Chapter 2. At the Epicentre of an Invisible Battle
I was born in 1972. At that time, the Soviet Union could still be seen on the world map, and the present Republic of Belarus was the Belorussian SSR.
I say this without nostalgia. It's just that everything was so long ago that it already seems like some amazing gray-haired antiquity. At that time, the 21st century seemed to be an impossible distant future, a fantasy, which you can only read about in books, but never see with your own eyes. Now it's the other way around. Now, when I look back mentally, I think, "Did all this really happen? Am I really from that time?" Too much has changed. Sometimes I seem to myself like an alien from some semi-legendary past. Maybe if I lived in a more prosperous part of the world, I wouldn't feel that way. But as it is — I'm not just from the past. I'm from the Soviet past. This is not only a completely different time, but also a completely different world. A kind of double coup happened to me. In contrast to modernity, it is felt in retrospect, but quite acutely.
This is not a feeling of loss and longing for the lost. It was not a cozy world for me. I don't have feelings like "Oh, how good it was then, and what a pity that everything was lost." There was both good and bad. Just like now. That is why there is a change of worlds, but there is no feeling of tragic loss of something uniquely beautiful, something that with the departure of which an important part of me died. I carried something from that world with me, the rest just passed by. It is interesting and instructive to remember it, but not nostalgic.
So, early '70s. We lived in a neighborhood unofficially called Manastyrok adjacent to the Sož River flowing through the city. These are streets and alleys built up with private houses with small courtyards and vegetable gardens. Earlier on its place there was a settlement of Old Believers, which was associated by the townspeople with something devotional, monastic; hence the place’s name. The natives of the place are still called "monastic". In my time the former inhabitants were almost gone. Several streets were populated by gypsies. Although on our left hand there lived an Old Believer, a pious old woman Matrona Ivanovna. There were only a few traces of the past. So, one day, digging up a vegetable garden, my grandmother found an Old Believer cross, which I still keep as an interesting souvenir.
The family consisted of me, my parents, grandmother and Aunt Svetlana, who is ten years older than me, and was still in school at the time of my early childhood. When I was little, I thought she was my sister, and I was terribly surprised when I was once explained that this was not the case. However, I did not get rid of the habit of addressing her by just "you" and calling her simply by name. Around the same time, I learnt from an adult conversation that she was not my grandmother's own daughter. She herself did not know about it — and she was the last of all relatives to find out, already being an adult — so I was asked to keep quiet. I promised, and I kept my word.
My grandmother was still working at that time; she retired already in my memory. She was also chairman of the street committee for many years. Now this might sounds strange. What kind of committee, why was it needed?.. It's actually quite an interesting thing, a sign of the times. The street committee was engaged in public work, performed certain functions during various state events and exercised, so to speak, the lowest authority. It could, on behalf of the public, settle conflicts between residents of streets under his jurisdiction, or issue censures. For example, if some man drank a lot, raged and offended his wife, the committee would take a secretary with him, they would go to the poor man's house and tell him off. He, as usual, beat his chest, repented and promised to make it up. They left with dignity, warning that in the event of repetition of disorderly behaviour they would hand him over to the police. Sometimes it even worked.
In general, it was a quiet and peaceful area, something like a large village inside the city, where cars rarely drove and notable local events rarely happened. One of this events happened after we moved from there. Grandma loved to tell this story called "How I caught a thief". One day she was drinking tea in her kitchen — and from the window overlooking the neighbor's garden, she saw a person climbing through the attic window into the house of neighbors who were absent at that moment. She jumped out into the street and ran to gather the people. People began to converge to the scene; one of the lucky few who owned a home phone at the time called where he should to. And when the thief climbed back in the same way, through the attic, he was met by a whole crowd, with the police and almost with solemn speeches.
Our land plot was two hundred square meters. One hundred was occupied by a house, the other was occupied by a small vegetable garden with several beds. Flowers grew along the edges of the garden — peonies, dahlias, chrysanthemums, phloxes, Venus' shoes, pansies, sometimes gladioli.
