Ice Trilogy Page 9

  After that I fell into a trance. I not only stopped talking but didn’t react to questions and requests. I just sat, hugging my knees, staring into the fire with unseeing eyes. I saw only the not-yet-born hearts. They carried me into a tent and poured opium into my mouth. I fell into a deep sleep.

  I awoke three days later to the sound of cries and shots. I was calm. But the joy had deserted me. Making my way out of the tent, I saw the entire expedition standing around the finished barracks. They shouted joyously and shot their guns in the air. I walked over to them. They ran up to me, began to hug me. It turned out that there were three causes for joy: the barrack had been built, a huge crater had been found not far away, and that morning a wagon loaded with provisions had arrived from Vanavara. I listened, but had difficulty understanding. I was drained and indifferent. Kulik approached me.

  “So then, Snegirev, are you better now?”

  He looked me straight in the eyes, all attention. I answered him with my own look.

  “So this is what’s going to happen, young man,” Kulik said to me, “from now on you are going to eat well, under my supervision. We don’t need anyone fasting here. Is that clear?”

  I looked him in the eye silently. Kulik took my gaze as agreement. They had already had dinner, so the time for force-feeding me was put off until the evening. After the wagon train was unloaded and its drivers rested, it returned to Vanavara with half our horses, two sick people — the geologist Voronin (he had bad diarrhea and a high fever) and the student Berelovich (who had hurt his eye during the construction) — and the mail. They didn’t send me back with the wagon train, feeling that, despite my quiet lunacy, I was capable of being useful. Or perhaps Kulik really did believe that I was a talisman. Soon he gathered everyone and gave an inspired speech. He said that everything was going according to plan, everything was working out in the best possible way: a fifty-meter crater had been found — clearly of meteoritic origin — the bores hadn’t located any tree stumps at the bottom of it, therefore something more important would be found; the geologists had panned the local soil in Chistiakov Spring and found microscopic metallic spheres in it, each no more than two millimeters in diameter; these spheres were scattered almost everywhere and provided evidence of the metallic nature of the Tungus meteorite; the barrack had been built and was being equipped for living, all the provisions were being transferred there. Three men would remain in the camp to set up the living quarters, the rest would move to the crater, which was located only three kilometers away, and would work on excavations until evening.

  Martynov, Anikin, and I were left in the camp. The barrack was divided into storage and living sections: one for keeping provisions and equipment, the other for sleeping. First we carried over all our supplies and put them into the storage section; then we began to construct bunks from young trees and to caulk the chinks in the walls with moss. Two small windows were cut through the barrack walls. The weather continued to be warm and dry. Martynov and Anikin set off to look for young trees around the edge of the swamp. Sticking white moss into the chinks between the charred, wormhole-ridden beams, I mechanically watched the two receding figures through the cracks. The ax in Martynov’s hand sparkled in the sun. And this flash of light suddenly awakened me. My heart quivered, my brain began to work. And I finally understood with my entire being WHY people had come here! They came in order to find the enormous and intimate. And to take it away from me forever! I trembled in terror. The clod of moss and the hammer fell from my hands. Why did they take so much time coming here? Why did they put up with such hardships? Why had this barrack been built? In order to find my joy! In order to prevent me from meeting it FOREVER!

  A cold sweat broke out on my lips. I licked it away. I had to act. I looked around: the barrack. It had been built by people to help them find the enormous and intimate. Without it they were helpless in the taiga. I ran out of the barrack. A little ways off stood a barrel of kerosene. Kulik forbade storing it in the barrack. I rolled the barrel over and dragged it inside. I broke the stopper and leaned the barrel over a pail. The kerosene ran into the pail. I grabbed the pail and splashed it on a pile of boxes and sacks. Then I filled a second pail and poured it on the walls. I splashed a third and fourth pail onto the walls from outside. I took some matches and left the barrack. I lit a match and threw it at the black wall. The barrack caught fire.

  I turned and walked into the taiga. Choosing a direction opposite from the one where the people had headed, I walked between the blackened trees. My heart quivered again, stronger and more urgently than before. It beat in my chest as though it wanted to break my rib cage and jump out. I understood that I had to hurry and I ran. Time stopped, the black forest jumped around in front of my eyes, sweat poured down my face. I ran and ran and ran. This lasted for an eternity. The sun was setting; the dead taiga was plunged into twilight. The stars sparkled above the charred treetops. My legs began to give way. The breath burst from my dried lips. Suddenly, in front of me, a felled tree appeared — the only one in the entire dead standing forest. An old, thick deciduous tree lay on the ground in its full length, broken in the middle. The huge roots, not completely pulled from the ground, had frozen, raised just above the earth. With my last breath, I fell on the earth, crawled under the hanging roots, and lost consciousness.

