Happiness is permitted, if you dare take it.
one
We saw the fool for the first time that day in Vologda. We were in Moscow before that and when we had our fill of all the places to see, visit and experience, we headed north. The railway station was near Babushkin Square where we had coffee, tired from the trip and even more from the abiding responsibility to constantly lug our stuff around when we would much rather just happen to forget them somewhere, were we not well aware that the selfsame things we hated would be needed all too soon. If not today, then tomorrow, when our shirts start to lose the fresh smell and the underwear and socks need changing, beards start to bother us and need shaving. Like many things, a suitcase too is a good servant, but an evil master.
We sat and waited for two hours for the café to open as it started work at 10. Exhausted, we mostly kept quiet. Our heads stood upright only to listlessly drop toward our chest the very next minute, gathering strength for the next stretch they were supposed to stand straight the way they were supposed to. When the café opened, we were the first through the door, first at a table, first to order.
There was nothing of interest in the café, nothing noteworthy. White walls, wooden bar, burgundy furniture that looked like seats ripped out of a bus and moved into the watering hole. The coffee was not good, but it was coffee which was the only criterion it needed to meet for us to drink it. N.N. twice as fast as me, as usual. He just loves to burn his tongue, you will forgive him, he is an incredibly hasty man.
So, we saw the fool for the first time that day in Vologda when we exited the café and took a back alley, not really knowing where we were going. We just wanted to take a stroll. We knew that we would later go toward the centre, inquire about accommodation, do everything travelers usually do, but we wanted, as we always did when we arrived in a new place, to let it guide us where it wanted for the first hour. And it is precisely because it led us to him that we are writing this because in many other places it led us nowhere worthy of mentioning. It is perfectly natural to choose something extraordinary when you feel the need to address people, right?
He sat there, draped only in a rag, this washed-out sheet, faintly gouging the ground in front of him with a short stick. He was more naked than dressed, with unkempt hair and even less kempt beard. As we approached him, not too close to threaten him in any way, we heard him muttering but not in continuity, he would just blurt a word here and there, almost too soft to hear.
We exchanged a look that said, then more than ever before, that we were thinking the exact same thing. Only later, when we lost him and continued on our own, did we speak about it; we gave a name to the thought we shared before, made it audible this time.
When he noticed us he scowled, like a child scowling at food. He looked us in the eye with this ridiculous disgust, alternately N.N. and then me, then he made some more moves on the ground with his stick, hastily scraping away what he had been etching into it, turned around and moved on, away from us, but not too quickly. He was not running away, far from it. He was simply moving away at his own pace, as if he were looking for a quiet place just for himself. Again, he looked like a child whose territory in the sandpit was taken over by rivals. When we approached the place where he was scribbling on the ground, there was nothing special, just a bunch of grooves, crisscrossed with no rhyme or reason. There was no room for conspiracy theories; no need to decipher his lines – they did not mean anything nor did he seem like someone who wanted to tell us something. Our gaze followed him until he disappeared in one of the yards in the distance, out of sight. We hoped that we would see him again somewhere.
We had both read a bit about it at some point of our lives, but we never dreamed that we would ever come across anything like it. We were sure yurodivy[1] no longer existed, yet still we were certain that we had just met one. As if no one, in their wildest dreams would dare contest that. It’s a funny thing. We did not have any special proof, except that we both thought the exact same thing. We did not ask him nor did he tell us. Nobody appeared to convince us of it. Where did this certainty that he was one of them come from? I do not know, but we were pretty sure of it. From the moment we saw him half-naked on the ground.
We decided to believe we met one, though our yurodivy was probably just a local homeless man, driven mad by the bad weather and lack of human affection in his life. We felt good. We were honoured for some bizarre reason known only to us. On that day we met a blessed fool and he looked at us. The look was anything but pleasant, but it was a look. Filled with this absurd notion we walked back toward the railway station. In the direction opposite from the one he walked away from us.
two
Sometimes, I lie in bed and can’t go to sleep, and when the dark sky appears through the window, with just one star in it, or several among which one is particularly conspicuous, I am flooded by a special kind of excitement and partially selfish emotion, the impression that at that moment it is shining just for me. I relish the fact that everybody else is asleep, and I am awake; to look at it and have it seemingly talk to me. Rationally, I am aware that the star would shine with or without me, even if I were asleep, or have never been born. But in those moments as I lie, especially in beds not my own, a sprinkling of narcissism in me loves to convince me that it shines more strongly exactly because I am looking at it and that we are connected in some curious way.