The house had two small living rooms, a kitchen and a corridor where there was a cooker with gas cylinders. Heating was by stove; peat was bought annually for this purpose. Water for irrigation was piped through the plot of the neighbours who lived on the right, and drinking water had to be carried in buckets from a standpipe located on the next street. Like I said, almost rural life. Only without livestock.
The house was old. It stood on a high, almost human-sized, brick foundation. Not far away, at the other end of the alley, there was a railway. When a heavy train travelled along it, which happened often, it was not only noisy, but the whole house shook from the tremors travelling through the ground, and the chandelier overhead swayed. At some point, the foundation could not withstand such trials, and a crack passed over it. Fortunately, the structure did not collapse.
However, there is a special story about this crack. My grandmother told me that she once observed a strange phenomenon: a ghostly glowing ball suddenly appeared in the middle of the room, rolled to the wall and disappeared, as if falling through the floor. Of course, she told all her neighbors and acquaintances about this miracle. Some of the old-timers said that it was a sign: there was a treasure buried where the ball disappeared. She decided to check. Left at home alone, she went down into the underground and began to dig under the wall. And indeed — there was a stash made, apparently, by one of the previous owners of the house. However, there was nothing valuable in it. Simple glassware: plates, candy bowls, fruit bowls... She used to show these off to her family. I don't know who would want to bury all this stuff. Or Grandma was hiding something. Or the whole story was her invention — although everyone knew the story. Anyway, she claimed that the earth sank at the site of her excavations, and that is why the foundation had cracked there.
Above the living quarters was an attic where all sorts of old junk was dumped. It was rarely visited. Therefore, when the wasps got there, nobody noticed. But they did not waste time, they worked in their own way. As a result of their work, one day a piece of the ceiling fell out, and through the resulting hole, a wasp swarm rushed into the room. It was creepy. We had to make a hasty escape, and then sit in the yard for a long time waiting for the insect control experts to arrive.
When I was about five years old, a small annex of one room, conventionally divided by a stove, was attached to the wall of the house, and my parents and I moved to live there. Apparently, this was a variant of what is called "own corner".
Of course, everything that has been told above does not give an idea of the situation of the first years of my life. It's not even a sketch. So, a few disparate facts. Maybe it would be necessary to give more detailed sketches of the hometown and the neighbourhood as a place of action. But I don't want to do that. And it would hardly work.
My city has never been something special for me to talk about emotionally, with deep warmth and inner awe. I don't have a strong emotional attachment to it. There is something connected with it that is important to me — but it is primarily related to the Teaching, and this is another topic. Unlike many people, I don't consider my city the best and most beautiful just because I was born here. Maybe I've lost something because of that. Or maybe, on the contrary, it helped me not to close myself in the narrow limits of the perception of "small motherland" as an unconditional psychological priority. I had to travel around Homieĺ not so much and not so often. Maybe that's why I didn't form a particularly strong emotional attachment to it. The same applies to my neighborhood, which I saw rather fragmentarily. It's not that vivid and detailed memories of it have been preserved, but rather a certain general feeling of the atmosphere of the place. Although I miss Manastyrok, its atmosphere, even after more than forty years.
The first years of my life were spent there. Were they eventful? It depends on what is considered an event worthy of at least a cursory mention. Especially since some of them were of a specific nature. Even then it was related to the Teaching. Although I know this for certain with regard to some of them, with regard to others I can only assume and guess. Even today I myself do not understand everything yet.
But the first event was definitely related to it. And what important things happen to a person after birth? That's right: they get a name. My name was chosen in advance. The parents wanted a son, and they thought they'd call me Pavel. But on our alley there lived a boy Pavlik, unpleasant and always snotty, — so this intention was abandoned. They decided to call me Andrei. And so I was for a few weeks before I was born. When I was born, everyone said so: Andriushka was born. However, on the eve of the day when I was going to be registered under this name, my parents went to bed, and my father suddenly said, "Let's call him Victor." Mum suddenly replied, "Let's do it." Later they were surprised for a long time and could not understand how it happened. I learnt later that their guardians (those who are known in some religions as guardian angels — though in reality they are not angels) had a hand in it. They suggested an idea to my father and encouraged my mother to agree. Knowing what purpose I came with, the guardians — or someone else in authority — decided that a name related to that was needed, that it should be a speaking name.
