Untrodden paths

Victor: Whatever team you play for there’s only one goal in this ball game.

Tupikov, a portly man in his sixties, grinning: Victor Vasilyevich is a philosopher, got here because of it.

Victor: No, I’m not a philosopher. I used to practice yoga, until my enlightenment, then I wrote a book – and here we are…

Tupikov: Now psychiatrists are busy writing the review. After which, unless the author shuts up, the «publisher» would pay him lavish royalties, which you, Victor Vasilyevich, would be at pains to enjoy, say, in Sychevka, or in Kazan’s life ward.

Victor: Well, Nikolai Ivanovich, I’ve never shied away from the graces of our high and mighty. Besides, one can write in Kazan too.

Andrei and Sasha laugh.

Sasha: Victor, they’ll give you such hell for your ravings you won’t know how to read, much less write.

Victor: If I remember correctly, Porfiriy Ivanov was able to write his things when they locked him in Kazan psychiatric prison.

Sasha: Who’s that?

Victor: A Russian healer, a yogi.

Tupikov: Victor Vasilyevich, Ivanov, being a yogi and a healer, never meddled in politics.

Sasha: A pal of mine returned from Kazan recently. He says the guy who tried to shoot Brezhnev in Red

Square is still in solitary. The guys there have tried repeatedly to pass him cigarettes at least, but the coppers never let them.

Andrei, surprised: Is he still there? It’s been over twenty years since he…

Sasha: What did you expect? It’s a life ward…

The somber mood was broken by Bachkov reappearing in the doorway: Hey, loafers, breakfast time!

With a joyous cry Voronin leaps from his cot. In the doorway he receives from Bachkov a kick in the ass, so hard it might have knocked anyone else down, but Voronin just gave another loud raspberry and raced to the dining hall, reciting on the way children’s verses «I’m a jolly little cloud mistaken for a bear. I’m a jolly little cloud, floating here and there…»

The rest, smiling, leave the ward slowly, leaving behind only Victor Vasilyevich and Andrei, who went on scrubbing.

Andrei: Why don’t you go?

Victor: I take my meals only once a day.

Andrei: Oh, yes, you are a yogi. I myself have been practicing yoga for 15 years already. I’ve read lots of books on it, and on the occult in general.

Victor: Really? In our country one can get these books only by samizdat. You have a chance to get such literature?

Andrei: No, I just happen to know English and spend a lot of time in the library of foreign literature in

Moscow.

Victor: I see: a second language is a second life.

Andrei: Frankly, what I wanted to say is that I don’t know what a person could write about yoga to land him in a psychiatric hospital.

Victor: First of all, there are lots of things about yoga which the authorities would like to keep secret from the public, mostly things which concern mind control. That’s actually why the occult department was formed inside the KGB.

Andrei: Really? Well, on the other hand, why not – bearing in mind that there’s no hole in the country they won’t stick their nose in.

Victor: Of course, they do. How else can you explain the fact that all our underground groups in yoga, martial arts, and esoterica in general are controlled by the KGB, sometimes even guided?

Andrei: You mean they are hiding more from the public than from the authorities?

Victor: Of course!

Andrei: And their goal – control and modification of conduct?

Victor: This too. You seem to know the issue and catch on fast.

Andrei: Yes, I read a few reports on similar CIA programs and occult sects created in the US for those purposes. It’s hard to hide such things in a democratic country with its Freedom of Information Act.

But what did you write about this to cause the KGB to send you here?

Victor: Nothing yet. They sent me here for creating a new dialectics and using it in analyzing the present political situation as well as for giving forecasts for the future that warn about the complete disintegration of our political system – which they, for some reason, call communist – and for warning about the consequences which might take place if the regime, clinging to power, should resort to methods of control and manipulation of the public mind.

Andrei: I see. But how are your dialectics related to yoga? It seems to me that dialectics is part of philosophy.

Victor: It’s directly related.