Les Tanyuk

Kiev, mid-1960s. The autumn night outside seemed thick and black as ink. A deafening silence reigned in Les Tanyuk's small room. Theater posters, banned samizdat publications, and an open diary lay scattered on the table under a dim lamp. KGB surveillance, constant government pressure, and the unbearable pain of the recent loss of a friend had burned Les from the inside out. He sat hunched over, his head in his hands. His eyes burned with fatigue and lack of sleep. Tanyuk reread the lines of Vasya's poems over and over again, trying to find solace in them, but every word echoed with a dull pain. "You're not here, Vasya... How can this be?" he thought. Suddenly, a strange, cold draft blew through the room. The window was closed, but the curtain swung open. The air around him changed abruptly—it smelled distinctly of cheap Verkhovyna tobacco and fresh newspaper ink. Les would have recognized that scent among a thousand. Tanyuk slowly, almost numbly, raised his head. A silhouette now appeared right by the window, where a moment ago no one had been. A face, a coat, a gaze...
Les froze. His fingers gripped the edge of the table convulsively, and his breath caught in his throat. He closed his eyes, counted to three, and opened them again—but the obsession persisted. Simonenko's figure sat there, translucent, the street lights barely visible through it.
“Vasya?..” Les’s voice broke into a hoarse whisper. He slowly rose from the table, afraid to take even a step, lest the ghost dissipate. - What... you can’t buti. I am devout. It's just a hallucination due to fatigue... You're dead, Vasya. I told you myself...

He looked at you with huge eyes full of despair and hope, waiting for the ghost to answer.