STRANGE TOWN

Kozelok town stood on gently sloping hills near the place where one of the big rivers made a bend. It had only appeared on the maps recently although people dwelt in those parts since long ago. The records of the historical museum of Kozelok mentioned everybody, even those who had simply passed by, since the eleventh century. All those with megalomania honored those places by the presence of their troops.
Trying to fill their empty for the lack of spirituality “belly” with the others’  pain, suffering, fear/respect, and also with lands, slaves, gold and power, they finally started to feel comfortable in that terrible reflected light. Their inversely proportional to what they felt inside immense ambition sometimes was temporarily satisfied. But the inner emptiness had its own laws. It was immeasurable, and only after passing through it one could become strong and free. It was impossible to fill it with the exterior things. Therefore, with the beginning of each new day the illusion would dissipate, and the inner truth would reveal itself to “the great owners of life” once more: they still were who they used to be, and would remain so.
Life laughed at them yet again. So they avenged life, continuing to march around the world, sacking, raping and killing everything in their path. All the likes of Hitler, Napoleon, Tamerlane, Macedonian, Caesar, and so on were the biggest losers on Earth. But simple, quiet towns like Kozelok where people lived happily and in harmony with each other often got in their way. That was why pain, blood and tears were not an exception in the town’s history. In addition to the objective historical events that actually took place, almost every resident of the town could tell a unique story about the most bloodthirsty and terrible conquerors that happened to his ancestor and was passed down from generation to generation. The citizens would tell those stories with simplicity and an absolute faith in the occurrence although they were often similar to strange and none too funny jokes. Those stories had a secret, some encrypted wisdom of the lost knowledge that our distant ancestors VEDRUSSES fully owned. That allowed them to live as they wanted to and never be enslaved.
Once, when a Roman legion of five thousand warriors came to the border of one of the villages, the men talked to each other and decided to open three beehives in each yard. The Romans only noticed the huge dark cloud when it was too late even to run. After that, no one came to Russia for a hundred years. Such stories were many.
Another feature of the town and the Kozelians was the belief in flying saucers (UFOs). Who wouldn’t believe it, if every other resident was confident that he had seen a UFO in the sky over the city, or taking off from the hills with his own eyes! By the way, always the same hill was pointed at, although, there were five of them. “The dead zone” was also located there. Maybe animals, birds and people went there to die, feeling the approach of death, or maybe they got there by accident, and then the zone didn’t let them go? One way or another, the number of dead bodies in that area was much larger than in any other place. People began to pass the zone around since long ago, when they noticed that cows that had wandered into it by chance didn’t come back, birds didn’t nest there, and dogs made long ways round avoiding to enter it.
The local God’s fool Gagah-Magah pointed a finger towards it and made a show of panic rolling his eyes, whining and sputtering, as usual, unintelligible words and saliva. In addition to his favorite “Gagah-Magah speech” that had got him his nickname he uttered some whole connected by intonation phrases in the language that only he could understand and waved his hand towards the zone. People could not understand anything, but got even more afraid. The third peculiarity of the town was arts and crafts. Skilled blacksmiths lived there. They worshipped their craft treating the fire, the metal, and the tools as friends and relatives. The jealously guarded their secrets and passed them on only to those who could see and feel the soul of the fire and the metal. Due to that, the skill continued to develop, to enrich and would pour together with an artist’s soul out into an extraordinary beauty of the forged object: fences, grilles, locks, and arms. Perhaps that was the reason why Kozelok gave no impression of provincial poverty and simple-mindedness. The most common houses were decorated with lovely wrought iron fences with ornaments that included intricately woven flower patterns, quaint hunting scenes, fantastical animals, birds and people. Benches and swings made of twisted iron, water dispensers that looked like sculptures could be seen in the gardens; even watering hoses’ valves had a special touch to them. Multi-stands with flowers in pots stood in the windows and on some roofs of private houses. In the local market one could find ashtrays in forms worthy of ancient mythology, fine and elegant candlesticks. But they had no mass character. Each one was a custom-made object, and the masters worked only on request. Patterns were different, and the topics didn’t repeat. One could only recognize the hand and the class of the artist by some elements and details of the joints.
