Laurus

by Eugene Vodolazkin

In the begynnynge God created heaven and the earth. He created them in order that people not thinke heaven and earth were without begynnynge.

For what you have tamed, you become responsible forever, Christofer said, stroking the wolf.

The brain is the body’s tsar and it is at the very top because—of all earthly beasts—only man is a rational being and walks upright. His incorporeal thinking, located within the body, ascends to the heavens and comprehends the perfection of this world.

I compare the soul to a flame that originates in an earthly candle but has no earthly nature as it strives skyward, toward its kindred elements.

At the cemetery and everything. It is live people who lie there, after all. I saw only the dead. For God, all are living.

Each of us repeats Adam’s journey and acknowledges, with the loss of innocence, that he is mortal. Weep and pray, O Arseny. And do not fear death, for death is not just the bitterness of parting. It is also the joy of liberation.

At times it is not crucial how a word is spoken and by whom. All that is important is that it has been spoken. Or, at the very least, thought.

For Christofer, the written word seemed to regulate the world. Stop its fluctuations. Prevent notions from eroding.

Why did he go off to die? Why did he not die with us, the ones who loved him? Christofer wiped Arseny’s tears with his scratchy touch. He kissed his forehead. It was his way of warning us that everyone remains alone with God at the final moment.

those who speake unto themselves and ask questions of themselves and answere themselves and become downhearted.

My heart is breaking and I am crushed to leave you, but I cast my sorrow on the Lord, as the prophet says.

As he left, he saw how Arseny propped Christofer up. He said: Let him go, O Arseny. It is because of you that he lacks the courage to leave.

Arseny awoke early in the morning. He looked at Christofer, lying beside him. He inhaled all the available air in the house and shouted.

Their healed bodies preserved memories of Christofer’s good deeds.

Because the first steps are the most difficult.

Arseny knew the patients still saw Christofer in him, making each visit like a continuation his grandfather’s life.

The flickering of the fire on his thick-browed and wrinkly face had somehow seemed as primordial and ancient as fire itself.

Ustina was not separate from his love for her. Ustina was love and love was Ustina.

Upon seeing Death, Arseny’s soul said: I cannot abide your glory and I see your beauty is not of this world.

mercy should be a reward for effort.

Arseny felt the coldness of the lake’s depths as he walked along the ice. A waft of that coldness felt to him like a waft of death, as if the lake’s abyss contained everyone from Belozersk who had ever departed.

She’s my mama, whispered Silvester. Nothing wicked can come to me from her. But she belongs to the illness now, not to herself, said Arseny,

And I am glad to accentuate its grandeur with my wretchedness, since in doing so it is almost as if I am a party to its creation.

But I cannot cure him, because of the gravity of my sins. These sins do not allow me to rise to the height where that person’s redemption lies. I, my love, am the culprit in his death and thus I weep for his passing and for my own sins.

Movement away from the present—in both directions—became something Ambrogio needed as much as air, because it removed time’s unidimensionality, which caused him to gasp for breath.

historians in the Middle Ages were unlike historians these days. They always looked for moral reasons as an explanation for historical events. It’s like they didn’t notice the direct connection between events. Or didn’t attach much significance to it.

Because when you miss someone, we’re talking about lacking a piece of you, yourself. And you’re looking to be reunited with that piece.

A city of saints, whispered Ambrogio, following the play of the shadow. They present us the illusion of life. No, objected Arseny, also in a whisper. They disprove the illusion of death.

I keep waiting for some sort of sign that could show me I am going in the right direction, but I have not seen a single sign in all these years. It is easy to follow signs, and that requires no courage, replied Ambrogio.

I think time is given to us by the grace of God so we will not get mixed up, because a person’s consciousness cannot take in all events at once. We are locked up in time because of our weakness. Does that mean you think the end of the world already exists, too? asked Arseny. I am not ruling that out. Of course death of individual people exists, and is that not, really, a personal end of the world?

You Russians really love talking about death. And it distracts you from getting on with your lives.

I will be ashamed that the sun that belongs to everyone falls on this face. I will know that I have no right to it. I have no right whatsoever to what is beautiful. It is possible to die while still living.

You know, O friend, any meeting is surely more than parting. There is emptiness before meeting someone, just nothing, but there is no longer emptiness after parting. After having met someone once, it is impossible to part completely. A person remains in the memory, as a part of the memory. The person created that part and that part lives, sometimes coming into contact with its creator.

But what death is not stupid? asked Arseny. Is it not stupid that coarse iron enters the flesh, violating its perfection? He who is not capable of creating even a fingernail on a little finger is destroying a most complex mechanism, something inaccessible to human comprehension.

By destroying Ustina, I deprived her of the possibility of discovering what You placed within her,

The only reason I did not give up is that I would have been even worse at anything else. I am not certain of my path and that makes it ever more difficult for me to progress further. One can walk an unknown road for a long time—a very long time—but one cannot walk it eternally.

So you say faith is not enough for you and you want knowledge, too. But knowledge does not involve spiritual effort; knowledge is obvious. Faith assumes effort. Knowledge is repose and faith is motion.

Do not become like your beloved Alexander who had a journey but had no goal. And do not be enamored of excessive horizontal motion. Then what should I be enamored of? asked Arseny. Vertical motion, answered the elder, pointing above.

I will liken the motion of time to a spiral. This involves repetition but on some new, higher level. Or, if you like, the experience of something new but not from a clean slate. With the memory of what was experienced previously.

It is only up close that each separate little stone seems not to be connected to the others. There is something more important in each of them, O Laurus: striving for the one who looks from afar. For the one who is capable of seizing all the small stones at once. It is he who gathers them with his gaze.

You have dissolved yourself in God. You disrupted the unity of your life, renouncing your name and your very identity. But in the mosaic of your life there is also something that joins all those separate parts: it is an aspiration for Him. They will gather together again in Him.