CHAPTER 6. UNFAIR JUSTICE

April 6, 1985.

“Well, Domenico Gianini, you really want to interview me and pour my entire story onto paper? Today there are many other doctors in the world who deserve to be interviewed just as much, or even more... for example, those thanks to whom William Schroeder became the first person in the world to be discharged from the hospital with an artificial heart... But since you sincerely wish it, I won't refuse you and will tell you my story...” the seventy-two-year-old Italian doctor said to the twenty-eight-year-old interviewer Domenico Gianini, who was currently at Valentino Diodato's home. At that moment, the rain was pouring continuously outside, and inside the house, a fireplace, near which Valentino Diodato sat in his elegant rocking chair, was crackling faintly. “Perhaps for some, my life story will seem ordinary, but for me, it is entirely riddled with truly unique and exceptional events... As with all people, the canvas of my life was made of colorful and dark threads. Like all people, I loved and hated; I was loved and hated... The story that brought you here to me has its origins long ago—back when I was a little boy and lived in a poor Italian neighborhood where my friends and I loved to play soccer. It was there that I first had the chance to meet representatives of the mafia. It was there that I first learned that all the greatest criminals and mobsters are born in the smallest and most inconspicuous neighborhoods... I became a doctor, I started a family... a home... I worked hard... My son was born with a disability and I had to work extra jobs to afford him expensive medicines... One day, a certain... well-known to all of us, but I won't say his name so as not to destroy his political career... a representative of one of the local mafia clans came to our hospital. His son had been stabbed on the street and urgently needed an operation. We immediately began to provide him with help, but all our efforts could not save the boy: he died a few hours later, and his father promised to take revenge... no, not on his killers, but on us, simple, innocent doctors... So, for many days I awaited that moment—the moment of revenge. I lived in fear because I was well aware of the degree of madness and depravity of these people... That day came suddenly... He, along with his brethren in spirit, burst into my house and told me that I would never perform another operation—they broke all the fingers on my hands... and, what was much more horrible, they took all the money I had saved for my son's medicine... In an instant, this man became rich and never worked another second in his life... he became a politician... he bought a new house, a new car, and my son... my son died! Having done nothing wrong to anyone in this life, I was punished in the cruelest way. He happily spent my money, and my son was in the ground. There was nothing I could do about it! Having lost my son, my money, and my fingers, I no longer saw any meaning in this life—I could no longer work as a doctor! I was cast down into the hell of this life and only I had the power... to drown in it or to climb the burning coals and walls to the gates of heaven! Streams of lava flowed through my veins—I would never be a doctor again! At the same time, I wanted to live to get revenge on my offender and to die so as not to be in this vicious world anymore! During the day, I smiled at my family, and at night, I wept. They destroyed my whole life, took everything I lived for—to help people and save them! But did they really destroy it? I was tempted to heal my emotional wounds with alcohol, but... my mind, with the help of the voice of the Almighty, saved me—it brought me back to the realization that alcohol has destroyed more people on this planet than all wars combined—but wars are despised by all, while alcohol is sold on every corner... I began to look for a way to calm my soul and heart—and I found it: I started to read a lot! Reading continuously, I realized what kind of world this is and what knowledge had passed me by until the moment of my tragedy. Unable to act physically, I became extremely active mentally and emotionally. I realized that I had been blind. From then on, when I woke up, I immediately rushed to my books, and in the evening, I couldn't tear myself away from their essence. People began to call me insane, boring, and my pastime uninteresting, even annoying and nauseating... but I was happy and enjoying life as I never had before! So I became a kind of train that knew its path—my rails were strictly marked, and I drove only forward. I occasionally stopped on schedule to pick someone up and drop someone off. The conductor, my soul, constantly, with special care, checked the passengers for tickets. There were often cases when people would catch up to the train, realizing that they had left it too early without making sure of its route... some would cling on and ride on the outside, never getting inside... and some would curse it and draw on its body. Did that affect its movement? But, like any train, I was doomed to die—in one way or another... I understood this, just as I understood that the rails remain forever, but only the trains change: they are retired, and new ones take their place... My feelings roared chaotically within me, like sailors on shore leave... Through books, I learned many things... for example, that people used to strive to revive antiquity, but now—the Renaissance! And through reality, I realized that now even the church is not a reliable refuge from the influence and manifestation of evil! Looking at myself in the mirror from time to time, I came to the conclusion that in those very ruins of today, life once flourished in the most vibrant way! Reading books, I didn't even notice how processes had occurred in my being where feelings of anger and revenge had sprouted on my heart like parasites and were continuously feeding on the purest source of my soul—they grew bigger with every moment, and the virtue in my heart grew weaker... I thought a lot about the nature of crime... My offender, perhaps, also prayed to God for daily bread. Everyone's bread is their own: some put thoughts of a real piece of bread into this prayer, while others think of money, cars, and restaurants. Everyone