Shootik

by Aleksya Sokol

  The young lady at the desk looked puzzled but had no argument when Jurij took a pen and made a flourishing gesture with his arm before signing his name.

  “Now you can give him his documents, miss.” The lady handed them to Jurij.

  Some fifty meters now towards the gate, Solveig guessed, and we are free. Before that, they could still be called back, if Dr Huang discovered…

  Moving steadily, Solveig took Jurij’s arm, directing him. The luggage was being carried by a young man in a uniform, one of the reception boys, who took it over from the male nurse. He walked close beside Solveig and signed to the guard to open the small pedestrian gate. Outside, the taxi driver came happily towards them. He was equally glad to see them appearing. One whole hour waiting time on his clock was a long time.

  Fourteenth Picture

  “Life experience is the only thing which you can call your own, my boy,” said Staretz to Shootik, “all the rest…the accumulated knowledge, the thoughts appearing like visitors from outer space when least expected…are gifts to you. Free gifts to help you to put your life experience to work, collecting new insights in the light of life’s trials. Continuously learning through them, seeing their relevance in the context of your life, this yes, can be said to belong to you. As your accomplishments.”

  “That is,” he added, “if you decide to become human.”

  Poor the individual…Staretz thought between his own sentences spoken more to himself than to Shootik, who finds himself suffocated by a heavy burden of hardships which fate appears to provide for him…and getting himself inscribed into collective human history as a victim. Where should all that untransformed life-matter be stored?

  Staretz knew it, of course. He was surrounded by a whole library of reports on this life-material, which he had to administrate. For how long? Until each of them was reclaimed by its owner, the landlord of this abandoned property. Until he became aware of it and went in search of it.

  “In search of his ‘story’?” Shootik obviously had read the Old Man’s thoughts with no trouble.

  “In search of his ‘story’…yes. And then committing himself to it, like to a bride of whom he had lost sight long ago…”

  “The story as a bride? An unusual picture.”

  “Yes…” Staretz agreed. “The bridegroom has to come to know his bride, not to possess her as a woman.”

  The whole drama of interpersonal relationships was contained in these few words. His drama also, which he had been hiding from himself for such a long time.

  Those who are unable to live their lives sentence themselves to suffer them. Much suffering is, in its core, life unlived.

  A refusal to live, was his refusal to recognise the bride, Staretz had to admit. In fact to send her away. Solveig had left him. His life after that had become ‘time passed’. Consequently, he had had to spent immeasurable time here, in this library, among countless records of other people’s stories, until he was ready to pick up his own…and read it.

  Staretz knew that this time had come and that he knew, finally, that he knew it!

  Shootik stood still in front of the Old Man with ‘farewell’ in his eyes, and Staretz saw in them that he would never again see his young friend coming in any way known from his appearances up to now. He also knew that from now onwards he would have to open the door of the closed compartment in which he had spent…a lifetime, so it felt, and that he would have to do this voluntarily. That is, if he really wanted…to be enlivened again. Shootik had kept his umbilical cord connected to the source of life. He had protected his life flame from burning down. Now it was Staretz’s task and time to take it into his own care.

  Shootik vanished slowly from his sight. A tear ran, slowly too, down the Old Man’s cheeks and onto the table top and then he saw it! A bright red-coloured something lying there…a red nose made of soft, shiny material!

  This, he decided, would be the only object he would take with him when he left this place, once he had tidied it and made the final entries in the logbook, so that his successor would know from which point to take it over. Who this successor might be, he needn’t worry. Somebody would surely have been appointed already and be waiting to occupy his post. As he had been in his time…Somebody who needed and was needed, as he had been, to be of service to others. As others had been of service to him.

  Somebody who…he smiled, would be keeping his book on the shelf and checking it whenever there was a new entry or an old one vanished!

  Chapter 16

  The Happening…

  How to grasp what has not yet become? The happening, not the happened, that which lives on the crest of the waves of life force acting from beyond dimensions knowable on the surface. Events, taking place on the outer level of human existence, assemble themselves into a ‘readable’ life story, which people proudly call their own biography. It writes itself as it were, creating a pattern which connects all separate events to make sense, any sense possible or desirable for drawing conclusions. Life itself, however, acting from a realm ‘beyond’ all systems and patterns of thought, escapes these attempts. Life’s activity happens outside the reach of human minds, for as long as they are not ready to accept the unprepared…the doing, not the done, the action, not the effect.

  ‘Time heals all wounds’, it is said. This is not so, unless the wound itself becomes a passage to the ‘other side’ of life’s reality. Going through the wounding, allowing the soul to do so, requires full awareness and a renewed experience of its happening. It also means acceptance of all there is. Or was. Bringing this consciously into the present, feeling the impact, the bereavement, the pain, the loss and everything else connected to it, does not heal it. It cannot change what has occurred, but it throws a new light upon the event. The full vision of something that had to happen opens the doors of perception into the space beyond one’s personal affairs. Beyond, too, what is usually being considered as being the only reality which is knowable.

