The Way of Muri

by Ilya Boyashov

  The technician wasn’t fooled by the cat’s apparent display of affection.

  ‘You shouldn’t fall for all that nonsense! Crafty little devil! I’d throw him back outside, if I were you. They’re so devious… All that stretching and purring, that’s just for show! They know exactly what they want. Kick him out right now, I tell you, or you’ll never get rid of him!’

  ‘He’s just a poor, defenceless animal!’ exclaimed the astronomer. ‘What have you got against him?’

  ‘They’ve got their own agenda, however much they fawn all over you,’ declared the technician. ‘They don’t care about anything else. They’re just out for what they can get.’ He grabbed Muri by the scruff of his neck and snarled at him, ‘What’s the big idea, eh? Have you come to steal the last of our food? Or are you just looking for a roof over your head until it warms up a bit?’

  ‘He’s here to stay,’ the astronomer answered cheerfully on the cat’s behalf. ‘I know what cats are like. They just need somewhere to call home.’

  ‘What exactly are you planning to feed it, eh?’ Mirko was really starting to lose his temper. ‘All we have left is about ten cans of stewed meat, some pasta and a few other scraps. We’re not going to have anything left to eat ourselves soon!’

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Patić said firmly.

  ‘You’re right about one thing!’ declared the technician. ‘Now he’s got his foot in the door, that cat’s not going anywhere. At least, not until the food runs out – then he’ll disappear like the wind. Little bastards… All they care about is themselves. They know exactly what they’re after!’

  ‘Good for them!’ exclaimed Petko Patić. ‘Anyway, I have to go now.’

  ‘The world’s gone mad! They’re all killing one another, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re discovered up here by a gang of bandits, and then we’ll be killed too… And all you can think about is your stupid theory!’ The technician was seething with impotent rage. ‘But who cares? That stupid star of yours isn’t going to keep anyone warm at night. You don’t even realize how crazy you are!’

  In despair he kicked out at the cat, who immediately sought refuge under the astronomer’s bed.

  ‘You’re actually insane,’ continued Mirko. ‘Do you understand that, or not? Lying on the freezing concrete, your eye glued to that lens night after night, scribbling away in your stupid notebooks…’

  ‘The state of the world is of no concern to me!’ answered Patić. ‘They can carry on blowing one another up, for all I care. The Council are a bunch of clueless idiots. They’ll be laughing on the other side of their faces soon enough, though, mark my words! But why am I bothering to explain myself to you? Who cares if Zagreb and Belgrade are reduced to ashes, along with the rest of Europe, for that matter – what difference will it make?’

  Patić saw that the technician was rendered speechless by his outburst. ‘I don’t want to get into an argument with you about it,’ he added firmly. ‘You’re free to leave whenever you like, but I’m staying here! So what if the night freezes me to the floor and my arms turn numb? So what if we run out of bread? I’ll live on pine needles if I have to!’

  ‘And what are you going to have to show for it?’ the technician taunted him. ‘You can’t just pretend the Council doesn’t exist. What are you going to say to them if you screw it up again?’

  Patić responded by triumphantly passing wind.

  Once the astronomer had gone out into the freezing night air, to cling to his rope and haul himself up closer to the stars, Mirko turned his attention back to the cat. ‘You little bastard!’ he scowled. ‘If you think you’re going to stick around here, filling your belly at our expense, you’ve got another think coming. You might be able to dupe that old fool, but you’d better watch out for my broom.’

  With these words of encouragement he reached under the bed to try and grab the cat, but Muri had wisely retreated as far back as he could.

  ‘We should run, yes, run…’ muttered the technician. ‘Back to our own kind, as fast as we can, before others come and find us. We can’t stay here! And as for you,’ he said, glaring at Muri again, ‘I’m going to make damn sure you leave tomorrow. I know your game… Oh yes, you can arch your back and purr your little heart out, but if anything were to happen to either of us you’d be first in line to gnaw at our bones. I hate cats! It’s stupid the way people make such a fuss of you, falling over themselves to feed you… Hey, you understand what I’m saying, don’t you, you little devil?’

