A vicious circle

Elena Ksanti

1.

He had the feeling that “Nirvana” was filmed right here, somewhere near the Mein Bazaar, teeming with foreigners, bullock carts and cars hit from different sides. But maybe it just seemed that way to him. In any case, it was the same vinaigrette as in all major cities of India, and if it hadn’t been for the stupefying stuffiness in the room, he wouldn’t have left the hotel until the train.

The floor attendant cleaned the sink and toilet at his request, and the sickening, peculiar smell became less. Of course, you could have asked to wash the floor, which, apparently, had not been washed for several generations of alternating guests in a row, but Oleg decided that this would be an unprecedented burden for the employee, since they obviously did not like cleaning here very much. Fortunately, after living in this country for several years, he had already somehow resigned himself to these customs and did not complain much.

In his white and beige robes, which were a mandatory uniform for the Ashram in Sarnath, he sat in vairagya, blond and once undoubtedly handsome, with his back pressed against the painted wall, where it seemed the whole world, including even Russia, had left signatures, assuring the future inhabitants of the hotel of his exceptional existence.

It was unusually not so hot in Paharganj today. It was good, but it did not solve the problem that had been accumulating for many months and, having accumulated, manifested itself here in all its complexity and insolubility. He couldn’t immediately put its individual parts together into a coherent system. The only thing that was clear was that she was somehow connected to Galya. That is, when he saw her, he realized that the depressing thoughts that had plagued him for several months in a row were just preparation, a kind of shakeup, and the crisis occurred yesterday when he was sitting in the restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel and drinking coffee, which according to the rules of the Ashram was not recommended to drink. But it wasn’t the coffee.

The thing was, it seemed that no matter what he had been striving for over the past five years: enduring the hardships of life abroad, practicing yoga to the point of exhaustion, or sitting in meditation for months, despite the first successful symptoms, it all came to nothing. Nothing moved in his life, but after going through a certain circle, it returned to the same place again. It was like a stuttering record, when, passing a circle on the disc, the needle jumped off and the phrase began all over again. And so on ad infinitum. And the only way to stop it was to change the record or turn off the player.

But life is not a turntable, everything is much more complicated with it.

He had already tried to change the record before.

That was seven years ago. It was a frosty Siberian February outside, and a new batch of rats had been brought to the institute for laboratory experiments. He stayed late that evening because he urgently needed to prepare a report on the results of laboratory tests over the past month.

Oleg sat at the computer for a long time, drinking steeply brewed tea, and with blurred eyes tried to make out the letters on the keys. But the Russian letters kept getting mixed up with the Latin ones, and there was nothing he could do. Then he decided to take a break and sat down on the mat against the wall. Closing his eyes, he tried to relax and rest a little, but the Russian-Latin script was stubbornly floating in his head and, turning in a spiral, was striving somewhere into infinity. Oleg tried in vain to stop him, but the movement did not stop, and now he was swimming with this font in some kind of ocean, and the font began to turn into fish. And they were all beautiful and colorful, sparkling in the gaps of the sun, which shone like a light bulb from somewhere above and gleamed with joyful reflections on the stones.

Oleg was also happy for some reason, and it seemed that he had already completed the report and even managed to hand it over to a scrupulous and pedantic boss, and that soon he would be given a good position in the department of neurodynamic processes of the brain, and he would become exceptionally happy.

But then a little girl appeared out of the transparent algae, she had chubby cheeks and big black eyes. He thought he recognized her, even though he couldn’t remember where he’d seen her before. He smiled, and she cautiously approached him, climbed onto his lap and, wrapping her arms around his neck, clung to his chest, trustfully and sincerely, as if she wanted to entrust her existence to his strong hands. And he pressed her to his heart and suddenly woke up from an intense feeling of love and a desire to take care of this creature.

A baby rat was sleeping on his crossed arms, its muzzle tucked into his armpit.