Apparently, this is very important. Guardians don't often have such an assertive influence on their charges' decision-making. And in my story, that wasn't the last time.
They say that on the same day several other children were registered, of whom all the boys turned out to be Victor and the only girl turned out to be Victoria. I don't know what to think. Either the name was super popular in those years, or it is another family legend.
Some time later, they decided to baptise me. It was the initiative of the older generation of the family, since the younger generation was indifferent to religion. The parents went to the village church, inviting their friend Nina as the godmother, and their mother's brother Eugene as the godfather. When the priest took me in his arms and carried me around the altar, I, according to eyewitness accounts, clung to his beard so tightly that he had tears in his eyes. On the way back, the company ran into the head teacher of the local school where they had recently been studying. Everyone rushed to flee. They were ashamed that they could be caught attending church; and the godmother, moreover, was a Komsomol member. They ran away, and the head teacher chased them, shouting, "Stop! I'll find out who you are anyway!" Fortunately for them, he did not find out, and there was no trouble.
I have never worn a cross, but I remember it. Hanging from a simple rope, it was made of greenish metal, with the image of the crucified Jesus leaning with his feet on a human skull. The cross lay in a box full of buttons, needles and pins, spools for a sewing machine and other interesting little things, such as the grandfather's Medal "For Courage" of the II degree. I can't tell you how it got there, if you believe my grandmother's story about her leaving the house. I often played with the cross and the medal, and then they went somewhere.
Only because I was baptised at an unconscious age, my relatives still register me as Orthodox. Grandma was the most stubborn in this matter. No matter how many times I explained to her that I was an unbeliever, and that even according to Church laws I was considered to have expelled myself from the bosom of the Church, she stood her ground. And she continued to stand, even after learning about the Teaching. She said, "You were baptised, so you are Orthodox. That's it! And it doesn't matter what you think. And it doesn't matter what the priests write in their rules. If you're baptised, that's it." Here is an example of a formal attitude towards religion. Having faith in such an approach is not necessary at all. A ritual was performed on you — and you are a Christian, even if you were an atheist. Religion without the need for faith — what could be more hypocritical and sad?..
By the way, Anna's grandmother had a very peculiar approach to religion. She visited the temple, like many others, mainly at Easter. I saw her praying to an icon at home only a few times. She considered priests to be the last sinners, drunkards, licentious and profligates. She often told how her mother, my great-grandmother Domna, used to say, "I'll kiss an icon, I'll kiss a cross, but I'll never kiss the hand of a priest in my life!" But there were special reasons for the strained relationship with the priesthood, which I will tell you about later. But I had to watch my grandmother leafing through the Gospel — not reading it thoughtfully, but leafing through it, running her eyes over certain passages with a sceptical smirk. When asked about the reason for such outspoken skepticism, she replied, "They wrote all sorts of fictions here! Who knows how it really was?" She also did not believe in what the Christian religion tells about postmortality, heaven, hell and other such things saying, "How do they know? No one came back from there and told what was there." I reproached her, "And with such an attitude towards religion, do you call yourself Orthodox..?", to which she replied, "It's none of your business! I myself know how to believe!"
She did not look at all like a village old woman, from whom you expect devout behavior. She was a modern woman (of that time, of course), quite urban, secular, semi-intelligent, constantly reading books, subscribing to various newspapers and magazines, who had seen a lot and knew her worth. She never talked to me about God. I already mentioned how my parents treated religion at that time. So my baptism was nothing more than a tribute to tradition.
I am telling this in order to emphasise such an important detail of the atmosphere in which I grew up, as the complete absence of a bias into something spiritual. Having heard something somewhere I had a vague idea that, as it were, there was some incomprehensible being living in the sky who... But what it did, I didn't know, and I wasn't interested.
...In general, there is not much to report about the first year. But by the end of it, something happened that had the heaviest impact on my life and, in fact, determined its entire future course.