  ‘That’s right!’ the disgruntled cat hissed back at him in self-defence, his widely spaced teeth making it sound rather peculiar. ‘Every word. What’s more, I can tell that your limbs are shaking with fear and your tongue is sticking to the roof of your mouth. Let’s see which of us leaves first, shall we? As long as there’s frost on the ground and enough food to go round, I’m not planning on going anywhere.’

  ‘Don’t imagine for one minute that I have any intention of sharing my last rations with you,’ the technician warned him. ‘As far as I’m concerned you can chew the walls, claw the bed and quench your thirst with snow… But one thing’s for sure, you’ll die before the last rusks are finished!’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ purred Muri from beneath the ascetic’s bed.

  Temperatures plummeted, hovering at around minus thirty degrees Celsius for days, but Petko Patić, his sheepskin coat frozen to the floor of the observatory, remained at his post. While Serbian artillery was decimating the Bosnian Muslims, Petko Patić was awaiting a different kind of explosion in galaxy D104-2. It had been exactly 1,324 years since the last supernova in this sector of the Universe, so there was simply no doubt in his mind that it would occur. The pain in the small of his back barely even registered! Every evening he would clamber to the top of the tower, full of hope, and every morning he would come back down and throw open the door of the wooden hut, fresh as a daisy, without once losing his footing on the icy steps.

  ‘There’s hardly any fuel left,’ warned the technician. ‘Another couple of hours and it’ll be time to get the candles ready!’

  The frost was making everything outside creak and groan. Muri could feel the harsh brutality of Nature with every fibre of his being. But even this cloud had a silver lining: the local elementals had taken refuge in the driest and warmest cracks they could find, and not a single squeak reached Muri’s ears for the entire duration of his stay in the hut. He had grown tired of their continuous ultrasonic chatter, so this particular silence was bliss.

  Without paying any attention to the technician’s warning, Patić took a tin opener and opened the last of the stewed meat. Naturally, the first piece of top-quality Argentinian beef was given to the cat.

  ‘Great Allah!’ exclaimed Mirko, outraged. ‘That’s the last of our food!’

  ‘What about the rusks?’ the astronomer reminded him. ‘And we’ve still got some flour and salt. Fill my flask up with hot water – it’s time for my next shift!’

  This stoicism was the final straw for the technician.

  ‘It’s been two months already!’ he yelled, flinging his mug at the cat. ‘Two whole months we’ve been sitting here, and for what? That damned supernova of yours is as elusive as the devil himself! It’s never going to explode! It’s just a crazy fantasy, and you’re obsessed with it! Everything they said about you is true – you’re a failure, and a dangerous maniac into the bargain. Well, you can stay here with this mangy ball of fur, who’ll sink his teeth into your throat as soon as he detects the slightest sign of weakness, but I’ve had enough! I’m leaving. Carry on climbing up and down those damned steps, gorge yourself on pine needles, wash them down with melted snow and feed that cat on your own shit. It’ll be interesting to see how long you last!’

  Petko Patić had every right to react the way he did. Seizing the technician by the front of his shirt and shaking him from side to side, the astronomer roared, ‘Do you really know how important those steps are to me? Then you also know that no depriv
ation or threat of violence will ever make me leave this place!’

  After this impassioned statement Patić released the limp technician, who began rushing frantically about the cold hut like a cowardly spirit who’d been left behind. The technician loudly informed the mountains and the stars that he was leaving immediately, because he couldn’t possibly stay there a minute longer with a lunatic who had almost killed him.

  ‘Only because I feel sorry for you,’ he yelled, ‘I urge you to come to your senses and leave with me – tomorrow will be too late!’

  Patić burst out laughing and said, ‘I can’t – remember Robinson’s boat!’

  Muri pressed himself demonstratively against the astronomer’s legs. Sensing the cat’s contempt, the technician gave full vent to his indignation. His entire impotent rage was now directed at this sly, arrogant creature.

  ‘You ungrateful little beast! I know what you’re up to. You’re going to wait until that soft-hearted old fool collapses out of weakness or freezes up there in his tower, next to that useless great magnifying glass of his, and then you’ll set to work… Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! But you don’t fool me. Oh no, I can see what you’re up to, and I’m not going to fall for it!’

