“Very much. At this moment, even though the room is boiling hot, I’m generating even more heat at the spot where your body is in contact with my legs. I’m no Superman. That’s why I’m asking you to transfer both your pain and my desire. I want you to get up, go to your room, and play your violin until you’re exhausted. We’re the only guests in the hotel, so no one is going to complain about the noise. Pour all your feelings into your music, and do the same again tomorrow. Whenever you play, tell yourself that the thing that hurt you so much has become a gift. You’re wrong when you say that other people have recovered from the trauma; they’ve simply hidden it away in a place they never go to. In your case, though, God has shown you the way. The power of regeneration is in your hands.”
“I love you as I love Chopin. I always wanted to be a pianist, but the violin was all my parents could afford at the time.”
“And I love you like a river.”
She gets up and starts to play. The heavens hear the music, and the angels come down to join me in listening to the naked woman who sometimes stands still and sometimes sways her body in time to the music. I desired her and made love with her without ever touching her or having an orgasm. Not because I’m the most faithful man in the world but because that was the way in which our bodies met—with the angels watching over us.
For the third time that night—the first was when my spirit flew with the eagle of Baikal, the second when I heard that childhood tune—time had stopped. I was entirely there, with no past or future, experiencing the music with her, that unexpected prayer, and feeling grateful that I had set off in search of my kingdom. I lay down on the bed, and she continued to play. I fell asleep to the sound of her violin.
I WOKE AT FIRST LIGHT, went to her room, and saw her face. For the first time, she looked like an ordinary twenty-one-year-old woman. I woke her gently and asked her to get dressed because Yao was waiting for us to have breakfast. We had to get back to Irkutsk. The train would be leaving in a few hours.
We go downstairs, eat some marinated fish for breakfast (the only thing on the menu at that hour), then hear the sound of the car that has come to fetch us drawing up outside. The driver greets us, takes our bags, and puts them in the trunk.
We emerge from the hotel into brilliant sunshine, clear skies, and no wind. The snowy mountains in the distance are clearly visible. I pause to say good-bye to the lake, knowing that I will probably never be back. Yao and Hilal get into the car, and the driver starts the engine.
But I can’t move.
“We’d better go,” he says. “I’ve allowed an extra hour, just in case there’s some accident en route, but I don’t want to risk missing the train.”
The lake is calling to me.
Yao gets out of the car and comes over. “You were perhaps expecting more from that meeting last night with the shaman, but it was very important to me.”
I had, in fact, expected less. Later, I will tell him what happened with Hilal. Now I am looking at the lake, which is dawning along with the sun, its waters reflecting every ray. My spirit had visited it with the eagle of Baikal, but I need to know it better.
“Things aren’t always the way we expect them to be,” he goes on. “But I’m really grateful to you for coming.”
“Is it possible to deviate from the path God has made? Yes, but it’s always a mistake. Is it possible to avoid pain? Yes, but you’ll never learn anything. Is it possible to know something without ever having experienced it? Yes, but it will never truly be part of you.”
And with those words, I walk toward the waters that continue to call to me. I do so slowly at first, hesitantly, unsure as to whether I will reach them. When I feel reason trying to hold me back, I start to walk more quickly, then break into a run, pulling off my winter clothes as I do. By the time I reach the edge of the lake, I am wearing only my underpants. For a moment, for a fraction of a second, I hesitate, but my doubts are not strong enough to prevent me from going forward. The icy water touches first my feet, then my ankles. The bottom of the lake is covered with stones, and I have difficulty maintaining my balance, but I keep going, until the water is deep enough to—
My body enters the freezing water, I feel thousands of needles pricking my skin, I stay under for as long as I can—a few seconds, perhaps, perhaps an eternity—then I return to the surface.
Later, I realize that anyone moving from a very cold place to a warmer place experiences the same sensation. There I was, with no shirt on, knee-deep in the waters of Lake Baikal, as happy as a child, because I had been enfolded in an energy that was now part of me.
Yao and Hilal had followed me and were watching incredulously from the shore.
“Come on! Come on in!”
They both start getting undressed. Hilal has nothing on underneath and is once again completely naked. But what does that matter? Some people gather on the pier and watch us. But, again, who cares? The lake is ours. The world is ours.
Yao is first in. He doesn’t realize how uneven the bottom of the lake is and falls. He gets up, wades in a little farther, then takes the plunge. Hilal must have levitated over the pebbles, because she enters at a run, going farther out than either of us before plunging in; then she opens her arms to the skies and laughs like a loon.
No more than five minutes could have passed from the moment when I started running toward the lake until the moment we emerged. The driver, beside himself with worry, comes running toward us, bearing towels hastily borrowed from the hotel. We are leaping gleefully up and down, hugging one another, singing, shouting, and saying, “It’s so hot out here!”—like the children we will never, ever cease to be.
The City
FOR THE LAST TIME ON THIS JOURNEY, I adjust my watch. It’s five o’clock in the morning on May 30, 2006. In Moscow, which is seven hours behind, people are still having supper on the night of the 29th.
Everyone in the carriage woke early and found it impossible to get back to sleep, not because of the motion of the train, to which we have become accustomed, but because we will shortly be arriving in Vladivostok, our final stop. We have spent the last two days in the carriage, mostly sitting around the table that has been the center of our universe during this seemingly unending journey. We ate and told stories, and I described what it felt like to plunge into Lake Baikal, although the others were more interested in our meeting with the shaman.
My publishers had a brilliant idea: they would forewarn the stations en route of our arrival time. That way, whether it was day or night, I would get out of the carriage to find people waiting on the platform with books to sign. They thanked me, and I thanked them. Sometimes we stayed for only five minutes, sometimes for twenty. They blessed me, and I gratefully received their blessings, which came from all kinds of people, from elderly ladies in long coats, boots, and head scarves to young men who had just left work or were heading home, usually wearing only a jacket, as if to say, “I’m too tough for the cold to get to me.”
The previous day, I had decided to walk the whole length of the train. This was something I had thought of doing several times but always put off for another day, given that we had such a long journey ahead of us. Then I realized that we were nearly at our final destination.
I asked Yao to go with me. We opened and closed numerous doors, too many to count. Only then did I understand that I wasn’t on a train but in a city, a country, a whole universe. I should have done this before. The journey would have been so much richer; I might have met fascinating people and heard stories I could later turn into books.
I spent the whole afternoon investigating that city on wheels, pausing only to get off whenever we pulled into a station to meet any waiting readers. I walked through that great city as I have through many others and saw all the usual scenes: a man talking on his cell phone, a boy hurrying back to fetch something he had left behind in the dining car, a mother with a baby on her lap, two young people kissing in the narrow corridor outside the compartments, oblivious to the landscape speeding past outside, radios at full blast, signs I couldn’t understand,
