I opened my eyes.
The dark reeked of earth. I moved, stretched out my hand. I touched the ground and roots. The cold soil crumbled. I immediately remembered who I was and where I was. I began to extricate myself from my den. I crawled out from under the root “roof” of the old larch hanging over the ground, which had served as my refuge, and froze: everything around was bathed in bright moonlight. I lifted my head: a huge full moon hung in the blue-black sky surrounded by scatterings of stars. Its light was so bright that I turned away and looked around: everything, all the way to the horizon, was bathed in this incredible light. A fantastical landscape unfolded before me. The illuminated hillocks resembled frozen waves of an unseen ocean. Spilling over, undulating, crisscrossing, and colliding, they receded into the distance toward the horizon, a subtle glow in the eastern sky. The dead forest stood all around in absolute silence: not a sound, not a rustle. And I stood in the midst of this. Alone.
I felt no fear. Just the opposite: the deep sleep under the roots of the ancient tree had calmed me and given me strength. The fever that racked my body abandoned me, as though it had drained into the ground. I raised my arms to the moon and stretched with pleasure.
And moaned.
I was free!
There was no one around. No one laughed at me or gave me orders; no one asked anything of me, drove me on, or gave me idiotic advice; no one talked about Marxism and astronomy. The hated swarm of words that had pursued me like midges the entire month had dispersed and drifted away along with the people. The absolute silence of the world amazed me. The earthly world froze in front of me in the grandest calm. And for the first time in my life I felt distinctly the vile vulgarity of this world. Our world did not come into existence by itself. It was not the result of a chance combination of blind powers. It was created. By willpower. In a single moment.
This discovery shook me profoundly. I cautiously inhaled the cool night air. And froze, afraid to exhale. Books on philosophy and religion, arguments about existence, time, and metaphysics had contributed nothing at all to my understanding of the world in which I existed. But this moment in the midst of a dead, moonlit taiga opened my eyes to a great mystery.
I exhaled.
And took a step.
My heart began to throb in a now familiar way. And I remembered the huge and intimate. That which had made me tremble in mute ecstasy, lose sleep at night, walk without tiring, and silently clench my teeth. It was close by. I again felt it with my heart. But calmly now, without tears or shuddering. The huge and intimate was calling me. And I moved in the direction of that call.
I walked between the blackened tree trunks. The moon followed me, clearly illuminating my path. I saw every stone under my feet, every broken bough. The moon played on the charred trunks. They glinted and shimmered like anthracite. The thick moss was springy under my boots. It was easy to walk: there was no longer anything on my shoulders...No tins, lard, or crackers. Nothing that connected me to people. This didn’t frighten me — I experienced no hunger at all. My inner rapture of the last month had now turned into a staunch, persistent, irrepressible desire: to continue in the direction of the huge and intimate. And to find it.
I walked.
My legs easily overcame the wild, lifeless landscape. I walked for an hour, another, a third. The hillocks drifted slowly by. Finally they gave way and opened up. The moonlight glinted on a thin strip of water.
The swamp!
I approached it.
A slight fog of evaporation hung over it as before. My heart began to pound. I was drawn there by an irresistible force. The intimate and dear was close. I stepped forward. The moss beneath me was thicker, completely covering the soil. Swamp tussocks had grown up, and soon a viscous liquid slurped underfoot. With every step my heart beat more intensely. It wasn’t the usual palpitations of malaise and excitement. My heart was beating less often, but more powerfully and strenuously — each beat resounded in my chest, waves spread throughout the body from it. It was as though my heart had begun to live its own life, separate from the life of my body. Its heavy, even beats shook me ever so sweetly. My body resonated in time to these beats. My boots plunged deeper and deeper into the swamp, and it became difficult to walk. The water rose. Soon I was up to my waist. The cold water rushed into my boots and engulfed my legs. This was the cold of the permafrost. The moon brightly illuminated my surroundings. The resonant heartbeats left no room for fear. I wanted only to advance, I wanted dreadfully to go forward. And I hurried forward with all my might. The icy swamp clutched at my legs. But I was stronger. Clutching the tussocks with my hands, I forced my way on. One step, then another. Ten of the hardest steps.