Everything else in Kozelok was as usual. The local government was getting fat on stolen money building their own mansions and driving flashy cars around rundown roads, covering the almost destitute citizens with dust or mud depending on the season. The people fed themselves off vegetable gardens, and sold and exchanged all they could in the market. In the last five years all the breeding herd of cows in the collective farm died out because of malnutrition and diseases. There were only three pigs left, and that only because the chairman handed the almost dying animals to the citizens at his own risk and promised that, if they survived, he would not claim them back. Then he died, too. The people said that he died because he did not steal, and because his heart was suffering of what was going on. The local hospital should have fallen apart in the last century, but its stones and columns were steadfast. When it was raining water was pouring on the sick from the ceiling; the shower was out of order for nearly three years; the bathtub leaked. The plumbing was prehistoric with some artisans’ alterations, so that on entering the closet, one first stopped in confusion. Then, usually, all guessed (if they were conscious) that in order to flush, one needed to jump with all his remaining strength, and to catch a metal chain dangling almost from the ceiling, where incidentally, also the tank similar to the bucket was fixed. And it was useless to climb the w.c. pan in order to reach it, because it was so low that while sitting on it one had to stretch one’s legs forward. Besides, it was obviously safer to bounce off the floor. In short, it was just like Granny Masha, the attendant, used to say: “If a person started to flush after himself, then he will certainly recover.” Cold rusty water ran from the taps. Plaster was peeling off and regularly falling on someone’s head. Mold grew well and actively in the corners where the roof was leaking. Trofim Sergeyevich Korenev, the head physician of the hospital, who was also the part-time surgeon, the gynecologist and the expert in resuscitation, Anna Ilyinichna Skvortsova, the general practitioner and pediatrician, Rimma Ivanovna Burtseva, the dentist, five nurses and Granny Masha, the attendant, regularly performed so-called redecoration on their own. They selflessly painted, puttied the walls, mended holes in the floor, struggling with rats and cockroaches. They didn’t have the money to buy the materials because it had been one and a half years since their salary was delayed. It was a sad joke of a salary anyways. It was only enough to not starve to death immediately, but to have some time to suffer and to remember that life was still a nice thing no matter what. They did the repairs with the stuff that patients would bring. If there was filler, they would putty, a month later someone would bring some the paint, and then they painted.
Nevertheless, the hospital building was surrounded by a beautiful, “rich-looking” wrought-iron fence with a gate on which St. George killed the Snake. True, none of medical staff liked those gates. The Snake on them looked somewhat miserable and sick, and invoked much more sympathy than the guy on the horseback. It was a gift of a noble blacksmith’s son Vanya who was a blacksmith, too. Whether the master did not understand what the story was about and so sympathized with the Snake, too, or whether the staff felt compassion towards anybody because of their profession, it wasn’t clear. But Granny Masha said that those gates should have had been put in a different place: where the mayor was having his meetings. Then they would really reflect the essence: “First, they brought all the animals to their graves, and then started on people.” However, Vanya was working on the gates for a long time and put his heart into that job as a sign of deep gratitude to the staff for saving his life that he could have lost when he nearly drowned after the school prom...
It happened this way. The evening was wonderful. The crimson sun was slowly setting behind the horizon. The fresh air smelled of herbs. A warm breeze tugged at flounces on girls’ dresses, played with their hair and tickled temples.
The sounds of a guitar chords awakened romantic impulses. Their friendly bunch were resting and having fun with the enthusiasm and the agility of youth, meeting their future with joy and gladness, and hoping only for good luck. Then Vanya, Fyodor, and two girls decided to go boating. But the Kozelok river was not an easy one. Everyone knew that it had whirlpools in it. Every two years someone had a big scare in it; some even drowned. One of the girls’ little dog called Pear fell into the water. First, it calmly swam toward the shore, but suddenly it began to drown. Vanya jumped after it and started to drown, too. Then Fyodor jumped, and began to slowly sink into the foam of a whirlpool in spite of his desperate resistance. The boat heeled toward the whirl. But the girls did not lose their heads and didn’t abandon the guys. When the boat started spinning, Nadia sat at the oars and started rowing with all her force till she got bloody blisters, meanwhile Liubava threw their tied with a strong knot dresses to them, and pulled them behind a boat, like a hooked big fish. All the three including the dog that Vanya firmly clamped under his arm swallowed a lot of water and were treated for pneumonia in the local hospital, having spent at least five days in intensive care. The first thing that Vanya did on regaining consciousness was to begin to swear. He said that every morning someone put loud music on. It turned out that every morning between three and four am he was hearing polyphonic chants similar to those in a church. Since an absolute silence reigned in the resuscitation ward, Granny Masha the attendant drew her own conclusions and never mentioned the occurrence to anybody. Fyodor was conscious all the time and his illness took a lighter course. Nobody would know what the dog saw and heard, but it recovered, too. The hospital was old and, apparently, stood in a “good”, “right” place. Otherwise, how to explain that most patients left it on their own feet in spite of the fact that not even modern, but at least more or less normally operating medical equipment, intensive care, resuscitation devices, good medicines and so forth were not available in the hospital. Even the doctors who worked very hard putting their heart and soul into it, sometimes for several days without leaving the bedside of patients in grave condition, and who stopped believing in miracles since long noticed that.
