ARTUR ARISTAKISYAN PRESENTS
PALMS
Rome. Year 28 after the Crucifixion of Jesus
Emperor Nero outlaws Christians
Kishinev. Year 1990 after the birth of Christ
He said he was not going to move from this place
until the coming of the Kingdom of God.
"But to make it happen I should fulfil the following -
"I should make the inside like the outside
"and the left arm like the right arm,
"and the left cheek like the right cheek.
"And when I make a hand instead of the hand,
"and eyes instead of the eye,
"and a face instead of the face...
"And when I make legs instead of the leg,
"and a back instead of the back,
"and a head instead of the head...
"And when I make a man and a woman into one,
"so that a man is not a man
"and a woman is not a woman,
"then the Kingdom of God will come."
My little son, it's me, your father talking to you.
You haven't yet been born.
You've been living in darkness for a month now.
My little son, you see, your mother is not my wife.
And it's not in my power to promise you'll stay alive.
But I still want you to know everything.
Only a short time ago everything was so good.
Whatever I set about would work out splendidly!
People were falling in love with me.
And I was using their kindness.
Money seemed to stick to me.
And my mother and father waited for me in vain
so many a night.
Everything seemed perfect to me.
And today it has all changed.
My cards show total darkness.
My little son, I'm closing my eyes
to see you.
Chapter I
BED AND CLOTHING
Your mother is not my wife.
And it's possible that very soon you'll be scraped out of her womb.
Piece by piece.
Never mind. Can you hear me?
Nothing will ever change the fact that today you exist.
And I, your father, can talk to you.
Because there are things nobody else will tell you about.
I'll take you to the city. You shouldn't be sad.
Everything is divine in nature,
and I do regret it took me so long to grasp it.
Soon, this will be razed to the ground.
This district will be destroyed.
And these people will be forcefully taken
to shelters, prisons and lunatic asylums.
When it's not raining, this woman is lying on the ground.
She's been lying here for as long as 40 years.
40 years ago, on this spot, she was waiting for her groom.
He never came.
Then she made a bed for two and lay down.
She said, "I've been fighting on my own
"for 40 years against the whole system.
"I'm lying down and collecting chances.
"I deliberately don't undertake anything.
"It's better if I collect my chances
"until the chances reach their critical mass
"which will lead to an explosion,
"to the second coming of Jesus."
Those who didn't have a place on Earth
would come to live here.
And those who were destined to die,
but survived and had children.
My little son, can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
It is very important for me to know that you exist.
If only you knew
how much I want to take you to people.
I will show you how humans dress,
and how their bodies work.
We'll move along, step by step,
as we have no idea when we are going to see each other again.
Indeed, you and I need the same thing.
We need salvation.
And if your life is spared,
then you will have to live in the system.
Years will pass, and you will start thinking of how to leave it.
The first way to reach salvation
is to go mad.
Simply, to go mad.
I'm offering you this way to salvation, sincerely, as your father.
To go mad. Not out of hopelessness, no.
It's a chance. But you can only use it in a physical sense.
Or you can do as this woman, make a bed on the ground,
and lie down and make love to Jesus Christ.
Literally ten steps away from the woman lying on the ground
an old man is working.
He walks around town, and people throw old clothes at him.
He also has a girl with him.
He found her in the street when she was pregnant
and didn't have a place to live.
They put the old clothes into a press,
and sell them to the state for a pittance.
This is not the only type of clothes they have.
There are also those left from the dead.
After a funeral, people give him the clothes of the dead.
They store these clothes, but never sell them.
They arrange these clothes from the dead
like a wall around their house.
Some of the clothes are hospital pyjamas with numbers on them.
They are from people who died in a psychiatric institution,
from loneliness and injections.
Their pyjamas were to be burned,
but he took them and brought them to his place.
He said, "I learn from these clothes."
And in return, he whispers something to them about his own love.
He's even become able to tell when someone is about to die,
and their clothes are brought here,
to become part of this wall.
Once he gave a dress from a dead girl to his apprentice as a present.
It was the first time a man had given her a present.
That's why she doesn't feel any jealousy towards the dead.
