He fell silent and let his forehead drop to the sticky tabletop. Maximus stared in stunned silence into the space above the heads of the drinkers and dancers. He’d always suspected something along those lines. But still, what Peter had said filled him with anguish and spite.
Semipyatnitsky shook Peter awake and told him it was time to go to the train station. The foreigner obediently got out his credit card. Maximus didn’t bother to protest and used Peter’s card to pay for the vodka, even signed the slip for him. The waiter averted his eyes tactfully, an act that earned him a reward to the tune of one hundred rubles, cash, from Maximus’s own wallet.
Rather than get behind the wheel in his state, Semipyatnitsky flagged down a cab and settled Peter in the back seat. The latter quickly came to his senses once he’d lowered the window and taken a few breaths of fresh air. Maximus asked whether he needed to stop by the hotel to pick up his things.
“No,” answered Peter. “I’ve already checked out.”
When they got to the station, Maximus, with poorly concealed spite, said to his newfound friend.
“You know what, Peter? Next time, why don’t you get a girl for fifty euros and not worry about any six-hundred-euro girls? I’ll tell you a secret: There’s no difference!”
“Why not?”
“I’ll explain. Have you ever heard anyone talk about the ‘mysterious Russian soul’?”
“I think I’ve heard something of the sort . . .”
“Let me tell you about this mystery of ours. The fact is, you can never fuck a Russian girl.”
“No, I’ve fucked them many times . . .”
“You didn’t. It was a dream. Every Russian girl learns the knack from her mother. She takes your money and you fuck yourself while dreaming about Russian girl. So what’s the difference, after all? Why pay a lot of money for it?”
“Ah . . .”
“That’s not all. You can just save your money and fuck yourself alone in your hotel room for free, there’s no need to invite a Russian girl in and pay even five euros. All you’ll be doing is masturbating either way. Don’t let Russians cheat you.”
“This is . . . shocking to me . . .”
“Yes, my friend. You can never really fuck Russia. Only in your dreams . . .”
THE FALL OF KHAZARIA
The victorious host made its way homeward, flowed across the Khazar steppe in the direction of Itil-City . . .
Dissipating into smaller rivulets along the way. Meet a widow and set up house; build a mud hut and march no more. A man gets tired of war. The generals, all Murzlas, had galloped off ahead on their spirited steeds, changing horses when their mounts got tired, hastening to the city to pick up their medals from the Khagan, along with deeds to conquered lands for pillage. But the common soldiers just dragged themselves along—what’s the rush? They’d already spent more time marching than fighting. They spent four springs on the march. They stopped, took breaks: Hunt down steppe gophers, shake the apples off a tree, catch fish in the river using your trousers as a trap. There was nothing else to eat.
And the process dissipated even more.
Only a few made it back to Itil.
And with them Saat. No interest in widows, gophers. Maybe he figured they would give him back one of his mares now that the war was over.
They arrived at the city walls. No welcoming ceremonies, no laurel wreaths and flute bands playing music, no sweet congratulatory speeches. Initially the people inside even refused to open the gates. They shouted, “What are you, a band of gypsies?” The march home had run them ragged: They were filthy, covered in rags, bedraggled.
Of course they were. Four years of war will do that to you. But then good people let them in. Maybe they thought, What’s the point of them dying out there in the steppe, they might come in handy for cleaning the slop ditches or hauling stones to pave our courtyards.
The horde entered Itil, and—holy shit!—you wouldn’t recognize it; it had become a completely different town. Not a single Khazar left.
A feral people, a mass of black and yellow.
Little shops piled up everywhere, one on top of the other, daytime for trade, nighttime for dancing—the bad kind. And their language, it’d destroy your tongue. Sort of like Khazar, but strange, the sounds all twisted. And who was maintaining order? You could get clubbed in the back of the head just walking down the street. Chechmek sotnyas prancing around everywhere. Executive and judicial branches all rolled up in one. Their chief, the one who kissed the Khagan’s ring, now stood on every street corner, embracing the Khagan. Statues, that is.
