(excerpted/reedit from "The Khazar Dictionaries")
The traveler has a passport that is considered western in the East and eastern in the West. Her passport therefore causes suspicion in both East and West. At the bottom of a ravine furrowed with paths, she looks for the famous school in a deep forest, a school where she is to pass her greatest test. Her journey is long and difficult and it eats up the years.
On finally reaching the forest, she meets two men and asks them the way. They gaze at her, leaning on their weapons and remain silent, although they do say they know there the school is. Then one of them points with his finger and says: "Go that way and at the first crossing turn left, and then left again, it will bring you right to the school." The traveler thanks them, thinking it was a good thing they had not checked her travel document because they would certainly be suspicious of her as a foreigner and would wonder what her real purpose was.
She continues down the path, takes the first left turn, and then left again. It is not at all difficult to follow the directions. But the second path on the left leads not to the school but to a large swamp. And in front of the swamp stand two smiling, armed men whom she already knows. They apologize through their smiles and say: "We gave you the wrong directions. You should have turned right at the first crossing and then right again and there is the school. But we had to find out whether you really did not know the way or were just pretending. However it is late now, and you can't reach the school today. And that means not ever.
Because the school will no longer exist as of tomorrow. You have missed your entire life's destination because of this small test, but you must realize that we had to take this precaution. But don't blame yourself either. Had you taken the opposite direction and gone right instead of left, it wouldn't have changed anything, because then we would have known that you were deceiving us. Your purpose would have been clearly suspect since you were concealing it from us. So you really can't get to the school either way. But you haven't sacrificed your life in vain. It has been used to verify something in the world, and that is no small matter."
On finally reaching the forest, she meets two men and asks them the way. They gaze at her, leaning on their weapons and remain silent, although they do say they know there the school is. Then one of them points with his finger and says: "Go that way and at the first crossing turn left, and then left again, it will bring you right to the school." The traveler thanks them, thinking it was a good thing they had not checked her travel document because they would certainly be suspicious of her as a foreigner and would wonder what her real purpose was.
She continues down the path, takes the first left turn, and then left again. It is not at all difficult to follow the directions. But the second path on the left leads not to the school but to a large swamp. And in front of the swamp stand two smiling, armed men whom she already knows. They apologize through their smiles and say: "We gave you the wrong directions. You should have turned right at the first crossing and then right again and there is the school. But we had to find out whether you really did not know the way or were just pretending. However it is late now, and you can't reach the school today. And that means not ever.
Because the school will no longer exist as of tomorrow. You have missed your entire life's destination because of this small test, but you must realize that we had to take this precaution. But don't blame yourself either. Had you taken the opposite direction and gone right instead of left, it wouldn't have changed anything, because then we would have known that you were deceiving us. Your purpose would have been clearly suspect since you were concealing it from us. So you really can't get to the school either way. But you haven't sacrificed your life in vain. It has been used to verify something in the world, and that is no small matter."
The men talked on and the traveler had one consolation. She had not shown her passport, and the men by the huge swamp had no idea what color it really was. But at the same time she had deceived them and hindered their investigation which meant that her life had actually been sacrificed in vain after all. Of course it was in vain only from their point of view and she didn't really care what they thought, and thus it all comes out the same anyway.
And so the purpose of her being which no longer awaited her must inevitably shift against the flow of time. Now she begins to think that the purpose was not in the school itself, but somewhere along the way to the school, vain as the actual search may have been. Suddenly her memory of the search becomes more and more beautiful, and she concludes that the crucial thing happened not at the end of the road in front of the school but somewhere much earlier on during the first half of the journey.
She begins to scrutinize her memory, looks for the most important details. She narrows down their number, until, by increasingly ruthless reduction and strict selection, she arrives at a single scene from her memory.
A table and on it a glass of wine colored with another wine. Dreams of the night before baked into hot bread which has the dark face of your father and the shape of your mother's mouth. Cheese made from the milk of both the old and young island sheep. And on the table with the food, three red candles topped with flame and next to them, a book with a song of your life flowing through it.
Azure Ray - "Make Your Heart"
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Sources:
photo: photos.dia.ru