  When the door slammed behind the impetuous traitor, Patić mixed the last handful of barley drink with the hot water in the kettle, poured it into his vacuum flask and picked up a rusk. He turned to the cat.

  ‘Well, even in that state it still slams! I wonder what those fools at the Council would have to say about all of this.’

  Petko Patić ran his fingers through his unkempt hair and stood up, quietly dignified. He was no stranger to emotional outbursts.

  ‘Fool!’ he thought. ‘He keeps on running but he never gets anywhere. I stay in one place, but I’m already somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away!’

  The astronomer wrapped himself up more tightly in his sheepskin coat and picked up his flask of tinted hot water.

  ‘Doesn’t look like you’ve got anywhere else to go,’ he said, winking at the cat. ‘So you might as well stay here with me!’

  Muri shrugged off this compassion. As he left the hut Patić opened the door for no more than a few seconds, but it was long enough for Muri to fill his lungs with the icy air and to feel within it the coming thaw.

  ‘Like hell I will,’ he muttered.

  He set off as soon as the thaw began, leaving a trail of footprints in the snow as he passed through Piešte, Matina, Khorvar and Rižicy.

  Elsewhere Timosha the goose set a new record, successfully multiplying one hundred and forty-four by a thousand (it took ten and a half hours to verify the answer), and on the other side of the world Tong Rampa, a young Tibetan from Lhasa, left the modest shack he called home in order to embark upon his own personal odyssey.

  It was a day like any other in the capital of Tibet. A few solo travellers gazed wearily at the Potala Palace, while the Chinese drivers who had obligingly delivered them to Heaven on Earth sat in their Russian jeeps counting their American dollars. They regarded the local poverty with scornful indifference. The short mountain-dweller went virtually unnoticed – only a Chinese policeman, exiled to this godforsaken land for some political indiscretion, glanced briefly in his direction. Tong Rampa crossed the city, past the palace and all the modest stone houses, and then he was alone on the gigantic Tibetan Plateau. His shoulder bag contained the provisions he would need for his journey – yak fat and pieces of dried lamb. He put one foot mechanically in front of the other, screwing up his eyes and licking the road salt from the ends of his moustache.

  Tong Rampa stopped at the Long Chu monastery to call upon his brother, the venerable Togai Lama. After receiving his brother’s blessing and sharing a meal with the young monks, he set out immediately for his ultimate destination – the sacred and mystical Mount Kailash. Tong’s holiday clothes grew shiny with righteous sweat, and every now and then lice fell from his hair, but the pilgrim’s attention was focused on higher things so he rarely stopped to scratch or shake them from the strip of cloth he wore around his head, where they crawled in defiance of gravity.

  Tong Rampa came across a number of women walking alone and heading in the same direction. These women were short and stocky, like Mongolian horses, and wore peaked hats and an abundance of jewellery. Tong overtook them easily. The women jingled their necklaces, chasing away the local evil spirits, while Tong Rampa chased away the sheep that wandered onto the country roads. He preferred the more philosophically inclined yaks and would give them a friendly wave as he walked past, his bowed legs rhythmically tramping over the dry frost-covered soil. At night he slept on the bare earth, which was dotted with tufts of grass as tough as yeti fur, and calmly breathed the rarefied air. Even though his lungs were accustomed to it, this air still felt as sharp as knives. Spiritual air. His country, the ‘roof of the world’, came alive at night – stars of all sizes twinkled in the sky, and rays of light shone from the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, or so the Tibetans believed. Tong Rampa’s journey continued. During Tong’s visit, his brother had told him of secret passages through the valleys and hot springs. Tong had committed his brother’s verbal map to memory, and it may well have saved his life.

  Occasionally he encountered human settlements. The shabby, smoke-blackened tents and the lice-ridden children running impudently after foreigners did not anger Tong Rampa, because he himself, and those who languished here, knew the true value of the great secret hidden in the local mountains.

