I am seven years old. The first class is ended. I got access to a library. What here began...

I took some adult books, allegedly for the father, and "swallowed" them with a huge speed. I didn't sleep at nights. Some foreign classics of romantic era, Emil Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Victor Hugo - everything that was in the library, was absorbed by me with an improbable speed. From tension I mastered a fluent reading. I snatched out the moments extremely topical. What wasn't pleasant I read obliquely.

Later some Russian classics, verses - all went in use. In these years it was written off a lot of forbidden literature. A relative from the library didn't burn it, and I dragged all to the house, and read, read. At night, under a blanket with a small lamp. It was similar to hunger. I read, I read and couldn't be sated.

The mother was catching me with books at night and was taken them off, tore, threw into fire. From these actions my desires only inflamed and the appetite grew. The plots of books helped to develop some new ways to imaginations.

Now I understand an advantage of the maternal prosecutions. If she didn't forbid me reading books I perhaps wouldn't read everything what was in the library with such improbable speed.

By the tenth class all people that surrounded me stopped being simply people, they were the heroes of my phantasmagoric dreams. They lived and acted in my imaginations as I wanted. The field of my imagination became unlimited. If someone offended me I recouped that gave him a new name and thought out a new image, then composed a life with an end, in which he, my villain, got exposed, and regretted for his deeds, and surely improved. Here everything got interwoven what was in life, but LOVE AND DEATH was a basis of all plots. For some reason I was making the stories in such way that love and death were inseparable.

And what became with my God? He also changed. My ideas of God extended because of the books. Especially I was helped by N. Gogol and F. Dostoyevsky, a big contribution was brought by A.S. Pushkin and L.N. Tolstoi, and by all the poets of the silver age. But there were many questions and these questions didn't decrease but grew, bringing me suffering.

Once I decided to ask the father what is such God.

I was still too small and continued to believe that the father is a big and strict God. I hoped that he also will tell me honestly that he is God. But the father disappointed me. He told so that his words still sound in my ears:

“Remember, Masha, GOD is a HUMAN CONSCIENCE, AND THE ONES WHO LIES OR STEALS, GOD WILL ALWAYS PURSUE!”

When once I committed a theft, he executed for me such a court of conscience in which I endured a greatest humiliation and shame. He told then:

“REMEMBER, FOR ALL YOUR LIFE: IF YOU TOOK FROM SOMEONE SOMETHING WITHOUT PERMISSION OR ASKED SOMETHING - EVEN BREAD - AND THE PERSON GAVE YOU, BUT DIDN'T WANT TO GIVE - YOU STOLE. IF YOU GO ON THE ROAD, AND A THING - NOT YOURS WILL LIE - AND YOU WILL TAKE IT - IT IS A THEFT”

THAT WAS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE! IT MEANS, WHAT I SHOULDN'T ASK ANYTHING FROM ANYBODY IN GENERAL? BUT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LIVE SO. LIKE THAT IS POSSIBLE TO DIE!

God, how difficult for me it became to live with such God! He haunted me day and night. If I lied something - then, going down the street I felt as if all people know that I made it. Yes, such God couldn't be loved! I wanted to get rid of him, but didn't know how? It pursued me everywhere.

“If I knew you are like that I would never begin to talk to you!”

“God, why did you stuck to me as a burdock!”

“Get off!”

“I don't know where you hide now.”

“You are not in the icon, I know it precisely. The grandma was deceiving me”.

“You are not in me!”

“Not in the grandmother!”

“So, where are you?”

“Show up! I want to look at you!!!”

Such I addressed God now. I tried to deceive him and even to bribe. I hoped that if he shows I will seize him and drown in the lake, will bind a stone and dump. He wasn't pleasant to me at all, and I began to be terribly afraid of him. After all he always appeared at the most inopportune moments - when I wanted to make something against my conscience, and his emergence I felt. I was becoming hot and covered with a crimson color.

He never allowed me to tell a lie. Sometimes it was very necessary to tell lies, but that`s not how it turned out! He stood behind the back, and a heat on the backbone burned me, and my face showed everything out at once.