  Forces, not at all compatible with personal wishes for an enjoyable existence, operate on that ‘other side’ of life’s manifestations, moving whole continents of thought, mercilessly, as it seems and at random. As well as their astounding capacity for destroying age-old dogmas, they also show the uselessness of just mending something…The remedial thinking so much a part of a wishful attempt to restore what once was. A relationship is a prime example of this drama happening all over the world. Happening again and again. As old as it is, it is always new. Detectable in the small field of the personal as well as in the larger one of the interpersonal and the all-pervading field of intercultural affairs, the relationship is a key-notion. It is a cosmic law and the condition which life itself applies to us humans especially, as if it would ask: “You want to live? Really live? Then consider this law in all its implications.” Throughout the history of mankind, it has been the main root of a whole complexity of problems. The main implication is this: get off remedial thinking!

  A broken jar can be glued together and still be useful to hold a liquid of some kind. But it won’t hold that liquid which comes from a real life source. It may be a good enough substitute and it will do somehow…Many people live that way. In one of her prefaces to the columns, ‘Anna’ once wrote:

  ‘In relationships there is a constant interplay of forces antagonistic by nature, incompatible with the harmony desired by the couple. Each story can be read as a picture book portraying this interplay and leading it to a breaking point, where expansion of consciousness can be experienced, revealing the true nature of antagonism.’

  What about her own story…hers and his, Jurij’s, story, which was now emerging from the depths with all its consequences, bringing them together again? A need, necessity or a call for…? Everything that happens in our lives is for a purpose. This she knew by now. And particularly those things we would prefer not to have happened. There is a larger world from which we cannot rid ourselves without tearing our souls apart.

  When the curtain opens and you see suddenly wha
t it concealed…Anna saw it now, you become a citizen of this larger world. It is then or now that you reconcile yourself with the universe, feeling its mighty heart beating inside yours and God, she hesitated to bring Him into the picture, may have a smile on His face! How else could He otherwise still maintain His lonely position?

  Faith is the belief in things being able to happen and standing open for the happening, not making them happen, which is what the mind usually wants to do. Life is much greater than we imagine and want it to be in our little minds. Minds afraid to step beyond boundaries. Afraid to open up. You can cut just a tiny slice of life to last you a day or two. Or you can try to climb a false Matterhorn. It crumbles under your uncertain steps. Until it falls down, leaving you all bruised on the ground. Ground zero, you have to reach it, to…resurrect. You have to reach the level of truth about your life. Because it is not only your particular life. You share in the life of the universe. When you reach ground zero, you are at the point to start a new life. All danger and all opportunities work together. And the universe waits to see what you will do. But…never forget: there is always someone preparing the way for you. As there is always someone making investments on your behalf. Paying with life energy. The only payment accepted on that level.

  The parcel, oh yes. The white envelope with its remarkable contents, twenty-seven sheets of paper, closely handwritten by A, the fellow she hated from the bottom of her heart…if the heart was able to hate…was it? There it was, discretely tucked under a pile of latest issues of the magazine. What to do with the disclosure of facts and manipulations she had no doubt were true and still happening? Pass the information on…to whom? Publish…where, and who might give them credit? The story was beyond belief for an ordinary person, although, on closer reflection and putting some ones and twos together, not at all surprising. Nevertheless, it was too much to be revealed just like that: an insider, a big fish, stepping out of the pond decides to wash his vest with a full revelation to the world, together with his personal confession…Or something like that. No, this was not the right thought either. Solveig ordered herself to ignore her personal feelings. Why did A send this to her? Why not directly to a newspaper or a known journalist? Or an authority of some kind? Why she, a little columnist of a magazine which had no special range of influence in its field? Of course, she knew why. Because she had been ‘one of theirs’, collaborating for quite some time, before she broke out. Because she had been Jurij’s companion, a sort of a wife, and because she was the only one who would give full credit to what A’s writing revealed.

  Of course, because she knew it, if not in full detail, but in broad lines.

  And A had released Jurij, allowed her to get him out of that malefic institution camouflaged as a respected health oasis! He did it with the last of his power…A knew, of course, that Jurij also knew more than he was meant to know. And now A wanted them both to be free, whilst he himself…where might he be…and what might be his chance now to…escape? Solveig wondered. They certainly would not let him just go away, and be good somewhere else, would they? Solveig was aware that she felt worried about him. What did she really know about him? She pondered. Could a person suddenly change like that? What might have prompted this to happen? Her life would never be the same, that was for sure. Perhaps her real adventure, the journey on the river, was about to start. On a different level now.

  Jurij was still asleep on the couch, where she bedded him late last night. It had been a long journey back from Copenhagen and hours waiting at the airport for the first possible flight. A stressful waiting time too, not knowing how safe they were and whether or not Dr Huang would not become suspicious of her performance and the ‘kidnapping’ of his patient…By now he would certainly have tried to contact A or someone else from ‘the club’ and the alarm buttons would be pressed. They would not know what A had shared with her. She would share it with Jurij, of course, now that destiny had brought them together again. But then, who would know what was theirs to do? The material was unpublishable. Most truth has the same quality; it is unbelievable. Solveig sighed.