Oleg jumped up abruptly, violently knocking the baby rat to the floor, and he froze for a moment, either stunned by the impact on the floor, or because he still did not understand what had happened. Then he abruptly rushed around, jumped on the walls, and Oleg, finally waking up, began to catch him in order to put him back in the cage. And he began to catch him awkwardly, covered him with a heavy box, and even hit him several times. And he was dumbfounded and confused, rushing from corner to corner and screaming.

He screamed like a small child, and immense fright and bitterness could be heard in this cry. And from somewhere in the hidden corners of Oleg’s mental space, the meaning of what was happening began to dawn on him, and suddenly he began to understand this helpless and desperate cry that spread throughout the empty building and broke through into some very subtle and rarely used structures of the human brain.

Then Oleg stopped and looked at the frightened eyes of this little cub for a minute, and a painful pain tore and flooded his parched heart.

But how many times had he injected a syringe into these little gray furry animals, watched them fall asleep so as not to wake up again, and he had never felt this desperate cry that existed in each of their little hearts.

He couldn’t remember how much time had passed. The cages opened and the awakened animals jumped out of them and cheerfully scattered through the corridors of the Institute of Neurochemical Research of the Human Brain.

Oleg was the last to leave. The unfinished report with the mixed-up Russian-Latin font remained on the screen, which was frozen by the computer’s surprise.

2.

Fields scorched by the sun and debris along the railways were replaced by cities that looked like places planted with civilized oases, among endless wooden huts, where the majority of the Indian population lived in peaceful tranquility. And sometimes, looking at them and trying to understand the principle of their satisfaction when they had no opportunities, Oleg was ready to envy them, because in his life there was so much lack of this confidence of tomorrow, where you know why you are doing this, and that what you are doing has an undoubted benefit.

In his world, people all suffered or only pretended not to suffer. Especially during their student years, when they were forced by the Institute to be on duty at the hospital, calling it practice. And often, due to a lack of staff, they had to take care of the sick themselves, take those who were still able to move their legs to the toilet, serve ducks and carry out, put the dead on a gurney, and even catch imaginary white dogs that ran under the beds of nervous patients. As for the endless sad stories they had to listen to, there was no beginning or end to them.

And then he realized that no matter how much a person saw grief, it did not lead either to the cessation of suffering as such, or to the development of a certain adaptation to them. It was similar to the situation with the brain, as Professor Umansky repeatedly said: “Brain injuries do not lead to the formation of immunity against subsequent injuries. On the contrary, each of them makes the subsequent ones even more tangible, and eventually there comes a moment when even a minor injury is enough for a person to lose consciousness. Because this minor injury occurs in a thoroughly damaged area of the brain, almost devoid of natural protection…”

So it is with suffering. Most of the time, people just burned out, slowly and surely undermined by their sorrows. His nervous system became more and more unstable, and it became harder and harder for him to cope with the growing emotions. And when it reached the limit, the person simply went crazy, partially moving into another reality known only to him.

And the drugs only dulled these feelings. Both the apparent and fake satisfaction produced by the chemical reactions slightly leveled the swaying illusion.

And the person became dumber and more detached, in a semi-animal state, with preserved natural reflexes, lived out his life tediously and empty, without making an attempt to overcome the problems and sufferings from them with his own mind, which in countless numbers fall on every head.

Burrowing into books, Oleg painfully searched for a way out. As far as his means allowed, he bought up everything remotely related to this issue, as well as checked out friends’ home libraries and often visited the Reading Room of the Central Library. And it seemed that glimpses of some truths began to slowly be drawn in his restless mind, and the hope of some kind of way out took on real features.

“You know, the world doesn’t end with what we see,” he told his friend Vadim.

“Well, of course, we can’t see space,” he replied.

“No, it’s not. We have real ideas about space, according to research. But there is another world that is almost impossible to explore, since the entrance to it is only through our personal consciousness, through our own cranial box.

• Yes, but isn’t it just a disease?
• If this were a disease, then all yogis, Taoists and lamas would need to be treated. It’s just not clear why, all of them, oddly enough, have more power, more joy and more wisdom. And there are dozens of them, and there are billions of us, and we still haven’t figured out how to bring our lives into some kind of harmony. Despite all our advanced science and technology, it seems that we are the ones who are sick, and that they can cure us.

