PART 1

Jean: Vous rêvez quand vous dites que le rhinocéros s'est échappé du jardin zoologique.

Il y a des choses qui viennent a l'esprit même de ceux qui n'en ont pas.

(Eugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros.)

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] (M. A. Bulgakov, Master and Margarita.)

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] (B. Zakhoder).

These days Petya couldn't remember what it was that started his ... what do you call it? His religious explorations, let's say. It happened quite often that he'd walk down a street, would see a notice on a pleasant-looking façade, something like 'service hours Sunday 10 to 12' and this was enough for him to come in. Or they'd give him a printed sheet or a little brochure somewhere in the street. Little pretty things, printed nobody knows where. They often promised 'a miracle for your pray', and it would be silly, or, perhaps, sinful? not to try. That's how he came to masons. Or maybe not masons, they were called something else, it wasn't important, to him, although, maybe, it actually was? Gardeners-of -climbing-plants, maybe. Anyway.

Trying to understand what it was that attracted him so inexplicably, if not to say powerfully, to places like this, Petya told himself clearly: it was the exotics. The attraction for - can one even say love, perhaps? - for the exotics was important, he decided. The love of all things strange and unfamiliar. Stupid, really. An important factor in many.... What d'you call them? Spiritual adventures, maybe?

But if you think of it, the Russian Orthodox church is as exotic to him, or should be, at least. He grew up in a family that wasn't religious, no tradition, no knowledge of the Bible, nor the church service, and the old women in babushkas one can see in a church are total strangers to him. Why can't he see it as truly alien? Or pleasantly exotic? But no. It was different. This was something that he didn't really know, true, but could have. This could have been his from birth, if only. It was something easy enough to imagine, however. If his parents had enough intellectual bravery and contradictory spirit in them some thirty or thirty-five years ago to become baptized and start being active Christians at the time when it was still punishable. It didn't happen, but it easily could have. Would he see it all differently now, if it did? Anyway, babushkas in babushkas were simply not strange enough. Not strange at all, although completely unknown. But something unthinkable, unimaginable before Australia, like masons, pentacostal friends, third-hour-after-sunrise-gardeners or builders-of-fences-best-supporting-creepy-plants. That was it. What if, Petya suddenly asked himself, pushing the door of their - was it a church? - he wasn't sure - or should he call it a temple? a religious venue? - what if, when Vladimir baptized Russia - what year was it? anyway - maybe, he did it out of love for all things exotic? Why not? They say in Russian that there is no prophet in his own land, and, by the way, it's the wisdom right on the topic. A popular wisdom can't be totally wrong, or can it?

Suddenly he remembered, very clearly, how he flied back to Australia, from home, or, rather back home from Moscow, a couple of years ago.

He stopped over in Tokyo, left his suitcase in a hotel room, and went to wander, to see what he could see around the hotel where he meant to sleep.

Maybe not always very easily, but usually he could get an answer to where he is and where he has to go from the local people. More often, however, he didn't try to get any answers and just moved where his eyes would take him. It was a bit like mountain hiking, but in a different sense.

Where he came in the end was a Buddist temple. Petia hasn't seen anything like it before. Under the roofs of a really foreign shape, hard to find another word for it, he decided, there were hundreds and hundeds of burning candles and bubbling little fountains. Very quiet, solemnly silent foreign people were moving around and between them, with faces which were, Petia thought, not really suitable for pray. Not like anything he's seen before. And this was beautiful.

Their silence was counter-balanced, as he noticed, but not immediately, by a far away sound of a drum. The sound was moving closer. Bang. Bang-bang. The people not only played the drum, he noticed, when they came closer, but also danced. Bang-bang.

Petia's soul started trembling with the drum, and dreaming about total reincarnation. What does he want there, with the old women in church? Who does he better want to be? Their emperor? Or, maybe, better just a tree? Better a tree, he thought, you can grow and not many people want to stop you. No harm to the nature nor other people, only the oxygen you breathe out and the foliage - is this the word? - above. He will breathe out the oxygen. What can be better?

Petia stared at somebody, another tourist, perhaps, there were many around the drum players, but it didn't stop him from feeling he's attending something of great value and importance, - he stared and read the words on another person's tee-shirt: converse. Converse- converse- converse. Bang-bang. Petia made an effort and remembered, that converse is not quite the same thing as convert. After all, he was flying back home from Moscow, not in the opposite direction. Converse has nothing to do with converting to another faith, but has something to do with ... But faith is not what Buddhism is, he vaguely remembered. It is not faith, nor religion, and is compatible, therefore, with just anything you want it to be compatible with. The only thing you have to do is to understand what this compatible means. But what for? To try and penetrate deep into the connections between some obscure treatises, highly exotic in their spirituality, no doubt about it, and life and death ... Strangely, every time when he confronted this possibility he simply felt too lazy. He'll become a tree, instead. Much better and totally satisfying. Listen to the drum. Converse, verse-verse, converse. Bang.

The only thing that spoilt his happiness were the drummers themselves. Their Japanese nature, that is. Why is it, that they always get compared to a pony? Their name doesn't sound like one, at least, not in English, but still. Where does it sound like a pony? In French? Somewhere else? What's so bad about a pony, Petia wondered, and concluded, that, probably, the reason of this perception is the size. Ponies are seen the way they are because of their size, and the Japanese drummers he's listening to now, are so commonly associated with them because of. Their name? In another language? Their size as well? Who knows. It's a kind of envy, he thought, coloured by. What exactly it's coloured by, he couldn't decide. Misunderstanding? Not wanting to understand? Rejection based on lack of understanding and not wanting to understand? Something like it. They reject them, it you don't count, of course, all this sushi and sashimi they consume on a daily basis. Strangely, he noticed long ago that envious rejection is more powerful, than language barriers. This thought spoiled his joy from the drum a little bit, but not completely. How much we are all poisoned with symbols, he thought. And how often it is about an expression of envious rejection, rather than anything else.

Trying to say what he thought about it all as short as possible, Petia composed a poem. It started like this: symbols aren't simcards with balls.

God, he thought, again. How much we...