has their own daily bread—some material, and some metaphysical, like feelings and thoughts... Amazing! And yet, the money in this world is old—some banknotes are decades old—but you can get the newest things with them! But was the money to blame for the way that thief of my prosperous days treated me? Or perhaps the one who invented money? But is a person who creates a knife or a pistol an accomplice to murder? When a criminal goes into a store and spends stolen money, does the seller become an accomplice to the crime or encourage this vice? At what point does stolen money stop being considered as such? Or when a merchant sells goods that were stolen earlier and sold to his supplier, and by them, in turn, to him—is this merchant a seller of stolen goods? This world is complex! In it, a criminal who robs and extorts in an office is no better than a criminal who does it on the street. The first often smile sweetly, dressed in expensive clothes, while the second shows his fangs, living in the genuine slums of life's existence! Here, in this world, the power to destroy entire cities is often held not by those with large and strong muscles, but by those who, during this destruction, are sound asleep in soft beds and wake up with the desire to find out if it is all over! Such is this world! If everyone in it did not strive for wealth and luxury, then all the successful car brands, fashionable clothing brands, and the like would go bankrupt with a bang and cease to exist, which means there is only one conclusion—as long as everyone strives for luxury and wealth, so long will all the brands exist, as an encouragement, a quality result of this striving! Through books, I learned that when people don't understand something, it's easier for them to call it something abnormal, something that deviates from the truth, rather than, by studying it, realizing that this something is a higher stage and form of knowledge that, due to the limitations of their mind, is incomprehensible to them! Reality also didn't let me forget about it—with its help, I was able to realize that our world is a world where things control people, despite the fact that things are created by people! By realizing reality, I grasped where my being is and what laws operate in this environment. Here, in order to understand what good is, you also have to know what evil is and navigate its possible manifestations and forms! A lot can be understood through communication, but communication itself, in human society, is garbage, but even among garbage you can sometimes find something useful, of course, if you are able to see! True reality allowed me to realize that happiness in this world is not something good, but the absence of something bad: happiness is the absence of pain and suffering. Having been able to see a great deal with my metaphysical gaze, I began to generously and freely give my thoughts to everyone who needed them—at the very hour when the price of those thoughts was determined by millions! The coarse specks of anger no longer splattered onto my sensitive soul like ink on a snow-white parchment... Seeing in me a cripple and not a person, it doesn't matter, my wife left me, she left me alone. I thanked the Almighty for it... because it was thanks to her action that I met Alexandra, even though she also rejected me! Oh, but what feelings they were! What emotions! Thanks to her, I wrote my collection of poems, 'Kaikos,' but if she hadn't left, I would never have created my collection, 'Aphelion'—everything happened on time, exactly when it was supposed to, for which I once again thank God! Alexandra! I was as struck by her remarkable beauty as André Le Nôtre was amazed by the beauty of St. James's Park, which he was called by Charles II to change. Like Le Nôtre, I was convinced that she should not change anything in herself, but unlike Charles II, who listened to that French decorator, she did not want to listen to me... her 'no' meant 'no,' not 'yes'! Oh, how much I told her, despite being one of the students of Pythagoras—one of those who had to be silent for five years. Her influence on me was crushing—I rarely communicated with people... just as rarely as you could encounter a duel in 18th-century France! But she broke my heart—broke it into a thousand fragments, and on such a foundation, nothing can be built. These fragments should be crushed, thrown into a furnace, heated to the limit, and out of this matter, a substance more resistant to such blows should be poured into a new form! So, let's get back to the main point—the reason you came here... by depriving me of my fingers, of form, they did not deprive me of content! Soon, after a complete moral recovery, which I needed after the greatest tragedy of my life, I returned to the hospital with a proposal to the management of what I was best at—performing operations... but not with my hands, but with my mind! Other people became my hands—and I was their mind! I performed the most difficult operations with words and with my mind—that's when many people learned the difference between form and content in this world! Look, do you see this fireplace? The fire in it is like my thirst for life and knowledge—if I don't throw firewood in there, it will go out. Sometimes it burns brightly, and sometimes dimly, but it burns... it burns, just like the fire in me for my work... You see, not everyone, having gone through something similar, can refuse to give up and continue... no, not at all to carry their time and their cross!... but to fulfill their light-as-a-soul essence! Perhaps somewhere in another house in this world there will be a doctor just like me... perhaps without an arm... and he will read my interview in your newspaper... in a cold house... completely disappointed in life and blaming the Almighty for all his tragedies—but I am sincerely grateful to God for everything that has happened, because He knows what is best for me: for all my successes and achievements, as well as for all my injuries and tragedies... That doctor, perhaps, doesn't have the strength or desire to heat the fireplace in his house: he doesn't even make the slightest attempts or actions to do so—how can he fulfill his purpose? I am just like him, with my disabilities, but you are at my house now, not his...”