More so, the girl believes him, her teacher,
that these clothes belong to those who are already in Heaven.
Not long ago, he admitted to her
that both his legs were soon to be amputated.
First the left one, then the right one.
The girl with the flute said that when she was still healthy,
she didn't want to study.
She cried.
She cried because she was a girl and could not become a priest.
She said, "If I were a priest, I would have grown my hair.
"It would be long and wavy and as beautiful as the priests' hair."
My little son, in childhood I also wanted to become a priest,
to be allowed to have long hair, as long as a girl's hair.
Chapter II
LIFE ON THE SWAMP
I don't want us to leave this place.
If you decide to go around the woman on the floor,
you will see a door, a door in the ground.
A young man lives there.
He escaped from a mad house,
and came to live here, with these people.
In the hospital they called him a Pithecanthropus,
a prehistoric man.
Until one day he gnawed through his veins.
And when blood was flowing from his body
and he was already asleep, a naked boy appeared to him and said,
"Get up, calm down, go and live with these people.
"You will get up with them every morning and see how they live.
"You should watch. Let it be of no concern to you
"that you can't speak or work.
"You don't need to do either.
"You will start to speak later
"when people have exhausted all combinations of words,
"and eaten up their own language.
"That will be the time for you to speak.
"And while you are on this earth, just watch.
"Watch and don't be afraid.
"Don't be afraid that you can't change anything
"as you don't know your silence and what it is like.
"And you can't see the body of your silence.
"You are looking at a girl. You like her.
"But even her body is not comparable
"with the body of your silence.
"Your silence has a body
"and everyone needs it.
"You will start to speak later
"when people have lost the gift of speech
"because of shame and fear.
"Meanwhile, looking at people
"will submerge them in your silence.
"The time will come
"when people will extract new words from your silence.
Completely new."
Old people bring him food right here
because he comes out of the cellar only on Sundays.
He is afraid that on weekdays he could be caught,
and taken back to hospital.
The other day the ragman lost one leg.
Half of what he told his apprentice has come true.
Soon he'll lose his second leg.
Life on the swamp starts from the moment a child wakes up,
gets up from bed and steps on the water.
I won't tell you why I brought you to this place, or give you a reason.
Because you don't have to have any reasons.
You can simply understand me better when next to these children.
And I will probably feel like being closer to you.
There are two doors in the cellar
where the runaway lives.
One door faces the south side where the children live.
And the other faces the north side
where the old people live.
Apart from old people and children,
there should be ordinary adult people here.
But some had to leave and earn money.
Others are in prison, or have been sectioned.
That's why today there are only children and old people here.
One of the boys and his sister have turned 13.
Every week he asks his sister to cut his hair.
The boy said that at night he feels his legs are being torn away.
"It happens at night, in the dark
"when you stop feeling your own body,
"and when you can clearly see
"that these legs are not yours."
The boy told me that when his mother was arrested,
the investigator asked her,
"How long have you been sleeping with your son?"
She asked the investigator,
"Tell me how many legs your child has."
The investigator said, "Two legs."
"Well," said the mother,
"Can you believe that my son also has two legs?"
The boy told me that when his mother was ill and was screaming,
he and his sister started to scream together with her.
"We were distracting her from her fit.
"And when I was ill, Mummy kissed me all night.
"And when my sister was ill, I also kissed her all night.
"I kissed her 1,050 times.
"I was counting - 1,050 times,
"and I understood that anyone,
"however sick, would get better...
"...would get better, if kissed 1,050 times."
The boy told me that actually he was older than me
and that he would die before me.
He said he was going to be crucified,
and before that he'd be tortured.
I asked him, "Who is going to crucify you?
"Who is going to torture you?"
He replied, "It doesn't matter who will crucify me
"as long as I am tortured."
From the clothes of that ragman
the children made this doll and named it Jesus Christ.
These children also know something very important about Jesus...
...that one day he came to people who lived near water.
He told them, "Follow me, come with me...
"...and I will make you catchers of human souls...
"Catchers of human souls."
Those people left everything behind and followed him.
These children also leave this place and go to the city.
They go to one college, then to another.
Then they go to university.
