74
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
Inga designed the interior of the little house and planned all the plant-
ings on their plot, and she and Victor set out cedars, firs and pine trees all
along the perimeter of the plot, along with little fruit tree saplings. Every
evening, Victor would hurry home to his little house, to his future
homestead, where the future mother of his child was bustling about getting
the house in order.
It wasn’t just that all the women Victor had known before receded into
the background. They simply no longer existed for him. Inga’s unconven-
tional approach to bearing a child gave birth to new feelings in him, too.
Maybe he didn’t fully understand them yet – they didn’t really feel like or-
dinary love, but he knew for sure that he’d never be able to leave her, and
that only she…
That only with her could he build a future. They went to Moscow together
to attend classes on home birth. There was one strange thing about Inga that
confused him: she categorically refused to be intimate with him, explaining
that their child shouldn’t come into the world as a result of desires of the
flesh, but as a result of an immeasurably larger and more meaningful human
desire.
Really, though, the author of these books had gone too far:not as a result
of desires of the flesh? Is something like that really possible?
But one day, when he was lying in bed next to Inga, having already given
up hope of having sex with her, and was just lying there thinking about their
future son, he happened to touch Inga’s breast, and she suddenly pressed
herself to him and embraced him…
In the morning, as Inga still lay sleeping, Victor went to the lake, and he
noticed that the world around him was totally different now: unusual and
joyful.
Never before had he experienced what he’d experienced the night before,
not with Inga, not with any other women. It was not ordinary sex. It was an
inspired burst of creation. People are born, and people die. But if they go
through life without experiencing this, then they’re missing out on what just
may be the most important thing in life. But thanks to Inga, he hadn’t
missed out on this most important thing. And some new feelings arose in
