The chair staggered but, obviously, having read my thoughts on this matter, settled down and restored the balance. Clinging to the shelves and taking risks of getting hit on the head with a box of cassettes apt to fall down, I descended at last from heaven of my wardrobe to earth paved with linoleum. With the grace of a ballerina-suffering-from-radiculitis I stepped over hundreds of shabby books scattered all over the carpet in a hurry. Until now they had been crowding in dense rows on the upper shelves of the wardrobe, but in obedience to my momentary desire to tidy up the room at least once in a hundred years they found themselves on the floor, instantly giving the furnishings impressive and even intelligent appearance. As if some proud Gulliver I jumped over the whole of Paris which was so different for Dumas and Belyaev. Significantly cutting the air flows I rushed to the table, clutching a wonderful finding.
I had been looking for it for several years already. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I had wanted to find it for several years but a single glance at my littery wardrobe was enough to drown out my desire for a few months ahead. And here it was, in a case that looked like a thermos bottle; it was folding, cool and heavy, with a considerable layer of dust covering all those billions of lenses to which there was no access; there were plenty of parts falling off so that you needed to hold them with all the muscles of your eye; - nevertheless, this glass was finally brought to daylight.
Having waited for the night impatiently, having studied the map of the Moon found in the Internet and having already settled down in my thoughts somewhere between the Gulf of Dew and the Sea of Serenity, I equipped myself with the glass and pulled the curtain. Uhuh. Naïve moron... The windows of my room overlooked the wrong side. So much for the Moon and the Bay of Rainbows and the Sea of Tranquility and, personally for me, the Ocean of Idiocy. All you could see from here was the yard, the swings and a house across the street. Having rapped out a proper oath, I sighed hopelessly. But it wasn’t for nothing that I had started an expedition to the window, was it?
I directed the glass to a nearby house. C’mon! Are you kidding me? Exactly the day when I was armed and extremely dangerous all the residents of this typical house on the outskirts of the “Chav” District had decided to withdraw into their bedchamber and fall asleep! Only the windows of the communal hallway were lit, all the rest was a picture of appeasement. All right. I tuned the sharpness so that I could see the tiniest cracks in the steps of the hallway through those goddamn windows.
Silence. The light was steady, nothing was breaking into it. The doors were standing frozen on the landings. Blackish peepholes were staring out of the doors. Probably right now there was somebody behind one of these peepholes peering intensely. Probably somebody behind one of these doors was lurking in the darkness feeling his own heart beating desperately. Probably there was emptiness behind one of these doors. Probably physical one. Probably spiritual one. Another couple of minutes like this, I suspected, would drive me mad from tension. I felt unutterably eerie. What if I see something wrong, something I shouldn’t see? It was an ordinary piffle taken from horror films but I recoiled from the window and drew the curtain back. Pretend to be content with what I’ve got? Thanks, but I’d rather find a way to look at the Moon.
