People in My Ears

By Anna Catman

What is it we believe in today? Is it good and evil, black and white, like hundreds and thousands years ago? If there is no black and white, no good and evil, what is there left? Two really strange creatures, tapirs Willy and Nilly are set to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781490791265

Anna Catman

Anna Catman has worked as a disability support worker, language tutor and a researcher. This is her third book.

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© Copyright 2018 Anna Catman.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9122-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9123-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-9126-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018911677

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Trafford rev. 10/10/2018

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Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

PART 1

Jean: Vous rêvez quand vous dites que le rhinocéros s’est echappé du jardin zoologique.

….

Il y a des choses qui viennent a l’esprit même de ceux qui n’en ont pas. ¹

(Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros.)

Что бы делало твое добро, если бы не существовало зла, и как бы выглядела Земля, если бы с нее исчезли тени?² (M. A. Bulgakov, Master and Margarita.)

Тапир навек повесил нос, грустит он об одном. Он собирался стать слоном, но так и не дорос.³ (B. Zakhoder).

These days Petya couldn’t remember what it was that started his… what do you call it? His religious explorations, let’s say. It happened quite often that he’d walk down a street, would see a notice on a pleasant-looking façade, something like ‘service hours Sunday 10 to 12’ and this was enough for him to come in. Or they’d give him a printed sheet or a little brochure somewhere in the street. Little pretty things, printed nobody knows where. They often promised ‘a miracle for your pray’, and it would be silly, or, perhaps, sinful? not to try. That’s how he came to masons. Or maybe not masons, they were called something else, it wasn’t important, to him, although, maybe, it actually was? Gardeners-of -climbing-plants, maybe. Anyway.

Trying to understand what it was that attracted him so inexplicably, if not to say powerfully, to places like this, Petya told himself clearly: it was the exotics. The attraction for - can one even say love, perhaps? - for the exotics was important, he decided. The love of all things strange and unfamiliar. Stupid, really. An important factor in many …. What d’you call them? Spiritual adventures, maybe?

But if you think of it, the Russian Orthodox church is as exotic to him, or should be, at least. He grew up in a family that wasn’t religious, no tradition, no knowledge of the Bible, nor the church service, and the old women in babushkas one can see in a church are total strangers to him. Why can’t he see it as truly alien? Or pleasantly exotic? But no. It was different. This was something that he didn’t really know, true, but could have. This could have been his from birth, if only… It was something easy enough to imagine, however. If his parents had enough intellectual bravery and contradictory spirit in them some thirty or thirty-five years ago to become baptized and start being active Christians at the time when it was still punishable. It didn’t happen, but it easily could have. Would he see it all differently now, if it did? Anyway, babushkas in babushkas were simply not strange enough. Not strange at all, although completely unknown. But something unthinkable, unimaginable before Australia… like masons… pentacostal friends…third-hour-after-sunrise-gardeners or builders-of-fences-best-supporting-creepy-plants. That was it. What if, Petya suddenly asked himself, pushing the door of their – was it a church? – he wasn’t sure – or should he call it a temple? a religious venue? – what if, when Vladimir baptized Russia – what year was it? anyway - maybe, he did it out of love for all things exotic? Why not? They say in Russian that there is no prophet in his own land, and, by the way, it’s the wisdom right on the topic. A popular wisdom can’t be totally wrong, or can it?

Suddenly he remembered, very clearly, how he flied back to Australia, from home, or, rather back home from Moscow, a couple of years ago.

He stopped over in Tokyo, left his suitcase in a hotel room, and went to wander, to see what he could see around the hotel where he meant to sleep.

Maybe not always very easily, but usually he could get an answer to where he is and where he has to go from the local people. More often, however, he didn’t try to get any answers and just moved where his eyes would take him. It was a bit like mountain hiking, but in a different sense.

Where he came in the end was a Buddist temple. Petia hasn’t seen anything like it before. Under the roofs of a really foreign shape, hard to find another word for it, he decided, there were hundreds and hundeds of burning candles and bubbling little fountains. Very quiet, solemnly silent foreign people were moving around and between them, with faces which were, Petia thought, not really suitable for pray. Not like anything he’s seen before. And this was beautiful.

Their silence was counter-balanced, as he noticed, but not immediately, by a far away sound of a drum. The sound was moving closer. Bang. Bang-bang. The people not only played the drum, he noticed, when they came closer, but also danced. Bang-bang.

Petia’s soul started trembling with the drum, and dreaming about total reincarnation. What does he want there, with the old women in church? Who does he better want to be? Their emperor? Or, maybe, better just a tree? Better a tree, he thought, you can grow and not many people want to stop you. No harm to the nature nor other people, only the oxygen you breathe out and the foliage – is this the word? – above. He will breathe out the oxygen. What can be better?

Petia stared at somebody, another tourist, perhaps, there were many around the drum players, but it didn’t stop him from feeling he’s attending something of great value and importance, - he stared and read the words on another person’s tee-shirt: converse. Converse- converse- converse. Bang-bang. Petia made an effort and remembered, that converse is not quite the same thing as convert. After all, he was flying back home from Moscow, not in the opposite direction. Converse has nothing to do with converting to another faith, but has something to do with…But faith is not what Buddhism is, he vaguely remembered. It is not faith, nor religion, and is compatible, therefore, with just anything you want it to be compatible with. The only thing you have to do is to understand what this compatible means. But what for? To try and penetrate deep into the connections between some obscure treatises, highly exotic in their spirituality, no doubt about it, and life and death… Strangely, every time when he confronted this possibility he simply felt too lazy. He’ll become a tree, instead. Much better and totally satisfying. Listen to the drum. Converse, verse-verse, converse. Bang.