Anyway, I have to check it out.

And he began to apply for a long-term visa to India, because according to his calculations, most of the opportunities for spiritual search were located in this country.

3.

At that time, he clearly felt that he possessed some kind of inner incomprehensible forces that moved him, excited his imagination and gave him firm hope for some meaningful future. At times, it even seemed to him that his life had a rare and secret purpose, perhaps that he was some kind of mission designed, if not to save, then at least to awaken humanity. But he tried to think about it carefully, so that these thoughts would not lead him to stupid fanatical pride, but would inspire and benefit his orientation.

After reading Hindu literature, he decided that in all likelihood he had a clear connection with Dattatreya, the founder of the Nath order, and that works such as Tripura Rahasya, Avadhuta Gita, Jivanmukta Gita, and Yoga Rahasya were directly related to his past lives. And with these ideas, he came to the temple.

But Swamiji Siddi Temple, where he was staying, didn’t appreciate it. After scratching his beard and looking at him intently, Swamiji suggested that he start cleaning the stairs leading to the temple from that day on. And Oleg was depressed.

All the poetry and sublimity immediately disappeared, and the staircase he was washing turned into a clear violation of his entire scientific research nature.

But he was washing her. Every day at four o’clock in the morning, after washing his emaciated body with ice water, he went to the temple, and clumsily, splashing water on the walls and, without having time to pick it up, pressed his lips into a straight line, wiped the concrete steps with a rag. He rubbed, and did not have time to finish before the first parishioners began to walk, leaving wet dirty footprints behind them and looking in surprise at an intelligent foreigner with a doormat in his hands. To top it all off, a flock of young dark-skinned girls with bright burning eyes and in colorful pants, under short dresses covered with long scarves, invariably resorted. They stood aside, smiling mysteriously, looking at his pulled-up trousers and meticulously watching his clumsy actions.

He knew that cleaning the stairs was necessary for something, and it made more sense than just hygiene, and it certainly had to lead to some kind of result. But a month passed, then the second, and he was still cleaning the stairs, but there was no result.

“You just have to do it carefully, without expecting any reward, and then the result will come,” the Teacher said.

• Swamiji, but I’m a scientist, I can do a lot of good with my head, not with a doormat.
• First of all, you should benefit your mind, and then your learned mind will really benefit others.

And Oleg resigned himself. He continued to clean the stairs, and the rest of the time, after daily Puja and yoga, he studied Hindi and Sanskrit, until one day a Guru from Delhi appointed him his personal assistant and took him with him.

It was a significant promotion, and great prospects loomed ahead, but that was not the case. Traveling with him from city to city, staying in good hotels, eating in expensive restaurants, Oleg began to notice that his new Mentor’s lifestyle did not quite match the prescriptions mentioned in the canonical texts, and the worm of doubt that he had got there right and cruelly began to sharpen his heart.

“I’m losing my faith,” he told Swamiji one day after a big religious festival dedicated to Goddess Durga.

Swamiji gave him a sly smile and said:

“Then go back to the temple.

He wasn’t happy about the prospect of washing the stairs either, but even if he did, then he would have time, as before, to learn languages, practice yoga and meditation. But it’s still better than driving around on dusty roads, constantly monitoring luggage, booking hotel seats, and wasting valuable time working with boring visitors, and he replied:

“Yes, I think I should go back.”

Swamiji smiled broadly:

• Now you will not wash the stairs, you will sit down for a long-term meditation with the rest of the guys who are sitting on the second floor of the temple.

And Oleg couldn’t help but look serious, his soul shone and shone, and in it, as if in a huge ocean, Swam and shone, Swamijis, parishioners, guys who meditated on the second floor, and even cows that always wandered into the temple and brazenly stole fruits offered to the Gods.

4.