  ‘Shambhala! Shambhala!’ called the American tourists, sticking their heads out of their off-road vehicles, all baseball caps and video cameras. The foreigners who came to Tibet were essentially all the same. They would never really find what they were looking for. These explorers were amused by Tong Rampa and his funny way of walking. He hurried on, pausing only occasionally to eat a pancake or chew a little dried meat.

  At night Tong Rampa began to feel as though he could hear the sound of a mysterious and unsettling bell chiming over Tibet. At such moments he would whisper his secret mantra, the meaning of which had been lost by his forefathers long ago: ‘Lakmuri Ton Chon Go’. He came across salted lakes more frequently now, and even though he was used to it he became aware of the increase in altitude – his nose kept bleeding, and his blocked nostrils made it even harder to breathe. Continually clearing his nose, Tong Rampa crossed the Valley of Fear and the Plateau of Ten Deaths, where he stumbled across the bones of numerous unknown animals. In the salt-saturated Gompa Valley the wind whipped up the dust until it stung his skin, and he slept surrounded by human skulls.

  Eventually Tong Rampa reached the Longma mountain range and the three secret valleys. After successfully navigating his way through them, he arrived at the village of Parayang in February 1993.

  Soon the Tibetan was walking bravely between two lakes. The lake to his left was a frenzy of turbulent waves, with a ferocious wind blowing above it. This was Lake Rakshastal, the demon lake, home to none other than Simbu-Tso himself. By contrast, sacred waters calmly lapped the shores of Lake Manasarovar, the lake to his right. Tong Rampa was so unsettled by the Lake of Death and the Lake of Life that he looked up to the placid sky and cried, ‘Lakmuri Ton Chon Go!’ The demonic wind of Lake Rakshastal and the clouds above Lake Manasarovar picked up this cry and carried it around the world.

  The Tibetan’s clothes were threadbare and his eyes were raw and swollen, but the following day Tong Rampa sat with the monks of the Chu Gompa monastery, drinking hot butter tea and trembling with emotion.

  Finally he caught sight of the village of Darchen, and the river began to foam at his feet. In anticipation of meeting the great mountain, Tong Rampa cried with joy, ‘Lakmuri Ton Chon Go!’

  Oblivious to the Tibetan’s cry of joy, Muri was approaching the Austrian border. He paused to rest near the police checkpoint and wasn’t at all surprised when two police officers emerged from the booth, smart and shiny like brand-new toys and reeking of eau de cologne.


  ‘I’ve never seen one this bad before, Willy!’ remarked one of the officers. ‘Look at him, he’s just skin and bone.’

  Willy went back to the booth to fetch his flask. The flask was tall and thin and reminded Muri of the women of the Croatian border village Slivovca. Muri remembered Slivovca because he had been ambushed there by a pack of vicious sheepdogs, which had evidently made it a rule to tear to pieces every cat that crossed their path. They were bloodthirsty butchers, not the kind of dogs that would give up even once you were out of reach. Choking with humiliation, Muri had scrambled up a convenient pine tree to escape their gnashing fangs, but his tenacious persecutors had remained at the base of the tree until after midnight. This was probably their only source of entertainment, and they were evidently reluctant to go back to work. Eventually their barking became too much for the shepherds, who dispersed the dogs with their sticks.

  ‘My wife puts milk in my flask every day,’ remarked Willy, unscrewing the cap. ‘I’d rather have brandy, of course, but the old girl keeps filling it up with milk, and not only that but she checks it every evening to see whether I’ve replaced it with anything stronger!’

  He looked around for something to pour the milk into and ended up going back to the booth again for a saucer. The Austrian really was going out of his way for Muri. He reeked of the idle complacency of prosperity, as well as eau de cologne.

  ‘See, we’ve even got cats immigrating now,’ continued his colleague. ‘A load of gypsies turned up yesterday, too. Where on earth did they come from?’

  ‘We’re lucky it’s winter! As soon as the snow melts from the passes we’ll be overrun with refugees. It’s a pity we can’t just smoke them out like flies. I’ve seen all sorts in my time – Croats, Serbs, Albanians, even Turks! The dregs of society. They’re all freeloaders, and they’ll do whatever it takes to stay. They’ve got no pride, no shame!’