Why Anfisa Forget All. Or Just The drunk book

Translator Miya Mo

Editor Privy Advisor

© Anna Delenn, 2020

© Miya Mo, translation, 2020

ISBN 978-5-4498-6052-1

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Foreword

Sometimes it seems to us that reality is what it really is. Or maybe reality is what we really want? And what can we want and what do our desires and wishes consist of? If we look at every moment of a tiny desire, then it turns out that desire is a need, without which we cannot move on to our main desire. But what is desire?

Thinking about this, ideas come to me that true desire is only a state of goodness, silence, happiness. And it doesn’t matter how it was achieved. This is a moment between the past and the future, in which lies the elusive mystery of being. Each such moment advances us towards awareness, despite the piles of endless memories of already non-existent realities.

In this book, I described the condition of a girl who is afraid to dream. And once she allowed herself to dream, she found herself in constantly changing stories. Since these fantasies already lived in her head, situations developed faster than she had time to think. And so her dreams are already an established reality.

Chapter 1: Station

Hurry – rather not be too late… Running around puddles and people, Anfisa ran faster and faster. Recall – recall the city in which she was going to come, but what is it called?…Creamy Shores or what?…She must run! She cannot stop and look at her ticket. She has no time.

Maybe Lucy, my girlfriend, remembers. She remembers everything.

– Lucy, hello! Where am I going? – Anfisa asked in a hurry.

– You’re back for the old!? To Sunny Beach or the North Valley, – said Lucy and she got off the phone.

Oh Yes! Exactly! Running into the station platform, Anfisa saw a train. Here it is, my train!

– Where is my ticket? – surprised Anfisa. – Probably in my purse! Where is my purse? It’s not here. I don’t have it!

Anfisa looked around. There is only a huge old suitcase standing next to her, and as addition to it, grandfather’s boots and an old mother’s fur coat on her.

– I told my mother for a long time: Throw away that old fur coat, you always keep old stuff! – grumbled Anfisa. After searching in her pockets, she found a ticket for the tram. – Oh, I got this ten-years-old ticket and the number on it is lucky. Okay, I’ll check it later.

– So where is my ticket?” – excited Anfisa. – Time is running out and the train is about to leave.

Seeing the train conductor, she ran to him and panted, asked:

– Dear, you know, I have such a situation. Here is the train, I need to get on!

– Your ticket! – He said in a stern voice. – You all have a situation!!! Your ticket.

– You know…, – mumbled Anfisa.

– Ma’am, where are you going?”

– To Sunny Shores!

– This train goes to Tyumen.

– Oh, for sure! I just forgot the name.

– You won’t go anywhere without a ticket, and yours is only suitable for the tram, and even then it is ten years ago.

The train started moving and Anfisa, standing on the platform, watched as people jump into the train cars. – Why can’t I? – she muttered to herself. – Oh, I can’t with this heavy fur coat and a suitcase. They are so heavy, and even these huge grandfather’s boots too. I’m so tired, I better to sit down on a bench.

The train, gaining speed, went further and further. And Anfisa didn’t even have the strength to be upset, she only remembered the inscription on the last train car, Grandmother’s Village.

And now she seemed to understand everything. After all, everything is logical: boots, an old suitcase, mother’s fur coat, a ticket for the tram with a happy number 771199.

– When was it? – began to recall Anfisa. – Ten years ago. I was only fifteen. My mom and I probably went for a present for me. It was winter… Yes, I remember this mother’s fur coat…it‘s cold…the tram… a birthday present. This was probably the year when I really wanted a new phone with a flashlight. But it was a terrible day, and that stupid birthday!

– Enough! I don’t want to remember this anymore! And indeed it was not then. Then when?

– But the ticket is happy!

– I remembered it now! Exactly, it was on the eve of the new year. My mother and I went to buy gifts, there was a terrible snowstorm. Mom grumbled all the way at me and there was a moment when I understood everything. It’s snowstorm, it’s cold, and I’m wearing a short trendy jacket, which I traded from a girl from another school, giving her my long awful coat!

– Yes, I understood everything. I was very cold and did not want any gifts, nothing, just to go home, under a warm blanket… Then I became very sick with a sore throat. Everything was horrible. I don’t even remember the new year.