They find lodgers amongst the students,
and bring them here.
They catch human souls in the city.
They bring men and women
and put them up in the other house.
My little son, don't attempt to understand
where power goes, and from where it returns.
Power began to ferment like wine,
but they are scared to fill the old wineskins
with their new wine.
They won't fill the old wineskins with wine.
The old wineskins are being thrown out these days.
The system needs new wineskins.
New wineskins. What are they?
It is from the lamb that grazes freely...
...the Lamb of God.
Then they take him, slaughter and eat him,
tan his skin and make wineskins out of it.
It's all the same - the basics are the same everywhere.
Some children found this woman in the city in winter.
She was lying on the ground, drunk and frozen to the pavement.
She was no longer a woman, but a bundle of a frozen soul.
They peeled her off the pavement and brought her here.
She likes telling the children about her man.
Sometimes she extends her arms and calls to him.
She asks the children to call him too,
so that he'll come back to her.
And the children do whatever she asks.
My little son, say goodbye to her,
and I'll take you further.
While you're still not born, you are young and have a future.
Chapter III
YAZUNDOKTA
GEORGE THE VICTOR
MAN IN THE BROKEN TROUGH
My little son,
by now the old ragman has already lost his second leg.
That's it.
My little son,
I really want you to be popular with women...
...to be loved and happily married.
However, I'm begging you, if only you can,
stay a virgin and never become a man.
Don't become a man.
I know, it's hard.
Just listen to me. Another body goes through your heart.
With this body you can lead a sexual life.
With this body you'll be able to protect a woman,
even after her death,
when she doesn't have her husband, or father or brother next to her.
My little son,
through your heart goes the body of a pauper.
It's the finest of all bodies.
And with this body you'll be able to embrace any woman.
This body is always naked.
It's naked to the point of being invisible.
It doesn't belong in the system.
My little son, I want to take you to the man in the broken trough.
Do you know what he said?
He said that once he tried and managed to kiss his own chest.
He said he hadn't seen a naked arm,
or even a naked shoulder for a long time.
The man in the broken trough says that sometimes
it seems to him that his mother used to bathe him in this trough.
He said, "This trough is all that's left of my home."
I know that very soon they will convince you
that you are a consumer.
You consume electricity, buy clothes and use hot water.
You'll be told that society provides everything,
it's society that trains teachers and priests.
And if you don't need either, there's yet more.
Society provides doctors and prostitutes for you.
And if you don't need prostitutes,
they'll convince you that you're doomed to have a sexual life
requiring at least a towel and soap -
both produced by society.
In a nutshell, they won't leave you alone.
They'll convince you that a person is born in a social body,
and dies in a social body.
And you'll agree with this accusation.
But while you're still unborn,
there is something you can say for yourself.
You know better than me that as you are doomed to live,
it doesn't matter to you whether you live or die.
You don't need time.
It's those who are doomed to die who need time.
It's the system that needs time.
That's why your social body will haunt you,
even after your death.
My little one, my social body also isn't letting me get close to you.
His trough is damaged because he tried to commit suicide.
For money, he was taken to the roof of an eight-story building.
He fell down. But after the fall only the trough was damaged,
and he was unhurt.
Once, in a street, I touched a blind beggar.
He was wandering round the city looking for his wife.
You are on your own.
Imagine, you are on your own.
There is no one else... not even God.
You are on your own.
If you ever imagine that you are on your own,
then a multitude of lives will appear in your single body.
Because when a person realises he is on his own,
Jesus appears before him.
Jesus, because he was also utterly on his own in this world.
And if you ever get married and have children...
...you will not be able to move further,
unless you are full of compassion
and realise that your wife is also lonely,
and that your child is also utterly alone,
and that your father and your mother are also lonely people.
He too once had a woman.
When he remembers her,
he begins to embrace himself with both arms.
That's how he remembers her.
The man hasn't left his broken trough for 40 years.
He said that there is enough room in the trough for another person...
...and that once, in winter, one woman took him in,
but only for one night.
He said that that night he left his trough and lay down with her.
She put her leg up against his legs, and that's how they slept
until the morning, when he left.
