At the presentation of my book “Return Ticket“ in Varna, a reader asked – am i ever afraid This question surprised me much more than if she had asked me if I had ever fallen in love.
She was sitting in the front row waiting for me to answer. Perhaps from what she has already read, she has noticed that I never write about fear. It is this impression that I am “fearless” she had been drawn to attend the performance. She was eagerly waiting for my reply and my autograph.
A French professor, with whom I shared the predicament I found myself in when various intellectuals asked me if I was related to Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, advised me. Never say "I don't know". You are a sociable boy, nature made you that way and you need contacts because you were not born in France. Your classmates have families, relatives, acquaintances. You don't have them. Therefore, whenever someone asks you a question, never answer ``I don't know'', ``I'm not'', or simply ``no'' because you're wasting the interest you've raised.
A friend, who had read the book several times, came to my aid, telling those present how at the border furrow, for fear that I would hardly manage to run a second time, I had continued alone along the gorge of a river Erma.
The situation was saved, the woman left satisfied, with the writer's autograph in hand, who turned out not to be that brave, but just a normal person.
What happened in Varna, however, continues to revolve in my head. I am conscientious, not that I lied to the reader, but that I did not tell the whole truth. Conscience is not a page you turn, a book you close to open another. I failed to say when I was most afraid.
I was really scared when a doctor told me – You should consider surgery someday because...I have heard this warning several times in my life. I always reacted the same way. My answer to the doctor was the same – Tomorrow doctor! I did not make these decisions out of courage, but out of fear.