End to Ordinary History

by Michael Murphy

  “He’s right about the American Dream,” Fall said. “My friends in the U.S. Embassy said it was more alive here than it is in the States.”

  “Every human emotion invites its opposite,” Gorski said, looking into his glass. “Enantiodromia—as an actor I know it well. If I play a murderer long enough, I want to be a saint. If I play a hard man, I want to be soft. If I play a soft man, I want to be hard. It is the same with nations, perhaps. Underneath the warheads, our peoples could love one another.”

  “Maybe detente will lead us there.” Fall lifted his glass. “Let us drink to that.”

  For another hour they talked about the people Fall had met in 1969. Vladimir Raikov, a psychiatrist, continued his work on hypnotic regression to develop the powers of artists. Gennady Sergeyev studied psychokinesis. And Edward Naumov continued to proselytize for parapsychology and hidden reserves. But all were careful not to offend the authorities. Their caution inhibited their creativity, Gorski said wearily. Project Elefant and projects like it existed in another world, screened off from them by the military and the KGB.

  Reluctantly they parted, Fall waving as Gorski descended the broad carpeted stairs to the lobby. The Russian turned and waved, then went out to the street, exhilarated. Seeing his American friend had filled him with the excitement of three years before. But as he walked toward the subway, hunched against the wind, he felt a vague disquiet. If Jacob Atabet was the force Fall described, if he and Fall were discovering so much about the body’s powers, why would they chase rumors about a Soviet spy? What was missing in their experience? The discoveries Fall had described in his letters were not enough for them, it appeared, but Gorski didn’t see how they would further them in Russia.

  15

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Fall awoke to the sound of a woman’s voice at his door, calling out, “Good morning! A message here!” Before he could answer, a uniformed maid came in, placed an envelope at his feet, and left. The manners of hotel personnel hadn’t changed in these last three years, Fall thought. You were never safe from these intrusions.

  Inside the envelope was a handwritten message:

  Forgive my rudeness last night. I could not believe it was you! Will you let me buy you lunch? Can we meet at two o’clock, at the entrance to St. Basil’s Cathedral? I have a surprise for you! Sergei Aitmatov.

  Unlike the written English of most other Russians Fall knew, this note had no Cyrillic letters or inverted phrases. Such command of the language was added evidence that the man was no ordinary engineer. Fall wondered if he should talk to Gorski about the invitation, but his eagerness to see Aitmatov overcame his hesitation.

  When they met near St. Basil’s, Kirov’s guarded manner of the night before was gone. Dressed in a khaki bush jacket and faded blue jeans, he looked more robust then he had in Prague. Visibly, his spirits were restored.

  “Moscow is beautiful today!” Kirov said, gesturing toward the sunlit towers of the Kremlin. “On a day like this it is great to be a Russian!”

  “Thanks for the California weather! Are you trying to convert me?”

  “I am warming you up for a big surprise.” Kirov slapped his arm. “But come! I have a restaurant where we can talk.”

  They walked rapidly across the cobblestone expanse of Red Square, past the GUM department store and onto Chernshevskogo Street, Kirov pointing out places of historic interest. After a few hundred yards, they turned up a narrow alley. Opening an unmarked door, Kirov led Fall inside. A man in a seedy blue suit led them to an alcove in an empty dining room.

  “What kind of place is this?” Fall asked. “There wasn’t any sign on the door.”

  “There are restaurants like this without signs. You have to know your way around.” Kirov’s slightly Oriental eyes filled with merriment. “But here is my surprise. We will go to Tashkent tomorrow. I have some business there, but time enough to see that mosque!”

  “Can you get a ticket just like that?”

  Kirov passed his palm across the table. “Blat,” he winked. “You must know the right people. We will fly there tomorrow and meet some members of that school I described. Then we will go out to the desert and see that mosaic.”

  A waiter laid out plates of sliced cucumbers, brown bread, and butter. “You eat what he gives you,” Kirov said, “and be thankful there is something green. Vegetables are rare in Moscow this time of year.”

  “Who eats here?” Fall asked. “Is this some kind of club?”