It happened suddenly. Just suddenly: as they say, nothing foreshadowed trouble, and in the evening everything was fine, I was cheerfully tinkering in my crib, and in the morning I was completely paralysed, lying motionless, unable to move either arm or leg, and only my eyes were moving. The reasons for what happened remain unclear. There is a version according to which the vaccination given to me the day before was to blame. There is no actual confirmation of this. Nevertheless, the version was officially accepted by the family, and it is this version that is voiced when such a need arises. It turned out, however, that there are other versions among relatives. I will mention one of them later.
Do I need to tell you what a shock and grief this has become for my family? Moreover, it was still unknown what had happened. So, it was not clear what to do and how to treat me. The doctors, of course, immediately rejected the vaccination version. There were examinations, but they could not give me a clear diagnosis. At first they wrote in my medical history "infantile cerebral palsy". But it was obvious that it did not correspond to reality, and it was written simply because it was impossible not to write anything at all. Since then the diagnosis has changed several times, and I don't even remember what the last one was. The doctors came up with the idea of analysing my spinal cord — but somehow unconvincingly, like "Maybe it won't do anything, but let's give it a try." Mum did not allow to do this, fearing that it would make me even worse. When a few years later I was taken to Minsk to show some medical luminary of the all Soviet Union scale, the luminary, having examined me, could not draw any definite conclusions or even assumptions, and spread his hands.
Besides family and medical versions there is one more. Although it is difficult to call it a version. It's more of a hint, a clue. The pandect says, "You know what has happened to you: great streams are often harsh" (Eosfor II, 21). The quotation is from the text addressed to me. These words refer to what I said above. I have clarified, and received confirmation. But there has been no clarification that would make it clear what is being referred to. One can only guess what is meant. What is meant by "great streams"? Perhaps one of them is the Teaching, its power, its eventfulness. Then the other may be something that opposes the Teaching, does not want its manifestation in our world. My birth was purposeful; it was known what I was born for and what I must do. Undoubtedly known to all concerned. And maybe something was trying to prevent this from happening, trying to destroy me at the very beginning.
This is the clearest version of the interpretation of these words that I have been able to build. If it is true, it turns out that two opposing forces collided in the world of energy, and I found myself in its epicentre. The Teaching was able to protect me and repel the attack, but it was so powerful that it could not be neutralised completely, and I was still hit by it. The aggressive force didn't manage to kill me, but it did manage to cripple me, and thus make it incredibly difficult for me to continue my further work. That is, it still achieved partial success. However, the Teaching had come into the world, and I still doing what I have to do. Yes, it is more difficult than it could be, and the progress to date is less than it could be. But it is being done. Which means it was a victory — then, half a century ago.
And you know what? Now I think my assumption is spot on. Now — this is today, right now, as I write these lines. Once, in one of the articles, I already stated this theory in writing, but in passing, literally in two or three sentences. Now I have stated it in a little more detail. And my Teacher, Emere, didn't stop me. He always stops me if I am one step away from making a mistake that could be detrimental to the Teaching. And now he's silent. He is silent in spite of the fact that I put my considerations — considerations on such a serious matter — on the pages of the book. So they are true. Or at least, they are so close to the truth that some nuances do not matter much. That's how something unusual happens right in the process of writing. You could say it's live. In a sense, in front of your eyes.
So, I found myself completely immobilised. After a while, the paralysis began to recede. By the time I was about three years old, my condition had improved to the point where I could even walk a few steps on my feet if I was supported under my arm. Then I slowly began to weaken again. The body was failing gradually. From time to time I found that I could no longer do something that I had been able to do recently. For example, at the same age of three or four, I could sit on the sofa, turn around, slide off it and kneel down, holding it with my hands. At the age of seven I couldn't do that anymore, but I was still able to hold children's dumbbells above me on my outstretched arms while lying on my back. Shortly I couldn't do that either. My strength went away imperceptibly, drop by drop. By the end of the nineties, I had weakened so much that I was no longer able to handle a spoon and a fork. And for fifteen years now, I can't even hold a pen in my fingers. Fortunately, there is a computer; and my strength is still enough to spin the ball of a trackball mouse with one finger and press its button with the other, and to type on the on-screen keyboard. That's how I'm writing this book right now.
I'm getting way ahead of myself here. Just wanted to give some minimal perspective to complete the outline of the illness and the conditions I found myself in. A more detailed account will follow.
Last updated
