Читать книгу Fire Smoldering Under Water - Anastasia Kuznetsova - Страница 3
Chapter 1. Descendants of Mediums
African Poacher’s Son
ОглавлениеLittle Jean Batist was running so fast that the wind, swelling the lungs as a sail, interrupted his breathing.
He was 7 years old. He ran with his head down watching each step carefully, viewing the splitting jungle wilderness on the run. Jean Batist was in a hurry to get back before the sunset.
The sunset on the equator was early – it was already dark at 6 pm. And then wild animals went out for hunting. He had to run to make it home in time. But yesterday while running his 11 kilometers home from school he did not meet the snake. That was not good. It meant that they might meet today. And he would lose precious time.
Rwanda or as they also call it “Land of a thousand hills” is covered with subtropical forest. Lake Kivu being the most beautiful of the African Great Lakes, the waters of which are free from crocodiles that live in all the other bodies of water, and the banks of which are inhabited by 2 million people, amazes with its authentic beauty.
In the period of Jean Batist’s childhood the Rwandese Republic, located between Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Zaire, was different. Only 4 million people lived there. But until now, after civilization has come to this African country and its population has increased to 11 million people in just some 50 years, Rwanda is still considered to be a paradise on Earth. During the year the air temperature remains around 25 degrees Celsius. The harvest which is reaped several times a year has an excellent taste.
Local residents are engaged in agriculture and hunting. Nobody rushes to the palaces of education. Because intermittent wars and life on land do not assume that children would leave their families for a long road of education. But half a century ago, when two tribes of Tutsi and Hutu had already been at war with each other, creating a semblance of a relative peace, Jean Batist’s parents had made a decision that all five of their children should go to school, though only Jean proved to be able to study.
It was not easy.
At that time there were only 15 hospitals for the whole country and 95 percent of the population was illiterate. Jean Batist’s parents could not write or read as well as actually everyone else in the area – there was no need for that. Other values made these people’s lives replete and happy:
– To get up at dawn with the first lights of equatorial sun.
– To reap a harvest working 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
– To go hunting successfully trying to avoid to be killed by wild animals.
– To cook and eat fresh food as the food can only be freshly cooked – there is no place to store it.
– To relax in the evening with dances and freshly brewed banana beer by the fire, in a big friendly company.
– To sing a lullaby to a baby.
– To listen to a medium, the tribe’s voodoo, who was Jean Batist’s grandfather and who revealed to people amazing mysteries of predictions.
– To kill a snake.
Among the country’s population of 4 million people only very few kids could become elementary school pupils. After 7 years of elementary school, even less kids used to progress to the secondary school which lasted for 6 years.
There was no need for that. It was much more important to continue carrying out their father’s work: to work on land, raise cattle or to learn the trade of hunting.
Jean Batist’s age mates who were 7 years old got up at dawn to clean the barn from cows’ and goats’ dung and then went to help at the banana plantations. For the sake of attending school Jean Batist’s father relieved him of other work. So in the morning the boy just cleaned the barn and then ran to school.
This was difficult but his father could afford it. He was a poacher from Hutu tribe, and at his banana plantation worked the Rwandans from Tutsi and Hutu tribes, who needed money and who could dig the ground. Jean Batist’s father could not. He was a mine worker. And after work at the mine he hunted wild animals and buffaloes.
When Jean reached the age of 7, he was sent to school. The only one of all the families who lived in the area. It was 11 kilometers to his school. Every day little Jean Batist ran the distance of 22 kilometers.
He ran only because if he walked he would not make it to school on time in the morning, by the time the classes began. As well as he would not manage to be back in the evening before the sunset, before the moment when wild animals went out for hunting. By running he saved time to study and managed to survive. But he had one problem – not to miss a snake.
The parents told their children since childhood:
– If you see a snake – you should kill it. If you do not kill it – the snake will kill you. Or somebody else. A snake has to be killed.
That is why when he saw a snake he stopped. He knew that a deadly black mamba bite was too fast. And he had to react in time.
Black mamba, reaching a length of 4 meters, is notable for the speed of its movement. It can move with a speed of 15 kilometers per hour. Jean Batist was a child of an elementary school age, his speed could not exceed 10 kilometers per hour, and so he could just watch how a black snake dissolves and disappears in the jungle. I such a case he did not even slow down the speed of his running. As this made no sense.
He was strictly prohibited to go inside the jungle by his father, who used to say that the jungle fed the first and killed the second to feed the first. And children had nothing to do there.
And so Jean Batist kept on running. He was a skilful long-distance runner and preferred not to stop without an urgent need, but only to change the intensity of his run.
