Heaven on Earth

Loo just finished The Brothers Karamozv by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Her eyes flash. She shuts the novel, softly, rejects that world of men, and abstains from the wicked impulse to slam her book shut. The young boy Ilyusha Snegiryov climbed under the rails and waited for the train. Loo urges the train forward, comprehending the full consequences of her sin. There is much wickedness in Loo. She at least, realizes this. Surely, she should be creating “good” in the world but she does not. It’s really a problem, at least for good’s sake. Whatever good is. She somehow knows that the sake of “good” is not a tangible motive. Not enough reason to charge, guns blazing. When the rain pours the idea of “good” is washed away, chalk that has been scratched onto the sidewalk, painted, marked with all the intellect and hopeful impact of a youngster. Hope is not enough either. Hope and chalk and good are all washed away when the rain comes. Even trickling rain. Given enough trickling rain, the whole world will surely dissolve. Loo presses her forehead to the glass. White forehead, pale as an eggshell. The window is clear as all windows are, but she wonders - why it is not as white as her pale forehead? Why it is not white like eggshells? Eggshells are so pretty. We buy eggshells from the store, in the cartons and all, and they are so pretty. All nice and put together, full of life inside of them. And so the life slowly dissolves like the chalk and the rain and the hope and even the rain dissolves, see, and there is not much to do but dissolve with everything else. Loo presses her lips to eggshells when she buys them. What a treat, what a treat. Eggs to eat. She shrieks. Eggs come in those nice cartons. She uses the cartons for Ping-Pong balls when she’s done with the eggs. But are they ever really done with? Can they be done with? All that happens is they’re thrown away after the eating and they rot in the metal, stainless steel trashcan. Trash heap. Dump. Sea. Into the sea into the sea the eggshells go, or maybe they are burned, but they were so pretty when we got them, she moans. Nice and white like my forehead, like the window if it were milkier, like the galaxy when it is blown into shards of light. See, eggshells are beautiful. And then they are broken. Crack crack crack against the edge of the table. Swish swish swish screams their yoke, inside the bowl. Loo flashes her eyes. She likes to do that, now, ever since she started Dostoevsky. It seems all that Russians do are flash their eyes and they also do quite a bit of laughing and of sobbing… of weeping and wailing and betraying and…. They are crazy. Loo has decided that all Russians are crazy because of Dostoevsky. She wonders if they are much like the Karamozvs at all. Probably not. The Karamozvs are a strange bunch. There are three brothers, and they are all out to get each other, at least the two are, and Alyosha is the hero but Loo is not quite sure why. They are all out to destroy each other’s lives, at least at the beginning, and at the least to steal each other’s money and to steal each other’s women. The women. Oh boy. Then the stench from the dead monk, the one so esteemed. Esteemed, respected, king-like or something or other. Is that when Alyosha became the hero? When his mentor died? How come that always happens? With Harry Potter? With Luke Skywalker? It becomes a tradition, almost. Traditions should not be kept for the sake of themselves. They are kept because they occur over and over again, and then they are dubbed “tradition,” as if it is some sort of powerful last and first name all heaped into one being. An identity. Loo is fretting. She does fret, as so many Russian women do. Once she pricked herself by mistake in the shower, shaving around her ankle, and she immediately bent to check on her wound and it turned out to be a prominent blue vessel that was perhaps bursting into deep red blood and the blood trickled down in accordance with the trickling of the water into the drain. She fret then, in the shower I mean, when her blood was coming out. It really wasn’t that scary, after she dried off and everything, but meanwhile she practically caved and no sir, not because of her battle wound, not because of the eager meaning lives of her bastard sons or the stories about the donut bribing queen of the court… She already knew the message of Dostoevsky even before she saw its golden spine. There was a plaque on her bathroom wall that talked all about “dance like nobody’s watching,” “sing…” blah blah blah and all that phony nonsense, and then it said, “Live like its Heaven on Earth.” She saw that plaque every time she sat on the toilet and didn’t think much of it, but today in the shower with her little wound she began to sob recklessly and fall to her knees in pain. Because it’s not Heaven on Earth. Everybody knows it. Different names for different places. Come on people. But you know? Loo is ok. Loo is not like Dmitri or anything, not unjustly accused or sent to Siberia. Not regarded with suspicion because of her last name, or assigned twenty years labor in the mines. Loo did not kill her father, like Ivan did in his heart. You know what? They all killed his father. Eh? Why not? How do we know they didn’t? Guilty until proven innocent, right? That’s how the Russian court systems work anyway. You are set up for something, you take the fall. You fall and fall and fall until