The sun was setting. Oleg was still sitting the same way, his back leaning against the dirty wall of the hotel, and he stared out the window, which for some reason looked out into the corridor, where an elderly Indian woman, wiping moisture from her full, puffy face, was hanging laundry on the railing. And it seemed to him that this was how it was supposed to be, this colorful underwear and this Indian woman. It was as if, from the very moment of his birth, all this had been recorded in advance in his personal file, somewhere in the deep universe, and now he was just watching this tape, thoughtlessly and indifferently.

Galya was recorded too. He still remembered her gray, slowly floating eyes, similar to the eyes of a giant reptile, her smooth gait, which infuriated most high school students, and her voice, which practically became the symbol of his whole life. That voice that seemed to cut through space and fly far into the sky. And he still heard those magical words that came from the depths of her soul, which she said to the microphone on stage in front of an audience of thousands, and she said like this: “When you walk in a vicious circle, everyone is asleep, and you are carrying fire…” And the song slowly poured into the open space, and this song an incomprehensible tremor ran through his entire body and remained there like an indelible imprint, echoes of which guided and led him into the future.

Whether it was love, he didn’t know. A series of girlfriends, youthful infatuations and constant tragedies, and even marriage in his life, lived by themselves in a parallel space. And Gali’s unblemished image remained at some distance. He never even spoke to her, only briefly met her gaze, and immediately, confused, shifted his eyes in the other direction.

Yesterday in the hotel restaurant, here in faraway India, he saw her coming in and beaming, and did not immediately recognize her. Even, most likely, he just felt the familiar vibrations, and then saw those reptilian eyes, but only on a well-groomed and slightly faded face. Galina had not lost her former noble features, but the sharp wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, under her eyes, and on her forehead mercilessly cut into the graceful and radiant freshness of her face, imprinted in his memory. And the slightly expanded figure no longer gave the grace that he and his maturing classmates had stopped breathing at the sight of many years ago.

She was with a man in his fifties. Burly and imposing, he held her hand in his, listening to her words as she spoke in his ear, and with his small expressive eyes, he simultaneously searched for a place where no one would interfere with their enjoyment of each other’s company.

Oleg turned away, either out of embarrassment or because he didn’t want to be recognized. The habit of admiring her from afar, and being embarrassed whenever he came into her field of vision, proved to be tenacious to this day. And it made him uncomfortable.

The coffee burned his lips, and the toasted bread and butter didn’t go down his throat well, and his back was tense and wouldn’t relax. After eating hastily, he paid the waiter and, without looking in their direction, went outside.

5.

When he came to his room and got under the life-saving shower, he realized that he had done the wrong thing. He should have approached her, told her that he recognized her, that they had gone to the same school, and that he had remembered her all these years. …

The thought of his lost youth faded into the background. And now the worry that he hadn’t spoken to her, and probably wouldn’t again, having lost her in this crowd of idly hanging out tourists, was pounding on his shaved head with cold streams of water and wouldn’t let him rest.

After changing his clothes, he quickly went downstairs, but they were no longer in the restaurant. Then he rushed to the hotel reception.

• Did the Russians stay with you today? “What is it?” he asked the receptionist with bulging sleepy eyes.

“Yes, we stopped,” he replied reluctantly.

• And tell me, please, which room are they in?

“But they’ve already vacated the room.”

“How?” I saw them in the restaurant only half an hour ago.

• They vacated the room, about ten minutes ago.

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know,” he replied with slight irritation, making it clear that further questions were pointless.

All. Something shifted, broke inside, and Oleg couldn’t find a place for himself. He walked around his room, staring at the painted wall, and couldn’t figure out what was happening to him.

“You went for it,” he told himself, “you knew that it somehow corresponded to your inner nature, but for some reason nature was silent. She didn’t wake up in a year or two, and she remained just a prerequisite for some distant and now clearly illusory Enlightened future.”

And suddenly he imagined the smell of his native snow-covered Novosibirsk, its streets with tall buildings, his friend Vadim, with whom he spent hours in the kitchen drinking fragrant herbal tea, talking about the fate of the universe, and well-groomed Russian women in nylon tights and tight dresses. And he suddenly remembered with a pang how long it had been since he had slept on a soft bed in his parents’ house, steamed with his father in the sauna, and walked into the Russian Siberian forest, fragrant with greenery, berries and mushrooms.

