Pankratus

Our teacher of geography some time conducted a lesson, and then has suddenly told: - Today is a bad day... - Why? - The class has become interested, rejoicing possibilities to distract from her boring retelling of the textbook. It has appeared that on Sunday one pupil of our school, who for some years was more senior than we were, went to the zoo. There he has got through a fencing and has started to tease a tiger sitting in a cage. In the same cage there also was a tigress. Some time she observed of his actions, then, suddenly having jumped, has seized the boy by jeans and, without allowing escape, began to gnaw his hand. The passing by woman has seen this and has fainted.

The tigress has bitten off an arm and has released her victim. People have come running. The victim was brought to hospital. The local newspapers have written about that that has occurred. After any time the one-armed boy has appeared at school, drawing to itself inquisitive glances of children. He tried not to pay attention to us, as though it happens nothing. Everything has ended - and has begun in another way - when at our school stadium passed games in football. The one-armed boy wanted to play football with us, but the trainer has forbidden him to participate, having told: "- Well, where you such, without a hand?" After that the guy has left his house. His mother, who was our school cleaner, has sobbed out all her tears. The pupils of senior classes, having obeyed to her entreaties, have checked up local reservoirs, but hadn't found the body. Therefore mother believed that her son is alive. As, together with his disappearance, some money was gone from the house. Since then the disappeared person became my constant mental interlocutor. I have learned that he was on the tramp on the country, has passed all Siberia, from Novosibirsk to settlement Seymchan of the Magadan area. He has lost almost all his teeth. When there was money he drank vodka, but more frequently read the books and dreamed violently about anything. Then he has lodged in a village where, on an attic of his house, has found a library of ancient books, left by someone, including literature on History and Philosophy. He worked hard in the garden, as his mutilation has allowed to him, and read Plato, Herodot and Pliniy, making extracts from their books. He periodically informed me about the thoughts arising on his mind during reading. This person called Pankratus. One day he has died, having clamped in hands the book of "Dialogues" by Plato. His dead eyes have been widely opened, and the drooped, toothless jaw was allocated with a black hole on his yellow withered face. He has died because of a poisoning with carbonic oxide, being sleeping. He only has fallen asleep and practically at once has appeared in emptiness. It was his good luck, so a patient, especially oncological one, try to suffer a pain at first, then squall, strain a voice and dies of painful shock, and there remains nothing to his relatives/ but to shout together with him. Such very often happens in Russia. But Pankratus had no relatives. He had only a unique mental illusive interlocutor, and it was me. He was very happy person. It is strange that people stack the grown numb dead persons in boxes, lower them in deep crude holes and fill up with heavy blocks of the earth. Then the earth will crush a coffin and a tomb will fall. But, nevertheless, we continue to talk with them.