So he ran without stopping. Until he met a black ribbon on the road. Then he had to act to the most of his abilities as a child.
But Jean Batist was a son of a hunter, of a poacher. His ancestors’ blood was in his genes. The blood of those who had survived because they were faster than death. And he used to grab its tail with a proven movement, to lift it up with a sharp jerk and to hit its head on the ground at full force. Then he hit it again and again. Until the intense and solid flesh of a deadly reptile turned into just limp remains of a legless animal, with a thin, largely stretched body, without movable eyelids.
Many years later, when the tribes of Tutsi and Hutu started to fight for power and the war broke out with Tutsi genocide, in which about a million people were killed, Jean Batist would see how this method of killing poisonous reptiles worked for his own countrymen.
Warriors from the tribe of Hutu annihilated Tutsi with extreme cruelty, sparing nobody. Tutsi soldiers from the patriotic front, who attacked Rwanda, also annihilated every Hutu they met on their way.
They killed children like snakes.
They killed infants in an absolutely terrifying way. They took kids by a leg and hit hard against the ground or a solid object. They hit them until the brains started to flow from a small skull. After that they threw the babies together with their parents in the waters of the Nile to be eaten by huge – five meter long, with the weight of six or seven hundred kilograms – crocodiles-cannibals, which destroyed the bodies in a matter of minutes.
War is always devastatingly disgusting.
But one still had to survive until a war.
It was like that during all seven years of the elementary school. Until Jean Batist had advanced to a secondary school. The education was stationary and the parents had sent their son for another six years to live in a relative analogue of a college. It was when Jean Batist had already turned 13 years of age, that they have bought him the first pair of shoes in his life.
He tried to do his best. Realizing how many hopes his parents associated with his education, Jean Batist, having a natural curiosity and an inquiring mind, demonstrated remarkable achievements in his studies.
The experience gained from the men of his family – his grandfather-medium and his father-poacher – and piled in a neat sandwich with new sciences, had produced a striking contrast.
Jean Batist knew no fear.
To be more exact, he demonstrated some special state, which could be characterized as a rejection of fear. This helped in everyday life as well as in socialization with his peers. From his grandfather-medium he had got a developed intuition as well as an insight. He always felt what the other person had in mind. And as the years went by it became more and more interesting for him to learn the mechanism of functioning of this strange system called the brain. He kept remembering the incident, which occurred to him when he still was at the elementary school and which affected his whole life, becoming probably his determining factor in choosing a profession.
It was the second year of his running to school. Once, when he ran in being a little late after killing another snake, Jean Batist was surprised to find out that there were no classes. All the children had been gathered in a big classroom where there were unknown people in white coats. The children were vaccinated. Jean Batist had never been vaccinated before. But he already knew that a doctor was a being close to God. The most kind, the most compassionate being in the world. This was what his parents always said. This was what everybody around said. And he lived in an absolute awareness of this truth.
When a doctor in a white coat came to him, he started to watch happily and curiously how he would be vaccinated for the first time in his life. The doctor came closer and roughly grabbed Jean Batist’s forearm to turn his back. Before he could resent in surprise, Jean Batist felt the syringe needle entered his shoulder blade and the fire broke out in his body. It happened so quickly that the next moment he was screaming something through tears to the back of the retreating doctor in a white coat. Severe pain entered his shoulder blade as a burning flow, and the worst of all was that this pain started to increase. Lurching from a sudden coming fatigue, he felt the trembling in his weakened legs and wanted to lie down right on the classroom floor.
But the fire greedily devouring the little body was so unbearable that in his last effort, lurching, he got out and ran.
He wanted to cool his body and he ran faster and faster so that the wind blowing from the run could bring some relief.
Thus, not seeing anything around from the pain, he ran until he got home.
Catching the sight of his home he started to slow down and then, already losing his consciousness, slowly sat down in the shade of a tree behind the house. Leaning back against the familiar trunk of the oil palm tree he sat there till dark, wiping away bitter tears of resentment and broken illusions.
This old oil palm tree was his secret friend. He used to come to it sometimes just to worry about something, turning over in his hands the dry leaves, which covered the ground around. Or dreamed about something, slowly touching the amazing bark of this tree. The tree, which had so much changed the life of the whole mankind.
Many years later, already pursuing science, Jean Batist would find out what a catastrophe had struck the whole planet in connection with this ordinary tree, from which the palm oil was produced.
The thing was that for getting this highly profitable product large areas of tropical forest were cut down every day.