And he suddenly realized how tired he was of getting up at four o’clock every day, washing his body with cold water, eating unleavened tortillas with overcooked vegetables that were thickly mixed with spices and stood up like a lump in his tender Russian stomach. I’m tired of sleeping on hard mats and repeating incomprehensible Sanskrit mantras. And every day he expects that something will happen today, and the Gods will descend from heaven and tell him the hidden words that will save humanity, which is dying and rejoicing in agony.

And his head began to spin. And it seemed that he had inadvertently opened a forbidden door that he had so carefully hidden from himself all these years, and now Galya appeared, and he, gawking, inadvertently went out on a forbidden wave and everything went at the seams. Locks and codes flew, and the brain’s complex electronic system malfunctioned.

An oppressive silence hung in the room with the eternally humming fan. Just yesterday, a devoted Russian who clearly kept his vows went up to the scribbled wall, and, taking a ballpoint pen, wrote: “You can’t leave the world until you leave it, fully realizing that you don’t need it. Oleg”

He went downstairs, went outside, crossed the street, and found himself in a Transagency.

“What do you want?””What is it?” the smiling, fat-cheeked Indian asked him.

“I need a ticket to Moscow,” the Russian scientist replied firmly and without hesitation.

6.

It was still a long way from departure and there was still time to wander around Delhi and make the necessary purchases.

There weren’t many people on the street yet, it was early in the morning, and foreigners still preferred to relax in their unsanitary rooms.

Everything was just like yesterday, the same annoying merchants and the same diner owners, and even bosom friend Michael, who, upon seeing Oleg, again blossomed, as before, with his slightly slow, but clearly somewhere deep in his soul, a reasonable smile.

Michael had been an invariable attribute of Paharganj for several years, so it was completely incomprehensible how he could run his dubious business here and still remain unscathed. Having been born in Australia, he chose India for his life. Short-cropped, with pleasant features, and always faded cotton clothes of an incomprehensible original color, he lived by selling motorcycles, and then stealing them back from his customers.

“I don’t speak English,” Oleg warned him, saying it even without an accent.

But he didn’t believe me, and he sat down on a chair next to me anyway.

• Why did you speak English last year? “What is it?” he asked in surprise.

“Because it was last year, and now it’s a different year,” Oleg laughed.

Then Michael pulled his head into his shoulders and was offended.

Oleg felt a little sorry for him, and he leaned across the table and whispered:

• Don’t worry, it’s a Russian tradition. Sometimes we talk after a year, sometimes after two, and sometimes we just forget everything.

Mike rolled hashish in silence, then, when he lit a cigarette, he said:

“Yeah, you won’t find anyone more wonderful than the Russians here,” he grumbled and moved to another table.

Oleg remained free from other people’s ideas and useless communication, and thus freeing up space for inner concentration, he withdrew into himself.

He was trying hard to remember all the details of his school life. And the first trips to the taiga, and horseback riding, which were located behind Akademgorodok, and of course again, Galya.

And as soon as he imagined her face, it suddenly came to life and bent over him, and the astonished heavily-made-up lips whispered:

• Oleg, is that you?

He didn’t immediately appreciate the trick. Galina stood in front of him, real and alive, and screamed with joy.:

• Yes, but I think there’s a familiar face, is it really our guitarist from the school band? That’s right. Oleg, I’m so glad to see you. You have no idea. It’s just a miracle to meet your fellow countryman here in this wild filthy country!

And something strangely shrank in his soul, shrank into a ball, and was embarrassed in his growing awkwardness. His inner sanctified Gal somehow did not correspond to this shrieking person, who, for some reason, defined his beloved India with such an ugly and foul-smelling word.

He ordered coffee for her, the waiter reacted quickly and stared at her face.

• Yes, didn’t you recognize me? “What is it?” she asked, slumping heavily into a chair.