The only thing that spoilt his happiness were the drummers themselves. Their Japanese nature, that is. Why is it, that they always get compared to a pony? Their name doesn’t sound like one, at least, not in English, but still… Where does it sound like a pony? In French? Somewhere else? What’s so bad about a pony, Petia wondered, and concluded, that, probably, the reason of this perception is the size. Ponies are seen the way they are because of their size, and the Japanese drummers he’s listening to now, are so commonly associated with them because of… Their name? In another language? Their size as well? Who knows. It’s a kind of envy, he thought, coloured by… What exactly it’s coloured by, he couldn’t decide. Misunderstanding? Not wanting to understand? Rejection based on lack of understanding and not wanting to understand? Something like it. They reject them, it you don’t count, of course, all this sushi and sashimi they consume on a daily basis. Strangely, he noticed long ago that envious rejection is more powerful, than language barriers. This thought spoiled his joy from the drum a little bit, but not completely. How much we are all poisoned with symbols, he thought. And how often it is about an expression of envious rejection, rather than anything else.

Trying to say what he thought about it all as short as possible, Petia composed a poem. It started like this: symbols aren’t simcards with balls.

God, he thought, again. How much we are all poisoned with it. I can’t listen to the sound of wind nor to the drum, without thinking of it. And I’m not the worst case at all. I want something free of it, simple and free of any symbolic poisoning. Simple, sensual and free. Epicurean, maybe.

Thinking like this, he pushed the door and entered into the masons’ place. Why unthinkable? Everything seemed reasonable here. The main reason why he couldn’t feel what’s required at home, with the Russian Orthodox, he thought, was that he didn’t want to be like the old women there. What they were like and believed in, and how, he didn’t really know, but was sure that he’s not like this. So what? Surely, in this he wasn’t the only one like this. His desire to obtain some exotic spiritual product, luxuriously alien, and wrap himself in it, like it is a warm scarf, was growing stronger.

If he ever met any Russian Orthodox in his new life, in Australia, that is, they always had something peculiar about them: neither speak nor understand Russian, for example. But although this was unusual enough, from any normal point of view, Petia was sure that this isn’t really exotic, not in the right sense, anyway. Rather it was, to him, a sign of an obvious professional ineptness. And certainly not a soft spiritual scarf to wrap himself in, like one he was so longing for. To his taste, which was insatiable, he found, this was not enough, not in the right direction. For some mysterious reason he was sure about this bit: if they were called Russian Orthodox, he wanted them to speak Russian. And if they weren’t in Russia, he wanted them, best of all, to preach something he’s never heard of before. A free unrestricted leap of faith, or what d’you call it?

Where exactly he wanted to leap, he wasn’t sure, but knew he didn’t want to be, where the old women were. At least not where he thought they were. Yes, a leap of faith. And masons, or climbing-plants-gardeners, maybe, was their name, can you believe it, had it all.

Petia and his friend Sasha came to them by pure chance. Walked up the road, suddenly saw a notice, and came in. What can be possibly wrong about it? But it wasn’t that simple.

Everybody was nice to them. Everybody shook hands: every person with each of the rest, which, of course, could take time, but this was their own ritual, they said. When this was finished, they played guitar and sang songs. It was difficult to make out words. Petia understood just two: the law of resurrection. There was a sermon, too. ‘Brothers and sisters,’ the priest said, ‘we are gathered here today to celebrate the salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

The more Petya listened, the less he wanted to celebrate. Although the man, the priest, if this was what they called him here, was obviously a skilled public speaker, and spoke well. Nothing particularly unusual, it seems, everything as always in its place, but the emphasis slightly shifted. What was it, really? It was difficult to retell, he realized. Because the emphasis was sometimes just the tone of voice, sinking deeper and darker. When he spoke of Christ’s suffering. He suffered like they did in concentration camps – this was what the man said – and it was good. For him, and for us, this was a road to salvation. Although normally, of course, there can’t be anything good about concentration camps. Which made you ask why was it good in this, most important case. Or was ‘good’, perhaps, not the right word? Anyway, Petia wanted to push the emphasis back, where it was, in its usual place. But no. Something’s changed. He saw it differently now.

The only thing he wasn’t sure about was how much the effect, achieved in his case, was intended. Did it just happen, and nobody meant it at all? Petia couldn’t believe they meant it, but, on the other hand, it was impossible to believe that this person, who clearly knew what he was saying, why, and how, did something unintentionally. The man knew how to speak and said what he wanted to say. But why? And how?

He couldn’t say why, simply because it was much too exotic for him. Who knows, what they think, when they say it all? Certainly not him, and maybe, it was for the best. Because it left some room for doubt.

In a few days, the same man came to visit him at home. Petia wasn’t there, so the man left a book. It was called ‘Friday to Sunday: the law of resurrection.’ Reading it, Petia finally convinced himself… he wasn’t sure what of…but somehow he felt, that however shaky he was in his beliefs, these clever people talking of concentration camps as a road to salvation were as alien to him as the old women in the Russian church at home, who simply wouldn’t listen nor understand, having something important cocooned inside them, unreachable for all clever talk. Petia knew they didn’t know, mostly, what they believed in, but … Can it be the best way, after all? Like this? There must be a way somewhere in between not knowing anything at all and that know-it-all deconstruction, flowing smoothly into destruction, but where was it?

And Friday sounded to him, suddenly, as a hint: Frida was the name of an old friend who disputed the ownership of a chocolate bar, that Petia just bought once before her very eyes. He decided not to read a book, for now.

He should have turned the other cheek to his chocoholic friend. Instead he put the chocolate into his bag and rushed away.

No, knowing a bit less wasn’t a solution, he decided. What I need is