The next day we walked around. Some houses were very strange, wooden and big, they reminded me of the ships in my dreams from which I wake drenched in sweat. They are ships anchored in the North Sea which for some reason I am always compelled to swim by, moving soundlessly in their immediate proximity, aware of their motionlessness, size and proximity, with the constant feeling that they would move any second now. It is the kind of dream where nothing notable happens, but where I have the opportunity to experience the terror of my potential helplessness in the face of something physically millions of times bigger than me, that has the power to dispatch me into an utterly stupid, quick and gruesome death.
N.N. tells me that he heard that Ivan the Terrible once visited Vologda and a pebble fell on his head at the very entrance of St. Sophia Cathedral. As he was awfully superstitious he wanted to tear the Cathedral down because of it. I think it is safe to say that Ivan truly was terrible. We carry on as I want to buy some of the famous butter I heard about. It would not be a bad idea to have a drink somewhere soon, too. Having acquired the butter, that I then carried squished in my bag the next ten days, we sat in a small tavern, barely noticeable from outside. N.N. asks me to translate the motto hanging above the bar, surrounded by photos, from the looks of it of the owner, his relatives and friends. Fishing scenes, pictures of lunches and what looked like some kind of karaoke-euphoria.
Oh, yes, the sign above the bar says: Overindulge, there’ll be nothing left in the end anyway. Do they mean the end of the day or when we die, it remains unclear, but one shouldn’t dare be a stranger to tavern philosophy.
We are unsure whether we are in the mood to overindulge because it is only one in the afternoon, but we order a couple of beers and are also presented with pancakes which from, by the looks of it, we could not have avoided if we tried.
We reminisce about some of our previous travels. Both N.N. and I have always been rather susceptible to wanderlust. Even when money was scarce, we found ways to travel, often very uncomfortably, but comfort was never very high on our list of priorities. Sometimes together, sometimes alone. An entire array of other lives always packed into one and the same suitcase.
We remembered the yurodivy and launched into an analysis. He has, for example, probably never been anywhere but here. How does he feel, what kind of life does he lead, and the life he does lead appears to be wholly atypical compared to the lives of the people we meet every day in these and some other streets.
What goes on in his head? If he is not insane, at least not in the way I imagine insanity, if his mind is keen, but somehow self-sufficient, not adrift in ambiguities and contradictions, what does go on in his head? What truths does he know and understand to have swapped for them all that makes a human human in the traditional sense? What bounty was he awarded for rejecting everything we are still part of? Finally, was he always like that or did he become like that recently, when his wife left him, when he lost his house or drank his brain down the drain? His person hides so many secrets… Yet the look he bestowed on us did not appear to hide any, it seemed that truth itself materialised in those eyes, plain and simple and nothing more. I am so prone to exaggeration when it comes to some people! N.N. resents my turning him into some sort of superhuman, myth-building and idealising the man to the extreme. He seems to have curbed yesterday’s enthusiasm, as if our shared impression has slowly faded away. He admits that he no longer believes that the man was a blessed fool, allowing more room for the possibility that he is a man who lost his house and his mind followed. N.N. is the hand, I am the balloon. That is probably the secret of the longevity of our friendship.