  The Ice

  I opened my eyes.

  The dark reeked of earth. I moved, stretched out my hand. I touched the ground and roots. The cold soil crumbled. I immediately remembered who I was and where I was. I began to extricate myself from my den. I crawled out from under the root “roof” of the old larch hanging over the ground, which had served as my refuge, and froze: everything around was bathed in bright moonlight. I lifted my head: a huge full moon hung in the blue-black sky surrounded by scatterings of stars. Its light was so bright that I turned away and looked around: everything, all the way to the horizon, was bathed in this incredible light. A fantastical landscape unfolded before me. The illuminated hillocks resembled frozen waves of an unseen ocean. Spilling over, undulating, crisscrossing, and colliding, they receded into the distance toward the horizon, a subtle glow in the eastern sky. The dead forest stood all around in absolute silence: not a sound, not a rustle. And I stood in the midst of this. Alone.

  I felt no fear. Just the opposite: the deep sleep under the roots of the ancient tree had calmed me and given me strength. The fever that racked my body abandoned me, as though it had drained into the ground. I raised my arms to the moon and stretched with pleasure.

  And moaned.

  I was free!

  There was no one around. No one laughed at me or gave me orders; no one asked anything of me, drove me on, or gave me idiotic advice; no one talked about Marxism and astronomy. The hated swarm of words that had pursued me like midges the entire month had dispersed and drifted away along with the people. The absolute silence of the world amazed me. The earthly world froze in front of me in the grandest calm. And for the first time in my life I felt distinctly the vile vulgarity of this world. Our world did not come into existence by itself. It was not the result of a chance combination of blind powers. It was created. By willpower. In a single moment.

  This discovery shook me profoundly. I cautiously inhaled the cool night air. And froze, afraid to exhale. Books on philosophy and religion, arguments about existence, time, and metaphysics had contributed nothing at all to my understanding of the world in which I existed. But this moment in the midst of a dead, moonlit taiga opened my eyes to a great mystery.

  I exhaled.

  And took a step.

  My heart began to throb in a now familiar way. And I remembered the huge and intimate. That which had made me tremble in mute ecstasy, lose sleep at night, walk without tiring, and silently clench my teeth. It was close by. I again felt it with my heart. But calmly now, without tears or shuddering. The huge and intimate was calling me. And I moved in the direction of that call.

  I walked between the blackened tree trunks. The moon fo
llowed me, clearly illuminating my path. I saw every stone under my feet, every broken bough. The moon played on the charred trunks. They glinted and shimmered like anthracite. The thick moss was springy under my boots. It was easy to walk: there was no longer anything on my shoulders...No tins, lard, or crackers. Nothing that connected me to people. This didn’t frighten me — I experienced no hunger at all. My inner rapture of the last month had now turned into a staunch, persistent, irrepressible desire: to continue in the direction of the huge and intimate. And to find it.

  I walked.

  My legs easily overcame the wild, lifeless landscape. I walked for an hour, another, a third. The hillocks drifted slowly by. Finally they gave way and opened up. The moonlight glinted on a thin strip of water.

  The swamp!

  I approached it.

  A slight fog of evaporation hung over it as before. My heart began to pound. I was drawn there by an irresistible force. The intimate and dear was close. I stepped forward. The moss beneath me was thicker, completely covering the soil. Swamp tussocks had grown up, and soon a viscous liquid slurped underfoot. With every step my heart beat more intensely. It wasn’t the usual palpitations of malaise and excitement. My heart was beating less often, but more powerfully and strenuously — each beat resounded in my chest, waves spread throughout the body from it. It was as though my heart had begun to live its own life, separate from the life of my body. Its heavy, even beats shook me ever so sweetly. My body resonated in time to these beats. My boots plunged deeper and deeper into the swamp, and it became difficult to walk. The water rose. Soon I was up to my waist. The cold water rushed into my boots and engulfed my legs. This was the cold of the permafrost. The moon brightly illuminated my surroundings. The resonant heartbeats left no room for fear. I wanted only to advance, I wanted dreadfully to go forward. And I hurried forward with all my might. The icy swamp clutched at my legs. But I was stronger. Clutching the tussocks with my hands, I forced my way on. One step, then another. Ten of the hardest steps.

  Twenty.

  One hundred.