My little son, beware of learned books,
beware of laws, any laws.
Because for the system we are not people.
It has established an order of things
in which neither you nor I exist. There is no one.
There's only the law which exists for us,
the law of blood, the law of fine matter.
Our blood, yours and mine,
is the sacred axis of the whole system.
The laws of dialectics deal with it.
The laws of dialectics are the laws of the system.
They work only within the system.
They are tested, logical and, of course, false.
According to these laws, the system is a great biomass,
and a human being is the number of its chances.
It's possible to take these chances away, or to leave them.
This is the foundation of everything.
These are the laws of dialectics,
for this reason they are immune from morality...
...immune from good and evil.
With all this in mind, it is getting ever harder
to discuss whether we are human at all, or not.
He was nicknamed "George the Victor".
Beggars call his hands "candles", two "candles".
At the moment he is smoking his last cigarette.
And you, my little son,
should live your life like a cigarette...
...and like a candle.
Like a cigarette, you'll smoulder and leave your ashes behind.
Like a candle, you'll melt and turn into light.
And your light will transform your body.
You'll see...
It wasn't that long ago that he worked in the fields.
Once, because of the girl he loved,
he was caught, and thrown into millstones.
The millstones were in motion.
Since that time, he roams the city on his knees.
He never gets up.
He does fortune telling, about the girl
who was stolen from him.
He wants to know if she still loves him, or not.
She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not.
With his knees, he practises fortune-telling,
fortune-telling about the girl.
The system by now has acquired the rhythmic basis of death.
It has learnt how to counteract itself.
That's why it's pointless to resist the system.
In reality, the system doesn't want to kill us.
It wants to be.
To be.
It doesn't want the end of the world.
That's why the system needs light, which it doesn't have.
Particles of such light are the flesh of the soul.
They can only be taken from human life.
With each day that passes,
I feel that the system crystallises the light in my body.
The light grows solid and leads to a headache.
I don't have any proof. I just know that my head aches.
That's why, my little son, before it's too late,
you should start working for your salvation.
You see, you have your own light.
Follow it, and you'll come out of the system.
For now, do not think about any kind of nonsense.
Don't think about travelling abroad.
After death, you'll have enough time to travel around.
Our next baptism will be by fire.
Then it will be too late to decide whose side you are on.
Grigory said that he is happy.
Happy because he can't cross himself either in the Orthodox way,
with three fingers,
or in the Catholic way, with an open hand.
For him, the Great Schism of the churches never happened.
In his hands, they are reunited.
"God knew that what he conceived was worth the risk.
"He has already prepared a body for me.
"It will be made of imagination and light.
"The smell has already reached me from the kitchen,
"where my body is being prepared.
"You can't even imagine who I'm going to be."
This man is a king -
King Oswald.
He says his civilisation doesn't leave any trace.
His civilisation is on small wheels.
Every morning this woman appears in the market.
She doesn't live anywhere. She just keeps walking and walking,
pulling a trunk behind her.
Her name is Yazundokta.
The man in the broken trough said that once, when she wasn't even 20,
he saw her posing for a photographer
who was taking pictures of her bare back.
He said that when he saw her back and her shoulder blades...
...he wondered why little wings were not growing there.
The man in the broken trough said
that her back is still as gorgeous as in those days.
"She has the most beautiful back in the world!"
When Yazundokta's estate, all her property, was taken away,
and she needed food, she would allow her back to be kissed for money.
Only kissed and only her back.
Yazundokta told me she had become a woman in prison.
Her first man was her jailer.
Yes, a jailer.
She told me that in the war, before the evacuation,
grenades were thrown at inmates,
and shot dead in the most cold-blooded way.
Women were shot in the genitals.
She said that man, that bastard...
...pulled her legs apart, and shoved his revolver right inside.
"He shoved the barrel of his revolver right there.
"But the revolver misfired...
"...and he pulled the barrel out of me.
"I saw his face, I saw how exhausted he suddenly was.
"He was terrified, and ashamed
"that he had failed so dramatically.
"I hugged his head and I comforted him."
That same day, he took Yazundokta out of prison.