Twenty.
One hundred.
The hummocks ended: ahead lay the smooth duckweed hollow. I took the one-hundred-and-first step. And sank up to my chest. But my heartbeat was deafening, and each pulse of blood pushed me ahead. I grasped at the rotten trunk of an old, broken tree that was sticking up out of the duckweed. And I understood that ahead, under my feet, would be — a deep quagmire and quicksand. However, I also realized that there was a strip of water over this quicksand. And that I could swim in this water. I’d just have to take everything off — and swim ahead. Grabbing on to the trunk, I pulled my feet out of the quicksand with a furious movement, pulled myself up, and sat on the flotsam. I took off the wet clothing clinging to my body. I pulled off my waterlogged boots. Then, naked, I pushed away from the trunk, raking aside the water with my hands and pushing with my legs, like a frog. It was incredible — I was swimming in a bog as though swimming across a lake. The water on top, just below the duckweed, was clean and cold. I just had to keep on swimming straight ahead without stopping. If I stopped — there was only death, the quicksand would pull me under. It tickled my stomach with rotten slime, tried to snag me. But all fear remained behind, in the world of people. I swam a bit and suddenly understood: the huge and intimate was quite near. Just a little farther — and it would be possible to touch it.
My heart started beating such that rosy-orange rainbows flared in my eyes. I quickly became very warm. Then — hot.
Ecstasy seized me.
Sobs burst from my clenched mouth, which had forgotten the language of people. I realized that if I didn’t touch the huge and intimate, I would die, I’d drown myself. Without it there was no reason to live. I had nothing but it. I had never desired anything so deeply in my life.
The water that my strokes parted shimmered in the moonlight. The green duckweed played on the surface.
A divine silence reigned all around.
A stroke of the arms, the body slid ahead.
Another stroke.
Another.
Another!
Another!!
Another!!!
My hands touched the Ice.
And I understood why I had come here.
I burst into happy sobs.
I had found the huge and intimate. My fingers touched the smooth surface. My heart beat deafeningly. I felt like I was losing consciousness. My head cleared in a flash. Divine emptiness resounded in it. While my fingers continued feverishly touching the Ice under the water. Sobbing, I began to choke. The edge of the Ice reached smoothly upward. I pushed through the water desperately. I crawled onto the Ice, like a lizard. There was very little water covering it. Shaking and sobbing, I crawled and crawled farther, along the top surface of the Ice. All around, as far as the farthest hummocks, spread a smooth hollow covered with duckweed. The enormous mass of Ice slept under it, submerged in the swamp. This dear, intimate mass had lain there quietly for twenty years, waiting for me. I’d needed twenty years in order to find the Ice! Sobs racked my body. I burned with heat. My heartbeats shook me. I was choking, swallowing the damp air of the swamp. Ahead the green duckweed gave way a little bit. The Ice glittered over there in the moonlight! A little patch of pure Ice! I pulled myself up and ran toward it, splashing the water, trampling the sleepy, thousand-year-old duckweed. The Ice! The Ice sparkled white and blue! How pure! How powerful! How mine.
Mine, mine forever!
Running up to the patch, I slipped.
And fell, slamming my chest against the shining Ice. I lost consciousness. For a moment.
Then my heart began to resound from the blow of the Ice. And I immediately felt the entire MASS of the Ice. It was enormous. And the whole thing was vibrating, resonating in time with my heart. For me alone. My heart, which had been sleeping for all these twenty years inside my rib cage, awoke. It didn’t beat harder, but sort of jolted — at first it was painful, then it was sweet. And then, quivering, it spoke.
“Bro-bro-bro...Bro-bro-bro. Bro-bro-bro...
