—this means that the closer we try to get to the essence of Tulubaika, the more details we discover, and this process is endless. As Poincaré said, "Science is a continuous approximation to truth. It's an eternal chase, but not after a chimera, rather after an asymptote".

—White noise...—Slavoslav Slavoslavovich mumbles.

—They don't teach you this in cop school?

—No, they don't, and thank our comrade Major Yehoshua, may his memory be blessed,—he adds sarcastically.—No need to dilute our Orthodox thought with your foreign sciences. For such heresy, we could lock you up for fifteen days, citizeness.

We all laugh heartily. Alephtina leaves her spoon in the bowl and eyes the glasses, clapping her hands in anticipation.

—Tell me, what have you concocted?

—So, milady, we wished to concoct a refined foreign cocktail, following a most esteemed French recipe. Alas, upon inspection, 'twas discovered that our Champagne hails from Spain, and the English gin is nowhere to be found. Therefore, if it pleases you, we shall substitute it with the traditional Tulubaikan moonshine, forsooth.

—Oh indeed, dear sirs, that's how great discoveries are born, isn't it?—says Alephtina and picks up a glass.

—Well... here's to us then,—says Slavoslav Slavoslavovich.

—Cheers.

We raise our glasses and clink them.

—Wait-wait. What about helixing?

—Right you are.

—Not for nothing you're a scientist now, citizeness.

We swirl the glasses until little whirlpools form, following Alephtina's advice to create a stochastic process in the drink and enrich it with oxygen. We sip. The alcohol whirls through the body, warming the corporeal and the incorporeal. My chronic déjà vu immediately intensifies at Olympic 100-metre dash pace and my forehead fills with a hot-cold sensation that we're sitting exactly as we sat ten and twenty years ago, and everything around is nothing but a nostalgic dream staged by a radical art-house theatre troupe.

—One every day,—says the fake-mustachioed doc, looking like a Felix Dzerzhinsky.—Best in the arse cheek. Right or left—you pick. But I stick it in the right—don't fancy commies. Go on, give it a go.

In my hand is a syringe, pearlescent goo shimmering inside. As if I'm about to jab myself with a vial of glitter.

—And will everything go away right away?

—Nothing happens right away, compadre. It'll pass gradually.

—Maybe there are pills?

—The pills are bitter as olives from the tree. You might get asphyxia (and not an erotic one). Then, of course, everything will go right away.

—Is there perhaps a stronger dose? So I could take it once and be done forever.

—No, compadre patient, chronic déjà vu is incurable. You'll be on jabs for life now. I suffer from it myself, but I jab it regular and it's fine—no bother. But if you ever want it like before (ha-ha), skip a couple of days and everything will be back to normal. Well, will you give it a go now?

—My wife will give it a go to me at home. I'm afraid to do it myself.

The doc nods understandingly. I stand up, adjust my shirt with rolled-up sleeves, shake the doc's poisonously blue rubber hand, and head for the door.

—Doctor, what about the centrists?—I ask before fleeing this torture chamber.

—Ah, those... They use rectal suppositories, so it dissolves inside. It's uncomfortable to sit at first, though. The suppositories aren't small, mind you.

We nod to each other stoically, man to man. I exit, slamming the door.

On trips, I do it myself, contorting in front of the mirror in the hotel bathroom. I alternate right and left, just in case, to avoid jinxing it, but I reckon I forgot to take it today and yesterday. So here we are, a flare-up.

—Oh, how lovely!—Alephtina exclaims, polishing off her glass.—This is what I'm getting at. How's your motor, Slavoslav Slavoslavovich?

—Well, I took a taxi here. It's a piss-up, after all.

—What do I care about your taxis, Slavoslav Slavoslavovich? The Opel, I'm asking about your trophy Opel.

—Ah, the Opel... It starts up.

—Does it run?

—Runs it does. Not like new, but it goes like the clappers. Rattles a bit, but it's fine. It's more "authentic" that way, as they say.

—Will you give us a ride?

—Well...—Slavoslav Slavoslavovich gets shy.

—For old times' sake. When else will we get a chance to ride in a trophy Opel?

—Well... There are still a couple of parts to replace... Can't seem to find the right paint...

—Just tell us what you need, we'll sort you out.