The Khagan himself was nowhere to be seen. Voiced his will through the Chechmek. People were whispering: There’s no Khagan, only the word itself remains: Khaganate! But no Khagan.
Maybe there had never been one.
What about the Murzlas? Where were they?
Gone, gone to the lands beyond the sea, gone to the places where they’d taken all that grain, poured it into their own barns and bins. Grain makes the man.
Abandoned the Khazar land.
So they weren’t Khazars after all, but a different people, nomadic.
Saat made his way home to his tent, and there were new people living there, children running and crawling like kittens in the yard, howling. Guess he wasn’t going to get back his mare. Home full of strangers. Who needed him now? And where could he go?
Saat sat on a hill, mourned.
The falling star?
Passed him by.
WASTELAND
The events of the previous day—the Dutch pills and the trip into Ni Guan’s head—had shaken Maximus out of his usual dazed state, his preoccupation with the mundane: his commute to work every morning, his beer drinking and TV every night. The mind-body interface in his brain had shifted, something had changed forever. And there was something alarming in that change.
The day after his excursion with Peter was Saturday, and he didn’t have to be at work. Semipyatnitsky slept until noon. Just before awakening he had the next dream in his Khazaria series, a sad little installment.
Maximus took a shower, boiled himself four eggs for breakfast (lunch?), and decided to take a drive. Somewhere, anywhere. One of his magazines had an article in it about an archaeological site, a three- or four-hour drive away. Though of course he had to figure out where he’d left the car.
Maximus dressed, went out, and hailed a taxi heading downtown. He found the car right where he had left it the night before, near the Tribunal. Untouched by thieves, hooligans, or the tow truck. A good omen. And Semipyatnitsky headed north.
The Murmansk Highway begins just after Vesyoly. At the city line the driver encounters a row of Cyclopean bulletin boards advertising the Mega Mart. After that the road broadens out into a divided highway with a tree-lined median, but that lasts only as far as Sinyavino. The road that continues on to Murmansk after Sinyavino bears little resemblance to a national highway. Resembles it even less than that string on the stripper’s hips resembled panties. Narrow, just one lane going each way, no stripe down the middle. Nightmarish pavement, nothing but potholes. Maximus clutched the wheel, shuddering as trucks roared past his window a mere arm’s distance away, pondering the sobering truth that this transport artery was the only road linking an entire oblast to the rest of Russia. Other than that there was one railroad line and a seaport that iced up every winter. That was all. Considering the high cost of railway tariffs it was clear that most of Murmansk oblast was supplied by truck transport using this one narrow, pitted road. And there are so many other regions like this in Russia, essentially cut off from the capitals! And no one cares. Not until one of them rises up and demands its independence or one of their neighbors starts to show too much interest. There was that incident where the Finns claimed a village, and the president offered them the ears of a dead donkey instead. But we’re talking about an entire oblast here. Do we really need to keep it? Well, if so, you’d think they’d at least put down a decent road.
It’s
only on the map that we’re one big united country, all one color. But the land isn’t a map, it’s forests and rivers, fields and ravines. And for one place to be united with another, you need a road.
Centuries ago people on the flatlands settled along rivers, mostly because the rivers served as highways linking one world to another. You can’t get far traveling through the great slumbering forest or across the vast empty steppe, especially if you’re hauling goods for trade. The Varangians, those bandits and traders who founded the Russian state, had traveled by river, if you buy that theory about the Norse origins of Rus, that is.
Semipyatnitsky had no intention of going all the way to Murmansk. His destination was the village of Staraya Ladoga, Russia’s first capital, the place where the Varangians had begun their expansion onto the Central European highlands. He wanted to see that landscape for himself, to feel what those energetic Norse adventurers had felt so long ago. To unwind the scroll of the country’s history back to zero. To understand how and why things had turned out the way they had.
The road was long. Nothing on either side. Semipyatnitsky recalled a phrase from a guidebook for tourists: “Some ten percent of Russian territory is densely populated; twenty percent is relatively civilized, and seventy percent is virgin land.” Tselina, in Russian. The land is a young girl. A virgin, you say? But what if she’s an embittered widow, an old trollop?