– So, the ticket? – the chatter did not subside in Anfisa’s head. – Where is my ticket now? And where am I going in my mother’s fur coat and grandfather’s boots? And what is in this suitcase? Maybe there’s an answer to my long-standing question: Why am I so unhappy that I can’t even go on vacation normally?!

– How tired I am and hungry. And where am I now? How did I get here? – She looked to the left and saw the train station. – Yes exactly. I’ll go eat something. Where is my purse? There is money and a ticket should be there, probably. Oh yes, I don not have it. What to do then?

Anfisa lowered her eyes to the floor and there bill in a thousand were stuck under the leg of the bench she sits on.

– Oh wow, everything is perfect! So this is what the lucky ticket is about! It was not in vain that I found it, which means that the fur coat on me is not just by mistake! Of course it is old and too big a little bit.

– When is my vacation? – She reasoned with herself. – In summer! And I’m in a fur coat. Hmmm… horror! How hungry I am, I can’t think of anything else now! Food, and then everything else! Now I have enough for food and a new ticket. Oh, I am saved! Luck and blessing have always accompanied me through life!

– I’m so happy! But people around me not so…they are so gloomy, they all fuss, they run somewhere and everywhere, they invent all kinds of nonsense. Such a nightmare!

Chapter 2: Coffee Shop

– Food-food… – With these words Anfisa got up from the bench and wandered off to look for a coffee shop. – What a strange day! Where do they eat here? I’ll find pointers. There is a waiting room over there and the dining room is to the right.

Entering the dining room she stood in line.

– Excuse me, Sir, are you the last?

– Yes!

For Anfisa everything here looks like in her former school cafeteria: the choice of menu is limited, the smell is peculiar, large tables, a lot of people and just as noisy. Such a strange and already forgotten sensation.

– I have to make a choice, what will I eat? – Anfisa asked herself and immediately answered. – I’ll probably take the soup and that salad.

– Girl, have you chosen? – the cashier asked.

– Yes, please, pea soup and carrot salad, as well as black tea. – Anfisa replied.

– Eight hundred and fifty.

– How much? So much? I don’t have enough for a ticket!!

– Take it or not? – the cashier said roughly.

– Yes! – Answered Anfisa holding out a crumpled bill found under the bench leg.

Anfisa picked up a tray of food and went to look for a table. But unfortunately all the tables were occupied! What to do? Yeah, there, at the end of the big dining room, one elderly man was sitting at the table. Hoping that he would not refuse her, Anfisa went there.

– Hello. May I sit here at your table?

– Hello dear. Have a seat young lady!

– Thanks! My name is Anfisa! – Anfisa said affably.

– Well, what a weird name! In now days you don’t understand anything. The soup is tasteless, the clothes are terrible. Can’t figure out which are the boys? Which are the girls? And the names are just a nightmare. I’m just Sergey Alexandrovich. Anfisa, from Egypt or what? – muttered the man.

He continued grumbling… while Anfisa silently ate her soup and hardly even listened to him thinking to herself.

– How difficult for such an old one to understand that everything has been changed for a long time. Enough to live with the old concepts! After all, you have to live here and now!

Having finished the soup and leaning on the back of the chair, she realized that she really felt good!

– Girl, what do you say about this? – Sergey Alexandrovich asked Anfisa.

– What?

– About the times! Here you are, for example, dressed as an astronaut. Iron is polished like a mirror, huge boots. You don’t look like a girl! In my days, girls wore dresses, and young people in suits!

– Why am I as an astronaut? I’m in my mother’s fur coat. – Anfisa thought in surprise.

– Are you talking to me right now? – She asked him while looking around.

– Everyone has strange clothes, I saw this only in cheap fantasy TV shows.

– Interesting, but how do I look? – And looking down at her legs, Anfisa saw quite, to put it mildly, strange boots and everything else as he had just said.

– But, I looked cool! I just had to tell him something, but I do not know what! I need to come up with a beautiful story, so I won’t fall face down into the mud, muttering another absurdity!

Chapter 3: Sixth Planet

– You know, we’re at the train station right now, right? – clarified Anfisa on the go, thinking of what would happen next.