  “The clientele is part Tatar, you see.” Kirov nodded toward a massive figure moving past their table. “Does he scare you?”

  The man sat at a table nearby. His large, dark face with its high cheekbones and slanting eyes conveyed a sense of menace. “The last of the Golden Horde,” Kirov said, pretending to study his plate. “Don’t look now, but he’s smiling at you.”

  “Should I smile back?”

  “Not if you can help it. If you do, he will come to our table. He seems to like you very much.”

  Facing away from the large smiling face, Kirov feigned a look of terror. Fall smiled in spite of himself, and the Tatar grinned in response.

  “Please don’t smile anymore,” Kirov said with a deadpan look, “or he will buy us dinner.”

  They sat in silence, buttering slices of bread, and the man finally turned back to his companions. “Are you ready for Central Asia?” Kirov asked. “You will need some sweaters and hiking shoes, and a warm overcoat. If you don’t have them, I can get them for you in Tashkent.”

  “I’ll need hiking shoes,” Fall said, “but otherwise I’m ready. Since Prague I haven’t stopped thinking about that secret school. There are a thousand questions I want to ask you about it.”

  “Not now,” Kirov said expansively. “I hope we don’t have to talk metaphysics on this glorious day!”

  “I can’t stop thinking,” Fall persisted, “about your Earth of Hurqalya. Is it simply a metaphor? Or is it a state of mind, or an extension of physical space . . .”

  “That is unfair!” Kirov threw up his hands. “To answer it will take a week!”

  “We have a week. You can finish in the desert.”

  “All right, I will begin to give you an answer. But for this you will owe me a dinner and a very good bottle of wine.” Kirov wiped his hands with a napkin and leaned closer to Fall. “I will answer with a story that took place in Moscow some years ago. It will take a few minutes to tell.” He paused as Fall put down his fork to listen. “There was a man from that secret school who came to work here in 1955. Life in Tashkent, where he had grown up, was blessed with teachers and friends, and he had a garden where his meditation always brought him close to God. But in Moscow everything changed. It was cold and hard and lonely. His work was difficult, and he asked his chiefs to send him home. When they refused he prayed with all his heart and soul, until he had a vision. In a blazing revelation, he saw Moscow swallowed in an earthquake, and he cried to God for help. The vision was so intense, its imagery so vivid and present, that he thought his room was sinking into the earth. But God spoke to him, saying that he should look for a ray of light coming down from heaven and climb it toward the sky. At that very moment such a ray appeared, and he climbed hand over hand out of his room and out of the crumbling city.”

  Kirov paused. “Now I know this man. You must believe me when I tell you that he climbed into a city with buildings and rooms like ours, with streets and parks and people. But the space that contained it was a marvelous elixir! To breathe was to taste delight—to move was to dance. Instead of a sinking room and crumbling city, there was a world more beautiful than any he had seen before.”

  Kirov sat back and folded his napkin carefully. “And now for the best part,” he said. “When the man opened his eyes, he saw that his vision had actually delivered him into that radiant world. His room, his building, the rug on which he sat were the same as the ones in his trance. The heavenly city was Moscow! In the words of his teachers, he had gone through the ‘first gate’ of the larger E
arth. And he saw at once that this was permanent. Though he might forget sometimes, he would never forget completely. A trace of this blessedness would stay for the rest of his life.

  “But there was more. In time he would enter a ‘second gate.’ When his work in Moscow was done, he would return to the desert for a deeper kind of meditation, to enter this Hurqalya more fully, with his body as well as his mind, winning a more glorious life within the larger Earth. In this second transformation, his elements would become the luminous form we are meant to enjoy.” Kirov touched Fall’s arm. “The ‘first gate’ is what the saints have shown us; it is the way to God, the way to our true Orient. The ‘second gate’ is the way toward making our union with God more complete, the path that you and your friends have begun to explore. Does this story help you?”

  Fall sat without answering, studying the Russian’s complex expression. He did not understand the story completely, but decided to save his questions. Its meaning might be clearer in the desert. “There’s an old teaching,” he said, “that matter is the densest form of spirit and spirit the subtlest form of matter. It goes back to the Platonists and beyond. Your story reminds me of it.”

