Soon I got the chance to test the accuracy of those paradoxical words. First of all about the rigid organization. But not with the aid of reasoning. To the contrary. I tested it with my body. After some thirty kilometers, I felt extremely exhausted; the tempo was hellish. J. K. was merrily chattering and wildly turning the pedals. At one instant he affronted me, saying that I am structured like the Catholic church; your head, he said, is the holy father the Pope, full of pride and dogma; your heart is like the cardinals who dream of becoming the pope and of killing the father, and your limbs are like the flock, left to themselves and forced to obediently execute the orders that come down from above. I could not understand the parable, so J. K. translated it for me: my brain is full of Euclidean prejudices and I observe the world with the eyes of a geometry teacher, which is wrong, because that is how the illusion of perspective is created, and with it the illusion of distance. If I intend to reach Dharamsala, I should observe the world with the eyes of a Byzantine icon which places the important things in the foreground and above all — sees things from all sides.
“You mentioned icons,” I said, “but I read in some document that icons are idols.”
“Oh, icons, icons,” sighed J. K. “Icons are not idols. They are painted with goal of teaching people to look at the world properly; to look at the world from above. Just remember, on the icons, how small the walls of Jerusalem are in relation to the human figures in front of it. Or how the patrons are holding their endowments in their hands. Or, if you like, how some buildings are seen from all sides. But people are just people: observing things in a Euclidean, horizontal way, they mistakenly see the icon in the same way they see the subjects represented on them. From the Renaissance forward, things have just gotten worse. In the center of the picture is no longer the human face that hovers over and illuminates the world, but the flabby human body crumpled and pressed by buildings, lost in the perspective of the world. That is the human view. Once a certain renowned scientist told me that human thoughts are in the form of a square and box. To us, the world seems to be stable and consistent. However, in God’s view the world turns out to be horribly deformed. That is why the Lord turns his face to the Earth ever more rarely.
“But,” J. K. said, “don’t think about that. You’d better save your strength for the ride, because your muscles don’t turn the pedals, your spirit does. And it would be better to see things like this: it is not you that is moving, but the road and the Earth are turning, and you are standing in place and keeping your balance.”
An Oneiric Orgy in Niš
In spite of the fact that J. K. brought me out of the clouds and down to earth, I was more than a little surprised when, at the end of the first stage of our trip, we stayed at a house whose red lamps left no doubt about the kind of place it was. The house was run by a certain Madame Greta with whom J. K. was very close, even tender. We had just settled in and caught our breath when the call to dinner came. I would have most readily skipped supper, lay down and slipped into my dreams, every bone in my body hurt, but I could not get out of it. Downstairs, in Madame Greta’s salon, a company had already gathered consisting of scantily dressed girls, long-haired pale guys, rather obese gentlemen and a bunch of midgets. In the dimmed light, it all looked spooky; everything looked like it was prepared for some sort of black mass, and not like the welcoming committee for the athletes of a religious organization. But those were my prejudices. A month later, when we were close to Dharamsala, J. K. pointed out to me that I had been conceited; that I had observed all that with the eyes of a Philistine who categorizes everything as good or evil. And then, ashamed of myself, ashamed before Ernest and J. K., I remembered my childhood and the local prostitute, Amalia, with whom I was mortally in love. Her walk and thick layer of make-up, her happy face — everything about her filled me with excitement and I could not understand the mean thoughts and insults that people poured out on her; especially because those insults came from people that I also loved — my mother, my aunt and my father — and that is just one more proof in favor of the proposition that unsolvable aporias begin already in the unspoiled nature of childhood, when there is no division between good and evil, honest and dishonest, ugly and pretty.
But that night in Niš, after a rather large number of glasses of wine that had the bouquet of resin, the main dish was served, prepared according to the recipe of J. K., “Nightmare Chicken.” Before I move on to the events that followed, I will reproduce the recipe for preparing that delicacy, convinced that it will enrich the history of gastronomy.
Wash a young, slaughtered, plucked and prepared chicken, then salt it and marinade it in wine and plenty of pepper for six hours. Remove the chicken, pull the spinal cord out of the spine with a knitting needle, and push two grams of highly sweetened raw opium into the spinal column with that same needle. Meanwhile, prepare the stuffing: fry some finely chopped bacon in onion and carrots, and when it begins to brown sprinkle it with the hashish pollen. Stuff the chicken with this filling, sew up the hole and bake at a low temperature for two to three hours, occasionally basting it with wine. Serve warm and eat immediately.
Already fairly tipsy, I ate that chicken with its pungent but tasty flavor, and a comfortable warmth spread from my stomach through the rest of my body, making it feel lighter. And just when I had relaxed and put my hand under the table onto the knee of the girl next to me, J. K. warned me that it was time for bed. In one room of the attic, three beds were waiting for us and, still in my clothes, I stretched out on one of them, engulfed in fantasies. I do not know when I fell asleep, but as soon as I did, I began to dream. And I dreamt Ernest and J. K. “Where have you been?” asked Ernest. “Do you think we can wait till dawn?” At that moment I began to dream something else: the bank of a river and an unknown woman waiting for me, but J. K. nudged me with his elbow and shouted: “This way!” We found ourselves in a rather large barracks where frost was building up on the walls. Jammed together, the room was filled with wooden bunk-beds. In the pile of bodies, we could make out two men. They were lying next to each other, smoking and talking.
“There’s Vartolomeyich,” J. K. said to Ernest.
“Yes,” said Ernest. “Vartolomeyich is here.” Vartolomeyich was blond. In the crowd of weathered and tortured faces, his radiated serenity.
“Who is Var…” I wanted to ask, but J. K. hushed me and told me to listen.
“Did you know, Pavel Kuzmich,” Vartolomeyich said to his neighbor, “that I got here on a bicycle and that one man prophesied that I would end up behind bars.”
Pavel Kuzmich smiled.