your head splits open like old Grigory’s and there’s not much to do about it then, eh? The lawyers didn’t spit worth a dime either. The defense attorney was pretty and all, and old, pretty like an old lawyer with a silver tongue and earlobes and all, but all he did was make the people very sad when Dmitri fell. The prosecutor presented evidence. Not enough evidence to be sure, but enough to carry the burden of proof. What is the burden of proof? It must rest on the backs of each juror, until all the sudden it plummets off to the floor and there is no more burden at all, just a whim. Jurors cannot be trusted. Judges cannot be trusted. They are mere men. There is no one to be trusted but God and God’s Word through men and God’s Work through men. Alyosha should have been the judge. That’s what Loo thinks. Alyosha, hero of the novel, watching the brothers perish, the brothers - savage, cannibals, eaten alive by each other, by themselves. By their loves and by the ones who loved all. Phileo. A real show of it, eh? That’s what Loo thinks, anyway. Alyosha was the hero because he inspired those young boys who really had nothing to do with the tale. He gave them a good Karamozv to look up to, the monk who has been rejected. The one who rejected evil despite evil’s claims. These are senseless mutterings. Loo is disappointed. That’s all. NO IT IS NOT ALL IT IS MUCH. Much much much. The taming of the shrew, the locusts, floundering, the screams of Lise as she perishes in her bed, sick, lame, decidedly lonely. She loved Alyosha as much as her soul, so she stole his soul and alas, there was nothing left to love. Gold mines. That’s the key here.  If they had all gone out into the wide world and explored and discovered their own goldmines there wouldn’t be much trouble at all. Why, Dmitri would have fled long before his father’s death! Ivan would never have returned, in the first place, and Alyosha would have been the only Karamozv left in the whole village and a good one at that. Even people looking for rumors would forget all about what the name Karamozv meant. Alyosha would paint it over. White like an eggshell that hasn’t been cracked. But that’s the thing about people. No matter how long you wait to see if things will turn out all right, eggshells eventually crack and all of the goodness seeps out and it is no longer very pretty at all. Be gone devil. That’s just what you have to say sometimes, like Alyosha did before he fell asleep certain nights, every nights, really, and a great peace fell around him, gossamer sheets, and an invisible cloak to the devil. Sure, the devil knew where he was but the devil daren’t touch Alyosha. Alyosha. The good Karamozv. The name carried with celebration into the streets of Russia, the schoolboys hoist it with joy, despite their fallen comrade. “A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.” Joseph Addison said that. Loo has no earthly idea who Joseph Addison is but she would visit him, if she could. He must know how to have a contented mind, because if he didn’t he would have no earthly idea how to enjoy the greatest blessing in this world. Loo wishes she knew where to find this Addison fellow. He must not be Russian. If he was Russian he would be the laughing sort, Loo is sure. If he is Russian Loo would look him up and visit him sure soon as possible because right now she is in Russia and that is why she read Dostoevsky, to have the real Russian experience before her exchange program began and now its begun and now she’s finished with her novel and there is not much to be done now but weep for the bastard Russians and their children. Did you know, Russians are always laughing or weeping? Or both? That’s what gives her away, Loo acknowledges. That’s why people here can tell she’s not Russian. When she laughs it’s a silent sort of thing and when she weeps it is in private. A sad state of affairs. She is awful sad right now, Loo is. She is looking out of the window and there’s nothing but snow and all of that moisture hanging in the air. Dark clouds are all around forming a crown over the flat lands. Spreading to the sea, a wave before the waves begin. When her head turns back from the window she sighs. There is a fellow that’s been watching her for some time now, a rather Alyosha looking fellow. Loo has been peeking at him occasionally. She thought many times now, every time she saw him now, that he looked a great deal like Alyosha. What a surprise. To be reading and reading about the Karamozvs and now here they are on her train speeding through Russia. She is supposed to be heading to her student exchange hostile, and then everything will be fine and these deplorable thoughts about the Karamozvs will dissolve with all the rest of the world and with those black cloud waves, bursting through the sky like dark horses, like the dark black horses with the ribbons around their neck in the bachelor’s billiards room, in the widow’s kitchen. She caught Alyosha looking at her. Understand, now, Loo is not a homely lady. Loo is young, a little under twenty perhaps. Her eyes are fresh hazel, a deep fresh hazel like the stained sea, like a minty tea. She carries the feminine curve Dostoevsky so admires, the lust sought after by many Fyodors, the plump burgundy lips, nearly brown, a nose without billow, hands white as the sails of St. Mary, the majestic ship of the East, teeth glistening in the trenches of bottomless youth, her body clenched, tight, stretched