Denis Nushtaev - True Sadness

Editor Kristina Golovko

Translator Evgeny Teterin

Illustrator Alexey Dmitriev

© Denis Nushtaev, 2022

© Evgeny Teterin, translation, 2022

© Alexey Dmitriev, illustrations, 2022

ISBN 978-5-0056-5355-0

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Some minutes ago I made myself a coffee and instantly started working on the book. It is only the book that helps me to concentrate after what happened here, in this very room. Every object here inadvertently conjures my memories but even this yellow cup of coffee doesn’t help me untwine the lines of this intricate fate made of strong memory fibers. When this feeling flooded me again, I quickly tried to find a foothold for my further narration. And suddenly I remembered a childhood story – “Hoici’s True Sadness”.

Hoici could create incredibly beautiful poems full of heavenly airiness, lightness of fertile pollen, depth of blue sky seen from a mountain ridge – his rhymes were flowers, his poetry was nature, all his passion was put into mellifluent angels and they hailed him around the towns and villages. Even the Emperor of the Earth was made jealous of these poems, which were his only comfort: he left the palace and after a long time in the densest forests found errant Hoici.

Out of endless anguish, the Emperor stopped eating, his feverish mind couldn’t stand any thoughts and so he barred his contemplations in every way, he inflicted punishment on himself exhausting his very being. “Don’t, – said Hoici. – If my poems make you suffer, then they are bad poems and I will not write them again”. “I beg, write one more or I will blame myself on Earth and in Heaven for shattering your inspiration”. And Hoici wrote his last creation – a poem of true sadness of falling leaves, opening chrysalis, passionate heart, awakening spring and all the basic reality, as well as the poem of his only love which encased all his art with vacuum, making this art unearthly. And Hoici said: “My poem is now going to Heavens to settle in the realms of Izanami. But my beloved will be reborn and she will sing this poem, and I will meet her in my new flesh, and our souls will live in this world forever because we beheld the true sadness.” The Emperor saw Hoici’s soul divide into a plenty of souls and Hoici’s poems turn into four woman’s hairs, of which the Emperor made a musical instrument. He tried to reproduce the melody of the poem to tell Hoici’s story but failed to find a proper tune – this way he spent twenty years in this forest until he despaired and told his story. It was different, it had a different tune but only it could comfort the Emperor’s anguish – it made him almost happy.

Hoici’s story is very long and I will return to it because it was this story that helped me feel the irony of what had happened, dive into the deep and sweet and rich incomprehension. And now I also want to tell my story of “true sadness”, genuine for all possible worlds; but having poor imagination and no poetic talent, I am able to present it only in the form of a short essay, made of stories, opinions and fantasies of other people, from the past and the present, and my own notes where I have been trying to find the answers to three questions that scrape my soul. The first one definitely tortures every resident of our island from the very childhood – do we have to go beyond the borders of the island, and are we complete idiots when we try to answer this question? The second one is my naïve hypothesis – is human imagination the only reality? Maybe, we must seek the answers in it? The third one is a part of my personal story – what happened to my friend? The answer to it will give the clue to understand the first two to the full extent, as its mystery lies in a real and tragic life of my friend who tried to go beyond the border but couldn’t handle the inconstancy of his nature, plopped on the banality of reality and in the end couldn’t stand the prosaism of human spirit.

I never noticed Alan’s sufferings. Our friendship was built on endless dialogues, due to which we found the way to other spheres, ornamented our own mindset and in which Alan always went further than me, usually forgetting where he started. But now his sufferings mystically cut the fabric of my perception to different individual realities, forcefully tore the alive and full-blooded organism into several parts, and the new wholesome perception of the man who – as I thought I knew well – came to me only through the interpretations of memory free of impression.

Through the weeping canopy of a tree, into my room comes the morning ray of light. Sizzling all the trifles on my desk as if it wants to seize the cup which Alan presented to me. If there is anything that can return Alan into this world by some mystic ceremony, this china cup is the best gangway between the worlds. Its round stumpy shape creates the vacuum within, its elegant handle connects this vacuum with our world and a coffee bean image on its bottom reminds me of the unstoppable force of human fantasy. Please stay with me in this room for some time so that I can’t feel so miserable – the thought of this text being read warms my human nature incredibly.

My room is in a mental hospital where I have been living and working since my childhood, and which in large part reflects the spirit of our island, measuring its years of existence in the form of stories ingrained in its units. The wonderful world in which we found ourselves created a much more fertile soil for insanity that it had been in the previous ages – here we are always surrounded by incomprehension. It is ironic that people with such a science development as ours have self-awareness of ancient tribes: we don’t even always know why it rains here. Our island’s story confirms the theory that for people there is no scarier a devil than incomprehension, which is always with us – even when we feel enjoyment, a thought will definitely cross our minds: this will (and soon) be over, so we try our best to extend any enjoyment with the things we start associate our pleasant moments of our life with. If your arm is cut off, you will know the source of pain, and despite the fear, your soul will immediately start its painstaking work to restore your delusive self-awareness, but incomprehension is insidious – coming from outside, it settles in our soul and infects it with dangerous ideas. It is “incomprehension” with which I explain the fact that so many people are trying to escape the island knowing about the grave perils beyond its borders, and I became convinced in that when Alan decided to leave it.

I recall one patient in our hospital who lost a baby. Dismissing the fact of what had happened she tried to kill a person. She wanted to prove that people don’t die and a soul can be seen in a material form. When she was brought here, she demanded to see a scientist. As an experiment we complied with her request and she met one university professor. She started to ask him to show her a soul and offered any money for that, to which the professor courteously admitted his incompetence.

– Scientists know everything, – she was shouting, – I will not believe that they have never seen a soul. Then what do they know?

– They know a lot about our world but there are things that you cannot comprehend.

– There’s nothing good in our world. Why know about it? Give me people’s souls, I want to see people’s souls!