Nevertheless, they could tell when the recovery of completely hopeless patients occurred clearly in spite of everything. Granddad Prokhor who was in the hospiral a year ago with transmural infarction, all of a sudden, looked through Anna Ilyinichna during a morning medical bypass, and said: “Get lost, muzzle!” Anna Ilyinichna wondered: “Whom are you talking to?” It turned out that he had been tortured by two strange creatures for several days. According to the description of Granddad Prokhor, they were of a short stature with disproportionate bodies. One of them had a square head, and the other, an animal one. It seemed to Granddad Prokhor that he had seen them earlier in his grandson’s book about Egypt. Anna Ilyinichna was none too lazy, so she went to a library and asked for a book on Egyptian mythology, not really hoping for success. Imagine her surprise when Prokhor Petrovitch immediately recognized Anubis, pointed at him and said: “Here he is, the muzzle, and the other is not here.” Every day they, being very polite, requested him to make a choice. Moreover, according to Granddad Prokhor, they could see doctors and nurses, but the staff did not see them. They talked to him without words, but he understood everything. From time to time they removed his horrible pain and the terrible fear of death, saying: “If you make the right choice, then there will be no more suffering.” Prokhor Petrovich kept silence…
He kept silence while recollecting how many Heinies he made away with in 1943 during a melee. He didn’t feel sorry for some, they knew the score. But he couldn’t get out of his memory the eyes of others filled only with despair and resignation when his bayonet pierced their flesh. Like a thin thread, they connected him with all the humane, kind and true that he believed in and fought for. Prokhor Petrovich knew that they just wanted to die because they had happened to be in a wrong company and in a wrong place. And he happened to be their executioner. He never really thought much about it. It was the war...
But as the years rolled by, he began to notice how many mistakes people, even his children and grandchildren made, and how hard it was sometimes to work them off. At that point he probably would not be able to kill those boys, he understood and forgave them. Yes, what was there to talk about...? At that point, he himself would have asked them for forgiveness. Prokhor Petrovich remembered many things of his life, but apparently the visitors from Egypt did not like his answers, because they returned him the pain and the awful fear of death characteristic of heart attacks again and again. Then again they would haunt him with their proposals. And so on and so forth without an end.
Anna Ilyinichna decided that Prokhor Petrovich was suffering hallucinations associated with hypoxia, so she added drugs and an oxygen mask. Meanwhile, Granny Masha brought Granddad Prokhor an icon of Our Lady and said: “Ask her for help when they pester you. She will help.” Maybe it really was the hypoxia and a hallucination of the remembered images unconsciously connected to death and pain; or maybe it was something else.
Only that Prokhor Petrovich, while being discharged from the hospital, described everything in detail. At first he felt weakness, helplessness, a terrible pain, an animal fear and despair; he was afraid to sleep, and didn’t even close his eyes because he knew for a fact that if he did it, he would die. He wasn’t tired of life, on the contrary: only then he realized what life was and how to live it, and madly wanted it. Prokhor Petrovich realized that his death was very near when, suddenly, he had an overwhelming craving for chicken Kiev that his late wife used to cook. Before her death, she also asked him for a pancake with caviar. While he ran to the daughter in law to ask her to fulfill Katya’s request, she died without waiting till he was back. In the morning Prokhor Petrovich started to hear very loud polyphonic chants, like, in his words, those in a church. And in the afternoon the gentlemen from Egypt came. But hardly had he looked at the image of Our Lady and mentally asked her to help him, the two immediately disappeared. The last time they came, he was very badly, and, opening his already closing eyes with difficulty he thought: “Lord, take the evil spirits away from me and let me live a little bit more, if I’ve got at least a little chance!” Suddenly, he saw how the Golden Wand flew out of Our Lady’s sleeve, and, slowly spinning at large amplitude, hit the evil spirits right on. While it was flying, the space was changing in some way, and Prokhor Petrovich knew that everything would be fine. Then he began to feel better, the chants grew quieter, and the two visitors disappeared for good. Starting Monday, when he began to take medicine brought by his son from Moscow, the chants stopped, too. A cheerful red-haired kid who looked like a clown came and said: “Well, ungreased dray-cart? Are you creaking towards the recovery?” It was the last time that Granddad Prokhor saw anything and spoke to anybody. After that, he quickly began to recover, and started to get up. Anna Ilyinichna couldn’t help marveling because his relatives didn’t manage to get the desired medicine and brought some other that they had found, and in any case its quantity was not sufficient.