  The hummocks ended: ahead lay the smooth duckweed hollow. I took the one-hundred-and-first step. And sank up to my chest. But my heartbeat was deafening, and each pulse of blood pushed me ahead. I grasped at the rotten trunk of an old, broken tree that was sticking up out of the duckweed. And I understood that ahead, under my feet, would be — a deep quagmire and quicksand. However, I also realized that there was a strip of water over this quicksand. And that I could swim in this water. I’d just have to take everything off — and swim ahead. Grabbing on to the trunk, I pulled my feet out of the quicksand with a furious movement, pulled myself up, and sat on the flotsam. I took off the wet clothing clinging to my body. I pulled off my waterlogged boots. Then, naked, I pushed away from the trunk, raking aside the water with my hands and pushing with my legs, like a frog. It was incredible — I was swimming in a bog as though swimming across a lake. The water on top, just below the duckweed, was clean and cold. I just had to keep on swimming straight ahead without stopping. If I stopped — there was only death, the quicksand would pull me under. It tickled my stomach with rotten slime, tried to snag me. But all fear remained behind, in the world of people. I swam a bit and suddenly understood: the huge and intimate was quite near. Just a little farther — and it would be possible to touch it.

  My heart started beating such that rosy-orange rainbows flared in my eyes. I quickly became very warm. Then — hot.

  Ecstasy seized me.

  Sobs burst from my clenched mouth, which had forgotten the language of people. I realized that if I didn’t touch the huge and intimate, I would die, I’d drown myself. Without it there was no reason to live. I had nothing but it. I had never desired anything so deeply in my life.

  The water that my strokes parted shimmered in the moonlight. The green duckweed played on the surface.

  A divine silence reigned all around.

  A stroke of the arms, the body slid ahead.

  Another stroke.

  Another.

  Another!

  Another!!

  Another!!!

  My hands touched the Ice.

  And I understood why I had come here.

  I burst into happy sobs.

  I had found the huge and intimate. My fingers touched the smooth surface. My heart beat deafeningly. I felt like I was losing consciousness. My head cleared in a flash. Divine emptiness resounded in it. While my fingers continued feverishly touching the Ice under the water. Sobbing, I began to choke. The edge of the Ice reached smoothly upward. I pushed through the water desperately. I crawled onto the Ice, like a lizard. There was very little water covering it. Shaking and sobbing, I crawled and crawled farther, along the top surface of the Ice. All around, as far as the farthest hummocks, spread a smooth hollow covered with duckweed. The enormous mass of Ice slept under it, submerged in the swamp. This dear, intimate mass had lain there quietly for twenty years, waiting for me. I’d needed twenty years in order to find the Ice! Sobs racked my body. I burned with heat. My heartbeats shook me. I was choking, swallowing the damp air of the swamp. Ahead the green duckweed gave way a little bit. The Ice glittered over there in the moonlight! A little patch of pure Ice! I pulled myself up and ran toward it, splashing the water, trampling the sleepy, thousand-year-old duckweed. The Ice! The Ice sparkled white and blue! How pure! How powerful! How mine.

  Mine, mine forever!

  Running up to the patch, I slipped.

  And fell, slamming my chest against the shining Ice. I lost consciousness. For a moment.

  Then my heart began to resound from the blow of the Ice. And I immediately felt the entire MASS of the Ice. It was enormous. And the whole thing was vibrating, resonating in time with my heart. For me alone. My heart, which had been sleeping for all these twenty years inside my rib cage, awoke. It didn’t beat harder, but sort of jolted — at first it was painful, then it was sweet. And then, quivering, it spoke.

  “Bro-bro-bro...Bro-bro-bro. Bro-bro-bro...

  I understood. This was my real name. My name was Bro. I understood this with my entire being. My arms embraced the Ice.

  “Bro! Bro! Bro!” my heart trembled.

  And the Ice answered my heart. Its divine vibrations flooded my head. The Ice was vibrating. It was older than everything alive on earth. The Music of Eternal Harmony sang in it. And that music could not be compared to anything. It sounded the Beginning of All Beginnings. Pressing my chest to the Ice, I froze stock-still, listening to the Music of Eternal Harmony. In that moment the entire earthly world paled and became transparent for me. It disappeared. The Ice and I hung alone in the Universe. Amid the stars and wordlessness.

