Having found refuge in a corner, Roll was now listening to the daily quarrelling of his mother and the father. When this relaxed for a while, the boy would play with his soldiers. "I cannot understand why mum and dad live like this, torturing themselves!" kept on thinking the boy. Roll looked at Murka, the cat who was resting peacefully. "Cats do not have this kind of problems. It would be great if people could learn to live like cats".

He always looked at cats as if they were extraterrestrials, totally uninvolved in human worries. Cats never started wars, never went to work and certainly never made families. As for dogs, these were a totally different kettle of fish and their life was hideous. Unlike cats, they had to play with humans and depended too much on people. Cats, on the other hand, did not have to obey anyone, they were fully independent.

"Murka also had her kittens. She devoured two of them, and mother drowned all the others, but one. This, indeed, had been a fast way of solving the problem. When the kitten who had survived grew up, she started to push it away from her. Different people have different ways of living and yet they are all burdened with all sorts of problems" taught Roll.

 He imagined a fantastic world, where only cats would live many lives. Here his Murka would have been the queen of all the cats. This world had neither problems nor stupid worries. He reflected that this cat had been teaching him how to approach life correctly.  

Pots of flowers were standing on the windowsills: ficuses, aloe and others. Roll often played amongst these flowers, imagining that he was in the jungle. He thought that flowers were even wiser than cats. Flowers had no problems at all, they were placid and happy. Roll loved to talk to them, imagining being himself a flower or a tree standing in the sun. 

Stones, cupboards, chairs and beds were really mysterious beings for him. These, simple witnesses of all happenings, would silently watch everything. He looked at the cupboard that reflected Murka and part of the room.  The cupboard looked as though it was smiling and seemed to understand Roll's thoughts: "One day I shall become just like this cupboard and shall not worry when mum and dad end up in an argument again; I shall not worry when dad will throw away my books and toys" dreamt Roll.

 “Mum, why did you choose this kind of man to be my father?” asked the boy at dinner as soon as the drunkard father had at long last settled down and had fallen asleep.

“How could I guess that he would become like this?” answered the woman in tears.

Roll recollected the way his mother argued and came to the conclusion that she indeed was rather ignorant. "She didn't know that I would become such a good for nothing and a fool” he thought, chewing macaroni and bits of cutlet. “Surely, since they make the same mistakes over and over again, most people do not think anything at all.”

 As it happened, many times throughout his whole life, he would come to the conclusion that this thought was quite correct and that, of all people surrounding him, he was the only one who gave life some thoughts.  As for others, most of them recurred to already made answers suited for all situation, although no one knew who had invented them.

Roll refused to live in this way, and thus decided to live in a different way, for instance, in the way Murka, the flowers or the cupboard lived; by imitating their way of living and learning from them, he would live better and without worries. 

Caught in these thoughts he walked downstairs, to the sixth floor, to Maxim with whom he often played. Maxim's parents often quarrelled too and did not understand each other. 

“Shall we live as our parents?” asked Roll. Maxim, unlike his friend, did not seem to be too concerned with this problem.

“No, I would hate to go from home to the plant, as my father does” said Maxim. “I would rather be a cosmonaut. My father’s job at the plant is extremely boring. He once told me that he had dreamt of becoming a pilot, but had become a worker instead. I think this is very uninteresting” 

Roll thought that becoming a pilot or a cosmonaut was probably rather difficult as so few people could manage it. Perhaps there was some secret attached to this, of which most people were probably unaware. Only after many years Roll understood that the majority of people are lazy, stupid and diffident. They just do not give a toss to long lasting and goal oriented efforts that could make them become somebody. After chatting for a while, the boys came out on the landing between floors and began to play blind’s man bluff with Jury and Sanja Matantsz. Sanja started to count so to choose who would be the blind. 

“Three knives were dropped from the third floor” he began “ One red, one yellow and one blue, choose the one you like”.

 Roll thought, that people often rely upon a lucky incident.

An incident, however, can very seldom be lucky, not more than a lottery ticket. Surely, this is why people do not reach success. Roll ended up being the blind in the game. He was blindfolded, turned around several times and, after everyone run away, began to look for the other boys following only his instinct.

"My mum must have found my father in this way! This is why everything is so bad now!" thought Roll. 

At that age he didn't yet know that all people walk in darkness and take whatever they find. No wonder, as no one had ever taught them how to analyze and select.

All of a sudden Roll felt a blow in his face. He thought that somebody was teasing him yet, when a second later  another blow landed on his forehead. he took off the folder and saw that Mishka, a local hooligan, had come upon him and had begun to hit him. 

