125 RUS

I remember, there was an Italian fairy tale called «Happy Man’s Shirt». The plot: the king’s son plunged himself into black melancholy, and only a certain shirt could save him. The final is open: Having finally found a completely happy man in the wilderness, the king and his servants, who wanted to save the prince at any cost, were extremely disappointed – there was no shirt on the lucky man. But let’s imagine that the king got what he wanted and the prince recovered. What does this mean? A worthy successor to the throne, a prosperous state. The prince will be busy with the country’s affairs, and will enjoy himself as befits the monarchs to somehow relieve tension: balls, hunting, horseback riding. No painful thoughts alone, everyone is happy. The question is whether he really needs it? Whether he was more ambitious, he would pretend that he cared about worldly affairs just like his royal forefathers. Had he been bolder, he would have built himself a hut in the forest and led a hermit’s life. The prince was quite comfortable in his palace apartments, staring at the open window mournfully and not letting anyone in. He had no other wishes, as it could be seen from the fairy tale. Buddhist postulate has always seemed controversial to me stating that any desire causes suffering and that, if we get rid of desires, we directly get rid of suffering. What to do if there are no desires, but nevertheless, suffering is present (see the story about the poor prince)?

I have no craving for adventure, impressions. I just can’t stand the monotonous continuation. Too hastily, as it seemed, having left my former routine existence, I hoped most (and still hoping) to find my way to be right. Because for the past ten years I can’t remember a day when everything would be really good. Cloudless. Who was there crying heart out, looking at the clouds? It seems it’s Virginia Woolf – a great episode, very close.

If the phrase «it makes me sick to my stomach» could be applied not only to indicate sickness, I would say so about the clouds. I am still reeling and cringing at the sight of people scurrying back and forth, their petty worries and this eternal good heaven, a gigantic dome sheltering us from the evil blackness, from the cosmic abysses. No, I do not need either life-living water of Primorie, or a happy shirt, if after that I stop thinking about the noble sky by accumulating the bourgeois Zufriedenheit[4 - «Contentment, satisfaction» (German).]. I wrote in German because the adjective «bourgeois» is always looking for its twin brother – the adjective «philistine». So, remembering Mrs. Dalloway by Woolf I immediately remembered Steppenwolf. Hello, Hesse.

The bus was about to arrive and take me to the capital of the Primorye Region, where I would be able to lie down on a comfortable hotel bed, and also find out what degree of oxidation and decay the contents of my suitcase had undergone. Then I would plan to find out the address of the nearest dry-cleaners immediately.

Chapter 2

B – Bagulnik

Rhododendron Mucronulatum is a shrub with elliptic-lanceolate [people call it Bagulnik ― note made by me, Ajax] It is considered to bethe most decorative and the most powerful species in this group. In the wildness, old specimens reach 3—5 meters (with a stem thickness up to 10 cm), and grows to 2.5 meters when cultivated. It has purple flowers and relatively large leaves (5—7 cm long, 3—4 cm wide), which mostly fall in the winter – only rare leaves stay on the plant bordering the buds on the top of one-year shoots. This species is more demanding for soil moisture during its period of growth and is resistant to winter periods (it grows well even in the south of Primorye, where cold, snow less and dry winters are common).

Rhododendron Dahuricum is extremely winter-resistant with an abundance of flowers, a half evergreen deciduous shrub (part of the leaves overwinter). Its size impressive in adulthood: 2—2.5 m in height and about 3 m in diameter. This is a relatively drought-resistant and photophilous species; Rhododendron Dahuricum blossoms are less lavish if there is not enough lighting. Its heavily branched canopy is decorated with large funnel-shaped flowers of lilac-pink-violet shades.

Rhododendrons bring joy to people and call them to be committed to good, because these plants are Divine. Long ago, when God left the sinful Eden to Heaven, He wanted to take away all the beauty of the Earth from people. But His Love for people and Hope overcame a just anger: God left

people these divine plants – rhododendrons. But they do not grow everywhere, only in hard-to-reach places – such as high mountains and gorges, on seaside cliffs and screes, at glaciers and waterfalls.

(Source: «Rhododendrons of Primorye»,

an article by N. Ya. Repnitsky)

I’m on the bus, which should take me to Vladivostok but for some unknown reason there is a sign «The Second River». Everything has a double name here that refers to the airports and the destinations. Judging by the map, the road runs along the Sea of Japan, but I can’t see it, only the eternal fells are visible from the windows. Now and again bright purple specks flash on the fells. This is Bagulnik. That’s how the special species of the rhododendron is incorrectly called here.

