Chapter 36
"You are a boor after all, Vic," Suo stated, sitting at a table across from me in an expensive French restaurant on the outskirts of Paris. "Leaving a woman one minute to get ready is outright boorishness. I would even say—transcendent boorishness!"
"You do have that green bauble, don't you? So I see no boorishness here. Just rational use of available resources," I answered calmly, raising a glass with some expensive wine.
"And next time, I want to leave the choice of dress to myself," she declared with an intonation I didn't understand.
"You didn't bother, so I bothered," I didn't see anything supernatural in this. I'd understand if the size didn't fit, or it sat poorly, or rubbed somewhere, then the complaints would be understandable. "And what exactly doesn't suit you? I spent time, searched, chose exactly what I would like you in. What's wrong?"
"But you could have left the choice of underwear to me," she looked away.
"Did you not like something specific?" I tilted my head to the side.
"Well, no... Everything is very beautiful..." she hesitated with the answer.
"But?"
"I don't like feeling like a doll that has no preferences, taste, and will of its own, which the owner dresses and takes out for a walk!" she finally blurted out what was spinning in her little head. "I am not your slave, I am a woman! A person!"
"What are you talking about right now?" I clarified.
"About the collar!" she exclaimed.
"Not a 'collar,' but a leather neck ornament with a moonstone. It suits you very well, by the way," I answered unperturbedly. In response, I heard a certain inarticulate growl.
My eyebrows flew up on their own, and my eyes widened.
"What?" she clarified suspiciously.
"I thought I was the only one who growled in our family."
"Then you were mistaken," she cut off. "As your beloved Russians say: 'who you hang out with is who you learn from!'"
"I prefer: 'who you hang out with—serves you right!'," bringing my face back to its usual state, I parried. "And why 'beloved Russians'?"
"And who made Dzhugashvili a superhuman? Not you, you're going to say?" I fell silent. Took a napkin and carefully wiped my lips. Then put it aside and without any joke in my eyes looked at her.
"How you know is clear. The question is, does he know?" I asked her.
"He suspects for sure," she sighed. "Especially after your second 'gift'."
"I couldn't do otherwise, Suo. I couldn't..."
* * * Flashback
1941
"The serum..." Abraham sighed, splashing himself another half-finger of whiskey in his glass. "Serum, serum, serum, formula-shmormula! Everyone needs the formula... But that's not my main discovery at all!" I remained silent. He didn't need an interlocutor right now. He needed a listener.
"After all, the most important thing I discovered is..." he took a key out of his pocket and put it on the table. And then pushed it across the table to me. "Do what you want with the formula, Victor. But don't let my life's work be lost! Promise me you won't let it!" with fervor in his gaze, he stared at me, grabbed my hand and put the key in it, then bent my fingers so that the key was clenched in a fist.
I was silent for almost a whole minute, looking down at my fist. Abraham also waited silently.
"I promise," I answered, hiding the key. We didn't bring up any serious topics that evening anymore.
* * *
1948
In one of the banks in Switzerland, a clerk escorted me to the personal anonymous safes, where by the key number, I found the right one.
There was a single folder with papers. Nothing else.
I took it, closed the safe, and at the entrance gave the key to the clerk, closing the storage in this bank. It had fulfilled its task.
* * *
Locking myself in my room in Erik's and my house, I thoughtfully read the contents of the folder left, literally bequeathed to me by my friend. His life's work. A revolution in dietetics.
Abraham was a Genius with a capital G after all. He managed to develop a diet and a set of exercises which, if applied from early childhood, are capable of giving an effect equal to, or maybe even slightly surpassing, the effect of the super soldier formula.
A gift to humanity.
Exactly like that, pretentiously and naively read the inscription on the cardboard cover of the folder. "Geschenk fur die Menschheit" and nothing else.
And I promised to deliver this gift. Nightmare.
In the morning I arrived at the exact same bank and paid for the exact same safe deposit box, into which I again put the folder with contents that were too heavy for me.
For me, but not for another.
* * *
1954
No longer an old man at all, but a strong man full of vigor is sleeping peacefully in his bed. And I stand next to it, look at him and hesitate.
Terrifying to the point of madness. Terrifying not for myself. Terrifying to make a mistake. Terrifying what will happen to this world if I make a mistake.
But I put down the folder with the pretentious and naive title, and next to it a note written on the second half of the sheet left right here several years ago. Written with the same pen and in the same handwriting.
"I am giving this to you."
One short line. That's all there was on that half of the sheet. I thought about the content of the message for three years. Thought. But these few words are all I was capable of. I'm no master of beautiful words.
Well, just try not to justify the trust placed in you!!! Just try, Joseph. Just try...
* * * End of flashback.
"Dzhugashvili is a very dangerous man, Vic," Suo said. "Did you know that he studied magic?"
"I didn't," I answered her honestly.
"He studied. And he was very good at it. And then he became disillusioned and left."
"Studied under you?" I clarified.
"Yes, under me."
"Did we cross paths in Kamar-Taj?"
"As far as I remember, no. He and his comrade Gurdjieff were rather withdrawn young men. Spent almost all their time in the library. Idealists. And then they just left."
"Did you keep an eye on them?"
"Watched over them sometimes. Gurdjieff died in France in '49. He threw himself entirely into mysticism. Communicated with Hitler. Even taught him. Before the war."
"And aren't mysticism and magic the same thing?" I was surprised.
"No. Magic, despite all its accompanying philosophical background, is largely an applied field. Concrete. Mysticism, on the other hand... It is what goes beyond the limits of human life. What exists before birth and after death..."
"I see," I pondered. "So Gurdjieff was a mystic? And Dzhugashvili?"
"Dzhugashvili—an idealist. Dreamed of benefiting the whole world. He didn't find this path in magic. Nor the means of achieving it. In mysticism, as far as I understand, neither."
"That's why he went into politics?"
"Apparently so," she shrugged.
"What do you think his reaction will be when he sees the photos of you and me from the New York Opera?" I pondered.
"Hard to say. He is unpredictable. But, I think there will be no reaction. I am a figure outside of his interests. He knows my tasks, and knows that no one but me can perform them. And these tasks do not intersect with his affairs in any way. But you... He might show interest."
"Who the fuck needs such an interest," I grumbled.
"Alright, the gods be with him, with Dzhugashvili," she sighed and smiled. "Let's enjoy the evening, since you brought me here. And such conversations spoil my appetite. To us?" she raised her glass with a ruby liquid.
"To us," I raised mine in agreement. And what difference does it make that she has pomegranate juice there, and I have wine?
* * *
Read Advanced Chapters on: p@treon/Amiii_
~Every 150 PS = Bonus Chapter!
~Push the Story forward with your [Power Stones]