I understood. This was my real name. My name was Bro. I understood this with my entire being. My arms embraced the Ice.
“Bro! Bro! Bro!” my heart trembled.
And the Ice answered my heart. Its divine vibrations flooded my head. The Ice was vibrating. It was older than everything alive on earth. The Music of Eternal Harmony sang in it. And that music could not be compared to anything. It sounded the Beginning of All Beginnings. Pressing my chest to the Ice, I froze stock-still, listening to the Music of Eternal Harmony. In that moment the entire earthly world paled and became transparent for me. It disappeared. The Ice and I hung alone in the Universe. Amid the stars and wordlessness.
And my awakening heart began to listen closely to the Music of Eternal Harmony:
In the beginning there was only the Primordial Light. And the Light shone in the Absolute Emptiness. And the Light shone for Itself. The Light consisted of 23,000 Light-bearing rays. And one of those rays was you, Bro. Time did not exist. There was only Eternity. And in this Eternal Emptiness we shone, 23,000 Light-bearing rays. And we begat worlds. And the worlds filled the Emptiness. Each time that we, the rays of Light, wanted to create a new world, we formed a Divine Circle of Light consisting of 23,000 Light-bearing rays. All the rays turned toward the inside of the Circle, and after 23 pulses in the center of the Circle a new world was born. We created the heavenly bodies: stars and planets, meteorites and comets, nebulae and galaxies. Their numbers grew. And their Harmony gave us Joy. The Eternal Music of the Light sang in them. We created the Universe. And it was sublime. And it came about that we created a new world, and one of its planets was covered with water. This was the planet Earth. We had never created these kinds of planets before. And we had never created water. For water is not constant — it is disharmonious. It is capable of creating worlds itself — unstable and disharmonious worlds. This was the Light’s great mistake. The water on the planet Earth formed a sphere-shaped mirror. The moment we were reflected in it, we ceased being rays of the Light and were incarnated in living creatures. We became primitive amoebas, inhabitants of the boundless ocean. The water carried our tiny bodies. But the Primordial Light was in us as before, though dampened a bit in the disharmonious, world-spawning water. As before, there were 23,000 of us. We scattered across the expanses of the Earth’s ocean. The disharmonious water engendered not only living beings but time as well. We became prisoners of the water and time. Billions of Earth years passed. We evolved along with other beings inhabiting the Earth. Our upper vertebra developed into an enormous tumor called the brain. The brain helped us figure things out better than other animals. So we became humans. Humans multiplied and covered the Earth. Dependent on flesh and time, people began to live by the laws of the brain. They thought that the brain helped them to dominate space and time. In fact, it only enslaved them to disharmonious dependence on the surrounding world. People with well-developed brains were called intelligent. Intelligent people were considered the elite of humankind. They lived by the laws of the mind and taught them to others. People began to live by the mind, enslaving themselves in flesh and time. The developed mind engendered the language of the mind. And humankind began to speak this language. And this language covered the entire visible world in an opaque film. People stopped seeing and feeling things. They began to think them. Blind and heartless, they became more and more cruel. They created weapons and machines. Throughout their entire history people have engaged in three main activities: bearing children, killing other people, and using the surrounding world. People who proposed anything else were crucified and destroyed. Engendered by the unstable and disharmonious water, people gave birth and killed, killed and gave birth. Because humans were a great mistake. Like everything living on Earth. And the Earth turned into the ugliest place in the Universe. This little planet became a genuine hell. And in this hell we lived. We died as old people and were incarnated in newborns, unable to tear away from the Earth, which we ourselves had created. And as before, there were still 23,000 of us. The Primordial Light lived in our hearts. But we didn’t know this. Our hearts were sleeping, like billions of other human hearts. What could awaken us, so that we might realize who we were and what we needed to do? All the worlds that we created were harmonious and permanent, dead in the Earth’s terms. They hung in the emptiness, giving us joy through the harmony of their peacefulness. The joy of the Primordial Light sang in them. The Earth alone violated the harmony of the Cosmos. For it was alive and developed on its own. The