“What are you peeping at?” he had said, putting the blind folder back “Now you look for me!”

Hooligans seem to be a special kind of people. They are strong, lucky and independent.

Roll would have liked to be one of them, but it was very difficult for him, as he lacked their inner power and determination. Much later, he understood that these hoodlums were simple people endowed with a stronger willpower, who had grown up too fast. Indeed, when their individuality had began too develop, many of them had been victims of their mothers’ influences, and had gone to the bottom of society because of their harmful habits. Only those who remained wise and strong inside managed to become heads of the mafia.

“Hey, Roll!” said Micha, speaking through his nose “Give me all your coins, otherwise I'll beat your nose out of shape!” he added. Roll reached for his pockets, found something and gave it to Micha.

Hoodlums were for him like guides of the Cosmic Power, who gave him great Knowledge. Roll thought that this was how people were intimidated and pushed into doing whatever strong people wanted.

Fear, indeed, was a powerful emotion, hard to overcome. One could do anything under the spell of fear: "If I ever could conquer fear, I would be like Micha". Roll imagined himself as a strong armed hooligan, who did whatever he chose and capable of scaring everyone else. 

Right at that moment he heard something. Roll became fearful as he thought that Micha was coming back. "My dreams were so sweet, and now they have disappeared, and only dirt is left!"  he recited, remembering some of Pushkin verses. No, it was not Micha, it was Andrey, his neighbour, who was three years older than him. He had brought some wrappers of chewing gum and was showing them to his friends. At that time, as chewing gums were not ready available, all boys thought that these wrappers were of great value. Indeed there were only few around as they were goods imported into Russia.          

 “Well, would you like too buy some wrappers?” asked ‘Murik’, which was Andrey's nickname in the yard. 

As Roll didn't want to let others buy the wrappers, he agreed to buy them all. He took the wrappers, went home and took some money from his mother’s pocket. Then, saying that he was going for a walk, returned to the yard.  Everyone else envied Roll for having the wrappers and look enviously at their bright pictures. With Roll's money Murik bought some ice cream and began to leak it greedily. Roll wanted some ice cream too, but he had no money for it. He looked at his wrappers and even smelled them. The smell was delicious, but he could not chew them. At this moment, a strange idea came to his mind: had he done something right in buying the wrappers? Could it be that they were just illusory valuables like stamps, badges and match boxes? "What would Murka say about it?" This indeed was a question Roll often asked himself.  

Estimating life from the cat's viewpoint sobered him up.

Both for Murka and himself the ice cream was better than those wrappers, but for the ficus and the cupboard even he was of no interest at all. These were much more detached from life than he and Murka were.

"When I will grow up, I will build a factory to make wrappers and will become a millionaire” dreamt Roll “I will buy a mountain of ice cream. Then nobody would deceive me with this bullshit". But then he could not see that the whole world is founded on illusory values, that there are people in facts understand it well: life is made up of illusions!

With the other boys they went go to the garages; they jumped from one garage to another. An old and feeble-looking man started to tell them off and even threatened them with his walking stick, grumbling: “Hey you, young hooligans, why don't you  sit calmly?”   

Roll thought that if this old man would have jumped with them over the garages, he would not have been so feeble and unhealthy. People become sick because they think it shameful to run and jump, and they are too lazy to take up some sport.  Indeed, this is why there are so sick. He recollected that his mother always scolded him with similar words: “Sit down, or better lie down. Stop running around!”

Roll remembered his early childhood, when it was still possible to discern his capabilities and development. When swaddled, he felt chained, shackled and unable to move about. This must be why many young men end up having all sorts of diseases. This is why they grow up weak and crippled. 

At school Roll was asked to sit hours on end and listen to a lot of rubbish and nonsense, instead of running about and jumping, and to develop as all animals do. Perhaps all people’s problems were due to the fact that they had too much energy that got to their heads, making them crazy and capable only to invent horrible bombs to crack the planet in thousands bits. 

Soon after playing around and running, all the children had gathered together by the main door and Murik had began to tell them scary stories. 

“Somewhere there is a pit and on its bottom there is something strange, capable of causing death. Whoever casts a glance inside this pit dies on the spot. A man looked down the pit and died. Scientists cut down the membrane of his eyes and managed to develop it to see what he had been looking at in the last minutes of his life. One scientist looked at the membrane and death started to come upon him. Then he ate the membrane, he just swallowed it, so that no one else would set eyes on it, and died.” 

It was getting dark under the main door and these stories were making the children scared. It felt as if something horrible might happen all of a sudden.

Roll returned home in this state of mind. His cat Murka was lying peacefully and afraid of nothing. Only he, Roll was scared because of his sick fantasy.