Every evening after work, and sometimes on weekends, in spring, summer and autumn, Slavoslav Slavoslavovich escapes from his family for a rendezvous. He walks along dark streets, encountering stray dogs and the absence of asphalt on the way, but such nuances are like smetana to a cat for him, he's a copper, with a gun. Reaching the coveted garage, one of the endless alley planted by Stalin himself back in the days of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Slavoslav Slavoslavovich opens the gates. Before him, as in a fairy tale, appears a slightly rusted but clean Opel Kapitän Cabrio, the colour of a Schutzstaffel uniform, full of rounded forms, equipped with bug-eyed headlights and a distinctive radiator grille, that very legendary car on which Slavoslav Slavoslavovich's grandfather rode from Germany in nineteen forty-five, fuming home victoriously to Tulubaika, minus one ear and two fingers on his right hand. At one point, the totality of parts that had fallen into disrepair in this Opel amounted to about a hundred percent. Slavoslav Slavoslavovich managed to replace some from local sources, some I sent him from Europes. Question: does the old grandfather's Opel remain the same trophy Opel if every original part in it has been changed several times? One might accidentally become a Volga that way.

For a split second it gets darker, either in the world or in my eyes, but immediately after that, the night illuminates the kitchen with lightning in search of sad people. Hail begins to bombard the balcony windows and door, filling the balcony itself to the brim with icy clusters the size of tennis balls, until they start spilling over the edge. Thunder drowns out the music, but the squeals and gasps of those gathered for the piss-up are still louder.

—That's some weather!

—Did you clock that?

—Fuck me perpendicularly…

—This has never happened before and here we go again!

—Blazinn oodles!

—I hope my greenhouse is still standing...

Flash number two. Scratching the linoleum on his way and bumping into every doorframe, Meawbius, electrified after a hairdryer ordeal, bursts into the kitchen and, with one precise leap onto the fridge, begins the ritual of summoning the Sly One.

—Tenebris princeps, audi vocem meam, surge ex abysso, miau, et appare coram me!—he could have shouted, and we all could have added "amen" in chorus at the end, we could do so much more that it's unclear why we're not doing it, at least "for the plot" it would have been worth doing.

The light in the flat goes out, someone in the next room yelps, someone laughs, an unknown piece of crockery breaks, enhancing the general chaotic background.

—"Let there be light," said the electrician and cut the wires!—announces one of the guests.

The frightened feline's orbs begin to glow with hellfire, a sparkling aura gathering around his fur. Oh no… Oh no… Oh no, no, no, no, no.

—Miau! Nunc est bibendum lac!—Myabius could have howled.—Audi me, serve humane! MIAU!

Here the powerless fridge under the cat could have suddenly turned on, hummed, shaken, its door could have swung open and out he'd come—the Sly One in person, looking like a chort, hairy, with polished horns and hooves. And we'd sit together with him, and knock back pure Tulubaikan moonshine, and chase it all down with toasted bread with a demonic amount of garlic, which he, the Sly One, would have prepared for us in the fridge converted into an oven. But no, life isn't like that.

Alephtina wants to pick up Meawbius, but he hisses, kicks, flails his paws chaotically, so that one careless blow and will Alephtina be walking around with an eye patch. My boozer uncle in Tulubaika once had his hands so scratched up by his cat that my aunt thought he'd tried to off himself, called the shrinks, who somehow packed him into a straitjacket and carted him off in a white UAZ-452 to the nuthouse. What they did to him there is a mystery, but he came back sober and never drank again. Note to self: treating alcoholism with a cat.

—Leave him be... He'll shred you to bits,—Slavoslav Slavoslavovich tells Alephtina, leaning back slightly.

—He's got no claws,—Alephtina replies, trying to manage the cat.—He's just scared. Look, he's calming down already,—she nods at Meawbius purring in her arms.

With grace, electricity returns to our chambers. To the accompaniment of brass pipes and the whole orchestra joining them, those gathered burst into applause, whistles and sincere thanks to Ionius, the overlord of electricity, and the master of all free ions in the universe, who, to become free, had to attend many rallies against universal darkness.

Someone, whose changed face I haven't yet remembered, quickly pops into the kitchen, asks if we three aren't bored here (cats don't count as conversationalists, not even ones like Meawbius), offers to join everyone else, to which we unanimously no-no. The visitor grabs a bottle of wine and, bowing out, leaves our kitchen temple.

Alephtina goes to the fridge with the disgruntled cat, opens it with one hand, takes out milk and pours it into a bowl. Meawbius, jumping down from her arms, begins to lap up the feline holy water, smacking his lips.

She, meanwhile, takes out an hourglass standing under a portrait of a smiling wrinkled babushka in a headscarf on the corner shelf, in which instead of sand is nothing other than the ashes of that babushka, Alephtina's granny, rumoured to have possessed extremely supernatural (at least for Tulubaika) abilities. Sighing heavily, Alephtina sits at the table, places the hourglass in front of us. In a thin stream, Grandma Nüra seeps from the upper part of the hourglass into the lower.

—How long does she last?

—That I haven't figured out yet.

—We could just flip it over,—says Slavoslav Slavoslavovich and reaches for the hourglass, to which Alephtina lightly slaps his hand.