Earth became a dreadful tumor, the cancer of the Universe. The Divine Balance of the Universe was broken. Worlds shifted, deprived of the Divine Symmetry. And the Universe that we created gradually began to scatter in the Emptiness. But a piece of the world of Harmony, which we had previously created, fell to the Earth. This was one of the largest meteorites that had ever fallen to Earth. A huge piece of Heavenly Ice, in which the Harmony of the Primordial Light sang, having traveled for billions of years through the Universe. This was Heavenly Ice, created hard and transparent, according to the laws of Harmony. By its nature it was different from the pitiful earthly ice that formed from impermanent water, although on the outside they could not be distinguished. The dust of the Cosmos had settled on it, forging a thick iron armor. The armor helped it to withstand entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and broke off when it hit Earth. This happened on June 30, 1908, here, in Siberia. The Ice fell to Earth and entered its soil. The water of the Siberian swamps hid it from people. The permafrost helped to preserve it. For twenty years the Ice waited for you. It is right beneath you. It is yours. It was sent here by the perishing Universe. Salvation lies in it. It will help you and the rest of Earth’s hostages to become rays of Primordial Light once again. It will bring your hearts back to life. They will awaken after a long sleep. They will speak their secret names. And they will begin to speak the language of the Light. The 23,000 brothers and sisters will find one another again. And when the last of 23,000 is found, you will stand in a Circle, join hands, and your hearts will pronounce the 23 words of the Light’s language 23 times. And the Primordial Light will awaken in you and will turn to the center of the Circle. There will be a flash. And the Earth, the Light’s sole mistake, will dissolve in the Primordial Light. And disappear forever. And your earthly bodies will disappear. And once again you will become rays of Primordial Light. And the Light will shine as before in the Emptiness, for Itself Alone. And it will beget a New Universe — Sublime and Eternal.
I opened my eyes.
And saw the morning sky. The stars had faded. The moon had paled. My face was submerged up to my eyes in warm water. I moved and raised my head. I lay in an indentation formed in the Ice by the contours of my body. This naturally created bath was filled with warm water, with the heat that had left my body. I felt surprisingly calm and well. Calmer and better than I had ever felt before.
I sat up. I felt no exhaustion from the previous night. My chest was a little sore, but that was all. I looked at it: a large bruise had appeared in the middle of my chest. This was the place where I had hit myself against the Ice. I smiled. I touched my chest. Then I stood up.
The rising sun illuminated the hillocks in the east: the Siberian day had come. A new day on the planet Earth. The first meaningful day of my existence. I finally understood why I was born and what it was I had to do.
My brain went to work.
The indentation where my body had lain all night resembled the letter Φ: my arms had been resting around my body in half circles. In the center of the half rings, two oblongs of Ice surrounded by water jutted up, formed during the night as the heat of my arms had melted the Ice around them. I kicked the left oblong with all my strength. The base cracked. I grabbed it with my hands and broke it off. I lifted it and held it to my chest. The Ice vibrated. My heart resonated in time with it. The strength of the Ice filled my head. I lifted the massive chunk easily and showed it to the pale morning sky.
I cried aloud.
My cry carried over the swamp, bounced off the distant mounds, and returned to me in the voices of my brothers and sisters who were lost among humans. The first ray of sun hit me in the eyes. The Divine Ice sparkled in the sun. I had to return to the world of people. To search.
I put the piece of Ice on my shoulder and set off along the surface of the Ice in the direction my awakened heart told me to take: westward. Smoothing out, the Ice descended gradually under the water. Submerging along with it, I moved the green duckweed aside. When the water reached my mouth, I swam, clutching the chunk of Ice firmly. And soon my feet touched the silty bottom of the swamp. This wasn’t the previous viscous quagmire: you could feel a different sort of ice — the permafrost. Pushing my feet against the earthly ice, I climbed calmly out of the swamp. I looked back. The hollow of duckweed had closed up, hiding the iceberg, as though no one had ever violated its peace. I shut my eyes. My heart felt the entire iceberg. It was huge. An eighth of it had lodged in the permafrost; the part underwater was only the top edge, smoothed and melted into the concave form of the surface.