The areas of the size of 300 football fields.
Per day.
Every day.
Until no more forests were left in several countries as well as the animals that once inhabited them. And the zone with the “greenhouse effect” had appeared over the territories of Indonesia and Malaysia, killing our planet.
He would find out that probably this particular product had played its role in a very short life span of his countrymen. Men seldom survived the upper limit of 65 years. And, as it had been proven, the amount of saturated fats of palm oil used in foods directly led to death, caused by a cardiovascular disease and a coronary heart disease.
And he would give up everything, which comprised palm oil, for the sake of his children’s lives and for the sake of saving the planet. And he would often think that if people realized the full horror of the disaster, which they brought closer with their own hands with every purchased product, food or perfume, drink or detergent – they would certainly give it up.
Forever.
When there is no demand, supply disappears.
And it would become possible to save this planet, which had been dying for a long time because of the devil of avarice of those, who believed that there were some pockets in the personal coffins for them and their children.
When his tears dried, Jean Batist who had already gone through a whole kaleidoscope of emotions, made up his mind. He would never forgive this person in a white coat.
Never.
For the pain.
For his rudeness.
For turning his back in response to the cry for help.
For the cruelty, which could not be natural for the one who knew the mystique of life and death.
For all the disappointment.
And he also made a decision that by all means he would become a doctor. In order to never cause pain to anybody. To become a real doctor and to help people with an open heart, looking into their eyes.
The time had passed. The results of Jean Batist’s education pleased his parents as well as his teachers. He drew the attention of his physics teacher – a monk from the congregation of catholic monks. They became friends. Monks with the mission of education or just with a kind human attitude had accompanied Jean Batist his entire life.
When the time came to go to university, the congregation of catholic monks helped Jean Batist, as one of the best students, to join the education program in Russia. Thus he got to Moscow, to the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba. He came to Russia with a distinctive objective of getting a high quality medical education and to come back to his homeland, to Africa, to serve people. To become a monk and to dedicate his life to medicine.
But often love of God cannot withstand a competition from the love of a woman.
– Damn it! – it was long since this had become Jean Batist’s favorite expression in Russian. – I don’t know what to do. Deeply confused he was sitting in from of a monk, in front of his former physics teacher, in front of his friend.
– All these years I wanted to become a monk so much that I did not look at any woman at all. Until she appeared. I don’t know what I should do! And I ask you, my teacher, to help me. I will do as you say.
The monk kept silence for a long while. Then he slowly began to explain in detail the things that at first glance were very obvious truths. But, as it turned out, only at first glance. This was a very long conversation. But Jean Batist had remembered its main and fundamental essence for his whole life.
We are all people made of flesh and blood. And it does not matter if we are monks or ordinary people living worldly lives.
It does not matter what we believe in.
And if we believe at all.
We are animals. This is our biological nature. And as any living organism we do react. We have feelings and emotions. We experience them in a natural way and cannot have a full control over them. The strongest feelings are Faith and Hate. Having the absolute faith a person is capable of almost anything. Even of giving their own lives. Having the absolute hate a person can take lives of others.
And when a human being meets a person, to whom he or she develops biological attraction and emotional attachment, we call it love.
Love of a person – is the highest emotion which is called a feeling and is peculiar to human beings only. As all the other highest emotions, love is a specific psychological state, which shows itself in a long-term and stable worrying about the object of love.
The feeling of love can be different depending on the object of love. Love of parents, love of children, love of a man or a woman, of work or pets, of reading or traveling – all of these are different manifestations of this highest emotion. That is why feelings are often classified according to subject areas. The last being divided into moral and ethical as well as intellectual, practical. This is very simple, as simple as an alphabet.
Love of God is not an emotion. And even not a feeling. It is called a true love because it cannot be demonstrated in the morning or in the evening. It does not depend on a season or a life situation. This unconditional love is a part of activities of a human being.
Love of God is a state. As breathing, for example. Breathing may become uneven when we worry. Or quiet and deep when we sleep. It may be different. Furthermore. Particularly the sound of our breathing is the main sound indicating that we are alive. Love of God is like this.
And it does not matter if you are a monk or a worldly person. The main thing is that you breathe.
Jean Batist had cherished forever the memories of that sleepless night, which he spent thinking after his conversation with the monk. Soon he married the woman he loved, and he spent the rest of his life in a close cooperation with monks who revealed for him this amazing insight into life.