—Hands off or I'll flip your head over. Here, pour instead. You're performing your duties poorly, Comrade Captain,—Alephtina declares sternly, yet with an indecent amount of irony, and pushes her glass to the centre of the table.

By copper will, by Alephtina's desire, the vessel is filled with cava and moonshine. I, meanwhile, observe Grandma Nüra, leaning towards the hourglass.

—Look here,—Alephtina intones, after first rinsing her mouth with the drink.—There's very little left.

We, pretending to have understood everything, nod in unison, men to woman.

—We need to go there sharpish,—she enunciates, taking a sip.

—Where to?

—Where d'you think? To Tulubaika.

—To Tulubaika?

—Oh.

—You do come out with some crackers sometimes, Alya. "Sharpish!"

—I've worked out that, with a margin of error of three point four percent (dead accurate, I should mention), Tulubaika will vanish as soon as Grandma Nüra runs out.

—Vanish?—Slavoslav Slavoslavovich and I ask, taken aback.

—Vanish.

—Just up and vanish, like that?

—Precisely like that. A situation of complete singularity will occur and the village will collapse in on itself. Well, that's in theory.

—Well, blow me down...—Slavoslav Slavoslavovich drawls, scratching his bald bonce.—Like in the Bermuda Triangle?

—No, for real. No fairy tales. Poof—and it's gone.

—How's that?

—Just like that. You know how it was in childhood, your grandma asks you to help, go fetch some bread, you agree, toddle off to the kiosk, but it has run out of bread. Proper annoying, right?

—Too right.

—So you think, I'll go to the next village then, can't let grandma down, can I? You walk for an hour through fields, through rowan groves burning with ruby flames, triumphantly buy the last loaf of white bread in the only shop called "SHOP" in the neighbouring village, walk back, get bored, hunger awakens in your belly, you forget everything in a childish way…

—For a moment of total transcendence…

—Exactly. You start eating this bread, just biting the loaf straight from the bag—it doesn't matter where you're taking it or to whom, it's still warm, crusty, the most delicious fresh bread you’ve ever tasted. So you walk, head in the clouds, grasshopping, admiring nature, maybe accidentally stumbling over an asymptote (they say children can still trip over them, and some can even jump over them like a skipping rope), and there you are, you return to the village, but grandma's gone—she died, they took her away in an ambulance straight to the cemetery in a coffin prepared at home, cobbled together for a bottle of vodka by John the carpenter from the boards of the old collapsed Communist Party hut. What can you do? She was old, took three nostalghin pills every day and suffered from chronic déjà vu like everyone in our parts. And there you stand thinking, what now? I've already eaten the bread.

—Been there, done that...—Slavoslav Slavoslavovich nods. He looks like he might fall asleep any moment.

—It'll vanish completely. It will for us, and we will for it. If we arrive too late, we will not recognise each other,—says Alephtina.

Time in Tulubaika always dabbled in some dilation, like on that planet in "Interstellar". You've already graduated from university, got married, travelled the world, changed a dozen jobs, gained muscle and intellect—practically ascended to Apollo and Dionysus rolled into one, but in Tulubaika it's like nothing's changed, yet everything's completely different.

—That's why I don't want to go and won't go,—I tell them straight.

They, Alephtina and Slavoslav Slavoslavovich, suddenly turn to me, having sheathed all their alcoholic intoxication, and ask in unison:

—And why's that then?

And I look at them and don't recognise them, as if my chronic déjà vu has again metastasised into chronic jamais vu. Déjà vu, jamais vu—even a sober tongue would tie itself in knots, not to be untied. The world's a splash from fish tails gliding through void's vast sea. A plop—and chimeras flee the present, harnessed three, clasping throats of forms and images, devouring all they see. Memories entwine in wreaths, from mind flee silently, sprawls languidly on graves. These people I (don't) know, their faces (un)familiar to me, their voices (not) known to me, a ghostly similarity is all my wretched thought can find, reflected in their plea—eyes hungry for my words, awaiting eagerly.

Somewhere in the beautiful distance, lightning flashes, rain and thunder gently-nostalgically tap on the membranes in my ear shells. I sit, watch, unwind a thoughtful thought, the answer just won't construct itself, like communism over all those years, while in the next room the lads get out a guitar and start singing Yegor Letov:

Distant Ophelia laughed in her sleep:

A pot-bellied thrush, a shaggy deer

The habitually last year's painted snow

Easily, lightly and cheerfully crunches on teeth.

—Jamais vu,—I finally answer after a pause as long as two pauses (or three).

—Jamais what?

—Huh?