  “Many traditions point toward that understanding, and many of them are still alive in the Soviet Union. They are alive among some of my friends. In the next few days, if all goes well, you will learn about them.”

  16

  ON WEEKENDS TASHKENT’S open market was especially busy, Kirov said, because farmers had free time to sell the produce from their private plots. Some of them came from state farms and collectives more than fifty miles away to make the extra profit permitted by the government, while others sold herbs and vegetables they had grown in the middle of the city. Everywhere the booths and pavilions were crowded.

  “You can see twenty or thirty ethnic groups,” Kirov said, “most of them living in harmony.” He nodded toward a handsome Tatar woman dressed in Western slacks and blouse, carrying melons and corn toward a Volga sedan driven by her blond Russian husband. Behind her walked a barefoot Uzbek boy wearing short pants and a white cotton shirt, his brown Turkish features alive with curiosity about the stately woman. As she got into the car, he watched her wistfully, then produced a yo-yo to show her some tricks. She smiled radiantly, drawing looks from the men on the street. As the car drove off, the boy waved good-bye as if he had been smitten. After watching the car a moment, he skipped down the sidewalk to follow a bearded patriarch wearing the traditional khalat, or long coat, and conical hat from Kazakhstan. The old man was a mullah, Kirov said. A boy carried bundles for him, and two passing women bowed respectfully.

  Melons, corn, red and green peppers, pistachio nuts, herbs, flour, and long rows of cheeses were arrayed on wooden tables inside the pavilions. The bargaining over prices was incessant. Kirov nodded toward three Uzbek women wrapped in bright flowered shawls who were arguing with a blond, blue-eyed man wearing jeans and a Levi shirt. He was a German from the Volga region, Kirov said, but spoke little Uzbek. The women would get their price. Two rough Kazakh men who looked Japanese to Fall watched the argument with amusement, grinning to reveal magnificent rows of gold teeth.

  As they crossed the teeming market Fall marveled at the variety of faces: aquiline profiles from Tajikistan, Chinese features from Kirghizia, and the dark good looks of Georgia. There were Ukrainians whose families had settled in Uzbekistan during the nineteenth century, and Azerbaijanis and Turkmen and Jews. This was the hub of Asia, Kirov boasted—one of the world’s richest meeting places for traditional and modern cultures. He pointed to new office buildings near the market. “Old and new, East and West, Muhammad, Christ, and Lenin,” he said with pride. “Soviet Central Asia seems to work. Most of these people are satisfied. And some are more independent than you think. But come.”

  Kirov signaled a muscular Uzbek who stood by a dented sedan. The man opened the back door for them, and a moment later they hurtled down a narrow street onto a boulevard. Careening from lane to lane, they accelerated to fifty miles an hour. “Where are we going?” Fall asked with alarm. “Does he want to kill us!”

  “He goes slower than most,” Kirov said, grabbing the seat as they skidded to a stop. “But brace yourself, anyway!”

  They turned at an intersection, swaying dangerously. Fall held the front seat for safety.

  “He is showing us his skills,” Kirov said. “He sees you appreciate them.”

  Another car careened down the street ahead, and their driver gunned the motor. A race was on. Fall covered his eyes as they swerved past two motorbikes. But their driver had more to show off. Accelerating again up a rise in the street, he leaned forward and slapped the dashboard. As they hit the top of the rise they sailed—all four wheels off the ground—onto a dirt road that ran between rows of mud huts.

  “Old Tashkent!” Kirov shouted. “We don’t give everyone this special tour!”

  Donkeys and cows trotted away from their taxi as they bumped along the rutted road. Kirov looked through the dust that swirled behind them. No one had followed them.

  They reached a stand of trees and stopped. Squeezing the driver’s shoulder like an old friend, Kirov told Fall to get out. “Follow me,” he said. “I know a shortcut.”

  Walking rapidly, they went through a wooden gate in a high brick wall. A moment later, they stepped out onto a tree-lined street with two-story stuccoed houses. Most of the windows were barred, in the traditional style of old Tashkent. “A little adventure,” Kirov said casually. “Intourist wouldn’t take you this way.”

