Besides this test there were others. They were all intended to measure the current condition and potential of the brain. There were auditory tests (where you had to remember and repeat combinations of words at speed), visual (remember combinations of cards, and then reproduce them, also under time pressure), and tactile (they would bend each of your fingers, and you had to remember and repeat the order, with eyes closed). These tests were all known as evidence, that’s what people would call it, “making evidence”.

Chloroethane

After that first test, the tapping one, Natalya Yevgenyevna asked me to take my pants off and lie down on my side. She started to pour liquid chloroethane over my buttocks, first on one side then the other, and on special points on my toes. It was sore and I felt an unpleasant burning sensation on my skin. After the procedure you weren’t allowed to raise your head so the best thing was to make yourself fall asleep or at least lie with eyes closed.

Later the skin would itch like crazy where the chloroethane had touched it, and would come out in small crusty burns. But with the years I got used to it. After that first time I got this treatment almost every day for six years. I never noticed any change. Everyone there got this same treatment all the time, adults as well as children. It was known as layering; “to layer a person”.

I should say that at least there was never any sexual subtext to any of this treatment. No one ever touched my genitals.

Much later I read that chloroethane is a strong drug and that even small doses can have a strong intoxicating effect. People can even become addicted to it. But we never knew that and never noticed any special effect from it. At least I never did.

THE POINT OF ALL THIS

Soon I found out there was a Chief orchestrating all this confusion: Viktor Davydovich Stolbun. He was an elderly man (at least he seemed so to me, although in reality he wasn’t more than 50), short, with a big meaty nose, dishevelled grey hair and small eyes, and everyone respected and feared him. To be on the safe side I also started to respect and fear him.

We referred to our commune as the collective. It was made up of people who wanted to build true communism, to save a world perishing from widespread schizophrenia.

As the Chief saw it, humanity’s main problem was that most people in the world were suffering from schizophrenia, alcoholism, drug addiction and other serious psychological aberrations. “Children are suffering and perishing!” he would cry pathetically, gesticulating dramatically. From his point of view, absolutely all physical ailments, including cancer, infectious diseases and broken bones, stemmed from psychological deviance, that is from impure mindsets and ways of thinking. For a person to recover, they had to correct their psyche and restructure their personality.

The main reason for a deviant psyche was the corroded system of family relations. Psychological correction was therefore only possible with the involvement of the whole family. Thus, people came to the collective (or rather, were forced to come) with their whole family. Any relatives who refused to join the collective for whatever reason were considered traitors and potential enemies. Anyone who left the collective for any reason was also automatically put in this category.

My whole family, with the exception of my grandfather, was completely in thrall to this ideology.

This meant there were whole family clans in the collective. In turn the whole collective was split into two groups: adults and children. I was in the children’s category, obviously. We lived separately from the adults, and differently. Sometimes we wouldn’t see the adults for months.