Chapter 11

Still, they did go out for a walk through the center of the City of B in search of the New Year’s spirit.

It was good to break out of the apartment building on the narrow old lane. To feel another energy, bright and strong. Here the holiday defeated evil.

The couple visited several of the city’s iconic New Year’s places and remembered the true meaning of the New Year. It is not about being given one more year, but about acquiring a new soul. Children, however, simply liked the lights. Some people dream of a new life, while for someone New Year itself is enough...

They rode home in a fantastic mood, perfectly suited to the holiday. They did not even notice the vulgar, tasteless ads for stupid shows on the huge billboards, the books displayed in shop windows and packed with the absence of talent. The small-minded domestic worldview, driving out the relics of heroism, spread wider and wider, like weeds through a garden. And artists fed the rabble pseudo-art for consumption: admire yourselves, rabble. And people watched stupid shows and read books that told them it was wonderful to be exactly what they were -- ordinary, comfortable, small.