“Please have a seat, mademoiselle!” Their host nudged a teacup in her direction and half filled it with strong amber-colored tea, then added hot water to top it off. Gluzman slid an almost-transparent slice of lemon onto a tiny dish for her, then graciously offered the silver sugar bowl. “Young ladies don’t take sugar these days, do they?”
“You fool!” a creaky old voice suddenly rang out just behind Masha.
Masha jumped in surprise and turned around. Behind her hung an enormous cage, and inside it, an enormous parrot.
“You fool!” the parrot repeated.
“No need to tell me, I know!” Gluzman retorted cheerfully.
Masha laughed. The tension that had accumulated in her body during their long walk to the room was falling away now. Though Gluzman was eccentric, he didn’t show any signs of insanity, as far as she could tell. His dark eyes seemed to take everything in hungrily, and his large mouth was twisted into a wry smile.
“My parrot very much resembles me, don’t you think, my dear? Two silly old good-for-nothings!”
Masha smiled and took a sip from her delicate ceramic cup. The tea was excellent.
“I don’t believe in the green teas and red teas they have these days, with their flowers and buds and petals and little pieces of straw, smelling like anything at all other than tea. I don’t need my tea to be diaphoretic or calmative or anything else. My nerves, honestly, require a stronger medicine.” Gluzman’s fluttering hand performed its ritual over Innokenty’s cup next, and then he sat back in his chair, clearly pleased with himself. “Well then, my young friends! What brings you to my humble abode?”
Innokenty bent down and pulled Masha’s map from his briefcase.
“Dr. Gluzman,” he said, “we need a consultation. Or, actually, a confirmation of my theory.”
Gluzman took a pair of glasses with round, thick lenses from his breast pocket and perched them atop his fleshy nose. The expression on his face remained unchanged, but he tilted his head first to one side, then to the other as he looked the page over carefully.
“I believe there’s a certain pattern to the points marked on the map, Professor. Do you see it?” Innokenty looked nervous, ready to spring up from his chair.
“It might just be a coincidence, but—” Gluzman turned to Masha, removed his glasses, and smiled. The old man’s teeth were blindingly white. “Inno-centi must have seen just what I see here. He’s a wonderful boy, mademoiselle. Don’t you let him get away.”
“I won’t,” Masha said, smiling. “I’ve been holding on to him since we were eight years old.”
Gluzman nodded and turned to the blushing Kenty.
“Never be afraid of your own conclusions, young man! You must trust that whisper inside you! It is formed of knowledge, first and foremost, and of deep intuition. It comes with experience.”
“Heavenly Jerusalem,” Kenty said quietly.
“Heavenly Jerusalem,” repeated Gluzman. “Precisely.”
Masha looked impatiently from one man to the other.
“Masha, dear, judging from the discouraged look in your lovely eyes, you must be unfamiliar with the concept?” Gluzman chuckled and rolled his wheelchair over to the bookshelf that lined one wall of the room. “Here you are, for a start,” he said, pulling out a leather-bound volume. “The Holy Scriptures. Have you read them?”
Masha felt her cheeks going red.
“Surely you have,” said Gluzman, not waiting for her to respond. “But who remembers books like these? Only old dotards like me. Now, let me just find the place…” He thumbed through the pages. “Here we are. Listen. From the Book of Revelation: ‘And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.’” Gluzman removed his glasses again, and looked up at Masha. “You see, Mashenka, my dear—may I call you Mashenka?—in the religious tradition, the city of Jerusalem was considered the navel of the earth, because it was meant to be a prototype of the Heavenly City. And that Heavenly Jerusalem, in turn, is the kingdom of the saints in heaven.” Gluzman smiled. “If you believe John, it is a city of uncommon beauty, built of materials that shine and reflect the light. Gates made of pearls, walls made of precious stones—jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, topaz, chrysolite, amethyst—and streets made of gold. And this description was not just something the storyteller dreamed up, his own fantasy. No!”
Gluzman looked to Innokenty, and his former student took up the tale.
“In those times, gemstones represented sources of sacred energy. They are eternal, and like eternity, they are perfect, unlike the mortal world of humans, plants, and animals.”
Masha felt lost, which did not escape Gluzman’s attention.
“It’s rather a lot, isn’t it? Here is the important thing. Symbolism aside, written descriptions of the City of Heaven are so precise, so suggestive, that they have allowed human beings, time and time again, to create their own models of that city, in essence transporting it from the heavens down to this earthly realm. Every description is architecturally detailed, and every detail carries symbolic value. For instance, all the descriptions agree that Heavenly Jerusalem is laid out as a square. Its walls face the four cardinal directions, and each wall has three gates, conveying the image of the Creator in all directions.”
Masha cast a helpless glance at Innokenty, who winked back.
“Close your eyes and imagine this city, Masha!” Gluzman went on, reading from the Bible now in a singsong voice. “‘Twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels—’”
Masha had been following his description, her head tilted in concentration, but she stumbled at the angels.
“Dr. Gluzman, I really don’t understand what all this has to do with—”
“Patience, my child. I know haste is the burden of the novice, and you are both still so young. Try to resist your urge to absorb knowledge on the run. Now, where were we? Oh yes. In the Middle Ages, the Gospels were often interpreted as instructions for action. Medieval architects had two models to work from: Heavenly Jerusalem and the earthly Jerusalem. The real Jerusalem influenced the cities people built to evoke the celestial one. Think of the Golden Gate in Kiev, or in Vladimir here in Russia. Those were intended to copy the Golden Gate in Jerusalem, and later in Constantinople.”
Masha nodded uncertainly.
“Mainly capital cities tried to imitate the earthly Jerusalem,” Innokenty added. “But plenty of smaller Russian cities were designed based on the descriptions of Heavenly Jerusalem. Kiev, as Dr. Gluzman said, but also Pskov, Kashin, Kaluga, and, of course, Moscow.”
“Interesting,” Masha ventured. “I always thought medieval architecture was completely chaotic. Narrow streets leading nowhere, improvised rebuilding every time a city burned down again…”
“That is a common theory, but absolutely unfounded,” Gluzman answered heatedly. “As is this idea of the Dark Ages in general. Nonsense! It was a difficult but wonderful epoch, one which gave the world genius works of architecture, art, and literature. What have people ever made that is more wonderful than the spires of Gothic cathedrals, reaching for heaven? Or more noble than the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl? You might argue that by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Moscow had fewer poor, fewer orphans, fewer cripples. Less filth, and not nearly as many brothels and saloons per capita. But the idea, the supreme religious idea that governed and inspired life in those earlier times, even for the lowliest pauper—that idea was gone.”
Gluzman rolled back to the bookshelves and took down two more tattered volumes.