I didn't know that being in the world could cause such bodily pain–not from a whip, not from a stick, not from a sword, but from the air. I did not know that the wind can whip more painfully than a whip, and raindrops can beat more painfully than stones. It turned out that the skin had been hiding the power of touch from me all my life. The eye is sensitive to the image, the ear to the sound, the tongue to the taste, and the skin is not sensitive, it did not so much help as hide the fury of the world's touches when it surrounds and squeezes you in its arms, no longer seeing the boundary between itself and you. The skin was that boundary, and now it's gone.

It turned out that the skin hid the impudence not only of the world, but also of the flesh. I thought that I had learned to keep my nature in check, humbling her sensual urges, but I considered faith and reason as the main allies in the exhausting struggle with the flesh, but not the skin. But when not faith and reason disappeared, but the skin, the flesh lost its reins – it trembles and burns, it reminds of itself every second, because it is unusually free, and she was taken aback by the opportunities that opened up. But pleasure is the last thing she is capable of experiencing right now. Only pain, fiery and unquenchable, only pain... the flesh oozes blood, as it did not ooze with seed on the terrible nights of the triumph of temptation, each of its cells expels mucus, as if hoping that she can cover me all and become a new skin.

But there will be no new skin, because I am not a snake renewing the cover, not a lizard nurturing the rejected, not a crayfish changing the shell, like a legionnaire after a hard fight. I will remain like this, and I will not move from my place anymore, I have already walked a million steps since the Teacher ordered us, the twelve closest, to go to the countries of sunrise and sunset, southern bliss and northern stupor, and carry the words of a new truth. And I went, secretly grieving that it was not for me, Bartholomew, who was called the fourth, to become the instrument of the plan, but for Judas. How happy he was to sacrifice himself for the sake of the Teacher, because it took such a little thing – to blacken his name for centuries, a trifling sacrifice, not a terrible one, the name is dust, a dull echo of such a short life, and in eternity we will not have names. But to become a hand that creates a new world here and now, the world of love and truth is a great happiness! And I feel the same happiness now, because I also brought the arrival of a new world closer, sacrificing even less – skin. What do I need it for? We won't have skins in eternity.

In eternity, we will have nothing that separates us, prevents us from becoming one, creates Others. And Others are hell, and there, in hell, there will definitely be skin, maybe there will be nothing but skin, everyone will become empty leather bags, deceived by their own separateness and external beauty, but they will also burn – in the fire of empty vanity, exhausting pride, unquenchable passion. But in the fire, and in pain, and in suffering, they will not give up themselves, from names, from disguises, from skins, and we will become one, not bags without contents, but contents without bags. Just like I am now, skinless and dying in another ferocious country, all alone, and at the same time with everyone.

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Night has come, and death is still wandering somewhere, she is not in a hurry to touch me with a soothing touch and take me to the Teacher and brothers. We will be together again in the land of honey sweetness, we will sit down under a fig tree, we will be silent for a while to recover our breath, and then He will say a word that is always so true, so necessary for you and right now, as if this is the only word you have been waiting for all your life, as if your soul was preparing for it during the years of study and labor. It is not for nothing that He is called the Word-God. I so want to hear a word that moderates the pain from the rain, from the grass and sand, from the slaps of the wind, from the sharpness of the stones invading the flesh like nails of the crucifixion…

But no words are heard, only the whining of a street dog, awakened by the smell of blood, crawling along the street of an evil city in the hope of satiety. Come on, dog, grab me by the throat, and I'll believe in you as a savior. I will feed you with myself in gratitude for deliverance, as I myself partake of the Savior's flesh for deliverance. Lick my blood as we drink His blood to transform our nature. But for now I am a fragment of that nature that you so love to gnaw on moonlit nights in the doorways of this wild city. Where are you going, dog? Or are you not used to what your food says? But the word is the last thing I have left on this side of the path. I brought it as a gift to the people of the black country, and continued to speak even hanging upside down on the cross, but they preferred to take my skin, and left the word to me.

I'll be out of here soon, too, dog. I leave in search of a fig tree, under which He is waiting for me, smiling. I'll sit down next to him, and I won't take my eyes off, because I did everything I had to. I tried to learn the main thing – to love my neighbors, although even neighbors are hell; I almost loved them even when they cut my skin into strips and tore them off with measured jerks. She was sliding off me, deprived me of her protection and showed the world in its pristine state. At least in pain, I became on the same level with the Teacher, who experienced the imperfection of the world as if he had never had a saving skin.

Or maybe, on the contrary, he saw us all skinless, not allowing the skin to cover the external beauty of the stinking and oozing bile inside? Maybe the skin was created so that the faint-hearted could love their neighbors? Will you be able to love another, seeing a visible hell in front of you – bile and mucus, meat and intestines, and worms writhing in the folds of flesh? Only then would your love become a spiritual feat…

Where is my fig tree, I don't see it, I don't see laughing eyes, only a black hole into which I'm falling... Where is my skin now, and where am I, and who am I, and what was my name? The morning will come, people will come, refreshed and carefree, and see what is left of me, and let this be the last act of my love for my neighbors: I will show them the vile face of the evil world. For the skin protected not only me from the world, but also the world from me. But there is no skin anymore, and the world has nothing to cover the truth with: only love can transform abomination into beauty…