—Jamais vu. Like déjà vu, but the opposite. You look around and everything seems like it's for the first time. I'm afraid that I'll arrive in Tulubaika like this and... What will I see there? Neither grandmother's baking, nor fishing with grandfather, nor the cat Dulcinea engaging in mouse-catching and obscurantism, are there anymore, only the creaking junk in the form of a windmill remains, echoing throughout the area, trees grown to the skies and fields overgrown with shrubs and weeds. Jamais vu, in a word.

—Complete jamais vu, comrade...

—A function discontinuity...—Alephtina mutters and winces from an apparent attack of her mathematical synaesthesia.

—Flush it down,—says Slavoslav Slavoslavovich and gives her his freshly prepared portion of Tsar Cannon (thus we call our concoction).

The theatricality of the musical performance in the next room intensifies threefold and begins to sound as if headphones have grown into my ears weedly.

Enamoured Ophelia drifted far away

The night was bright, the earth did ring

Hastily hurried, without hiding from view

The clock to its foolish, comical land

Obedient Ophelia floated to the east

A wondrous captivity, granitic delight

A lemony pathway to an orange grove

Invisible lift to a transcendent floor

—So what's the point of going then?

Alephtina rolls her eyes.

—All the more reason. That's the whole point. We need to go.

—I don't want to go anywhere.

—Consider Tulubaika as a quantum system T(ψ). If we can describe the attempt to return with the equation T'(ψ') = M[T(ψ)], where M is the measurement operator changing the state of the system.

—White noise...

—Returning to Tulubaika is equivalent to finding a fixed point T(ψ) = M[T(ψ)], but the existence of such a point is not guaranteed, because Tulubaika is not only a point in space, but also a continuum of states described by the statistical ensemble of our memories and expectations.

—I second that,—I say, then nod towards Slavoslav Slavoslavovich.—But the noise is too white.

—In short, the past Tulubaika is asymptotically unreachable by definition. Consider it gone already... (Alephtina hiccups) And it won't be back. But some version of it still exists.

We sit, silent, hiccupping, in one ear—a guitar, in the other—Meawbius's purring, sprawled on the floor by my right foot, the very one with a hole in the sock, causing the big toe to stick out and provoke the cat to bite. The borsch has already cooled, and the sour cream has spread in white lumps, cosily gathered around oval drops of yellow fat, slowly tending towards a solid state. Meanwhile:

Distant Ophelia laughed in her dreams:

A weary demon, a willow bush

Gifted ponies scattered at dawn

To the four winds — try to catch them now

—You see, compadre, chronic déjà vu,—the doc tells me,—is not just an obsessive feeling, it's a whole syndrome of temporal dysfunction. If left untreated, there occurs, so to speak, an inversion of the perceptual continuum.

—Huh?—I exclaim with an intonation as if my brain is about to melt and flow out of my ears.

The doc exhales all the air from his lungs and begins to gesticulate like a juggler and continues to broadcast his cerebral ambrosia:

—Imagine the brain as a huge hourglass, where the grains of sand are your memories. With déjà vu, this hourglass works as it should, but with a small glitch—sand from the lower bulb, by a miraculous coincidence, seeps back into the upper one. But if no measures are taken, it can get worse, and the sand will start to get stuck. First in the narrow neck, then in the bulbs themselves.

—I see...

—And here, compadre, is where it gets interesting. When a critical mass of memory-grains gets stuck, your brain is no longer able to make sense of this petrified chaos of memory, and begins to perceive everything as new. This is jamais vu. You look at your wife and don't recognise her. You come to your homevillage and see it for the first time. You read a book you knew by heart, and each page is a revelation to you. But the worst thing, compadre, is that you stop recognising yourself.

The doc falls silent, thoughtfully stroking his fake luxuriant moustache.

—Even suppositories won't help there,—he adds.—Regardless of their size.

Biting my lower lip, I nod and once again shake the doctor's poisonously blue rubber hand.

In the morning, after the roosters hoarsely greet the dawn and the morning dew has had time to dry, we (plus grumpy Meawbius), sobered up, slightly gloomy, charged with ibuprofen and melancholy, will sit in the trophy Opel Kapitän and, puffing and rattling, collecting potholes and devil-knows-whats, across the boundless field between oat dunes, under the canopy of rowans blazing with scarlet fire, with rotting leaves wrapped around the wheel, mixed with the rotting remains of bad news printed on ten times recycled paper, which you only want to wipe your arse with, we'll head Tulubaikawards.

But for now, we're still sitting, watching gravity pull Baba Nüra’s ashes into the lower bulb of the hourglass, finishing off the dialectical borsch reheated in the microwave, and listening as, somehow keeping the chords and rhythm, behind the wall in which there isn't a single brick, Pink Floyd together with Ophelia drown in the raging mountain streams of borsch:

How I wish, how I wish you were here

Ophelia drowning in a borsch bowl, year after year

Running over the old ground, what have we found?

The same old fears, I wish you were here.

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