as a rubber band, taunt between the man’s fingers of her choosing. Loo is a happy medium between the figures of Grushenka and Katerina, and she carries herself as if she has recently suffered a sensuous affair. Recently betrayed by her lover. Loo knows her own beauty. She knows because men stare, even the old disgusting ones. Even the thick necked, bowing strudel pigeon nosed Fyodor’s, and she is greatly discouraged and despises her beauty quite as much as loves it. No one truly hates their endowments so much as loves them. It is impossible. Nobility of such hatred is far distant from baseness, thus can never reach fruition. I mentioned elasticity. Baseness is the center of the pull and each soul shall eventually recoil, suddenly snap back to the base depravity of things. Loo smiles at Alyosha, secretly glad she has caught his eye. With all intention of brotherly love, he draws near and squats beside her on the seat that originally seated one but now must seat two, and QUICK before his baseness dissolves entirely he leans in toward the window that should be milky and kisses her full on the lips. Oh, she says. She did not expect that from Alyosha. She pushes him away, after the kiss. One never interrupts a kiss, no matter how rude, and stares him in the eye for a moment to digest his soul but understands the nearness of another attack. She swivels her head quick as she can. The trees fly by outside of the window. Surely the snow will melt soon. It must melt soon, it is summer now. Snow is not allowed. Baseness is not allowed and snow is base. WHAT? She screams. Alyosha is supposed to be nice, you know. The hero of the school boys. The scape goat. The innocent of the three brothers. The good, good Karamozv who conquers the baseness of his name because he is born of a different mother…. Despite his wicked father. Turns out Alyosha is as sensuous as all of them. As sensuous as her. As Loo. As Grushenka. As Katerina. Dmitri. Ivan. Loo’s soul bursts with longing and shrivels with depravity. With weakness. She abhors all she has become and all she has conquered. She rejects the ideals learned and shared, the qualities that might seem to bring Heaven to Earth but nonetheless reveal other qualities all the more. The sin, Loo means. The juicy fruit of Adam and Eve. Fruit of the Loom, like the underwear company. There is one thing Loo knows about writing, for instance.  You can always delete ideas you have written down, but once they’ve left your brain there’s no getting them back, for instance, so it sure is best to scribble them down right away and hold down backspace later, if you wish. She turns around and kisses Alyosha on the forehead. He doesn’t return the favor. Her initial hurt was obvious. Alyosha attempts to mend the wound, to be gentle and all, like a real man. That’s what people say a lot anyway. That real men are gentle. The truth is that men are men whether they are real or gentle or whatever. So now he is looking away, embarrassed, and Loo is looking forward, laughing. Even though she is not a Russian she can laugh silently and see that not all in life is terrible after all. Alyosha’s kid brother walks over from the other side of the cabin and sits on Loo’s lap. She laughs louder now. An engine releasing steam, not loudly, just enthusiastically. She pokes the kid brother in the nose and he laughs too. Now there’s a real Russian. Real Russians don’t look out the window, turns out. They just look at you and study your features while you look out the window. Loo would very much like to just get to her destination so she can read more Dostoevsky but she really doesn’t want to. His writing is the sort that numbs your brain because of all the large words, but it also entertains your soul. The characters are unique. Heroes without egos. Egos without heroism. They change your life you know. You start seeing them outside of the pages, with their kid brothers sitting on your lap and their baseness staring you in the face while you look out the window. Suddenly Loo sees a beautiful thing through the window. The air has become enchanted. Enchanted like Grushenka if she were air. The atmosphere, shimmering, twisting lithely, a serpent in the sky. So many colors, surreal colors. A rainbow. Alyosha is not looking out the window. The kid brother is not looking out the window. They do not see. Would they see, if they looked? Instead they are looking at Loo, studying Loo’s beautiful pale face as they would a dead butterfly pinned to cardstock. Loo does a terrible thing then. She decides, resolutely as any politician would, that these fellows have no interest in seeing a rainbow. She will keep all of the rainbows for herself. She must. It is her blessing from God. Her pure blessing straight from the Heavens, and she ruins it now in her selfish muster. She keeps them, hoards them, even before the youngster who probably has never seen a rainbow in his youth…. Take that, Alyosha. Her face does not change, but internally, wicked thoughts take flight. Take that, hypocrite, desperado, vile serpent, sensuous leech! She submits to his will but hates him with a trembling, shivering disgust. A disgust kept within the folds of a murderous wench. Wicked. Fickle. So all the rainbows fade away in the evening sky. The night train plows along in Russian country, barren like so many women. Somewhere in the distance the daredevil Ilyusha Snegiryov lays down between the tracks and prays.