Soon after bombing started, the man was blown to pieces.
Only his head was left for Yazundokta.
People say, she took his head,
and as she has no home,
she keeps his head in this trunk.
There is a compartment in the trunk where that man's head is still kept.
He could have become her first man, but he completely failed.
Chapter IV
KING OSWALD
SAINT-SAENS (CHANCE)
FIRST DAY OF FREEDOM
There is something humiliating about people hurrying to work.
You should try not to go to work.
Don't do work useful for society.
It's better to be a beggar.
You see, people need guarantees. That's why they go to work.
They are paid not for their work,
but for having rejected the path of destitution.
My little boy, like any father, I only wish you happiness.
I don't want you to be in poverty, amongst the destitute,
against your will.
However, I believe only those who beg
earn their daily bread through their own labour.
Follow the poor. Become poor.
People who are poor in spirit can renounce even the spirit.
You can't even imagine how free are those poor in spirit.
They are so free they don't even need freedom.
They may not know who Jesus Christ is and whether he ever existed.
Blessedness is not a feat.
Blessedness is neither a talent, nor a chore.
It's just blessedness.
These people leave nothing to the system, but their ashes.
I can't say what's happening to me.
That means I can't understand what's being done to me,
and what's being done to other people.
To understand what's being done to everyone,
one should think differently to everyone else.
But how can one do that if no words are left?
If there were words, then there would be thoughts.
What's left is to learn the language of birds,
and become a social outcast,
because the writers have used up all the words.
The system set a trap for them -
it pretended it was afraid of their words.
And they fell for it.
They shouldn't have spoken to this system in its language,
but they kept doing so,
and their native language turned into a pillar of salt.
That's it. The system has created a body made of language.
I don't have my language any more.
There are no words and therefore no thoughts.
As much as I want to think otherwise, I just can't.
The situation is under total control.
Dissent will mean hiding one's thoughts.
That's why you shouldn't listen to anyone, my little boy.
Don't listen to your teachers. Don't even listen to me.
I'm stretching out my arms to you while you're not here.
I don't want us to talk in the language I use.
You've seen what it leads to.
My little one, you know...
...l'm afraid of your birth. Afraid.
I live in fear.
The fear is already here.
Here, in my stomach.
Because there is no fear in the mind.
If the mind is capable of seeing anything at all,
it can't be gripped by fear.
Those who step over their fear cannot comprehend what lies ahead.
My little son, I'm scared to come to you.
I'm scared to see your face.
The most frightening thing of all is to come out of the fear.
I want to see you and experience fear because of that.
On the same day I saw a young guy
who had been released from a prison infirmary.
He was in prison, along with his father.
His father lost his sight in prison,
and his movement coordination.
When his father was in prison,
the son gathered together medicinal and narcotic herbs,
and threw them to him through the barbed wire,
until he was put in prison along with his father.
If only you knew how he was shaking.
You, little one, have your own body.
Nobody knows about it yet.
This body is Easter.
It's called Easter.
The system doesn't own this body.
The paradox is that the death of the system lies within itself.
Its life is its death.
My little one, I've just had a feeling
that I'm talking to you after your death,
that ten minutes ago you were still here,
and now you are not.
That means I've become younger than you,
because I've been left alive, and you have not.
If that's so, one shouldn't believe it.
One simply shouldn't believe information
that comes from the system.
It's my fault.
It's me who believed that you are no longer here.
Don't believe information from the system,
especially if it's true.
Chapter V
HEALING OF THE BORN BLIND
These people were ordinary epileptics...
until an abominable experiment was conducted on them.
They were lobotomised, their memories were erased.
Now they can't remember anything.
They can't even remember themselves, who they are.
When a crowd fills the square...
...this blind boy hurries to work. He begs.
Though he was born blind, his stride is confident and fast.
He thinks all people are blind.
He really thinks all people are blind.
His father and mother are also blind.
They told their son that everyone is blind,
and that no one can see oneself.
But the blind boy made his own discovery.
He figured out that all people are women.
Every person is a woman,
and all voices are the voices of women.
That's what he thinks.
Women give birth to children who are also women.
And his fate was to be born a man.