What do we need all this space for? For nothing—all that emptiness just gets in the way. We cross it in haste and in shame as we travel from one oasis to another in our busy lives. Indeed, if Moscow were closer to St. Petersburg, and Rostov-on-Don to Moscow, with Novosibirsk nearby, it would be a lot easier to govern and supply. You can see why the tsar unloaded Alaska in exchange for a couple of glass beads: He knew that the cord binding it to Russia would unravel.
Yes, in the big cities people fight to the death for every square meter; the buildings cram in closer and closer together and rise higher and higher, grasping at the last remaining breathable air, reaching up to the heavens. Along Russia’s horizontal axis, however, the only things that grow and multiply are cemeteries and wasteland: pustosh. You could cover four or five cities with the palm of your hand, and all the rest of Russia is one giant empty wasteland.
And it’s all the same: above and below, outside and inside. Above the scorched, burned-out land is an empty sky, devoid of color. And inside your heart too: nothing there, just parched, wretched emptiness: pustota.
Wasteland, pustosh. The word entered Semipyatnitsky’s head and surrounded itself with other thoughts. An ancient word, conveying an exact meaning: pustosh, wasteland, not pustota, emptiness. Emptiness entails something Buddhist, a vacuum, there is something postmodern and pretensions about it. But pustosh is primordial. Like a pagan divinity: Mokosh . . . Pustosh . . . God of Emptiness.
Emptiness, though, pustota . . . is just emptiness. It is and always has been, from the beginning. And will remain so, permanently. Emptiness is cold, no way out. Wise: Chinese, Hindu. Eternal, indifferent.
Whereas pustosh is warm and melancholy. It contains the past, what’s gone by. In what is now pustosh, grain used to be harvested, great households stood, gardens and lush orchards grew and flourished. Then everything burned to the ground. Weeds grew tall and covered the arid soil. It’s abandoned now: no one there, just an old wino digging a hole in the earth. Planting sunflowers, maybe, on a whim, or digging a grave for his dead dog.
Then there’s pustinya, desert. That’s different too. Pustinya is sand, wind, a white camel, the Prophet on her back—peace be unto Him—she’s taking him from Mecca to Medina, or is it from Medina to Mecca, whatever, bearing Him on her back, and along with Him, salvation to all mankind.
Maybe it’s a bad thing that the land is so empty, but emptiness is necessary, because emptiness is a space that can be filled. Though everyone’s emptiness is different.
For the Chinese, the entire world is emptiness, pustota. Sewing Dolce and Gabbana labels onto trousers in some basement sweatshop, stealing the design for a concept car from Toyota—nothing is sacred. It’s all emptiness, and emptiness is Tao. Emptiness is the inner essence of things. And any form is simply a label pasted on emptiness, predetermining the way our untrustworthy senses will perceive it. So what’s the point of copyright, of defending someone’s asinine trademarks?
For the Arab, the whole world is a desert. Pustinya. And he couldn’t give a damn that there are other people living on the globe who’ve built great cities and roads, who have something that they consider to be civilization and culture. No, they’re all savages, heathens. The Arab rides alone in all his glory, regal and handsome on that white camel, a sack of petrodollars in one hand and an Kalashnikov automatic in the other, bearing either the Prophet’s teachings—peace be unto him—or salvation through death, take your choice, O infidels who wander in the darkness.
Whereas your European hates emptiness in whatever form. He covers it with construction projects, divides it into plots, parcels them out, maps everything, and presto, no more emptiness! Or so it seems. But no, it’s emptiness nonetheless: pustota.
For a Russian, though, wherever you make your home is wasteland. Pustosh is the Russian natural landscape. And any other terrain a Russian finds beneath his feet inevitably turns into that same wasteland which is so dear to his heart. Even his apartment becomes pustosh.
Because when you find yourself in a wasteland, it’s only natural that your thoughts turn to the futility of life.