“I found out,” he said, and remembering that he had to ask something, he added, “How did you suddenly end up here?”

Yes, we went to Goa to relax with my husband and decided to stop by Delhi at the same time for bags. A friend asked, she sells them at the market. They’re cheap here, but they’re expensive here in Novosibirsk. How did you end up here?

• And I live in an Ashram, learning the basics of Oriental wisdom.

“And…,” she said intelligently, “is it boring and as dirty as everywhere else?”

• No, I’m not bored, and we are usually clean, someone cleans the temple every day, this is the rule.

“Very well, then. And here it’s just darkness, we even changed the hotel yesterday, and still didn’t find it much better. My husband, he’s so intelligent, he has a sick stomach, and recently had his appendicitis removed, he needs good conditions, and these stupid Indians do not understand at all what is required of them.

• And how is Goa? Oleg asked.
• Goa is better, of course, but again it depends on where you stay. My friend advised me to go there. She said that the salty waters of the ocean are very good for the body. You know, she lost weight there and her skin got better. Yes, and I have a clear result on my face, I’m tanned, and even my cellulite has resolved,” with these words, she triumphantly and completely unabashed by others, demonstrated this by lifting her locally made skirt and exposing her full thigh in front of Oleg.

Oleg was ready to scream in despair, the only ideal he had cherished all these years, his guiding star, was hopelessly losing shape and disappearing, like a masterpiece under hydrochloric acid splashed from the hands of a madman. And trying to save him somehow, he asked:

• Do you remember that song that you composed in the eighth grade and once sang at a school festival?

“What song?” I haven’t composed anything, and I’ve never sung anything.

“Well, what about it?” – He was surprised.

• No, you’ve got something wrong.

“When you walk in a vicious circle…” he sang to her, bending slightly.

“And this one,” she remembered, and Oleg beamed.

• Yes, it’s not my song, and I didn’t sing it.

“How?” – he was surprised again, beginning to doubt the coherence of his brain mechanism, which had been working smoothly until now.

• This song was composed and sung by Faya. Do you remember when we had such a plump, pimply girl who looked like a toad?
• I don’t remember.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. So she composed it, but she was too shy to go on stage, and after recording this song in the recording studio, she asked me to open my mouth to her soundtrack. That was pretty cool, wasn’t it?

“It’s very funny,” Oleg confirmed, and some kind of nausea began to rise in his throat.

He sat and calmly looked at Galina’s dangling legs and face, red with excitement, and thought: “How quickly her noble image was disfigured by her womanly primitiveness. How could he have kept and worshipped this fake idol of spiritual perfection all these years, which arose from a small school prank and grew to incredible heights in his heart?”

Oleg felt cruelly deceived, but at the same time, some kind of incomprehensible heaviness fell from his heart, and for some reason it began to breathe easily.

Women and children from Rajasthan appeared on the street, in bright wide skirts, hung with gold, they looked like Russian gypsies. Then the Kashmiris passed by, despite the heat, in woolen vests with the same intricate pattern. Then there were more and more foreigners in burnt-out trousers and shirts of local manufacture. And the street came alive and filled with hubbub, laughter, the howling of merchants and all the languages of the world.

Michael finished smoking hashish, and was already intently peering into the faces of passing people, trying again to find the next customer for his constantly returning motorcycle.

Oleg became unbearably bored, he got up from the table, and, telling Galina that he felt a little sick, went to his hotel.

When he left, he was already clearly convinced that another record had been played in his life, and it was possible that it would be of better quality.

7.

Everything was easy and simple, an hour later he had already handed in a ticket to Moscow and bought a train back to his native Ashram.

Oleg, with his legs in the air like a child, was happily lying in the hotel on a huge wide bed, on sheets that smelled of cheap detergent, and with anticipation he remembered the faces of Swamiji, the young Indian girls who were always teasing him and the guys who sat with him in meditation and did yoga exercises.

And he realized with a kind of satisfaction that came from nowhere, how much he missed them, and how much he needed to be with them.