My heart knew: the Ice would wait as long as was needed.
I turned and set off with the chunk of Ice on my shoulder. Naked, smeared with silt, I walked through the sun-flooded, dead taiga. My heart sang, calling to the Ice and remembering my true name: “Bro, Bro, Bro...”
I lost all sense of time and didn’t feel the weight of the heavy chunk on my shoulder, nor the sharp stones and branches under my feet. The charred, standing forest gave way to toppled trees. The knolls and hummocks, strewn with broken branches and trunks, swam past. The Ice melted a bit on my shoulder, turning to water. Its occasional drops drove me on. I walked along, knowing with certainty where I was headed. My head was clear: during the night it was as though it had been cleansed of everything petty, disturbing, alarming, pointless. My thoughts were surprisingly quick and precise. With every step I discovered anew the world in which I had lived for twenty years. And this filled me with new strength.
Suddenly, descending into a glen, I heard ahead of me snarls, wheezes, and a strange whimpering sound. I walked on, rather than turning away. The snarls grew louder, moans could be heard. The bushes parted ahead of me. And I saw two bears tearing away pieces of a dying, pregnant elk. One of them held her by the throat; the other was ripping open her huge belly. A wheezing moan issued from the elk’s mouth, her beautiful long legs thrashed helplessly in the air. The elk’s bones cracked under the bears’ ferocious paws and fangs. The animal’s black belly, dappled with white, gave way, and along with her rosy-yellowish guts the baby elk, not yet born, fell out. Dark, with wet fur and large moist eyes, its gentle rosy-white mouth barely managed to open before bear fangs closed around its head with a crunch. A fountain of the newborn’s crimson blood sprayed from the bear’s mouth. In the distance another growl could be heard: a large bear cub hurried to join his parents’ meal. Rolling up in a brown ball, he dug into the elk’s entrails, grumbling with impatience.
This bloody scene in the midst of the dead forest graphically demonstrated to me the essence of earthly life: a creature that had not yet even been born became food for other creatures. The utter absurdity of earthly existence was here in this wheezing elk; in the convulsive, twisted lips of the baby elk, who had never managed to draw breath on Earth; in the furious grumbling of the bear cub; in the invariably good-natured face of the bear smeared with the fresh blood spurting from the torn neck artery.
But the chaos of earthly existence wasn’t frightening to me, since I had known the Harmony of the Primordial Light. Without a shudder I walked toward the beasts. They turned their bloody faces to me. Their fangs sparkled.
I approached them, carrying the Ice.
The beasts snarled angrily. Their jaws opened, their brown fur stood up from anger.
I took a step. Another. A third.
The bears roared and ran away. And I could feel that my awakening heart had frightened them. I sensed my power. With an awakened heart in my chest I could do anything. I had nothing to fear.
I went up to the elk. Her body shuddered weakly. There was moisture in her large blue-black eyes. The blood gave off steam in the morning air, spurting from her aorta. I put my bare foot on the animal’s shoulder. It was smooth and warm. The pointless and tormented life was leaving the body of the elk. The corpse of the baby elk lay nearby. She died giving birth to him, he destroyed his mother in being born, allowing the bears to overcome her easily. And all the bears wanted was to eat. The law of earthly life. And this had been going on for hundreds of millions of years. And it might go on for billions more.
I clutched the Ice to me. In it lay the destruction of this disharmony.
In it was the Power of Eternity.
It was time to strike a blow.
It was time to correct the mistake.
I would be the one to do it.