There they are, the remains of empires, the bygone glory of kingdoms, and what now? Futility. From wasteland we emerged, into wasteland we shall return, empty on the inside, on the outside empty too.
At that point it might seem fitting to try and free yourself from the trammels of the material world, but such a quest requires emptiness, pustota. Sitting on pustosh, though, you think: What are all paths? Many have trod and fallen, many have plummeted into the abyss. That too, futility!
But “even if I do not fall into the abyss, the poison will still find me,” sings the bard.* And pours the poison into the glass himself. It is all one path, all Tao, and this glass is Tao, Russian style. He drinks. And imagines himself wandering on roads paved with diamonds, then plummeting into the black abyss . . .
They say that this is Russia’s unique path. The Russian path to God. Through wasteland . . .
And so it is. For any road leads to God.
Maximus recalled something he’d read in Blavatsky or Roerich, a verse they claimed was translated from the Upanishads or something like that: All mountain roads lead to God, who lives on the mountain tops . . .
The Romans thought that all roads led to Rome . . .
And the Bhaktivedanta Swami used to tell his disciples that if they got on the train to Calcutta, they would never reach Bombay.
Funny, and true. But perhaps there is another truth: Any road leads to God.
Though it has two ends.
Semipyatnitsky drove slowly, trying to protect his car’s suspension from the road’s abundant potholes and ruts. He came to a fork in the road, with a 24/7 fish market, a café, a hotel, and a highway patrol station, and headed to the right, onto the road to Staraya Ladoga. When he reached the village, it was already dark.
The white nights retained their calendar rights; the sun still set late and its whitish light lingered in the pale sky long after the clock indicated darkness. But in this strange time, when night came on, it came suddenly. A dark hood would descend without warning, covering the entire world, blocking out even the stars. And when dawn glimmered early and drove the night away, it left the night even darker in memory.
The village nestled along the banks of the Volkhov River. Maximus drove down the right bank until he reached a hotel on the small town square. The square was deserted. Maximus parked, entered the hotel through a dark doorway, and climbed a stairway with carved wooden banisters to the second floor. The door into the hotel lobby was closed and Maximus pressed the buzzer to summon the des
k clerk.
The clerk told him that a room would cost 1,500 rubles, but that there were no vacancies. The rooms were reserved a month in advance: A lot of visitors, tourists as well as pilgrims, were coming to visit the monastery and churches of Staraya Ladoga.
Semipyatnitsky drove on to the very end of the village, then turned and headed back the way he’d come. He took a secondary road and followed it to the monastery gate. The gate was locked and the monastery was dark. In front of the gate was a convenient paved parking area, enough for a few dozen vehicles. A couple of cars drowsed there; around a third, a group of young people had gathered. The car’s windows were open, and its speakers were blaring a song to the entire town—something about a girl, a student, a sweet piece of candy—violating the spiritual grandeur of the place. Maximus spat and drove away in annoyance, retracing his steps.
The second road on the right was narrow and led up a steep hill. On top, in a grassy clearing, stood an old chapel, or maybe it was a church—religious architecture not being one of Maximus’s strong points. A cat, evidently the church’s caretaker, appeared and meowed a loud greeting. Maximus regretted that he hadn’t picked up some smoked fish at the market he’d passed on the way. All he had in the trunk was a milk chocolate bar. The cat demonstrated an admirable lack of fastidiousness and accepted his gift gratefully. She ate the treat, and then, meowing loudly, led Semipyatnitsky on a tour of the grounds, showing him a hill that sloped down to the river and a mowed lawn behind the church. Maximus took a liking to the animal; he had a soft spot for cats anyway, and this one projected an air of reverence and spiritual dignity.
Maximus stroked the vociferous cat one more time, delivered an eloquent and verbose farewell, got in his car, and descended cautiously back to the highway. He was now quite close to the entrance to Staraya Ladoga, with its cupola-shaped hills rising over a bend in the river.
* Ilya Kormiltsev (lyricist for the band Nautilus Pompilius), from the song “Diamond Roads.”
The Maya Pill Page 11