Antonín squirmed in his seat a moment or two, then said: “Obviously, if we analyze the dream using Jung with a slight Adlerian modification, then, …” He paused, noticing Dr. Sukthankar gently shaking his head.
“I’m afraid that’s not it. In fact my patient’s dream was nearly identical to a story from the Mahabharata. An epic poem, you might call it sort of an Indian Odyssey, though about fifteen times longer. I discovered the story yesterday in a catalogue on a computer at one of the libraries recommended to me by your colleague Dr. Kadlecová. The librarian was even kind enough to translate a portion of it into English for me. So that’s most likely where my patient got it from. A book. And then years later, it turned up in a dream.”
“So no such thing as mystery then?”
“None.”
“I believe that’s what they call globalization, no?” Antonín said.
“I suppose,” said Sukthankar.
“Oh, you know what? You’ll definitely know the answer to this. Why is the lotus flower so important in India?”
Dr. Sukthankar thought a moment, then said: “I think because it symbolizes purity and beauty. It grows out of mud, but no mud ever sticks to it.”
“All right then,” said Antonín. “So, how have you liked it here?”
“Beautiful city,” said Sukthankar. “Gorgeous, in fact. And those statues on the bridge … the Charles Bridge, it’s called?”
“Yes,” said Antonín, “Charles, although most of the statues, maybe all of them, are of saints, you know. Christian saints. So what do you think about Christianity, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” said Sukthankar. “I may have told you, but I went to Catholic school as a child.”
“Right, so what do you think? I mean, as someone who belongs to two cultures.”
“I don’t have any opinion on that,” Sukthankar said. “Although the founder of modern India, Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Christianity, said he thought it would be a good idea.”
“I see,” said Antonín. “Well, as I said, our history isn’t exactly rosy or optimistic. It’s got all sorts of shadows and cobwebs.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Sukthankar. “A city this beautiful couldn’t have risen up out of nothing.”
“Like your lotus flower,” Antonín said in amusement.
“Yes, like the lotus,” Dr. Sukthankar said with a smile. “My grandfather in India used to end ceremonies by saying, ‘The wheel of being rolls through this world, without beginning and without end. It rolls through this world, causing creation and extinction. The wheel of being rolls and rolls on, without beginning and without end.’”
“Now that’s globalization,” said Antonín.
“In a sense,” said the doctor. “In a sense.”
22. A RUN THROUGH THE WOODS
A thought emerges in Josef’s mind as he runs: the world is divided in two. Top and bottom. Left and right. Moving and still. The part of the world that’s old, as old as the world itself, and the younger part, with blood, veins and arteries, brains. The world is split from top to bottom into worlds of green and red. The world of insects and animals, the bloody human world, and then the green world, roots sunken firmly in the ground. The world of grasses, trees, herbs, the world of saps, resins, and juices … and all of it the world of landscapes that preceded the world of unreliable insect and human muscles pumping blood — hearts.
But whichever way Josef turned, left or right, this world was out of order. Either the world itself had been castrated, or the mirror of deeds had been turned around to the point that the meaning of natural was in question. It couldn’t be, it was impossible, Josef reflected. It was absolutely to the core, to the bone impossible for nature, here, somewhere between the forty-ninth and fiftieth parallels north of the equator and the thirteenth and fourteenth meridians east of the Greenwich Observatory, to be so heterogeneous that the world truly didn’t make the slightest sense at all anymore. How could the worlds of sap and blood be so interstitched, interlaced, implanted into each other that two giraffes, one rhinoceros, and three spiny anteaters were roaming around free at this latitude and longitude? It couldn’t be. Why, just a few months ago the whole place had been covered in snow. What was going on with the world? Was it out of joint, or had it just sprained an ankle that could be set back at least more or less in place with the help of some vinegar and splints? Josef turned, rotated, made a move that resulted in his left foot crashing down on a branch that splintered more out of dryness than because of his weight. He sprang up again, startled by clouds of dust and spores, sparkling pridefully in the afternoon sun as they floated up to the level of his anxious eyes from the lowlands of semiwithered moss. His body made nearly a complete clockwise pirouette, swaying as he looked back in the direction he had come from. One of the giraffes was staring right at him. He’d never realized before how big and beautiful the eyes were on an average-height giraffe, and shouting, “It can’t be!” and “Fifty degrees north of the equator!” and “In the Czech lands? The Czech lands!” and “My God, in the Czech lands!” he abruptly shot off again in the opposite direction from the one the two giraffes and three spiny anteaters had come from. The rhino was either still far behind him or had wandered off in a different direction.
It was a Wednesday morning, still hot. The year: 1945. The place: somewhere southeast of Plzeň.
Josef ran, fleeing, stumbling. Leaping over stumps without even trying to dodge the branches. He was a man in flight. But his strength hadn’t abandoned him. He didn’t know how long it would hold out, and he was afraid to look back. Animals, wild animals, in the middle of Bohemia. He would have smiled if he’d had the energy: southeast of Plzeň wasn’t the middle of Bohemia. The sweat poured off of him, he knew he couldn’t keep running for long. The forest floor was starting to slope slightly downward; he had already fallen several times, somersaulting downhill, but he suddenly stopped to listen. First he heard the stream, then saw it. Sprinting over, he knelt down and splashed water on his face. Then he plunged his whole head in and drank. Every so often he lifted his head to take another look around, but he kept on drinking. Once he had drunk his fill, he stood up and listened carefully, scanning the area, but there was no sign of the animals. If they were chasing him, or even if they just happened to be coming his way, they would be here in a couple of minutes. He waited to see whether they appeared at the top of the slope. He was being careful now not to step on anything. Nothing but silence, sunlight falling down between the trees, and stirred-up dust. All of a sudden he realized he had been holding his breath the whole time. He leaned against a tree and took a deep breath. Arched his back and raised his head to look into the treetops. For a moment he didn’t realize what he was seeing, what he was looking at. By the time he did he was back on the run. A tiny little monkey with disproportionately large eyes and long fingers stared back at him from the tree. I’ve never seen such a thing, Josef thought. Once again he was a man in flight.
After a while running, he began to detect the slightest trace of a path. He sensed it more with his legs than with his relentlessly darting eyes. There were fewer and fewer sticks, dry pine needles, and broken branches. His legs were getting more agile despite the trembles of fatigue running through them. Now his head, too, began to sense the gentleness of a trail unfolding before him. He huddled close to the ground. Pressed his head into the dust of needles and rusty bark. Scanned for shapes with his frightened eyes. Trying to bring them into focus and burn them into his brain. Gradually, a path appeared. His eye caught it as it measured the angles, drawing the scale and discerning the shapes. A small, nearly invisible trail tracing a route through the hot dust. The only thing that had made seeing it possible, though, was the fact that his head was pressed firmly against the needles, the temporal bone of his skull providing a solid base for his eye, allowing the ants it crushed to death to deliver one final bite to the large animal that went by a human name. Josef stood up. His body, driven like a pointer dog by fatigue, had lost its coordination. He shot off like a spring energized by joy. Joy! Joy! With a strength not so long ago forgotten and scared to death. He leaped up somewhat higher than necessary, his legs starting to run before they touched the ground. Taking hold while he was still in the air. Digging in now as his body landed, swaying on impact, recalibrating. Now fully synchronized, the camshaft took off in the direction of the path. After a few more minutes, the path became visible to the naked eye. After a few more breaths, the end of the forest was also in view. After a few more blinks of the eye, a dirt road spread out before him. Josef set out along it. Running at first, till fatigue declared itself, then downshifting to a trot. Next, alternating between a walk and a trot, scanning the surroundings, then finally just walking as fast as he could. As fast as his strength would permit, though it had left him a long time ago. He went on like that for at least an hour. It was impossible to say how long. Amid the exhaustion, and with weakness in reach, even Josef couldn’t tell whether time was passing faster or slower. He tried to estimate how much distance he had covered. To no avail. He realized with some unease that it couldn’t have been more than an hour since his encounter with the two giraffes, the rhino, and the anteaters. And then, as was bound to happen sooner or later, he saw the half-demolished building. A farmstead. Josef reckoned there had to be a village close by, but couldn’t see it. The road ran alongside the building and continued on. It suddenly struck him how quiet it was. He wasn’t in the woods anymore, but out in the open. Not a soul around, with the forest back in the distance behind him, an occasional gust of wind rustling the pines. He entered the farmyard, or what was left of it. An elongated structure. Stables on one side, barn on the other, well right nearby. The last side of the rectangle was formed by the sticks of what had once been a fence. Probably whitewashed with lime. No sound of animals. He walked into the yard. He had an urge to call out. Actually, he just had an urge to let someone know he was there. But he didn’t even want that, actually. He just had the urge to wash up, have something to drink, think about what had happened to him, and also, pee in peace. He walked a few times across the farmyard, back and forth. Peeked into the barn and the stable. Listened, didn’t hear any people or animals, nothing. He leaned against the well and realized how hard he was breathing, no, not breathing, puffing like a freight train. He looked into the well, took the bucket and threw it down. Noticed the rope on the bucket had snapped and been retied. But just then someone or something grabbed him by the legs, and before he knew what was happening, he was flying down headfirst. Without realizing it he screamed. Screamed with whatever air was still left in his lungs in spite of the shock. Screamed, roared, shrieked, squawked, squealed. He flew a long time, hundreds of thousands of years, until his whole body jerked to a stop and he was left hanging. In total darkness. His left foot was tangled in the rope from the bucket. His hands were scraped bloody from trying to grab the walls of the well. A twitch ran through his body as he hung, head down. Again and again he tried to haul himself up with his two bloodied hands, and once he’d roared the last remains of air from his lungs, he gasped for breath and tried to look up toward the light. He did, and up above, where just a few breaths in and out ago the cerulean canvas of the sun-bewitched sky had stretched, there was now … space. The small black circle of the mouth of the well filled with stars. Where there should have been sky-blue heaven, now there was a night sky. As his muddled brain ceaselessly arranged and rearranged the stars into constellations, he wondered which spectrum of visible light the well was screening out and just how deep he actually was. Even the skin from his hands he had left behind on the rocks lining the well was starting to hurt now. He had just about had enough.