Stepping over the elk’s body, I continued on my way. I walked for a long time. The Ice melted on my shoulder. But my heart led me calmly. Finally, when the sun began to lean toward sunset, I saw an Evenki camp ahead: two yurts and an empty corral. The reindeer were out to pasture. In the middle of the glade a campfire burned and venison was boiling in a huge cauldron. Here they were waiting for the return of the herd and the herders. Three dogs dozed near the fire. Seeing me they jumped up and joyfully ran to greet me: in these wild places the dogs of herders and hunters barked only at animals. But, running up to me, they recoiled and ran off with their tails between their legs, growling. I went straight to the yurt on the left. My heart led me there. I threw back the dirty strip of tanned deerskin and went inside. The light was dim, entering only through the hole at the top of the cone and through cracks in the walls. In the middle, under the hole, stood a tripod with a copper bowl. Cedar pitch smoked in the bowl, warding off insects. The bluish smoke rose to the top and disappeared through the hole. A girl lay sleeping on deerskins. She was not an Evenka; she had blond hair braided in two plaits, and a broad, high-cheekboned, freckled face. The girl was lying on her back, her arms out to the sides. With my heart I realized that she was very tired and was sleeping deeply. She was wearing a simple but well-made peasant dress with a dirt-stained hem. Next to her lay a fur vest-jacket, a head scarf, a leather belt with a large knife, a carved oak walking stick, and shoulder basket filled with wild strawberries. Farther away stood a pair of filthy boots with puttees hanging off them.
I understood with my heart that I had been walking here all day because of this girl. She was the same as I was. Her heart was also sleeping. It had to be awakened. Kneeling, I took the Ice from my shoulder and only then noticed how small the piece had become. The Ice almost fit in my palms! Most of it had melted along the way. I had to hurry, while the Ice was still with me. The girl slept soundly. Her lips were open, her tired body had given itself over to sleep with pleasure. I brought my hand with the Ice over the girl. Then stopped: no, that wasn’t the right way. My arms were strong enough now. I looked around: a bit farther off lay the carefully folded fur clothes of the reindeer herders. Pairs of leather boots stood there — homemade short boots tied with leather laces. I pulled out one lace, took the girl’s walking stick, and tied the piece of Ice firmly to the staff. Kneeling at the feet of the sleeping girl, I swung back and with all my strength hit the girl in the chest with the Ice. The Ice shattered against her breastbone and pieces flew about the yurt.
Her sleep was so deep that she only shuddered slightly. Then, suddenly, her whole body jerked, and her blue eyes opened wide. Convulsions seized her young body, she thrashed, as if in an epileptic fit, her eyes glazed over, her mouth began to open soundlessly. And my heart felt her awakening heart. The Ice had woken it. It was like a wave that traveled from the girl, from her chest, from her heart. And with great force crashed into my heart. And flooded it. And it stood stock-still, frozen in time, joining our hearts like a bridge joins two shores. It was all so new, so powerful and unusually pleasant, that I cried out. Our hearts had joined together. And I understood who I was. I began to live, joining with another heart. And I stopped being all alone. I ceased to be a two-legged grain of sand. I became we! And this was OUR HAPPINESS!
Tossing the staff aside, I grabbed the convulsing girl by the shoulders, lifted her, and pressed her to my chest. She thrashed, her head trembled, foam appeared on her lips. I held her even more tightly. And suddenly I heard, both with my ears and with my heart, the voice of her awakening heart: “Fer! Fer! Fer!”
My heart spoke in reply: “Bro! Bro! Bro!”
Our hearts began to speak with each other. It was the language of hearts. It brought them together. It was true bliss. No earthly love that I had ever experienced before could possibly be compared with this feeling. Our hearts spoke in unknown words, words only they understood. The strength of the Light sang in each word. The joy of Eternity sounded in them. They rang out, flowed, poured, and flooded our hearts. And our hearts spoke themselves. Independently of our will and our experience. All we had to do was plunge into oblivion, embracing each other. And listen, listen, listen to the conversation of our hearts. Time stopped. We disappeared in this conversation. And hung in space, forgetting who and where we were.