Within two seats in front of me, a ruddy-faced old woman is carrying a few stems strewn with dark purple flowers in a basket. This plant grows on the slopes, and I heard that you often see them in cemeteries (Is it because there are graveyards on the slopes, and everything is generally located on the slopes?). The purple ribbon winds its way down the slopes, it’s getting dark, where it’s about to become night and when the mist cheats by swirling mysteriously. A sign could be seen displaying directions to the Garden City – Bagulnik Garden City?

Leaning against the glass, it seems as if someone else’s distant memories can be heard through the items: the hum of an electric train, a water pump on Sedanka (just remember another Chinese name), rusty boats and maple leaves that have fallen too early… Never seen them before, but it might be that someone has been recently leaning against this bus window?

The air gets fresher at night with each passing minute, and fresher beside the sea with every kilometer traveled. I can’t stand the twilight, my eyesight gets worse, it becomes inconvenient to write. But everyone is entitled to their own views. For me, the evening sun is heavier than the lead, and it lies down with golden pollen on the delicate flowers of Bagulnik with warm «Good night, I will warm you again tomorrow». And they regally fall asleep, not looking down, where it is scary and dark and where the roots and foothills are covered with mist.

How desperately I would like to write something worthwhile, but instead, having thrown one stiff foot to the other, twisting the pen with my fingers, I bent down focused over my empty multi letters…

Just a detail: the closer to Vladivostok, the landscape becomes hillier and the colors of the forest become brighter. At the bus stops, the walls are decorated with mosaics with marine fauna images: seahorses, octopuses for example. Two lanes of the road from Artem becomes four, and eventually six as we approach the big city; a wide six lane highway, crowded with white and silver cars.

Well, looks like I arrived to a big city. In the middle of the roadway, there is a pompous coat of arms, and the drawn tiger welcomes the guests. Of course, it doesn’t look like a «welcome» but growls somewhere else. The heraldic King of the Taiga looks down so regally, of whom I imagine the tiger being a hospitable host who meets the newly arrived, yet a formidable defender who promises rapacious punishment to those who come to Vladivostok with evil intentions…

There are two stone walls right next to the road with a height of a house, no less. The first wall is dedicated to the forest, or the taiga to be more precisely. It is carved with acorns, sultana, tiger (you can’t do without it) and ginseng. The next wall is longer than the previous one, it starts and ends with anchors, and there are jellyfish, starfish, mermaid and Neptune (or Poseidon – for those who prefer Greece like me) displayed in the center.

The Second River is just a name of another bus terminal, which was kindly explained to me. To get to the center, I would have needed to take a city bus. But I would rather pay more to Artem the taxi driver, as he had already taken this far anyway, and besides, he could tell me all sorts of different things. As they say, a miser pays twice. To get from the airport to the hotel you need to change three times. In three stages (I hope that only in three!).

The Second River is a landmark. Here, Osip Mandelstam died of exhaustion in 1938. What I have printed out from the site dedicated to Mandelstam, being at home: «At the end of 1929 in Primorye, thebranches of the Far Eastern camp (Dallag, later called Vladlag) and the transit camp The Second River (Vladivostok) were organized, from where the prisoners were brought to Kolyma on the steamships to the North-Eastern camp. The prisoners of Dallag and Vladlag worked in Vladivostok for construction and loading works in Nikolsk-Ussuriysk and Spassk-Dalniy, they extracted gold on the island of Askold, coal in Suchan and Artem, harvested forests in the taiga and went fishing along the entire coast of Primorye. By 1937 the number of prisoners here reached 70 thousand people.»[5 - http://www.pseudology.org/Mandelshtam/Memuars/Monument.htm (http://www.pseudology.org/Mandelshtam/Memuars/Monument.htm)]

I also won’t get lazy to rewrite an even more unpleasant and mysterious passage: «In the bus terminal area (at the Second River) in the1930s there was a camp – a transit point for prisoners. This camp was located virtually on the marshland, where it is said that during the construction of the Bus Terminal they constantly ran into mass graves of corpses. Not surprisingly, no one builds residential buildings on this flat area! But they have constructed a parking lot, a market and a supermarket. The House of Youth nearby (which, they say, not so long ago was on fire)»[6 - see ibid.].The great poet of the Silver Age perished from hunger in thelocal camp. Another version of the cause of his death was due to an epidemic of typhus.

