Look at the sky

Today is warm and sunny. I am standing on the bank of the river and looking into the distance. Several days have passed since we returned from Tomsk. I did not call Alexander on principle because actually I had no reason to explain myself to him. I waited till a genuine and kind man with whom we had been striving for our success for half a year already would be reborn in Alexander. The telephone rang – I could not hear Alexander’s voice at first. He apologized to me, saying that he himself did not know how that could have happened to him. He said that he had gone to church, had a talk with the priest and that the priest had forgiven him for that bad behavior (!) and added that we should proceed with our affairs…

It seemed that the call was kind of salvation. I agreed. Though thoughts like flies continued whirling in my head. “Ha-ha, – I thought – is it possible indeed that an ordinary priest in a church can forgive a man for bad behavior? Even not knowing what that man had actually done? If so, then such kind of behavior is acceptable, isn’t it? Not clear”

Gradually I was forgetting that incident and we continued working with renewed vigour. I wanted very much to get my labour and time spent bring results. For all that time I could not forget professor Butanovich, the way he worked with the pendulum. From time to time I conducted experiments with the pendulum at home. The professor as well as the books and the Internet told me that it was not allowed to ask the pendulum (or the subconcsiousness, or the “information forces”, or the “Earth’s poles” – still I did not whom I talked to) about whatever I wanted. I was not allowed to ask questions which had obvious answers, or to use the received information to cause harm to anybody or for profit. And I asked questions about the future, asked for permission to undertake some actions, wondered about the prospects of my and Alexander’s project. The pendulum did give me answers. It seemed to me that every time I talked to the pendulum the impulses making the pendulum sway in my hand became more and more sensitive to me. Sometimes, however, the replies differed from those that I expected from the pendulum, or over time they even tended to change. How was I supposed to explain that? It seemed as if either the future events were inclined to change depending on the present or it was just a big delirium of mine associated with the way I lived, saw and heard… I did not know why but right now the pendulum did not give me “yes” to the question about the eventual success in my and Alexander’s affairs. I never told Alexander about my experiments and the answers I got from the pendulum.

Let me skip some moments from my life. I am in Moscow now, in the capital of Russia. One more thing has been done. One more coin was dropped into the moneybox. I am holding the documents in my hand: a charter, a certificate, a bank statement, a tax statement. Yes, our dream seems to have come true! We have officially registered a commercial enterprise! With an office in Moscow! Two founders – Vasily Torpaev and Alexander Smelov. 42% of the authorized capital stock belong to me. For me it was like a holiday! Alexander and I had been living in Moscow for a month already and nothing reminded us of that unpleasant incident form the past, but… That very evening, however, when we were invited to celebrate the successful registration of the enterprise that alcohol-involved incident repeated with a much stronger effect. It happened in the presence of our future partners – well-known and esteemed people. Alexander’s metamorphosis from an intelligent man into the “state of nothing” took him only half an hour from the beginning of the event. For half an hour Alexander managed to get drunk and already was off to the races: he swore, crashed into the tables with dishes upon them, pestered the people around us, shouted obscenities at those people on whom, maybe, our future activity and the realization of our projects depended… A sound of a broken glass and the imminent scandal were enough to get us kicked out of the restaurant. Throwing us out they threatened us not to appear there ever again and promised to tell others of the incident just to warn them to keep away from us… Within thirty minutes all what we had done so far was practically cancelled: tremendous efforts and time spent for the project’s sake.

“Why?…” – I asked one and the same question to myself recalling the answers the pendulum had given to me a month before.

“Quit it all and go back to your family, – I thought, – right now, rush to the airport…”

I felt that I had no power and opportunities left. The exasperating point was that I simply could not tell anyone why all of a sudden everything had got ruined – neither to my family nor to my friends. The emotions were inside me, but in public I had to look as though the things were good. And they were, indeed. Until then…

The middle of autumn. The weather in October is unexpectedly warm in Perm Region. I still could not understand what all those events that were happening to me could mean. The talented people whose acquaintance I was lucky to have made continue to believe in me and Alexander but it seems that the rumours about the incident in Moscow had reached their ears too. Alexander called me once and told me that it had been his fault and he was sorry and promised that nothing of the kind would ever happen again…

My attitude towards him was not the same as it was when we had started our cooperation, and he is well aware of that, but at the same time Alexander knows that it was not easy to me either and that at his “invitation” I had left my former job. Yet, I do not know whether he cares for my life, for the lives of those who believed in us?…All of a sudden Mr. Smelov has put forward a new idea:

– Let us, – he says – go to the professor and ask him using his skills in geology, topography and the capabilities of the pendulum, of course, to search on the map for, say, old hoards, lost caches which could be hidden not too far from here. We would find, say, a small pot of gold or silver and use it as a seed capital.

“Where would such a mad idea finally take us, I wonder” – I thought.

We called professor Butanovich and told him of our idea. It turned out, however, that for weeks professor had been marking on the map the places of hidden old hoards asking the pendulum to tell him how much and what exactly was there in the hoards, what kind of coins they were – golden or silver, how deep in the earth they were buried, whether they were accessible or not in case the territory of burial had been turned into a private property and, say, a house had been built on it, etc.

I understood that searching for buried treasures was not quite what Alexander and I had always planned to do but considering the desperate situation of mine I could not back down: either I had to go till the end or to publicly admit that I was a complete idiot to have committed myself to a crazy alcoholic-hermit.

So here it is – we are in the professor’s office.

“Well, – I thought – since I have come to the professor I should get some points clarified regarding the pendulum”.

I told Butanovich of my home experiments with the pendulum and let him know that whenever I asked questions to the pendulum I always felt feedback and that those were natural feelings that could not be compared to anything. The professor smiled and, perhaps, by that smile he admitted that those feelings were no longer something individual.

– Well, I see now that I am not the only otherwordly one, – Butanvich said, – let us try to find some hoard together then!

The professor and I bent over the map. Everything was going well. Irrespective of whose hand it was to hold the pendulum – mine or the professor’s – it showed the same precise results. First, the professor asked the pendulum a question and then I verified the received reply. We needed to find the simplest but not very remote place for searching treasures. The process was happening just in front of my eyes: like an understudy I felt and practically foresaw even without the pendulum those places, which the professor was trying to find out on the map with the help of the pendulum. A couple of hours later we already had a map of the suburb with the marked coordinates of the potential hoards and their brief description: the year when a hoard was buried, the circumstances of its burial and its contents…

Our attention was caught by several hoards located almost next to each other. The professor learned from the pendulum that several centuries before near the modern city a road of rich merchants with caravans had passed and the merchants used to stop there to spend a night. Because of the fear of being robbed some of the merchants sometimes buried their money, precious jewels, silver utensils next to the stopping place. Some part of the treasures, however, was never claimed. It seemed that the professor wanted to make the most of the pendulum: how many coins were there in the hoards, what they were put in (a jar or a pot, wrapped in a mat or packed in some other way), under which circumstances the hoards were buried, if some murder had ever been committed because of the hoards…

Finally, everything was ready: maps, GPS coordinates, laptop, metal detector, shovel and our pirate mood, of course! We went there the following day at dawn. The bus stop was eight kilometers from the place and it took us two hours to reach there. A clearing that we saw in front did remind us, though remotely, of the old stopping place of merchants. We set to work immediately. The professor had already got the pendulum to clearly indicate the area where we were supposed to dig. Having turned the metal detector on, we walked all over but the device was silent.