That's why he is a cripple.
And his father is a cripple because he was also born a man.
He believes that the only other man is his father.
The blind boy knows that female humans feel sorry for him.
They feel sorry for him because he is a man,
and throw coins to him to make his life better.
His blind mother knows that her son is constantly drawn to women.
She keeps reminding him that he shouldn't be
because he is a man.
"The thing you want to do, you should do with your eyes."
My little son,
if only I could see, I would make love with my eyes.
What a shame I can't make love with my eyes.
If a female human doesn't wish to notice him
she turns away, but he keeps waiting and doesn't leave.
He knows that the woman is also blind
and can't see he is a man, a cripple, and needs help.
By midday, all the members of the family meet up.
The blind man finds his wife.
And the boy, the bread-winner, comes last.
He comes to his parents.
About 20 years ago,
the father and the mother were in a psychiatric institution.
She was 20 then, he was even younger.
When they fell in love with each other in that institution,
as usual, they were supposed to be sterilised to be made barren.
But they managed to escape.
By touch, they found a tree with branches stretching beyond the fence.
They climbed that tree and found their freedom.
And they had a son.
The blind boy has a secret though -
a secret place where he stashes away a bit of money.
Before giving money to his mother, he hides here in this corner,
and transfers some coins from the full box to his secret box.
He keeps it deep under his clothes.
Neither his father nor mother know about it.
My little son, I really want you to become poor.
I, your father, wish that you become poor...
...because I love you.
My little son...
...I want you to decide to keep your virginity.
You will start seeing it as a living person,
and realise there is nothing more important for you.
You should unite your poverty and your virginity.
This is the only advice I can give you.
Unite your poverty and your virginity...
...and you'll begin to learn love from love itself.
Poverty and virginity will be your companions,
and you'll become more refined,
and your love will begin to take on the most incredible shapes.
Try and unite virginity and poverty,
and you won't need any civil rights,
which will not be of any use tO yOu anyWay.
Poverty will protect you from the system,
and virginity from the fornications of the system.
But I don't want your development to take the path of acquisition.
I want your development to take the path of renunciation.
Renunciation and loss.
And you'll become one who isn't part of the system.
That's why, if you haven't yet slept with a woman,
stay as yOu are.
End of part one
I can't help the feeling that the sky doesn't exist...
...that it has disappeared from above us.
Time has come into its final shape. That's it, time has taken a shape.
It's no longer possible to dissent, there is no point,
because the system will absorb everything that has a meaning.
That's why, little one, you should arm yourself with poverty,
and strike the system first.
Part 2
I'm scared for you, my little one.
You see, the sky used to be our protective ceiling,
which protected me from the cosmos, and the rubbish found there.
The sky used to be our protective ceiling.
When I was still living under the sky,
it was possible for some of my thoughts not to materialise.
Now all my thoughts materialise.
It's like a growing cancer spreading everywhere,
but it's a special type of cancer - it doesn't let the body die,
so the corpse can constantly conduct energy and power.
Today the system needs more fine matter.
It wants society to have superconductivity.
Now the system needs churches and prayer houses...
...which means that all religions are effectively disappearing.
Everybody before us was afraid of this situation,
which is worse than any war, and we have entered it.
We've entered the zone of the objective laws of the system.
Do you remember those epileptics? They found themselves cast out
because they didn't need to go anywhere.
They were on the border of worlds,
and could see into the nature of things.
Why see into the nature of things?
It's all been seen into already.
My little son, I'm closing my eyes so that I can see you better.
I'm going to close my eyes.
Perhaps it used to be land...
...perhaps then it was possible to feel the spirit. The spirit.
It was possible to touch it, to talk to it, to live with it.
Or perhaps I'm just depressed?
I used to think, "Never mind if I don't have anyone.
"I'll live with this land. It's already sufficient."
I didn't mind sliding into poverty
because I knew the land would support me.
And now, with every passing day,
I clearly see my utter uselessness,
here, where I'm standing.
My mother doesn't understand what I'm talking about.
I tried to talk to my girlfriend about this,
and terror engulfed me, thinking what would happen to her,
staying with me.