"How greatly can imagination fool people and make them scared like rabbits!” thought Roll “How much evil does imagination bring to us!”

He undressed and made himself ready to go to sleep. The room was full of darkness. Roll, resting on his back, began to look at the ceiling where coloured spots were floating and turning about, looking like northern lights. 

Upon waking up the next morning, Roll felt a pain in the chest: he had to go to school.

"Why should I do it? What the point of going to school? They can not teach me anything at all. I am just loosing the best years of my life there, that’s all! All those schools and high schools, what a lot of rubbish, they are just rubbish; they do not give people anything! Just a waste of time! Well, take my father for example, he has two diplomas and gets 120 roubles a month. Mum, on her side, chews the rag:

“You earn too little money! Look at uncle Kolja. He earns 300 roubles. Look at Aljoshka, our neighbour, a good for nothing, he works officially nowhere, but has more than 1000 roubles. You should not sit in your institute, but learn to live properly.

Everyone is goosy and stupid, they do not understand anything, it' s of no use to waste time explaining anything to them. And let alone higher education!" She kept on grumbling until the son interrupted her:              

“Mother, you and the rest of you are always complaining that the life is so bad, but you don't try to change anything. Why don't you? Why do you keep on living in this way to the end of your life?

“What can you change, my son? Everyone lives like this, perhaps everything will settle by itself someday”.

“No! Life never becomes better, as far as I can see. I think that it's a fairy tale that things will change when communism will come or when a good man will improve things. As far as I am concerned, I see only one outcome for you: divorce my father, put me in a children's home and start black-marketing. Then everything will be all right for you”.

“Oh-oh-oh!” she went on grumbling: “How can you say this!  I do everything for you! As for a home, only bums and derelicts hand over their children there”.

“You yourself do not know why you do it. You behave as if somebody had turned you into a zombie; you act according to some program. If you do everything for me, then why do you drive me to school?”

“What a stupid and evil boy you are! If you were clever, you would apply yourself to your studies and you would then know why I am doing all this. But you are ignorant, and too young. Wait, at some point you will see and understand everything”

My mother was so dull, that it was impossible to explain anything to her, even the simplest of things.

This was how Roll, not having anything better to do, kept on going to school.

Then, it came the turn of the lesson on physical education. People were ordered to go to ski. Roll put on his small skis, which he used many years ago on. He skied badly. The local hooligans overtook him and pushed him into a snow bank. Seeing him falling, they cried merrily and went directly upon him poking him with the ski sticks to hurt him. Roll felt completely helpless, unable to become like these hooligans, aggressive and devilish.  He thought that this was why his mother could not understand anything; it was too hard for her to be wise. Roll stood up and went on skiing on his childhood skis, shivering from the snow dropping under his collar.

"It's a miracle to be able to understand things, and even more to change” thought Roll “People are nothing else but small helpless ants; they are toys in this life".

The future made Roll certain that this picture was quite hopeless.

A man is a hero only in films or in his imagination; there he can be transformed from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan, into the ruler of the Universe and the saviour of the world. In reality people cannot even give up their bad habit, stop the flow of their absurd thoughts, and master their emotions, which make them do a lot of stupid, idiotic things. Moreover, people are slaves of all this idiocy; they appease and worship all their weaknesses and sins, which lead them to the grave. The older they become the duller and obtuse they grow. The matter is that they cannot - and do not want - to change anything, they do everything they can to become even worse and uglier”.            

Roll got to the end and blushed, whilst all the other boys laughed at him.

"To change anything one needs an external power, only this power could help me". He did not know then, that this power was quite close to him. This would come in the guise of a girl, a class mate with a hard look, who looked at everything with a cool smile. She came from another town, had joined their class a few days earlier and was already dictating her rules.

In the classroom, Roll occupied the farthest desk, the "kamchatka", the place she seemed to prefer. As he prepared his textbooks and began to thumb them looking through their illustrations, the girl hauntingly came up to his seat and pushed him slightly on the head, but he did not seem to notice it.

“Get out of my desk!” she said. “I shall sit here alone!”

Roll did not object, and was not offended either. He took all his things and moved to a vacant place. When Marianna - this was the name of this new schoolgirl- saw this, she smiled priggishly.

“You! Come here!” she cried. Roll turned around calmly and walked up to her as if nothing had happened.

“You know, I like you! I like simpletons like. From now on you'll sit at the seat in front of me together with Bozhen”

 Bozhen was a known the honour pupil. He had been given this place by Marianna as he had always helped her to do her tests and provided her with the right answers. From this day Roll found himself in Marianna’s entourage, who loved to collect people around her. So it happened that Roll started to serve her. She had always dreamt of being a queen and, indeed, she had become one. 