After graduation from the university Jean Batist came back to Rwanda with his Russian wife. They built a beautiful house. His wife was surprised by a mild sub-equatorial climate, without heat or cold. They reaped harvest in their garden several times a year. There were no mosquitoes on the shore of a boundless scenic lake Kivu, where they used to come for vacation. Sunsets and sunrises boggled the imagination with their unusual splendor peculiar only to the equator.
There is almost no twilight at the equator. An absolute day starts to be filled with red, lilac, pink colors, the solar disk dives beyond the skyline and an absolute night falls. All of a sudden. As if somebody turns off the day light and turns on a night light of an endless starry sky. This world resembled a piece of paradise created for a family’s well-being. Nature generously rewarded every day of the year with the wealth of all the benefits, which it was able to give.
Together with his wife, a nurse, Jean Batist served the patients in the clinic and worked on his thesis. The time when we are absolutely happy is like a wave of eyelashes. We do not notice it. Soon their life got filled with children’s voices, their family happiness obtained the perfection of great creation of a great artist, and a war came to Rwanda.
Genocide of 1994 claimed the lives of a million people. Jean Batist’s father and brothers were killed. Rivers of blood were running through the city and corpses of the people hacked to death with machete closed the exits from houses. Jean Batist was forced to flee the country to save his family.
Again he had got help from the congregation of monks. Jean’s wife and children were first taken to one of the West African countries, then to Belgium. In Belgium they had to start everything from scratch. In the literal sense of the word.
Russian degree in medicine was not valid in Belgium and he had to study again. To study again to be a doctor. But there was no money, so only one of them could study to be a doctor. His wife stayed at home with the children in a housing provided by social services.
Everything was unfamiliar. Unfamiliar country, unfamiliar language, unfamiliar people.
They just had to survive.
And they were surviving.
It took 4 years to validate his qualifications. The congregation of monks helped in this situation as well. They provided Jean Batist with an opportunity to work at their psychiatric hospital. Monks in many countries of the world opened medical institutions for working with psychiatric patients as well as with deaf and blind persons. This was their mission. And this allowed Jean Batist to find a work for that long period when he studied again. Even after he had obtained the official status of a doctor-psychiatrist in Belgium, he continued to work at the neuropsychiatric hospital of St. Martin on the outskirts of Brussels.
For a long time the horrors of war still echoed in the memories of all the members of Jean Batist’s family. But time moves space, and in a while the professional self-fulfillment of Jean Batist started to develop successfully as he used his life experience in working with PTSD – post-traumatic stress disorder – applying this experience to treating the people who had gone through a war.
Psychological traumas – is a special subject studied by psychotherapists. Jean Batist was not a supporter of a human body’s exposure to pharmaceuticals.
According to his long-term observations, it was quite obvious to him that a trans state in hypnotherapy was more qualitative by its nature than antidepressant drugs. Certainly not in every case, but in the cases related to mental health – for sure.
When mentally healthy people go through traumas, it is not necessary at all to introduce chemical elements into a body to exercise a forced control over people’s mental state.
Our unconsciousness – is that specific particle of God inside us. And this inner God is open to professional conversation. A psychotherapist always has a choice. To make a pharmaceutical company richer or to find the right words for a conversation.
Of course, it is easier to prescribe drugs. Substantially easier, as compared to that enormous work of the mind and soul, which is required to be done for the sake of a patient.
But Jean Batist liked what he was doing with all his heart and the more complicated the cases were, the more he committed himself to this amazing skill of curing human souls.
The children grew up, his son was going to apply to college and his daughter was graduating from a secondary school. Finally they got an opportunity to give up social housing, to take a loan and to build their own house.
Their own new house. Now each member of the family had their own room and in the evening they all could gather in the nice and comfortable living room with a beautiful fireplace made of red bricks. Only 3 years were left till the final payment to the bank. And the house would become theirs, at last.
And in this new country, in this new life, after all the ordeals of war, finally they would be able to obtain peace and to live happily ever after.
But one morning he realized that he was dying.
Jean Batist kept silence. Long ago they have agreed with Anastasia, that they would tell their own stories as well as the stories of their patients in third and first person.
This was fair.
– Jean Batist, do you mind if we get out into the garden and I have a smoke? – Anastasia realized that they needed a break. They were sitting near that particular fireplace of red bricks, where the fire was burning brightly.
– Damn it! Of course! I will breath your menthol, – exclaimed Jean Batist, smiling, as if this was exactly what he was waiting for. – You know, I will probably suggest the following. How about now you tell me how you lived. And then we will get back to my trauma. OK?
– No problem! – Anastasia took long menthol sticks out of a cigarette case, and they went out to the terrace, to the night garden filled with a citrus scent of lemon grass.