Life in writing

Konstantin Pavlovich no longer hoped that he would be able to save mankind from the power of blindness with the help of mathematics. He began to study this blind power. He was convinced that in the twentieth century probability theory could change the whole picture of the world in science. But the passion with which he was engaged in this theory, strangely mixed feeling of longing. Self-defense, neutral zone, saving distance allowed him to quietly meet the blows, which, since childhood, consisted of life...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, in order I will tell you about it and about our acquaintance. It began, we can say, by chance, although Elizaveta Nikolaevna not only knew for a long time about my works, but even copied some of them. One day, on her way home late at night, she hurt her leg, kicked her leg open, and, as it turned out the next day, torn her ligaments in her ankle. Helpless, barely got to the bench in Alexander Square, and then I literally stumbled upon it in the dark. I ran to the cabbage market, and two cab men carried it to my apartment...

There are days when I ask myself if I had a dream about all this - Petrograd, Isaac, white nights, a dress not from someone else's shoulder (I was robbed and I walk here God knows what), the opportunity not to think about tomorrow's lunch? You - I have no doubt about it - have been, are and will be. But was I on my trip to Kazan and how could it happen that I left without saying goodbye to you? Oh, how much I demanded from life then, how pampered, capricious, proud I was! Or was I then - me, and...

He received several letters from Lisa immediately after her departure from Kazan and returned them without printing them out. He didn't want to know more about her - now it was his turn to return her unopened letters. She dumped him, and she was fine! True, it happened to him for the first time in his life, "but maybe - he thought with coldness, which was (he knew it) comforting, pretend - will happen again and again. But not with coldness, but with rage he asked himself: what made him rush to Petrograd in the midst of urgent matters? Insulted self-love? Yes, maybe...

The past flew away swiftly, irrevocably. Life, cut off from everyday life, broke into a small apartment in the Hospital, all in its own way, forcing Karnovsky to quit for a while the master's exams, because there were fights with "hustlers", who announced that the capital of the "Ural-Volga states" is located in one of the city districts, behind the dirty little channel Bulak. In June 1918, he left for Moscow with his mother and girls: the Czechoslovak Corps went up the Volga River and was not far from Kazan...