Letters from Novosibirsk Read online

many here to be acquainted with. And besides, I like him.”

  “I would like him to map Tibet—twice: the ancient land and the living present one.”

  “Why? Why there?”

  Rimpon continued: “I was fortunate enough to have spent most of my Earth-years there. I know now, as I knew then, that my homeland was a doorway to our realm—yours and mine, Kolya. It is one of a few places on the Earth that offers such a passageway, and it is something I would like the living to know. Omar will begin to know it first, and we will let the others follow.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That is not necessary. Understanding is a life-concept, Kolya. We do not consider understanding important now. We have knowledge, and that is greater.

  Kolya felt a spread of good intention and well-being covering him, and he began to know now what Rimpon was talking about. Rimpon was gone, but he had left this knowledge with Kolya, who did tend to be open-spirited.

  Understanding is a life-concept thought Omar as he cleaned his favorite pen in warm water and RP-2 detergent. But to have knowledge is greater.

  Omar normally paid little attention to such roaming thoughts: random impulses of the brain, he considered them, neither useful nor harmful, though slightly annoying when filling in the mental void between work sessions. He could be planning his next map, which was to appear in the next issue of Letters.

  But these mental ramblings of his today were strong; they seemed to demand his attention.

  Nevertheless, it was time to begin the map, and soon enjoy the precise coordination of his conscious mind and hand in the ancient art of cartography. He had tried and rejected the electronic medium: its precision was too distant from him, the lines too blandly indistinct. He enjoyed the irreversibility of ink, the nuances in line thickness he could achieve, letting each map dictate itself to him as if through its own, Earth-worn voice. And, not surprisingly, no one wanted his maps. They did not fit the mold of those generated by electronic means, and no one ever thought of maps as works of art. They were simply one of the many inventions of humankind that demanded ever more precision and standardization. Omar’s maps were anachronistic, his motives unclear; his lettering did not always follow the strict guidelines as set by the Coordinated Earth Viewers’ conventions.

  But Omar had faith in his work; he knew that his accomplishments were his own, and they lifted him to a plane of exciting contentment, as if he were the sole confidant of Earth herself, privy to her contours, her blemishes, her successes and her works-in-progress. For Omar, like everyone, was made of Earth, and he considered the mountains and lakes his brothers and sisters, kin he should get to know.

  That morning, feeling that he knew the whole world at once (having drawn every nook of it many times over, in all its ages and perspectives) he simply let his hand fall to the blank page, and let come of it what it willed. The lines came together in the familiar but challenging study of Tibet.

  Tibetan mountains were the most exciting on Earth. Tibetan names rang like Tibetan bells in the echoing, cool air, and Tibetan sun cast hard shadows over her seas of peaks and ridges. Tibetan rivers and streams ran like the purest glass over Earth’s most primitive rock. The Age of Industry had skirted Tibet, but her people had known its rewards. Her people, thought Omar, had never lost what so many others in the world had lost during that grimy age: hope. They had endured Chinese occupation, but that had only strengthened their determination to keep their spiritual identity alive. Not foolhardy, they accepted technological advances, but were able to keep them at a sane distance from their spiritual centers.

  The fall of the Mao Dynasty, near the end of the twentieth century, had allowed Tibetan religious centers to re-open, but they were now equipped with the latest secular offerings to facilitate communication, environmental soundness, and good health. The New Tibetans could exercise, pick vegetables, hold a videophone conference, and go off to meditate—all within the same compound.

  Omar had traveled in Tibet only last summer; its impressions were still strong in him. As his pencil provided the contours for its border, mountains, rivers, and plateaus, his mind provided the living images that guided his concentration. He saw many times over the rebuilt monasteries, the intently calm faces, the convenience stores. But soon these were replaced with open-air markets where only grain, yak’s butter, and pork dumplings were sold. He saw the newer, tight-fitting suits replaced by long red and golden robes; the new monasteries replaced by ancient buildings filled with traditional artistry, inside and out.