I have heard, that flowers of Bagulnik along with carnations are often placed in cemeteries. Nobody knows where the grave of Mandelstam or the other prisoners are. In the plural, in the infinite plural.

Well, I will keep trying to get to the center of Vladivostok. Walk around wherever I like. Marina and I talked a lot about the tremendous use of loneliness for a creative and sensitive person. In the end, I had a lot of money with me and the most important set of necessities:

My grief – prophetic, pertinent,

My freedom – quieted and distant,

And ever-laughing, mocking crystal —

A numb and lifeless firmament.[7 - Collection of poems by Osip E. Mandelstam. Translated by Andrey Kneller.]

Chapter 3

C – City of Vladivostok

Vladivostok (founded in 1860) is a city and port in the Far East of Russia, the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, the final destination of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It is located on the coast of the Sea of Japan on the Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula.

(Source: telephone directory)

…The salt on my cheeks, the wind in the disheveled blackness of my hair, the ultramarine disease corrodes my eyes to the very bottom, to the core of the eyeball, and I enjoy every sigh, every slow glance, every step up and down, through countless staircases, climbs and descents of this city. A Panoramic view of the Golden Horn Bay from Eagle’s Nest Hill – I have never seen in my life such beauty before. From a great height, you contemplate the majestic bridges, and the sea surrounding the city, or, conversely, the city that surrounds the sea. Little bit more, and you can spread wings (or gills – they have the chance to be drawn around the neck because of the tropical humidity), drive off mountainous, angular land, steep asphalt curls, winding streets and fly forward, up high, to all four corners of the earth, because the ocean extends only here in all directions. Not warm turquoise, covered in white sand, but a real ocean, wild and untamed, thick, iodous and calcareous, spitting out the curls of seaweeds, which the coastal wind gathers into balls like a tumbleweed.

Military ships are always proudly alert with a sullen look facing the distant shores, ready to face an enemy at any time. They defend our lands in the East. In the East, the sun rises – appearing from the ocean abyss like a red-hot five-rouble coin, a gold medallion, a fireball. Own the East («Vladey-Vostokom’)! A cannon shot is strictly on schedule every midday; military and merchant ships are large and small, different ships being on a raid; Vladivostok was a closed city from 1953 till 1991, only USSR citizens could live there and visit it.

From time immemorial, Vladivostok is called «Haishenwey» in Chinese which means the city at Cape of Trepang or Trepang Bay. Since ancient times there is a legend about the blessed blue trepang that inhabits these waters (people call it sometimes ’sea cucumber’). The Japanese were less poetic – during the Meiji period (1868—1912) they tagged Vladivostok existed in those times Uradzio which meant the salty bay.

I stopped at a hotel near the Sport Embankment, in a room with the Amur Bay view. Ninety percent of the guests are either Chinese, Japanese or Korean. There is a corner with a microwave and a large thermos on nearly every floor as an extra convenience: So, to save money, you don’t need to have a meal at a restaurant every day. When I went down to brew a cup of freeze-dried noodles, a Japanese said to me, «Konnichiwa»[8 - «Hello» (Japanese).], which I answered back with formal and polite bow. The language barrier, which in my case becomes a barrier in the literal sense, because my mouth has not uttered a sound for all my life, has not allowed to get acquainted with Asians. Instead, I made friends with a local barman named Sergei. He is about my age, working shifts on the ground floor, where a porcelain white cat flaunts itself on a bar counter, screwing up its eyes and squeezing a fake bottle of Asahi with its paw – Seryoga calls it a «beer kitten’. My communication with the barman began, as expected, from a sheet of paper on which I wrote the name of the desired drink, and then he smoothly flowed into his story about the latest news in the city at Cape of Trepang, as well as endless monologues about cars. Practically everyone here has Japanese cars with a right-hand drive, most of them are white. This combination of sparkling white cars, marine, and blue sky, coupled with tightly whitened snow-white clouds, seems very harmonious. So, walking along the Ocean Avenue you suddenly realize that the traffic jam on the road is moving only in two directions: to the sea or in the sky. Well, I fancy both directions, which means that this is my city. And I shouldn’t have to waste time in getting my own car (a lifelong dream is finally taking shape).

