Laurus

by Eugene Vodolazkin

There is no purpose, only a reason.

The Middle Ages rarely presented opportunities that brought people together twice during the course of an earthly life.

Sometimes it is easier to speak when people do not understand you.

It is possible to die while still living.

I always knew that nothing of what has been disappears, Brother Hugo whispered in his sleep. Not a person, nor an animal, nor even a sheet of paper. Deus conservat omnia.

Sometimes you wonder if it is worth getting attached to people if it will be this difficult to part with them later. Arseny slapped Brother Hugo on the back as he embraced him: 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. Otherwise, how would we sense those dear to us from a distance?

After all, the sea is the source of all rivers and springs, just as the Lord Jesus Christ is the source of all virtue and knowledge. Do not all pure aspirations, every last one of them, stream from one and the same source? And just as spiritual streams rush to their source, all waters return to the sea.

The flow of fresh water into salt water, the pilgrim Friedrich softly said, is something I liken to how the sweetness of this earth ends up turning to salt and bitterness.

time is the arch-enemy of decisiveness.

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.

Arseny also did not rule out that these people simply felt like hanging someone.

Stepping back from the sad side of all this, I can be glad that my journey is concluding in such a beautiful place: with a view of the sea, a distant island, and all the grandeur of God’s world.

I am sorry, my love, that I managed to do so little, but I firmly believe that if the All-Merciful takes me now, He will accomplish everything we did not accomplish. Without that belief, there would be no point in existing, either for me or for you.

Even earlier, they had begun to suspect that their accusations were not altogether correct, meaning they had most likely been hanging Arseny out of inertia. They had lacked only the tiniest of reasons for stopping, and now it had been found. Their rage ran out just as suddenly as it had arisen.

It is hardest of all, O Arseny, to foresee the future of one’s own life, and that is good.

I forestalled time by only an instant, but that instant was worth an entire human life.

there is no repetition on this earth: only similarity exists.

A thought slowly rises toward him from the leaden depths: the ocean is mighty and he will never find Arseny. That he will find him only if he drowns. Only then would he have time to search. That thought releases him from the fear of drowning.

The ship was no longer resisting its element: it was a part of it.

Even when sated, a cat will pounce on a bird with a broken wing because that is how the cat and all her ancestors were made: the bird acts like a victim and the sweetness of harsh punishment for the victim is, for the hunter, stronger than hunger and more demanding than lust.

Those considered not near and dear (as was true of Arseny) rarely remain in the memory.

They looked at each other until the crowd had no more unjustified expectations and Arseny lost his fear of betraying their expectations.

Did time go backwards or—let us phrase the question differently—am I myself returning to some starting point?

his ability to concentrate on prayer while simultaneously dissolving himself within the patient.

There were no more fantasies in his dreams: these were true dreams, dreams about what had been. Time truly was going backwards.

the fruits of my labors turned out to be so small and ridiculous that I have experienced nothing but shame. 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.

And so, O Savior, give me at least some sign that I may know my path has not veered into madness, so I may, with that knowledge, walk the most difficult road, walk as long as need be and no longer feel weariness.

Do you not know that any journey harbors danger within itself? Any journey—and if you do not acknowledge this, then why move? 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.

But is not Christ a general direction? asked the elder. What other kind of direction do you seek? And how do you even understand the journey anyway? As the vast expanses you left behind? You made it to Jerusalem with your questions, though you could have asked them from the Kirillov Monastery. I am not saying wandering is useless: there is a point to it. Do not become like your beloved Alexander who had a journey but had no goal. And do not be enamored of excessive horizontal motion.

He shed some tears when he saw his trees by the wall because they were trees from a past and irretrievable life.

he who asks a question often knows the answer, too, even if he cannot always admit that to himself.

in any nation the majority of people are healthy and have no questions.

He had long suspected that time was discontinuous and its individual parts were not connected to one another, much as there was no connection—other than, perhaps, a name—between the blond little boy from Rukina Quarter and the gray-haired wayfarer, almost an old man.

Time no longer moves forward but goes around in circles because it teems with events that go around in circles.

Monday is dedicated to incorporeal forces, Tuesday to the prophets, Wednesday and Friday to the remembrance of Christ’s death on the cross, and Saturday to prayer for the deceased, and then the main day is dedicated to the resurrection of the Lord.

Time, my love, is very shaky here because the cycle is closed and it corresponds to eternity.

The path of the living, O Amvrosy, cannot be a circle. The path of the living, even if they are monks, has been opened up because, as one might ask, how could there be freedom of will if there is no way out of a vicious circle? And even when we replicate events in prayer, we do not simply recall them. We relive those events once again and they occur once again.

So you think time here is some sort of open figure rather than a circle? Amvrosy asked the elder. That’s exactly it, answered the elder. After I have become enamored of geometry, 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.

There are events that resemble one another, continued the elder, but opposites are born from that similarity. The Old Testament opens with Adam but the New Testament opens with Christ. The sweetness of the apple that Adam eats turns into the bitterness of the vinegar that Christ drinks. The tree of knowledge leads humanity to death but a cross of wood grants immortality to humanity. Remember, O Amvrosy, that repetitions are granted for our salvation and in order to surmount time. Do you mean to say I will meet Ustina again? I want to say that no things are irreparable.

He mourned those who had loved him, too, since he believed his life had not given them any joy.

He mourned himself and his life and did not know precisely what might be at issue.

And then his tears of sorrow changed into tears of gratitude.

The tears cleansed his soul as well as his face. For the first time in his life, Amvrosy felt his soul was finding peace.

peace was born not from overall reverence (his renown was greater than at any time before) but also not from the indifference that seizes many worthy people as they near old age. His sense of peace was tied to a hope that strengthened ever more and more in Amvrosy with each day he lived in the monastery. He no longer doubted the correctness of his path: he was satisfied that he was walking the only possible path.

I have been cognizing the world for a long time and have amassed so much of it inside me that from now on I can come to know it within myself.

The soul should become thus, thought Amvrosy. Impassive, placid.

I no longer sense unity in my life, said Laurus. I was Arseny, Ustin, Amvrosy, and I have just now become Laurus. My life was lived by four people who do not resemble one another and they have various bodies and various names. What do I have in common with the light-haired little boy from Rukina Quarter? A memory? But the longer I live, the more my reminiscences seem like an invention. I am ceasing to believe them and they thus lack the power to link me to those people who were me at various times. Life resembles a mosaic that scatters into pieces. Being a mosaic does not necessarily mean scattering into pieces, answered Elder Innokenty. 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. That, O Laurus, is how it is in your life, too. 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.

when dreams present images, they do not go to the trouble of observing relative things, one of which is time.

What a person is able to do using his strength is the very best. But what is beyond his strength, my love, is not useful.

nothing in the world recurs.