Ice Trilogy (12 page)

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-br
o...
Bro-bro-bro. Bro-bro-br
o...

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 ceased 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.

I opened my eyes.

And saw the morning sky. The stars had faded. The moon had paled. My face was submerged up to my eyes in warm water. I moved and raised my head. I lay in an indentation formed in the Ice by the contours of my body. This naturally created bath was filled with warm water, with the heat that had left my body. I felt surprisingly calm and well. Calmer and better than I had
ever
felt before.

I sat up. I felt no exhaustion from the previous night. My chest was a little sore, but that was all. I looked at it: a large bruise had appeared in the middle of my chest. This was the place where I had hit myself against the Ice. I smiled. I touched my chest. Then I stood up.

The rising sun illuminated the hillocks in the east: the Siberian day had come. A new day on the planet Earth. The first meaningful day of my existence. I finally understood why I was born and what it was I had to do.

My brain went to work.

The indentation where my body had lain all night resembled the letter Φ: my arms had been resting around my body in half circles. In the center of the half rings, two oblongs of Ice surrounded by water jutted up, formed during the night as the heat of my arms had melted the Ice around them. I kicked the left oblong with all my strength. The base cracked. I grabbed it with my hands and broke it off. I lifted it and held it to my chest. The Ice vibrated. My heart resonated in time with it. The strength of the Ice filled my head. I lifted the massive chunk easily and showed it to the pale morning sky.