To the unpleasant: the adventures of my such and such washed belongings did not end. They continue, but, alas, already without me here. As I accidentally took someone else’s suitcase, which was an absolute copy of mine. As soon as I began unzipping such an unusually pliable zip, I already felt something was wrong, but when I found the knots and skeins of leather and jeans items of microscopic size inside, I realized that the luggage was my curse during this journey.

Nevertheless, I’m writing a diary, the paper is patient. I will say this. I won’t be doing anything since I can’t contact the airport and share my troubles. Being a mute person, it is physically impossible, and I have no intention to go back to Artem and the airport.

In this identical suitcase, there was something quite intriguing, in particular – a voice recorder with recordings of people. As far as I could tell, these are patient’s conversations (pleasant voice, an interesting manner of pronouncing words, but sometimes like chewing words) with a psychotherapist. As it can be concluded from the answers of the girl, which resemble just a stream of consciousness, that the doctor uses hypnosis as one of the methods of treatment. I write a personal diary, but the paper is patient, so such a fugitive as your humble servant, is going to listen to all sessions with unconcealed curiosity and write them down in his all-merciful patient notepad: because some of the records I had already listened to are of great value for my modest travel essays. Perhaps it should be illustrated with an example,

«What does Vladivostok mean to you? Why do you speak of it as the only native element?

«There is nothing, there never was anything, never no. Oh, hell, it’s blowing my mind! It’s no good. Lord, why are the words so flat? They are lifeless, they do not have a milliliter of water, and wherever there is water, there is life. When Mira asked me as a joke what kind of dream I had as the most erotic, I answered that the dream was me being a late teen-ager, in the late afternoon, where my friend and I kept drowning each other in the lake with water-lilies like languid flowers along the banks, and one of us happened to be put under water now and then. Damn it, and there was also a time when it grew dark, my parents went out for a visit, I couldn’t stop crying when night came to Vladivostok. And there was an episode at school. I was sharing a desk with a guy who, yes. I sat next to him and drew pictures in a notebook: I drew myself without a face, suddenly, behind my back there was an indestructible army of fish, and my shoes were stuck with seaweed.

And there was another episode, my brother… Oh damn, and this is making my head hurt – Gods, give me the strength to write a story about this! – my brother is in a pale yellow cream shirt, with hair inherited from me and my father – straight, dark, laid on one side – I met him in a dream

at the square of his native town, the town of mines and the airport. The brother raised his hand and said, «I don’t believe we’ve met!» Oh yes, my brother lives under the seabed, he had always lived somewhere under the bitter sea, in Podmorie (under the sea).

Mira and I drove around Podmorie, and her mobile phone slipped out of a crumpled pocket and fell under the sea for fish to have fun. I’ve never been scared to drown. I preferred blue, light blue, emerald, green in the draperies – everything to satisfy the lords of the depths, the guards of musky seas… More downstream the memory: mother and father were standing on the pier near the huge museum cast-iron and salty anchors. Mira was next to me, I saluted to her, pulled out a huge shell, and put it to my ear. Mira looked with her slanting little eyes (eyes full of water, eyes full of life), «What can you hear over there, inside the shell?» I hear the music of a drowned piano, its keys are drunk, they are wooden and swelled, everything gets drunk from the water… Have you ever seen how the ship goes? She sways, all the ships are constantly drunk, all the drunken ships walk staggering – they need it to have hauteur, they face a long way to get back to the ground. While in the lake, for example, intoxication is different, as they are deep and dark, like graves with water lilies on top, in the evenings they are being poured with azure, heaven «farewell».

We will never choke, unless sobbing our hearts out. My stillborn brother lies at the seabed, all in pearls and mother-of-pearl, but I am thrown to the shore by a huge wave, which was called existence. This tsunami is called life, and I lie on the sand, blind with the light, and my shoes are really stuck with seaweed. And I gasp, and whisper, «Water, water, water.» Or as I still remember a little in German, «Wasser bitte gib mich Wasser.»[9 - «Water please give me water.» (German)]

But life leaves me to die here, in the world under the sun and the moon. Once, fishermen will pack me in their weather-beaten nets so that I can’t scare their babies. They will take me to the heart of the water, and I will fall face down.»

I could hardly breath while I was putting it down. A number of images steadily drawn to something familiar, so very famous… And I remembered it! Hello, Arthur Rimbaud:

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures;