13.
One night in a dream, I remembered that, for a long time, Ana F. had not passed by the corner where my friends gathered. “That girl,” I asked Ernest, “who you pointed out to me once. What happened to her? Why doesn’t she show up any more?”
14.
“I don’t remember pointing a girl out to you,” said Ernest.
15.
One day, my father got a letter from His Holiness the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church. His Holiness had written:
Dear Mr. Kowalsky,
The shoes that I ordered from your reputable shop suddenly fell apart before my eyes, and it became clear to me that the work of the devil is involved.
Please do not take this as a complaint; we as Christians are not interested in the treasures of this world. It is my duty as archpriest, though of a different confession, to turn your attention to the harmfulness of such activities for the Christian soul.
In the hope that you will turn to the true faith, the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church.
16.
Having read the letter, my father secluded himself in his office, carefully staring at his bicycle. The next day, he wrote a response:
Your Holiness,
I cannot express my regret because of the unpleasantness you were exposed to resulting from the situation with the shoes, but I would like to inform you of the fact that I did not make the footwear in collusion with the Devil. The truth is as follows: a Golem made those shoes. Because of circumstance, I was forced to destroy him, and thus everything the creature ever made was also destroyed. You certainly do not know that: Whatever God makes is indestructible and eternal; whatever a man makes lasts for a while; whatever a Golem makes lasts only as long as he does.
I made the Golem, this I confess, out of laziness. That is a sin. He worked instead of me. But I did not use that laziness for nothing. I used the time to construct shoes for walking on the water. You understand just how important for Christianity those shoes could be. In this time — when God does not appear and when the world is consciously distancing itself from the already faraway Lord — such shoes would be a real benefit to an archpriest. Because God will no longer appear until Judgment Day. I am sure of it. But, at the same time, I understand him completely. What should he do in this world? Even I, full of all sorts of horrible sins, can hardly stand its grayness and evil.
It is completely correct that I am sinful and that I am susceptible to all vices. However, I do not admit that I have distanced myself from the true faith. It is not possible to distance oneself from faith.
If a man completely rises above his sin and renounces it, then God, who is true to his promise, will act as if the sinner never sinned. He won’t allow him to suffer for a moment because of his sin. If he committed his sin even as much as all people sinned all together, God will not force him to atone for them. In doing so, God established a closeness to man that he created with no other being. If he is convinced that the man is truly ready, he will not look at what the man was before. God is the God of the present. He accepts you and takes you in just as you are, and not how you were. God joyfully suffers and has suffered for years because of the evil and iniquity that arose because of all the sins done in the world, so that man would attain full cognition of God’s love and so that that love and gratitude would be as great as possible, the world stronger, which often happens after sin.
Those are my thoughts and I await the day when God will expunge all sins.
With respect,
W. K.
17.
The fate of that letter by my father was strange. The Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church was enthralled by my father’s interpretation of God’s forgiveness. He even introduced it officially into the teachings of the Georgian church. Witold was quite proud of himself. He showed the Patriarch’s letter to his friends and his reputation grew, even among the intelligentsia. However, many years later, as I was reading the works of Meister Eckhart, I found a passage of my father’s letter, the very one on forgiveness, copied word for word. I was almost disappointed in Meister Eckhart, and then I realized: My father was the one who plagiarized! By then, Witold was already dead. I laughed. Writing against sin, he committed the sin of vanity, attributing someone else’s words to himself. But perhaps that was also part of his plan to sink to the very bottom of lawlessness, in order to rise above all of that in one moment and then draw quite close to God.
18.
But the heretical teachings of Meister Eckhart remained a part of the tradition of the Georgian Orthodox Church as one more proof that the ways of the Lord are mysterious.
19.
(part of the record of the investigation against my father)
INTERROGATOR: In May, 1913, you set off on your velocipede on a trip around the country. On that occasion, you caused confusion and disturbances through your actions in public places. Who stands behind your actions? I repeat! Who gave you the orders to act?
WK: The Holy Ghost stands behind my actions. A few months before that, when I received the commandment from the Spirit to preach the imminent end of the world, I knew that I was bound to fail, but I got on my velocipede and set off on the road. Because, I hope you know that, it is impossible to oppose God. The prophet Jonah tried that in his day, and we all know what happened to him. I do not know why I was the one chosen. But the ways of God are mysterious. Maybe that is the reason.
INTERROGATOR: To whom did you preach your first sermon?
WK: I gave my first sermon to a group of young men and women on some sort of excursion. I was passing by a field on my bicycle, I saw them and thought: Young people will believe me before the old will, and so I stopped. From my backpack, I took the banner: W. Kowalsky, PROPHET OF THE LIVING GOD and hung it on the steering column of the bike. The young men and women gathered around me immediately. The sight of a fifty-year-old in a dusty track suit necessarily attracts attention. Perhaps it was my good looks that were decisive in me being chosen as a prophet: I did attract a lot of attention. Prophets have to prophesy, and the people must persecute the prophets. That is the way the world order works.
INTERROGATOR: What did you say and how did those present react to your words?
WK: I cleared my throat and started off fairly tactlessly. But there are no tactics in prophesying. “There is,” I shouted, “life eternal and mortal!”
INTERROGATOR: What kind of reaction did your words bring out?
WK: At first — none at all. Nobody said anything. The girls elbowed the boys, they giggled, but all in all they didn’t cross the boundaries of decency. On one hand, this made me happy: it is nice to see such well-behaved young people; but on the other hand, it made me sad: in order to reach the Kingdom of God, all boundaries have to be crossed, even the boundaries of decency. In the old times they didn’t hesitate to cast stones. But just doing that, they didn’t cross the boundaries of indecency, which comes down to the same. When I thought about it, deep in my soul I felt a certain emotion, dull though it may have been, no matter what a wreck of a prophet I was.