The girl almost forgot about the thick middle age philosophy doorstopper. Oh, dear God, it was so hard to read what you had to. When Victoria was at school, she had a global problem: the reluctance to read what was assigned. She wanted to read what she wanted! Disagreements with her literature teachers often led to scandals of all sorts.

It couldn’t be helped. Studying at university Victoria got that reading was an important thing…too important. Surely after school graduating literature course was done and all the classical books were read. Yeah, nobody argued that some of the reading seemed to her to be nonsense, she disagreed with some, but there were interesting books too and the majority of them. Victoria realized that many books which were offered by the Department of Education, mustn’t be read by teenagers!

Vic remembered herself when she was 14. She was uncontrollable, hated to talk about love in any ways, knew nothing about respect and cared about nothing. She didn’t know what fear was! How could she understand the love in The Captain's Daughter or the most severe sense of Raskolnikov’s remorse? No, she couldn’t. She didn't care.

So being satisfied with the buying Victoria left the shop and went ahead towards Tverskaya street but she ran into an elderly woman who sold flabby, dilapidated books which were older than the woman herself.

The girl wanted to pass by, but her attention was drawn by a black book with fading yellowed pages, withered edges as if they were burnt with a lighter. There was nothing on the cover: no title, no author. There was just a black void. Nothing more.

As soon as Victoria took the book, she realized immediately that it was a rarity in her hands. It smelled of time. Here you can smell time when you open those old books.

The title was on the second page – Demonology. The girl’s heart began to rejoice. She loved supernatural stories and she wasn’t going to put the book back on any account. Although the price issue concerned her as well.

Her family wasn’t very rich. Her mum, Olga Vladimirovna, was a doctor at a city hospital. She got paid well because of her experience, years of employment, so life was liveable.

Her father lived separate from Victoria. He had a family but didn’t forget his daughter. He tried to help her on a moral and monetary level. He had a good thing going: he was an analyst of quite well-known company and the general manager’s right-hand man. You couldn’t say that he was a social animal, but he got paid enough to support Victoria and his new family. Vic never asked him to help. She had a chip on her shoulder because of her mother.

Olga Vladimirovna and Victoria’s father were in touch well. Ex-married couple managed to keep amity, but they screwed up the marriage.

Essentially Victoria was glad that there was no family feud. Despite that they lived separated they didn’t lose respect.

After having spent enough time turning and smelling the book’s pages, Victoria shifted her gaze at the elderly woman.

‘How much?’

‘One hundred roubles, dear’ the woman smiled.

‘One hundred roubles?’ her amazement was unlimited.

What is one hundred roubles in our time? You can say that this piece of paper is equal to toilet paper. It is two metro tickets or two bus ones, and you can have either metro or bus, not both. These are two loafs of bread and a milk. So, by the evening there would have been neither money nor a full stomach and the girl, surely, didn’t look twice at every penny.

Victoria was confused that the book was written in Cyrillic characters looked like modern Russian. Actually, you could get the general idea of the sentences, but some words were foreign gibberish.

Victoria wanted the rarity to be obligatory at her home, not to be sold for a song in the streets. The girl felt sorry for the elderly woman. She was under necessity of selling such rare things for trifling sum to keep on living out her remaining days. Victoria felt sorry that no one cared for old people at those moments when they really needed help financially and emotionally. Nobody cared for them: children were interested in their own lives, government was involved in infighting, assured that the whole country was well-off, and everybody was living their lives to the fullest.

Victoria paid 500 roubles for the book. She would have given more but she didn’t have more cash. The elderly woman was protesting, speaking that the sum was too much… Finally, Victoria got her to take money because the book should have cost thousands!

In an hour Victoria got to Krasnopresnensky park which was near her house. She didn’t want to go home. No one was there. Her mother was in the country, did gardening.

Victoria never understood a joy of exhausting oneself with work and then going hell knows where to pound away. Was there any rest?