CHASING SHADOWS So here is the Third Ring Road. Yaroslav Station is just around the corner. My brain is no longer being stoked with opium fuel. The agonies are beginning, the precursor to abstinence, to put it in medical terms, when the body loses the last glow from the dying embers of that very thing. I urgently need another dose, but I, Peter Petrovich Parfenchikov, have run out. With the last remnants of willpower I suppress my desperate craving for the enchanting bloom. I am suffering a coughing attack, my mouth is filling with saliva, my nose is running, my eyes are watering, and beads of sweat are popping out on my forehead. My undershirt and shirt are sticking to my back. My socks are damp, it feels as though I have been walking through puddles. My stomach hurts, my heart feels heavy, my pulse has quickened, my eyes are clouding over, and a stubborn thought bores into my mind, “If only I can hold out another thirty minutes or so. Otherwise my withdrawal symptoms threaten to knock me flat right here in the street. I might find myself in the hospital suffering from horrendous convulsions or kicking the bucket in hellish torment without fulfilling my promise to myself: to leave this detestable Moscow and finally attain freedom!” I look out of the window. The gray May morning nods despondently at me with a frown. Drizzle falls silently on the windscreen, fragmenting my moribund thoughts even more. My mind is becoming increasingly impartial, I seem to have lost it altogether. Only fragments of earlier experiences flash chaotically before my eyes. Now I assiduously wipe the sweat from my forehead with a satin handkerchief and greedily chew on it, hoping to deaden the pain of abstinence, now the five-cubic syringe of morphine does not have a needle and is impossible to find… In a kind of profound frenzy I try unsuccessfully to stick it with all my might into my vein. The fight with my unyielding body finally gets the better of me. I am covered in blood… Suddenly I find myself in a poppy field. I am surrounded by the cherished plant as far as the eye can see. The size of a fist, it stands tall, its blooms with their yellowish, white-blue petals are driving me crazy; I have this overwhelming desire to eat them until I burst. But I am helpless, my arms are tightly clamped to my thighs. I want to break off the heads with my teeth and chew them as quickly as possible, enjoying the wondrous milk, feeling the luxurious high, but my mouth will not open. My teeth are clenched as though pinched closed by an overwhelming weight. Damnation!. At that moment, the scene changes. Not understanding what is happening, I lose my last sense of reason, I am on the brink of insanity. I swallow codeine pills by the fistful, but the withdrawal symptoms do not abate. Usually five or six pills not only relieve me of the agonies, they provide quite a reasonable high. But now I feel nothing! My agony not only continues, it is getting worse. I am feeling worse and worse. Now I no longer feel human. I have become a faceless, senseless, unrecognizable creature. “Is this really me? Is it me? Me?” Parfenchikov harped on to himself in confusion. His state was becoming intolerable. At this juncture it should be noted that Peter Petrovich had the habit of thinking about himself now in the third, now in the first person. Incidentally, this was not the only strange thing about him. Thank goodness that a new topic distracted him from his awful conclusions, otherwise he would have driven himself to complete hysterics with his questioning. .
