The Next Days in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Like certain other self-respecting literary heroes,
he had long tried to keep to familiar territory,
to his author's view of the world and to his readers' tastes,
but such things can grow tedious with time.
And how tedious they can grow…
And so, when Ivan Denisovich came to feel this way,
he did not hesitate for long. He drew a crooked line across a map,
took a few bare necessities and set off on the road.

And the further he moved through space,
the more rarely he remembered certain of his former habits,
his author, and his erstwhile readers.
This had its drawbacks. People no longer recognised him.
But it had its advantages too. And what advantages.

For instance, he went to bet on cockfights whenever he pleased.
He laid out coloured grains of sand with Buddhist monks.
(We must admit he lasted only one day.)
He stood Thai girls rounds of vodka.
He played the bagpipe, drunk and badly out of tune, in Serbia.
He stole maize in Peru so as not to starve.
He liked his new life, and was even surprised
at how little he had known himself.

He hitchhiked from Florida to Ottawa and back
just to have a chat with the drivers.
And since he had few obligations and no particular ambitions,
he fell in love with every girl he met,
blaming it all on a midlife crisis.

Thus Ivan Denisovich lived his new life,
never tempted, even for a moment, to go back to the old one.
After all, common sense
was not to be defeated by the dubious comfort of fiction.