I started to wage with him a secret war. I declared to him:

“The war lasted for years. Sometimes it seemed to me that I am winning against him. I tried to outwit him. In thoughts I thought: "I will make such and such".”

I knew that he knows my thoughts. He lived exactly in them. For example I would start thinking of something not pleasant to him, to anger him. But on the second plan I had the hidden thoughts to do on the contrary, to make him feel ashamed that he thought of me so badly.

This fight was fascinating, but very difficult as a game of chess - you think of one move and you keep two more in stock, then three, and then I learned to have in the pocket about five thoughts. However, that was a terrible tension because it was similar to division of consciousness into many parts. Sometimes I managed to deceive him, and then I rejoiced and even forgave him his pestering and importunity.

Often I observed that people act badly, lie, steal - and nothing happens to them! I even envied and loved them that they are free from God and I don't. I felt as a captive sitting in a loner camera, while all people walk free. I wanted to talk, with pleasure I listened to everyone and noticed that people like it, and with me they were always very frank and told such things which didn't tell even to themselves.

But through time I learned that my God at first silent, as though he doesn't exist, but at the most inappropriate moment he, as they say, would play on me a dirty trick. And, owing to circumstances, he would suddenly take a control of my tongue and blurt out something that my friends - in a good case - took an offense and left, in a bad case - I was making enemies.

Or He would take control of my body and made through it the particular actions, which results I had to disentangle and couldn't explain.

Well - my God was not only cunning, but also artful. I strove for a friendship with people, so wanted to be pleasant to them, I did everything for this purpose. I thought that if I make friends with them, I will listen to them and agree, and maybe He will leave me. To be friends with Him sometimes was intolerable. A more terrible torturer not possible to imagine.

But far from it! He destroyed all of my friendships. I shouted at him:

“How dared you speak by my tongue?”

“Don't touch my body!”

“You scum!”

On what, maliciously scoffing, he'd say:

“But who made you talk? That's not me!”

But I knew - that it is a bald lie.

- “And what - you can lie, but me - not?! Allow at least to agree with people, I want to be on friendly terms with them!”

- “Be on friendly terms, who doesn't give you?!”

Then I developed some new tactics, decided that almost won't talk, only to nod and insert such words as – "okey, yes". The set was small. And it seemed to me that he left. He probably became bored. Now all people was becoming friends with me. There were relations about which it is possible to tell – "on good terms". I grew bolder. And here unexpectedly again there was Him, I always felt his approach, I even had to bite my tongue untill it bled and with the teeth clamp the lip, but he was stronger than me. And here some word flew from my tongue, and... my friends shocked!

And after he would disappear. And, if I was again in a company, I felt an estrangement and a terrible loneliness sucking in a pit of the stomach. He destroyed my relations with people, leaving me unprotected and lonely. And I again went to the world of imagination, but being very angry with him.

After I was tired of the fight, and there were times when I was given in his charge completely. And I began the attacks of love to him, but how to express it I didn't know because he was for me a ghost.

Then again I was angry with him and again I declared a war, and I started doing everything to spite him. Then he would plunge me into an abyss of sufferings and leave.

At first a pleasure, wild pleasure of freedom would seize me, and there was an unrestrained force. It seemed to me that if I would be given a point of support, I will turn this world.

But I didn't manage to turn the world. At some most important moment, when everything was staked in my life - as I thought - or - sir, or - gone, he would deprive me of this force, again appearing, and again breaking all my adventures.

Not me, but him didn't allow me to make anything bad.

And soon I understood what I am not so honest and incorruptible, not at all. I was capable of many pranks, perhaps even of most bad acts, but he, my God, didn't allow me to commit them. And once I realized that I am nothing, but he, my God, a name to which Conscience, had over me a great power and omnipotence.

Many years passed, I endured thousands of wars with my God and now, when I write these lines, there came a peace, and I am very grateful that He so protected me, and I want to wish to my friends:

“Let God of conscience always stand behind your back and keep your souls from decay.”

And another my God who gave me fire and directed my imaginations always was Love.

Strict and kind, fair and forgiving Gods, be in me and in people for eternity!