  After the wild ride, the quiet neighborhood was startling. The houses looked solid and prosperous, and the paved street was well maintained. Two middle-aged Russian women standing by a door were the only people in sight.

  “This is my neighborhood,” Kirov said. “I was born and raised here. Hardly anyone recognizes me, though, I’ve lived in Moscow so long. But here! Before we go to see my friends, let’s look at this museum.” He pointed to a garden fronting a tall, arched entranceway into a building with domes and tile ornaments of Islamic design. “The Museum of Applied Arts,” he said. “My friend Umarov will send someone here to meet us.”

  In the garden stood a pepper tree with branches that hung to the ground. An Uzbek woman in her thirties who sat on a bench by the tree nodded politely as they passed.

  Inside was an ornate entrance hall with an arching ceiling some thirty feet high. In its turquoise shadows, tiles with Persian arabesques and angular Uzbek designs lined the eaves and casements. The artistic synthesis here, Kirov said, was typical of mosques and mausoleums in Khiva, Samarkand, and Bukhara. Rooms like these were described in countless tales of the Silk Road and its great oases.

  Galleries with white stuccoed walls adjoined the entrance hall. In long glass cases were displayed Uzbek pottery, Bukhara rugs, brocaded dresses from Samarkand, and Kazakh jewelry of turquoise, gold, and silver. For half an hour, as they enjoyed the exhibits, Kirov described their history with the same pride he had shown in the market. To Fall, the noise and dust of Tashkent seemed miles away. There was a stillness in this part of the city that would support contemplation and study, a silence surprising to find after the noisy, smog-filled boulevards Kirov had shown him that day. It seemed a perfect place for Umarov’s circle.

  As they admired a great Bukhara rug hanging on a wall above them, the woman Fall had seen outside entered the gallery. She nodded at Kirov, and he gestured for Fall to follow. As they left by an unmarked exit, Fall asked if they might be followed.

  Kirov shook his head, then led Fall quickly down a deserted alleyway. A moment later they turned abruptly through an open doorway and stepped into a garden enclosed by two-story houses. An Uzbek man in his twenties bolted the gate behind them.

  “All is well,” Kirov said, taking off his jacket. “No one followed us here.”

  His heart pounding, Fall followed Kirov to a rug-covered bench that stood in the shade of a porch. Kirov gestured toward the garden. “I learned to meditate here
,” he said. “The place was my grandfather’s home.”

  The garden was enclosed by three houses and the high brick wall that faced the street. Beds of carnations and roses were bordered by trellises some three feet high covered with peppers and grapevines. The arrangement of the wooden screens formed a maze Fall recognized—a Persian design he had seen in a book on Iranian mysticism.

  “Who lives in these houses?” he asked.

  “Umarov and his students,” Kirov said. “It is a school of philosophy.”

  Kirov faced away from Fall to hide his emotion. The ambiguities of his work struck him here with dramatic clarity. It would not help to have Fall see his change of mood.

  To compose himself, Kirov imagined his grandfather’s face. He saw the old man again, cutting flowers, moving stones, readjusting these screens for his students. A garden like this could lead the heart toward God: Shirazi had brought the secret from Persia. These vines and flowers formed a mystical diagram in which you could walk for days in meditation. Kirov remembered his first illumination here when he was only fourteen.

  Then he heard the old man’s musical voice saying that this friend of his, this young, handsome Umarov, would someday be a man of the baraka. Volodya must remember: Umarov was his brother in the Way. Only they could carry the teaching through the dark times to come.

  It had been in 1945 when Misha came home from the war—Kirov remembered clearly. Umarov had worn the medals he had won for bravery as a fighter pilot pinned conspicuously on the shirt an American pilot had given him as a token of their friendship. Shirazi had seated them both on this porch to describe the troubles ahead. And then the old man had said it. He, Volodya, would have to suffer as Misha had done in the war. This garden, the zikhr, the Well of Light would depend upon the friends he would win in Moscow and abroad. Even then, Shirazi had seen into his future. Even then, he had seen that foreigners would find a Way like theirs, strangers with vision, people like Atabet and Fall . . .