  And when he looked at the names of cities he had sketched in, Omar could not remember ever having known them. Some were in locations where no modern town existed; their syllables only dimly familiar, like the memories of one’s earliest childhood impressions. In place of contemporary highways, Omar had drawn early trade routes. Even the rivers followed different routes, slightly off course from the ones he had drawn on his other Asian maps.

  A new sense passed through him, a new sense of belonging and not belonging. With this new sense came the loss of his other senses: he heard nothing and felt nothing; even his eyes were dimmed. Omar felt that he inhabited that map; that he had lost his religion, his past, his identity. Omar was a map, an ancient map he did not understand, but knew as well as he knew himself.

  When a blink brought him back to Novosibirsk he lifted his head to the cool white room. His hand still held a full pen, and the paper it rested on was white.

  8.

  Kolya found Elsa seated before her writing desk in the next cottage. He still knew very little about her, but thought her extremely agreeable to look at. Tired of playing tricks, he studied the lines on her face, which changed while she wrote her letter:

  With a hot glass of Georgian tea and home-baked muffin here to warm me, I feel nothing of the chilling storm that is about to begin outside. Outside, a lot of things go on that have no effect on me, the Nun of Novosibirsk. About all that touches me is my cat, Smolensk.

  I have received many letters lately in response to my last report—some of them kind and supportive, others bitter and hateful. But I’m afraid many of you still have delusions about the state of my life here.

  I am neither happy nor sad, trusting nor vengeful, melancholic nor exuberant. I simply exist here, like the wooden beams that support my cottage, or the perennials whose roots have burrowed in my garden for years here before my arrival.

  In this balanced state (some may even call it static) I am able and willing to note the cycles of life around me. Having no family of my own, nor an intimate with whom to plunge into folly, I have become like a sieve for all that passes by me or comes into view.

  My neighbors may appear to be in a similar state; but I can assure you they are not. They are absorbed in their ideas and convictions. I have none.

  Some have called me a man-hater, and I respond with a mixture of puzzlement and awe. I have never written an unkind word about men; my choosing not to spend my life being intimately bound to one does not mean that I do not respect and admire them. The ground rule for celibacy is that you must not hate the opposite sex. The celibate person, rather, contemplates and therefore grows to empathize with the absent one.

  I empathize with children as well, though there are none here at Novosibirsk. At times I feel I’ve become a child, soft, unassuming, dazzled by discovery in this world…

  “Discovery indeed.”

  Zofiya had presented herself on the mantelpiece, just next to Kolya.

  “Just look there, you can see nothing of the child written on her face. It’s as if she held a cast likeness continuously in front of her. Nothing of her true character is revealed.”

  “I think she’s pretty, Kolya offered.

  “You’ve yet to learn the meaning of the word. Why don’t we have a little fun—”

  “But—” Kolya began, but was snuffed out by Zofiya’s grandiose presence, which was matriarchal at the least. She would have her way.

  Elsa felt a tingling in her arm, the
way it sometimes felt when she was coming down with something. She shook it, pinched it, and finally dropped her pen and decided it was time for another cup of tea.

  But on her way to the tiny kitchen she tripped over the loose step that separated the rooms: the board snapped off and revealed a cache of grayed wooden toys, toys that had once been brightly painted and wrapped for name-day and Christmas celebrations.

  Her mouth opened in astonishment, and she suddenly felt that she had never been alone in her cottage; that there had been hidden artifacts like these supporting her steps, sweetening the air, and spreading echoes through the silence while she slept. She reached for a faded blue truck, made of wooden blocks, with wooden wheels and a wooden man sitting in the driver’s seat, blank-faced, no eyes or ears or nose. Its wheels were cracked but they still rolled; she pushed it over the oil-stained floor and watched it rise and fall.

  There was also a wooden flute with six holes in line and one behind for your thumb, a miniature balalaika, a doll’s cradle, and a set of painted circus bears, all a hundred and fifty years old.

  Elsa studied the toys, turning them over one by one. But she felt nothing for them; she couldn’t imagine the children who played with them, nor could she imagine the toys she had played with as a child. It was fitting that these wooden toys had