– Yes, – Sergey Alexandrovich agreed.

– I’m dressed like this because I’m waiting for my interstellar passenger spacecraft to fly to another planet, Epirus! This is the sixth plan from the solar system.

– I think we are at the train station and some spacecrafts come here!?

– A train will arrive for the passengers for the spaceship to take them to the space shuttle and then to the space port which is in orbit of the earth.

– What size spaceship?

– A huge spaceship, about eight hundred people! – Yes, everything became clear for Anfisa at this moment.

– How much does a ticket cost? How long to fly? – Sergei Alexandrovich did not let up.

Anfisa went into herself again, pondering her answers: – Oops, what should I answer him? Hmm, if the soup now cost as much as eight hundred and fifty, then it means going to the nearest resort for about sixty thousand, and flying to another system probably sixty million, oh! So I’m a millionaire! Probably an important person! What am I doing? Need to think about what I dreamed of as a child. Become an actress or writer? Let be the actress!

And so, after a pause, she was ready to answer with dignity.

– A ticket there costs about sixty million, this is for VIP person, the regular ticket will be cheaper! Fly usually takes a week!

– Seven days!? What to do there for a whole week?

– On the spaceship, all sorts of entertainment for every taste! Just a holographic deck itself! A bunch of restaurants. It will not be boring!

– Wow! And what is a holographic deck?

– It’s a place the size of a tennis court.

– I want to get there too!

– You keep dreaming and don’t hesitate! Everything is possible and you will succeed!

– Always dreamed of flying to another planet on a spaceship! And what is this deck for? Also tell me about yourself, about the planets and where have you been?

The fantasies of Anfisa seemed limitless, in her imagination she saw endless stories about space, about new people, about others from other planets, about herself, what could be her life!

– That was ten years ago. I really wanted to be an actress. I also really liked to come up with all sorts of stories about everything I saw! Do you understand me?

– Of course I understand you! In my childhood I just never stopped dreaming.

– So, dreams come true! – Continued to fantasize Anfisa. – Mom drove me to an interview in one creative studio. There they saw special talents in me and immediately offered to engage in acting. I was happy! Three times per week I went there. Almost immediately, participated in many performances, tried different roles. All that came to me in my fantasies, I was reliving segments of absolutely different lives on stage. At such moments I was so happy that every minute was a great blessing, as the most precious jewel that cannot be measured!

– Five years later, I was noticed by one famous director and offered a role in a film about other worlds, in a science fiction series. There I played the role of an ambassador from the earth. I had a lot of emotional experiences then! And everything turned out perfectly!

For a few minutes Anfisa felt like a star! Such as always wanted!

– So maybe it is? – Anfisa asked herself. – It’s just a strange day, I just forgot everything! I heard that this happens in people when they work a lot and sleep a little!

– You are so happy! – interrupted her thoughts Sergey Alexandrovich. – I’m thinking why didn’t I do anything like that for myself? To live a lifetime and never try for a minute or at least to wish myself a gift for myself!…

The old man sobbed with bitter tears from the realization of an aimlessly lived life.

– My dear Sergey Alexandrovich. I beg you, calm down, you are still alive! So you have the opportunity at least once to do what you dreamed about! Are you ready to listen further?

– Yes, dear! Forgive me! – he cheered up.

– I haven’t been on Epirius yet! I only know that there are creamy shores and a lot of butterflies. I managed to visit the planet Pyatisolnts, it is beautiful and fabulous. It is located on the fifth plan from the solar system and this planet has its own five suns. I call it Sunny Valley! It is inhabited by very cute little creatures that look like people.

Some like flying elves, some like gnomes. They are kind and friendly. On this planet it is very hot and there is only water in the caves, but it is terribly cold in those caves. People there organized a resort for themselves. They built a huge dome right in the middle of the planet. And, imagine, the planet is flat as a pancake. And what is there on the other side, no one knows or they don’t tell.

In the guidebook, of course, legends are described about strange, three-legged creatures that live without light in water or on land. The question is, can they get on the bright side? And why can’t we talk about them? And how are they dangerous? A lot of questions… They say that those creatures can penetrate the bright side through springs in caves only once a year, when five suns go down.