  And my awakening heart began to listen closely to the Music of Eternal Harmony:

  In the beginning there was only the Primordial Light. And the Light shone in the Absolute Emptiness. And the Light shone for Itself. The Light consisted of 23,000 Light-bearing rays. And one of those rays was you, Bro. Time did not exist. There was only Eternity. And in this Eternal Emptiness we shone, 23,000 Light-bearing rays. And we begat worlds. And the worlds filled the Emptiness. Each time that we, the rays of Light, wanted to create a new world, we formed a Divine Circle of Light consisting of 23,000 Light-bearing rays. All the rays turned toward the inside of the Circle, and after 23 pulses in the center of the Circle a new world was born. We created the heavenly bodies: stars and planets, meteorites and comets, nebulae and galaxies. Their numbers grew. And their Harmony gave us Joy. The Eternal Music of the Light sang in them. We created the Universe. And it was sublime. And it came about that we created a new world, and one of its planets was covered with water. This was the planet Earth. We had never created these kinds of planets before. And we had never created water. For water is not constant — it is disharmonious. It is capable of creating worlds itself — unstable and disharmonious worlds. This was the Light’s great mistake. The water on the planet Earth formed a sphere-shaped mirror. The moment we were reflected in it, we c
eased being rays of the Light and were incarnated in living creatures. We became primitive amoebas, inhabitants of the boundless ocean. The water carried our tiny bodies. But the Primordial Light was in us as before, though dampened a bit in the disharmonious, world-spawning water. As before, there were 23,000 of us. We scattered across the expanses of the Earth’s ocean. The disharmonious water engendered not only living beings but time as well. We became prisoners of the water and time. Billions of Earth years passed. We evolved along with other beings inhabiting the Earth. Our upper vertebra developed into an enormous tumor called the brain. The brain helped us figure things out better than other animals. So we became humans. Humans multiplied and covered the Earth. Dependent on flesh and time, people began to live by the laws of the brain. They thought that the brain helped them to dominate space and time. In fact, it only enslaved them to disharmonious dependence on the surrounding world. People with well-developed brains were called intelligent. Intelligent people were considered the elite of humankind. They lived by the laws of the mind and taught them to others. People began to live by the mind, enslaving themselves in flesh and time. The developed mind engendered the language of the mind. And humankind began to speak this language. And this language covered the entire visible world in an opaque film. People stopped seeing and feeling things. They began to think them. Blind and heartless, they became more and more cruel. They created weapons and machines. Throughout their entire history people have engaged in three main activities: bearing children, killing other people, and using the surrounding world. People who proposed anything else were crucified and destroyed. Engendered by the unstable and disharmonious water, people gave birth and killed, killed and gave birth. Because humans were a great mistake. Like everything living on Earth. And the Earth turned into the ugliest place in the Universe. This little planet became a genuine hell. And in this hell we lived. We died as old people and were incarnated in newborns, unable to tear away from the Earth, which we ourselves had created. And as before, there were still 23,000 of us. The Primordial Light lived in our hearts. But we didn’t know this. Our hearts were sleeping, like billions of other human hearts. What could awaken us, so that we might realize who we were and what we needed to do? All the worlds that we created were harmonious and permanent, dead in the Earth’s terms. They hung in the emptiness, giving us joy through the harmony of their peacefulness. The joy of the Primordial Light sang in them. The Earth alone violated the harmony of the Cosmos. For it was alive and developed on its own. The Earth became a dreadful tumor, the cancer of the Universe. The Divine Balance of the Universe was broken. Worlds shifted, deprived of the Divine Symmetry. And the Universe that we created gradually began to scatter in the Emptiness. But a piece of the world of Harmony, which we had previously created, fell to the Earth. This was one of the largest meteorites that had ever fallen to Earth. A huge piece of Heavenly Ice, in which the Harmony of the Primordial Light sang, having traveled for billions of years through the Universe. This was Heavenly Ice, created hard and transparent, according to the laws of Harmony. By its nature it was different from the pitiful earthly ice that formed from impermanent water, although on the outside they could not be distinguished. The dust of the Cosmos had settled on it, forging a thick iron armor. The armor helped it to withstand entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and broke off when it hit Earth. This happened on June 30, 1908, here, in Siberia. The Ice fell to Earth and entered its soil. The water of the Siberian swamps hid it from people. The permafrost helped to preserve it. For twenty years the Ice waited for you. It is right beneath you. It is yours. It was sent here by the perishing Universe. Salvation lies in it. It will help you and the rest of Earth’s hostages to become rays of Primordial Light once again. It will bring your hearts back to life. They will awaken after a long sleep. They will speak their secret names. And they will begin to speak the language of the Light. The 23,000 brothers and sisters will find one another again. And when the last of 23,000 is found, you will stand in a Circle, join hands, and your hearts will pronounce the 23 words of the Light’s language 23 times. And the Primordial Light will awaken in you and will turn to the center of the Circle. There will be a flash. And the Earth, the Light’s sole mistake, will dissolve in the Primordial Light. And disappear forever. And your earthly bodies will disappear. And once again you will become rays of Primordial Light. And the Light will shine as before in the Emptiness, for Itself Alone. And it will beget a New Universe — Sublime and Eternal.