slow, but almost without an accent. After all, his student years spent at the Russian Peoples’ Friendship University have left in Jean Batist an imprint of a blade wrapped around by a snake as well as a Cyrillic engraving. He had become an excellent psychotherapist with a good command of Russian language.
– OK, Jean. But being a gentleman, will you give me some preferences? I just have not one, but several traumas, which I could tell you about.
– Of course, – Jean laughed and shook his head. You are a woman. Moreover, you are a Russian woman. A Russian woman who is a psychologist-surgeon! Oh! I want details!
They laughed, and it got lighter near the fireplace.
– Then I will tell you the first story, which happened to me at the time when I was especially happy…
Anastasia looked into the cup with cappuccino. The drink was perfectly ready for use. I wish everybody has a motivation like this, she thought.
The smell of coffee and cinnamon was stopping the time, and Anastasia, warming her hands in the embrace of porcelain, wondered what to begin with…
Chapter 2. Angel’s Death
Goldfish Broth
Jean Batist smiled with his cautious smile, poured himself some tea and began to listen to Anastasia carefully.
– What a great meaning has the ritual of sharing food and thirst quenching. As if we not only feed the stomach, but also add some special spice to the soul food. It seems that we not only quench thirst, but also slowly and with pleasure fill with a bracer the vessel of the mind. We can call this a repast, compiled from the temporal and the eternal. This kind of lunch is only possible when the interlocutors are free from the most widespread evil – stupidity. And stupidity is a human evil, eighth sin, I am deeply convinced of that, – Anastasia put her fingers around the porcelain cup and, responding to Jean Batist’s expectations, proceeded with her story.
Fateful nuances comprise our reality like the sand makes up the ocean coast. For example, today, when she decided to talk of a trauma in psychotherapy, an interesting awareness had occurred to her. Anastasia recalled the date, which she usually did not recollect. Almost 13 years ago, on November 20, 2003 she lay on a hospital bed, waiting.
She waited, unable to change anything.
She had waited for two days in a row.
Waited for her child to die.
Her little boy. Her Mishenka.
To die inside her.
To die in her.
And this had brought the understanding that she was dying together with him.
And probably no one would believe, but she had died.
This was an absolute, hundred percent death. Her physical body lay somewhere. Somebody took care of it. Her family. Her mother, husband, friends. Thus she was told afterwards. They told her the same way, as usually a person with amnesia is told. But she herself almost did not remember that time. Probably her Guardian Angel practiced in painting and at some point decided to master the technique of pencil drawing. And in graphic arts curved lines should be periodically erased.
Absurdity of the situation had brought such a compilation of emotions and feelings, that to Anastasia, who was a psychologist at the moment, not yet a surgeon, but already a great experimenter, all this seemed to be a bad dream. Viscous, stifling nightmare as it happens sometimes when you cannot wake up.
Because just yesterday she had been brought by the ambulance to the hospital and was told that her waters had started to break. But, despite such period of pregnancy – 6.5 months – nobody would try to change anything.
Thus she was told.
Nobody would.
Because, from their point of view, the term was too small. The chances that a child could be born alive, in their opinion, also were too small. And anyway, why did she bother them with some stupid junk and diverted the whole medical team from celebrating the anniversary of their best gynecologist. They had got a table set there. Vodka was getting warm. And you, girl, has to hang on, it happens like this. You already have a child.
So. It means that you are lucky.
Others have not got even this.
Everything was happening in such an unreal world, that she took a sharp pain when breathing in and lost her mind when breathing out. She kept breathing this way, filling every cell of her body, spirit and mind with a painful insanity.
It all happened too fast. Just last morning she woke up in an excellent mood. Her caring husband had got their daughter to stay for a while with his mother, who lived in the next building, and went to his work. Anastasia went to the kitchen and came close to the window. She always liked to look through the window.
Outside autumn was getting weird.
On the bank of the river, which flowed under the window, reeds competed with fallen poplar leaves. The reeds tried to show up against the background of already dimming water with a row of brown cobs. It provided a contrast to a slate-gray shade of the river water. The river, in gratitude, added some more profound shades of mercury in the slate-gray color. The leaves of the poplars, sparsely growing along the river bank, were carried away by the breath of the autumn wind and tried to get into water. Their pale yellow worthlessness enlivened the landscape in the most paradoxical way.
Looking into this autumn river-filled November, she wanted to wrap herself up in a plaid and to fall asleep. Till spring. To hibernate for the whole winter as a she-bear. To wake up in spring, give birth to her bear cub and begin living. It would be then, when her Mishenka was born, that the happiness would become absolute and obtain some universal scale.
How else could it be? As so much was already in place for that.
She had a beloved husband, the second one, which meant that with him they should definitely live long, happily and the covers of their coffins would be nailed with one and the same nail. Because with so much love people not only live happily ever after, but also die in one day. This was an obligatory condition.
Her beloved daughter, clever, beautiful, her small panther’s kitten with the name of a goddess, her Diana. Her first husband’s appearance, who looked very much like Steven Seagal, was reflected in Diana by its best features. She was tall, with long, coal-black hair; beautiful, dark hazel, almost black eyes, with ideal face features and a slender figure – Anastasia new that she was growing to be a beauty and a clever girl. With a very kind heart and a delicately organized soul. She was excellent in her studies, was a winner of academic competitions. Kind, sensitive, delicate in her attitude to and her perception of the world, like a crystal bell. What else could a mother dream of?
And her mother dreamed of a brother for her wonderful little daughter. The power of her each previous dreaming was so strong, that all the dreams came true. Every objective had usually been achieved. The desire reigned over the achievement of the goal. So this time also the understanding of her own forcefulness continued to cultivate a selective form of vanity and pride.
She got a great temptation – to feel