three
I had a dream that night. N.N. and I were in Vologda, leaving a small tavern. After a brief walk, we sat on a bench with a little lawn behind it, followed by trees partially obscuring the houses lying beyond, behind their trunks. We were talking about a man who had for a long while been persuading me to help him publish something which I believed did not make much sense to publish, but he knew that I knew some people and now I was doomed to waste time on it. The thing in question is his criticism of everything under the sun, a dreary lexicon of cynicism in 300 pages which he would like to put in a hard cover. I had read what he sent me, but I did not have the heart to tell him what I really thought about it, and he continued to call and write to me, and occasionally I picked up with a ready excuse that I was too busy, or I just ignored the call. In the course of our conversation, N.N. notices none other than the yurodivy, sitting on the ground some ten meters away and looking somewhere into the distance, his back turned to us. He then turns around and watches us for some time, while we pretend to be engrossed in the conversation and not notice him, but, from time to time, we both follow him for a split second out of the corner of our eyes. My voice is rising and unpleasant because I am beginning to badmouth the man who has been bothering me with his book, I am explaining to N.N. why I believe it is not worth publishing and I launch into first an objective, followed by a completely subjective commentary about him and his work. The fool’s unwavering gaze is starting to make me feel uncomfortable. At that point, my phone goes off, but the melody in the dream is completely different from the one in reality. Aghast, in disbelief I realize that it is the man I am talking about, calling me for the third time this week. I pick up, he asks where I am and why I am so difficult to reach, I say I am on a trip, pretty far away, and that I hope the whole thing can wait until I return. I beg his patience and assure him that I will call him when I get back and unpack. We finish the conversation and that is when I realize that the yurodivy has come a little closer because I can see his face better. I nudge N.N. with my elbow to alert him to the fact, but he is already looking and we no longer shy away from staring more openly, not breaking eye contact. He has very thin eyebrows, sparse but long beard, hollow cheeks and somewhat female eyes, if eyes can be called that, elongated and with a slight upward slant at the corners. He stares at me intently and I expect him to look at N.N. anytime now as he too is watching him closely. But no, he stares only at me, with a look I suspect hides disappointment and disgust, but not much judgement or assessment. It seems to be more of a look a rural child might give an adult slaughtering poultry, a look carrying a hint of dissention, silent protest and mild revulsion for what it is witnessing; no judgement or assessment because it becomes clear as day – these are the instruments of the adult world. His intent stare lingers, making me be the one to look away. When I look at him again, I see that he has dropped his gaze and just sits there, only to get up the next minute and set off somewhere again, in a direction opposite from the place we are at.
I slump back on the wooden bench in a semblance of relaxation, though its backrest is actually so uncomfortable it is killing me, but I remain stock-still, without the slightest intention of moving.
We stay silent but not for long. I can’t help it, I have to speak out. I ask N.N. if he noticed how he looked only at me, and he claims that is not true, so I repeat what I just said and keep convincing him that I did not imagine it. He looked just at me as if he understood everything I was saying before and after the phone rang. N.N. says that that is a gross exaggeration. I agree; fine, maybe the fool could not understand what I was saying. But he must have sensed something about me if he felt the need to stare at me directly for so long. Maybe he sensed my tone if he could not understand what I was saying, maybe he sensed the unnatural switch from the brusque and mocking, impatient expose on the book of the man who called immediately after, to the polite and pacifying tone I used in conversation with him! He must have found something deeply unnatural in the rapid change in tone and that is why he looked at me like that, that must have been it. I was almost certain that he sniffed out the lie. Well, if he is indeed some kind of a sacrifice made for truth, how could he not sniff out a lie even when he did not understand the language used to convey it. N.N. says I am losing my mind, suggests we should move on and insists on buying me a drink. I accept, but remain partially absent. Only when we walk into a tavern, when the glass makes its way into my hand and N.N. grabs my attention with a story that requires me to respond to a myriad of questions and take active part, do I push the previous thoughts into the background and soon hear the first notes of my alarm’s familiar melody.
four
I am still thinking about the fool. Only now I cannot talk about it with N.N. because I am afraid he might get utterly fed up with me. I constructed and reconstructed his story a thousand times, what could have happened to him, what he was like before, what he is like now, imagined him as a child, then a boy, a man – before and after, but even after all the assumptions I was aware that it was only guesswork. You can build entire worlds of assumptions about a person you saw only once or twice.
I thought more intensively about myself too. Something cracked in me the day we met and after the dream where the fool gazed at me, never breaking eye contact. I thought about the way I live. All the time I spend on things I honestly do not consider all that important, all the people I try to do right by, often at the expense of my own comfort, peace or time, forgetting one of the more important rules – courtesy is the first step to suicide.