Now the resuscitation ward was, unfortunately, not empty either. A tall pretty girl of twenty-three that had recently graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University and came to stay for a week with a friend on vacations lied there in coma. No one knew what happened to her. Curious kids found her on the zone border. She was sleeping in a forest and would not wake up. No external or internal injuries were found. An old encephalograph showed rhythms characteristic of coma. The cardiac and respiratory activities were normal.
Granny Masha placed the icon beside her bed, sighed, and went to scrub the floors

* * * * *
A large hall filled with white light pouring through the translucent roof covering was slowly filled with strange people. Zosia thought that they ought to be actors because they were dressed in some incredible outfits. Rather, the first part of them was normal: men were dressed in suits, some in the Indian fashion, in wide trousers and long shirts, women in saris and tunics, others in dresses, skirts. Colors, styles, fashions were very different, as if they were from different eras. But something else impressed Zosia more than anything. Each had a very well and precisely made copy of oneself that, like a hood, hung behind one’s back. It was light and didn’t hinder the movement. The copy was dressed in different to those of the owner clothes. It seemed to Zosia that the clothing was determined by the profession of the owner. But the most funny thing was that many copies had toy buildings, cars, painted masks, dolls that looked like children, miniature men and women, paintings, models of some courts, forests, entire islands hanging around them on attached chains and ropes. Zosia carefully considered an odd couple.
The man was wearing white linen pants and an embroidered shirt, and a black-skinned crown-headed copy hung behind him. Heaps of cars, horses, palaces, even people were attached to it; in general, a very long trail of toys dragged behind the man. The girl next to him was dressed in white linen dress with inserts of woven lace, but a gypsy woman hung behind her. A baby, a male doll, and cards were attached to it. The couple hugged as if they had not seen each other for a long time; they laughed and joyfully peered at each other. It was evident that they were like brother and sister, and they were a very good match, although their copies said that they would never be together, at least not in this incarnation. Zosia wondered how she knew that…? And suddenly she realized: she was not Zosia. Zosia was hanging behind her, with her University degree, parents and friends; everything she considered herself to be and was connected to in that incarnation. Lord! How could she forget who she was, this hall, these people...? Why, she knew them all. She also knew that person who was smiling at her, who had one male, and the other, female half of the face, and had nothing behind him. Why, he was her beloved master! The last time she was a man, and was constantly with him. She drank him, ate him, was filled with the fragrance of his presence and had nearly reached him. How could she forget all that. In a mirror she saw a woman dressed in an orange tunic, behind which Zosia Zavadskaya, a graduate of MSU, hung. She came up to the master. Quite a large group gathered around him. All of them were her brothers and sisters. Some had cats, dogs, horses, dolphins and monkeys hanging behind them. She knew them all. They were united by love. All of them could communicate without words. Love and affection poured from somewhere above, from the sides, they permeated all of the space and were the presence of something greater that made them all a single whole, and gave them life... The state of grace filled her whole being. “Why do I see you only in a deep sleep, but when I wake up, I cannot remember?” Throny, who had a German shepherd hanging behind him, aimed the question into the space. “Do not worry, the time shall come, and you will remember. Your hour has not yet come,”— the heart of the master answered.
— How long shall I have to wait?
— It depends on you.
— Do I have the time? Shall I not be late for it?
— You existed before the time, and you shall exist after. The time belongs to you. You have as much as you want of it. You simply forgot this.
—- Who am I? Am I not a dog?
— No, but you need to remember and to realize who you really are. Therefore, there is time and the change of bodies. Now you are aware only of a part of yourself, the one that a dog’s body corresponds to. When you get the feeling of dissatisfaction in this incarnation, and you want to be different, or to do something else, then your body will immediately comply with this. Tomorrow we’ll meet again in a dream. Now wake up, it’s time.”
Zosia saw Throny disappearing. She asked her question: “What can I do in order not to forget who I am in the real life?”
