INTERROGATOR: Did you say anything else?
WK: Yes, I cried that life eternal is not impossible, but the one we have is. I referred to Plato, Plotinus, Scotus, Erigena, and Thomas à Kempis. I offered statistical proof, too. The average life-span is sixty years, a century-span is one hundred. Some live a span of eighty, and some a span of one hundred years, the span is not constant. It says nothing. It only proves that this-worldly life is impossible, and that the length of that impossibility varies from case to case.
INTERROGATOR: Were there any comments?
WK: No. In fact, yes. One young man asked me if I believe in eternal life?
INTERROGATOR: And what was your answer?
WK: That I do. With that, I spoke a ninety percent lie. Truth be told, I myself hardly believe in the ten percent possibility of resurrection. That’s because, like you, I am seventy-five percent nothing, with a tendency to become one hundred percent nothing. Augustine wrote that God created two kinds of beings: one close to himself, the other kind close to nothingness. We, people, are among those third-rate creatures. The seventy-five percent of nothingness that we so carefully conceal, that is what ruins our calculations. Because of it, all human projects, no matter how well planned, show an inexplicable tendency to return into nothingness. I knew that my project would end up there as well.
INTERROGATOR (to his assistant): Have this Augustine character checked into.
INTERROGATOR (to my father): And then?
WK: Then, some sort of teacher showed up, a professor or whatnot, and he cried, “Hey, he’s blaspheming against God! Grab him!”
INTERROGATOR: How did you react?
WK: Seeing that the crowd was rushing toward me, I jumped on my bicycle and tried to escape while stones were flying around me, thrown without precision, luckily. I’m not a bad cyclist, but the young men were running really fast. At one instant, I saw some sort of village church; the Sunday service had just begun, so I headed there and rode my velocipede into God’s house, hoping for sanctuary.
INTERROGATOR: How did the congregation react?
WK: They knocked me off the velocipede and started beating me for blasphemy. The pastor was among the most enthusiastic. In the meantime, my pursuers also arrived. Who knows what would have happened to me, but some of the people cried, “Let him go, can’t you see he’s crazy?” Then they stopped beating me and led me out of the church. They even gave me a ham sandwich.
20.
One night in my dreams, I was awaited on the corner by a man wearing a long leather overcoat. I stiffened at the thought that the agents of the secret police had discovered our meeting place, that they had dreamt it and come to arrest us. But the man smiled the way a person smiles when they want to show that they are not agents of the secret police and he asked, “Are you waiting for Ana F.?” “Yes,” I said. “You see,” said he, “that’s why they sent me.”
I didn’t dare to ask him who had sent him.
We sat on the stoop of my father’s cobbler shop.
“It’s a complicated story,” the man said. “You have to listen to me carefully; even then, no matter how carefully you listen, you will forget everything when you wake up. I have already been in your dreams and talked to you, and you have forgotten. The point is this: in times past to which no one’s memory reaches, human beings were whole. Then, for reasons that would not be clear to you, they were separated, divided into two sexes, male and female. Perhaps you can guess: two corresponding halves are supposed to find each other so that they can stop wandering about between reality and dreams. But the matter is made more difficult by the fact that the two halves are not born synchronously, I mean — in the same periods. To cut things short: Ana F. has still not been born, and you have already gotten quite mature. In the future in your dreams you must open your eyes wide, because you can only meet there, because dreams stand outside of time, as you know. And above all, above all you must learn to think slowly…”
21.
“Son,” my father said one morning, “you have to be paranoid not to be paranoid. In this world, everyone persecutes everyone, and everyone together persecutes prophets. However, at one moment you have to stop the paranoia: at the moment when you realize that you, though being persecuted, don’t even exist.”
“At that moment you are saved!”
22.
(passages of my father’s letters to people in public life, found in his legacy)
From a letter to the Pope
Holy Father,
I am convinced that, without fail, you must travel by bicycle on your trips. It is indecent for a person of your reputation to ride in armored automobiles, Satanic machines, because the very name automobile contains the principle of self-movement, self-sufficiency, which is Satan’s ideal…
I also propose that you relinquish your Swiss Guard. Christians do not dare to be protected from the evil of this world; follow the example of His Holiness the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church…
You must actually seek feverishly for the cross on which you will be crucified. If no one wants to crucify you in Europe or in America — go to Patagonia, go to Africa, desecrate some native taboos, find a way to become a martyr…
…The donkey is the paradigm of the bicycle, and it is known that the Savior rode a donkey into Jerusalem…
(1920)
W. K.
From a letter to M. Lowry
Dear Mr. Lowry,
Finally a proper book on alcoholism. Congratulations.
…It’s worthwhile to mention the secret of turning wine into Christ’s blood. I am completely convinced of its certainty. Not because I have studied the secret, but because through crazed drunkenness I have recognized my own stupidity…
…I think that they will all be resurrected: all those comic strip heroes, all the Mickey Mouses, Mandrakes, Kirbys…
…In any case, alcohol brought me to faith in God. Tearing me further and further down, humiliating me, it cleared a place for me in the Lord’s Kingdom…
…The doors to that Kingdom are exceptionally low. A man must humble himself, he must lower his head if he intends to enter.
23.
My father wrote another letter to the Pope:
Holy Father,
I understand that you did not accept my humble suggestion about the automobile. You continue to drive about in that contraption; you show off like some sort of bon vivant, a seducer, losing your reputation in the eyes of honest Catholics, forgetting that automobilism is the mortal sin of our time, while bicyclism, after love, is its greatest virtue.
But, what can be done, we are all sinners. This time I would like to recommend an exceptional product of my company W. Kowalsky & Co. — religious shoes. I dare to ask that you publish an encyclical recommending these shoes to the widest range of believers.
This is what makes them exceptionaclass="underline"
They are no different in shape from the normal shoe, which is important because of humility. However, the insides of those shoes are filled with a large number of sharpened tacks. Whoever wears such shoes will most certainly never be able to think of sin and pleasure; all of his thoughts will necessarily be directed to heaven. In addition, excursions into the streets will be reduced to only the most necessary and thus the chaos will be notably reduced.