I used to fantasise about one thing: just disappearing one day, going somewhere, far from the world I know. I was always attracted to faraway places where no one knew my name, where, just for a moment, I would be alone and free, peaceful and new. Of course, I would soon realise that I could not stay a stranger to the people around me forever. People would again become familiar with me and again claim to know me, in time narrowing the choice of all the things I want to be because at some point I will inevitably have a yesterday there that will control my tomorrow. You should not assume that I am asocial; my entire life and relationships point to the opposite. Only, there is something nauseating that I noticed about people, something that could make me truly sad and want to run away from them forever. They are afraid when people close to them change. Every time they feel you might change, they will try to thwart your efforts, often sensing the negative, rarely the positive side of your change, saying that you are inconsistent or that it simply cannot be because you are who you are. And when you ask them who that is, because much too often you yourself do not have such a keen eye for your own identity and its integrity, they will joyfully offer their own keen eye, telling you about yourself, things that you know, maybe know or do not know at all. With it they seem to lay a claim of a kind on you, your inner life and your intentions. If you are not decisive enough, you might start to doubt the rightness of your intentions, actions, decisions and finally dreams, adapting them to the identity assigned to you by others. Because their entire world is in a way jeopardised if you change. People like the world around them to be, by and large, fixed, though they will go on endless tirades claiming the opposite.
Another thing that often made me dream about leaving the known world behind is the fact that I have always felt I have several different roles depending on who I am with and where I am. With some people I am relaxed and flexible, a follower, a puzzle piece that fits anywhere, says yes even when he means no. With others I am decisive and resolute, a leader, someone who is there for you, to help you and do something, and then there is the third kind of person who makes me completely different again… And the cause of my deepest torment is the feeling that, in the relations with these people I am always the person they see me as. Even when I consciously tried to be unique in my relationship with the wildly diverse world, soon, something in their eyes would drag me back into the role of the person they saw me as instead of the one I was determined to display everywhere and to everyone as unique, singular and constant.
In yurodivy I recognised the thing that always fascinated me, the courage to remain in the same place but undergo a change, whatever it might be, without seeking another’s approval and independent of whether most would find the change purposeful or not. That, it seemed to me, is the key difference between truly good people and people like me, or all of those, along with me, who I love and know. These people I did not know, the, I would say, exceptionally rare ones who are bold enough to experience the thing happening inside them in a given moment, no holds barred, no compromise. The fool, him for example… Was he worried when he decided to live the thing he considered to be true at a certain point of his life? People like to call these things selfish. But is it better to lie or run away from yourself and the changes that sometimes, like voices from miles away, haunt and call us to go where we already are without knowing it. I don’t know… I am not saying that I could or would have to go that far; anyway, yurodivy and I probably do not worship the same totem. But that does not mean that I do not understand what he is doing and that I do not understand that I should do the same in my life. The truth is, after all, one. Totems are different, but the truth is one, it seems to me.
five
I watch the trees whooshing by with such speed that every branch soon becomes the next and then the previous even more quickly, and all of the none-too-dense trees seem to be cobweb curtains in the windows of the train taking us back to Moscow. I think about how sensitive I am to other people’s weaknesses and that it is not fair because I have an infinite number of my own, but that is probably why I cannot help myself. The ways we think that we are living right are absurd, and even more so are all the sentences we should have told others but did not because we love them, left within us to rot and degrade with a half-life close to eternity.
I am aware I cannot change a lot of things if I haven’t already. And I wonder whether it is truly that difficult to do only the things you want to and approve of. Would it hurt too much, me and the whole world around me, the one I accustomed to the good old me they know and love?
I watch the rapidly sweeping trees again and I feel that I will soon lose control of my wakefulness.
[1] Iurodstvo (or Foolishness for Christ) in Orthodox Christianity refers to seemingly irrational behavior for religious purposes, where it was considered one of the bravest and hardest forms of asceticism.
Translated by: Mirjana Slavkovski
VERNAKERA 