 As far as Roll was concerned, since this time, the other boys tried not to humiliate him and no longer pushed him when skiing, all this because Marianna was a master in manipulating different people. She had eventually achieved a respectful position at school, and even authoritative hoodlums treated her with respect. Roll felt in her the unusual Power he had himself tried to achieve.

With those she liked and who did not protest against her influence at school, Marianna began to organize a Mafia group. She set firm rules and watched strictly that her subordinates observed them, punishing those who opposed them. The boys who helped her, thus, obtained some privilege or services. In this imperious way she managed to gain everyone’s respect, including that of the teachers.

During a lesson a teacher was talking about the nuclear bomb, radiations and contamination. Roll thought that this was why there was so much radiation on the Earth, with  all those uranium mines and ozone gaps. Radiation had a special purpose. It seemed that radiations were needed for mutation, for making some other being out of humans. These beings were apparently needed for conducting some cosmic experiments.

As Roll grew up, he became more and more certain that human beings were not at all the crown of creation, nor the kings of Nature. Humans were nothing else but mushrooms; as mushrooms they made infinite copies of themselves for some special purposes of Nature and of the Earth as a whole. Yet these purposes were not beneficial for their lives as, on the contrary, humans were used as rugs on which others washed their dirty boots.

Roll told Bozhen everything he had in his mind, but the other boy did not pay much attention to it, intent as he was in absorbing every word the teacher uttered.  Marianna, instead, used to listen to Roll very attentively and at the end would say:

 “You're a good fellow, and you talk well too! If something else comes to your mind, please tell me. Perhaps you will entertain me in the future.” 

Roll was happy: at last somebody understood him. And so it was that he began to express all his opinions about all sorts of things to Marianna. 

One day, upon his return home, he looked into his mail box and found a letter addressed to him by Valery, his cousin, who wrote to him about the hardship of the military service.

 "My dear friend, I have just started training in the army. The oldies exhaust me with push-ups or in many other ways. If I show weakness, they break me, humiliate me, and I end up cleaning the lavatory and shining their boots. But this is not all; I learn to coil up the foot-bindings. I have to confess to you that I smeared my feet with blood as I was not accustomed to walking in high boots. Even more, we are forced to run as horses, and… do you want to hear more? We run with all equipment and ammunition and respirators. This happened just after dinner, and I ended up throwing up into the respirator, so I had to run in the spew for a long time. I tell you this to worn you about what will befall you, so that you are ready, otherwise you'll have a very hard time".

As he read the letter, Roll got scared. He immediately began to do all the exercises he knew and started to attend sport classes like karate and yoga.

He did not know then that the Spirit had approached him through this letter: fright and diseases often stimulate people to self-improvement and suffering and distresses to develop a greater comprehension of Truth.

From this time on, Roll began to devote more time on a daily basis to practical exercises, dancing, karate and Hatha-yoga.

These training showed him that only philosophical speculations about life are not enough. One should learn to control himself, his instincts, thoughts and emotions moved by the intent of escaping their tyranny. After exercising, he used to dance, switching the loud speakers to full blast.  Normally the fun would not last long, as his angry neighbours would switch off the electricity. The absence of music, however, could not stop Roll. On the contrary, he would keep on dancing in silence, as he had made up his mind to follow his own way, rather than becoming a victim, one in a herd of cattle, just as his mother and other people had.

Late at night, after his mother went to bed, Roll would start to tune his radio to find the "Voice of America",  and he would listen to their programs. Once, he came across the Vatican’s religious station. While listening, Roll suddenly understood that the most important thing of all was God and that without God all the philosophy of life is nothing else but a survival school. It was then that he vaguely started to understand God and thinking about Him, as his heart began to fill with Grace.

In that moment everything changed.

He knew then that God is Grace and that God was always with him, in his heart.

From this moment Roll listened everyday to this station and more and more allowed himself to be enticed by the idea of the high Truth, the existence of God and his Way. Roll, thus, found his own High Purpose, which up to that time he had not yet found. Overfilled with Grace he would think:

"People should not look for happiness anywhere, as this can only be found here! Just pray, stay with God and you can be very happy. Any other understanding of happiness is selfdeceit. One needs nothing more to be happy than sport and prayer: sports support one’s health, whilst prayer fills one with Grace".

As morning came, however, Roll would forget about it all, as this knowledge had not yet become his own, but was simply the result of his entering into the field of God’s Power. Many times in his life time he lost and found God, until the Divine transformed him completely from a senseless dummy, subjected to all influences, and turned him into a guide of God's Will.