  Jurij was waking up, a ray of sunshine touching his forehead. At exactly that moment a casually dressed man was passing the passport control to board a plane for Vancouver at Helsinki airport: Alexei Sogolov, on the passenger list. Nicolai Sogolov, his adopted father, who had brought him to the airport, was waving him goodbye with tears in his eyes, and his biological father, Antoine Casmir, was coming back to his senses from a three days’ coma at the hospital in Zürich. A synchronicity of an unusual kind?

  Fifteenth Picture

  Stories…never end. How would it be to live without a story to tell, either to the world or to oneself? Or not be part of an on-going story…? No game to play…nothing to win or lose…? Nothing to long for, or to battle against…A story holds one fast, it gives a place to be, one has a task in it. An important task! What if it were to be taken away? Where would one land?

  Time was running rapidly on the other side, the outer world, as it might be called. The world of temporal, sequential events in this running of time.

  Staretz was collecting this information from the people’s stories he had to guard. They were all neatly filed on the endless shelves of his transcendental a-temporal bookcase. Not at all less real because of this. It might be better to say, people were running out of time. Their stories had reached such a point of interconnection with everybody else’s that nobody could be sure of still living his or her own, and private story! Or living only for their personal needs.

  Staretz sighed. What happened on the other side affected him as well. How many copies of his personal book had got into circulation since that time which was registered in years? If not exact copies, since only he had the original, these were modified versions, attuned to the lives of others and their particular tasks. Aristide…that fellow follower of the path he had laid himself once upon a time. The Great-Master whom he was…and who believed himself to be at the summit of his personal power, from which…Staretz closed his eyes at that dreadful moment…he had fallen to rock bottom. The zenith and the nadir: how appropriate and unavoidable at the same time for the human experience. He had to agree. Not for the first time, as he knew. The continuation of his story was being lived by a number of individuals, in one way or another, in this ending-of-time time. Not a catastrophe really, only a major turning point in the history of mankind.

  Shootik…the Old Man’s eyes softened, the genius of his youth as he called him in his secret thoughts, Shootik was his link with the outer world and its realities. Shootik had the ability to be here and there as he wished. He could be here or there, in a transitory existence, connecting the worlds. He was a messenger serving a greater cause, involving people who had to do with events begun a long time ago, as they would say ‘up there’. They both knew that this ‘long time ago’ had no meaning in terms of the eternity in which he, Staretz, dwelt, although the notion of dwelling was even less compatible with the notion of eternity. It was just no measurable time at all. No beginning, no end, just being. Difficult to grasp by a mind system occupied principally with its own duration. Shootik, not yet incarnated in a human body, flew on wings of consciousness and life power between the opposites, doing his godly work. His existence nevertheless could also be on the verge of incarnation, as they call it on Earth. And if so, had Shootik not hinted at this possibility? Staretz would miss him ever-so-much. Because Shootik was the very inside of him. The young fellow was his youth, his life spark, his love and his light. His soul and spirit on the palm of his hand, to say the least.

  Without reluctance now, as though the invisible clock had struck twelve, Staretz got the book from the shelf near to him. It was always there, near to him, within the reach of his hand: his book with the aubergine coloured cover. Now it was time to read all of it, without leaving anything out. Although there was no such reality on his plane of consciousness, he needed the notion of time in order to place the lives of those who became, without their direct
knowing, the participants in his history.

  Within the notion of transient time events appeared to flow in a sequential order, as though following a pattern. Suggesting a continuous interplay of cause and effect, they ordered themselves into a logical proceeding, which could, no doubt, be regarded as real. On a broader scale of life’s manifestation, this logical proceeding proofed itself to be non-existent. Since any combination of separate events could produce an equally logical or understandable story. As in fact any picture allows its features to be put into any imaginable relation to others…

  When Staretz took his book into his now trembling hands, deciding on now or never for its reading, this now or never had the effect of a thundering opening of the space in front of him, which threw him back against the stone wall behind him, now shattered. Strangely enough, the hard impact of a collision with the stone element was that of liberation, as if a body armour had been released, falling into a thousand pieces. His hands were still trembling, and the book was no longer there. Instead, in front of him, a huge aubergine-coloured curtain, hanging from invisible heights, was being pulled open, revealing a picture of immeasurable size. Therein, he saw them now, amongst a variety of other figures and events happening all at the same time: Jurij, Solveig, Aristide and his staff, his coup…All his relatives, in fact. Aristide being his never-recognised son, whom he had used, misused actually, in a most disgraceful manner. Not physical abuse, but worse, mental and emotional. That which leaves scars on the physical level too. But then there was…and still is, as he was seeing him now. Gabriel, his former brother, who took a different path. And Mascha, or Marusja as she chose to call herself, who had to separate Jurij and Solveig, for the sake of what was still to come…and for his sake also. To start redeeming the past! For that they had to be part of his story. The journey on the river…and where it had led them.