For the Chinese, the entire world is emptiness, pustota. Sewing Dolce and Gabbana labels onto trousers in some basement sweatshop, stealing the design for a concept car from Toyota—nothing is sacred. It’s all emptiness, and emptiness is Tao. Emptiness is the inner essence of things. And any form is simply a label pasted on emptiness, predetermining the way our untrustworthy senses will perceive it. So what’s the point of copyright, of defending someone’s asinine trademarks?
For the Arab, the whole world is a desert. Pustinya. And he couldn’t give a damn that there are other people living on the globe who’ve built great cities and roads, who have something that they consider to be civilization and culture. No, they’re all savages, heathens. The Arab rides alone in all his glory, regal and handsome on that white camel, a sack of petrodollars in one hand and an Kalashnikov automatic in the other, bearing either the Prophet’s teachings—peace be unto him—or salvation through death, take your choice, O infidels who wander in the darkness.
Whereas your European hates emptiness in whatever form. He covers it with construction projects, divides it into plots, parcels them out, maps everything, and presto, no more emptiness! Or so it seems. But no, it’s emptiness nonetheless: pustota.
For a Russian, though, wherever you make your home is wasteland. Pustosh is the Russian natural landscape. And any other terrain a Russian finds beneath his feet inevitably turns into that same wasteland which is so dear to his heart. Even his apartment becomes pustosh.
Because when you find yourself in a wasteland, it’s only natural that your thoughts turn to the futility of life.
There they are, the remains of empires, the bygone glory of kingdoms, and what now? Futility. From wasteland we emerged, into wasteland we shall return, empty on the inside, on the outside empty too.
At that point it might seem fitting to try and free yourself from the trammels of the material world, but such a quest requires emptiness, pustota. Sitting on pustosh, though, you think: What are all paths? Many have trod and fallen, many have plummeted into the abyss. That too, futility!
But “even if I do not fall into the abyss, the poison will still find me,” sings the bard.[14] And pours the poison into the glass himself. It is all one path, all Tao, and this glass is Tao, Russian style. He drinks. And imagines himself wandering on roads paved with diamonds, then plummeting into the black abyss…
They say that this is Russia’s unique path. The Russian path to God. Through wasteland…
And so it is. For any road leads to God.
Maximus recalled something he’d read in Blavatsky or Roerich, a verse they claimed was translated from the Upanishads or something like that: All mountain roads lead to God, who lives on the mountain tops…
The Romans thought that all roads led to Rome…
And the Bhaktivedanta Swami used to tell his disciples that if they got on the train to Calcutta, they would never reach Bombay.
Funny, and true. But perhaps there is another truth: Any road leads to God.
Though it has two ends.
Semipyatnitsky drove slowly, trying to protect his car’s suspension from the road’s abundant potholes and ruts. He came to a fork in the road, with a 24/7 fish market, a café, a hotel, and a highway patrol station, and headed to the right, onto the road to Staraya Ladoga. When he reached the village, it was already dark.
The white nights retained their calendar rights; the sun still set late and its whitish light lingered in the pale sky long after the clock indicated darkness. But in this strange time, when night came on, it came suddenly. A dark hood would descend without warning, covering the entire world, blocking out even the stars. And when dawn glimmered early and drove the night away, it left the night even darker in memory.
The village nestled along the banks of the Volkhov River. Maximus drove down the right bank until he reached a hotel on the small town square. The square was deserted. Maximus parked, entered the hotel through a dark doorway, and climbed a stairway with carved wooden banisters to the second floor. The door into the hotel lobby was closed and Maximus pressed the buzzer to summon the desk clerk.
The clerk told him that a room would cost 1,500 rubles, but that there were no vacancies. The rooms were reserved a month in advance: A lot of visitors, tourists as well as pilgrims, were coming to visit the monastery and churches of Staraya Ladoga.
Semipyatnitsky drove on to the very end of the village, then turned and headed back the way he’d come. He took a secondary road and followed it to the monastery gate. The gate was locked and the monastery was dark. In front of the gate was a convenient paved parking area, enough for a few dozen vehicles. A couple of cars drowsed there; around a third, a group of young people had gathered. The car’s windows were open, and its speakers were blaring a song to the entire town—something about a girl, a student, a sweet piece of candy—violating the spiritual grandeur of the place. Maximus spat and drove away in annoyance, retracing his steps.
The second road on the right was narrow and led up a steep hill. On top, in a grassy clearing, stood an old chapel, or maybe it was a church—religious architecture not being one of Maximus’s strong points. A cat, evidently the church’s caretaker, appeared and meowed a loud greeting. Maximus regretted that he hadn’t picked up some smoked fish at the market he’d passed on the way. All he had in the trunk was a milk chocolate bar. The cat demonstrated an admirable lack of fastidiousness and accepted his gift gratefully. She ate the treat, and then, meowing loudly, led Semipyatnitsky on a tour of the grounds, showing him a hill that sloped down to the river and a mowed lawn behind the church. Maximus took a liking to the animal; he had a soft spot for cats anyway, and this one projected an air of reverence and spiritual dignity.
Maximus stroked the vociferous cat one more time, delivered an eloquent and verbose farewell, got in his car, and descended cautiously back to the highway. He was now quite close to the entrance to Staraya Ladoga, with its cupola-shaped hills rising over a bend in the river.
THE KURGANS OF STARAYA LADOGA
Their proper name is mounds, sopki, from the Russian word meaning to pour or pile up… The word kurgan came later; it’s Turkish.
Semipyatnitsky left his car by the side of the road, which was practically deserted except for the occasional vehicle passing by every half hour or so, the great eyes of its headlights blazing as it rounded the curve. He walked out onto the grass and followed a clay path up to the top of one of the bigger mounds. And looked out onto the world.
His breath caught in his chest, his head spun. The grandeur of the landscape that opened out before him blinded and paralyzed him. The Volkhov’s dark, motionless, glossy surface reflected the newly risen moon and stars in the infinite expanse of the sky, making the river itself seem billions of light years deep. Gentle, warm spots of light twinkled from the dachas and cottages on the opposite shore. A light breeze stirred the trees and bushes, like puffs of down on a black swan whose wings rustled, barely audibly, in the summer night.
For a few minutes, maybe more, Maximus couldn’t move, then he sank down onto the grassy earth. He closed his eyes, unable to bear the beauty. And when he opened them again…
Remembering that moment later, Maximus was inclined to explain his vision as a drug flashback of some kind. That can happen. You go for days, weeks, or even months without taking anything, and then suddenly, completely unexpectedly and in the most unlikely time and place, you’re back where you had been back then. Maximus hadn’t taken any of the pink pills that day, but evidently there was enough of the drug left in his system to bring on a hefty hallucination.
14
Ilya Kormiltsev (lyricist for the band Nautilus Pompilius), from the song “Diamond Roads.”