- You have not yet realized “who you are”, Tsetta, so you have nothing to remember in the life that you call real. It is a dream where you realize your desires and dreams. Someday you will exhaust them, and you will see that they are toys. The satisfaction of desires will never give you that to which you aspire. They lead you into the world of duality.
Happiness comes after misfortune, hate follows being in love, illness follows health, sorrow comes after joy, death after life, and then a new life. After all, these are pairs of opposites. There is no happiness, there is happiness-unhappiness. And entering the happiness game, you also enter the misfortune game.
If something gives joy, therefore, there is also something that brings sorrow. It’s an addiction. You're in the game. It is an endless wheel, it never ends. Your home is beyond the duality. That's where you'll find happiness and love. Someday you will understand everything yourself. None of the desires shall satisfy you anymore, because you will be able to always see the downside, all the hopelessness of it: how happiness triggers sorrow, luck triggers failure, success brings defeat and vice versa. You will feel that you are “from a different planet,” that you’re “not of this world,” that nobody understands you, and that you don’t belong here. You'll start looking for yourself and asking: “Who am I?” Only then will you begin to wake up and to see the reality. All the others around you will continue to sleep, snoring on the run for career, power, money, sex, dependent relationships.
Since that moment, Tsetta, you will go deeper and deeper inside yourself, and then, when you are ready, you will know who You are.”
Tsetta tried to look around. It was not the hall anymore, but just a huge space under the blue sky. She saw many of her friends who also formed small groups around the masters. She recognized them. She saw those who on Earth were called Kabir, Mohammed, Buddha, Nanak, Mahavira, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Moses, Zoroaster, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Krishna, Osho Rajneesh, Bodhiharma, Anastasia and many others who passed through that way before. Here were those who definitely knew who they were. A girl in a transparent tunic, with a ragged, poverty-stricken old woman with kind eyes hanging behind her, asked her master: “I guess I know who I really am. But it’s very hard for me to get rid of the burden of the past that I have behind, to abandon the body, the mind. In a world of illusions, I know myself as an object that the others reflect. If I reject myself, I will no longer be.” Master smiled: “You're almost ready. It feels like a psychological death, indeed.
But one must overcome fear and give up the false ego. Do not be afraid. Nothing but it shall die – something that never existed in the first place. In the meantime, keep watching and you will see how all that you are not shall peel and fall off. Do not pay attention to it.”
Tsetta looked at the girl attentively and noticed that it seemed that half of her face and body started to become male, and the old woman hung on a very thin thread. Tsetta again felt the love and bliss. She went to the master. He understood her without words. “Tsetta, if you call me, I'll be with you at once. Take my rosary so that you won’t forget. Tell the beads. And now, go. You’ve been here long enough to remember.”
The master’s smile and love were still with her when, feeling confused in corridors and tunnels, she heard a familiar church polyphony. It was like in the church where her grandmother used to take her. She ran, holding the rosary fast and repeating the master’s name, towards that sound which promised happiness and love.
* * * * *
Early on a warm September morning Anna Ilyinichna, the practitioner, reported to Trofim Sergeyevich, the chief physician and the head of ICU, the state of the patient Zoe Zavadskaya’s health during the resuscitation ward round. She said: “The condition is satisfactory. The patient is feeling good. She has no complaints. Neurological symptoms are absent. No pathology in internal organs. The memory is fully restored. The consciousness is clear. The girl remembers all the events before her stay in the hospital; her age, address, parents; she even named all her relatives. At first, however, there was some confusion. Immediately on coming out of coma, she mentioned some saints and even Jesus Christ as relatives and friends. Then her mind cleared. I think that we can start preparing her for the discharge.” “Excellent! Well done, Zosia Zavadskaya, the graduate of MSU, carry on!”- Trofim Sergeevich said. “Prepare the discharge statement, if you think it’s time,” - Trofim Sergeevich continued to talk to Anne Ilyinichna, the physician, at the door, leaving the ICU. She came back and said:
“Well, Zosia, your memory is fully restored. So tomorrow I am going to discharge you from the hospital. Call your friend and parents”. And, seeing the joy in the girl’s eyes, she added: “You are very lucky indeed. It is rare that people go out of a coma, moreover, with no losses.  I am glad that you will remember our town only as a little adventure.” When she left, Zosia took the rosary out and said to someone into the space: “Memory is a relative concept, right, Bhagavan!” The icon of Our Lady of Vladimir stood on the bedside table. That time she clearly saw the emanating from it radiance.
Marina Luch. March, 2005.
nakovkina@mail.ru