The nightmare, soon to affect everyone, is unfolding here.
And, if earlier, I wanted to become a dissident,
to burn at the stake or to go mad,
now it's becoming clear that to become a dissident,
one has to go mad first.
One has to go mad first.
Or die.
Chapter VI
SRULIK
HUNGER
NIGHTLIFE OF THE DESTITUTE
I wanted you to come to this man.
But it's too late, he's no longer on Earth.
He died, and birds sang prayers at his funeral.
His name was Srulik.
He lived here, in the attic.
Doves would fly into his window, eat from his plate.
When he was in bed,
doves would sleep on his face, between his legs.
Srulik didn't use money and never received a pension.
He sheltered women who escaped from prison and being sectioned.
The women would bring him grain, bread and wine.
Srulik told them stories
in which Earth was inhabited by birds, not people.
Jacob was a bird, Sarah was a bird, and David was a fledgling.
I'm increasingly getting this heavy feeling that is difficult to explain.
As the situation is getting worse... as the situation is getting worse.
The spirit is rapidly deserting the land and the cities.
It's no longer possible to stop it.
People are losing their protection.
The system has entered the phase of shaping itself,
of total survival by all means possible so as to manifest itself.
It takes any shape.
It turns whatever threatens its existence into its advantage.
It's possible now to build and open new churches
because the spirit itself is leaving,
because any attempts to keep the spirit in the system
will lead to another tragedy.
So, either a person lives in the spirit and leaves the system,
and lives together with it...
...or identifies oneself with the system and becomes its follower,
its slave, forever.
The spirit is leaving.
The spirit is leaving!
And the energy which stays...
...will have a quality not acceptable to everyone,
only to the followers of the system.
Decent, intelligent people
simply won't find enough concentrated energy,
that light and that piece of bread which could help them
to revive their own world.
That person will look like an alcoholic who needs a drink...
...while there is no drink to be found.
This will lead to intellectual death.
A person in such a lost state can easily be pushed in any direction.
It's not essential whether I'm going to be persecuted, or not...
It will be more or less the same thing.
What's important is that the forces at work will control everyone,
everyone who is moving against the flow.
Once Srulik developed a fever he said,
"I know, soon the other world will come.
"In childhood I heard there is a book
"which tells how to re-consecrate arms, legs, sexual organs."
He called the doves "poor beggars".
Srulik said,
"To touch a pauper, I don't have to go out and touch them.
"I've learnt to exchange warmth."
Srulik taught the bird language to the women.
Adam knew the bird language.
When, after the death of Srulik,
the police broke in to arrest the women...
...one of them hid a dove under her clothes
and jumped out of the window.
The woman fell five storeys to her death.
When her body was turned over
a white dove, with wings tinged red,
flew out and disappeared.
One beggar said people don't give coins -
but unbutton themselves.
"They unbutton themselves for me.
"They get undressed.
"Unbuttoning one, then another, then another.
"Men and women unbutton themselves from me. They undress and pass by.
"It only lasts a few seconds,
"but that's enough for me to see them totally naked."
The moment you leave society, you are confronted by eternal fear.
One can't immediately leave society.
You eat and drink, you live, and you're already a part of society.
Don't eat, don't drink, then you'll be able to live outside society.
Otherwise, whatever you say,
whatever your spiritual capacity,
your ability to see through things,
if you are moving with society,
you don't truly see through things - instead you are doing work.
You work for society, even when you see through things.
My little son, you don't see me, and I don't see you.
In this society, you and I represent a union of two blind people.
It is the condition of our contact.
I want to see you so much that I'm ready to believe
that one of these people is you.
My grown-up child, I'm trying to hide you,
so that nobody can find out who you really are.
I don't want to scare you, but you should understand this,
even if the system says it is based on law,
there is one thing in this world outside the jurisdiction of law...
...doom.
Doom.
If the system manages, in the nick of time,
to separate people into those who are functional,
and those who are doomed,
then a crime...
...will not be any different from a legality.
Individuals will lose the ability
to analyse the state of the society in which they live.
My little son, don't become a human rights activist.
Don't be swayed by how they risk their lives.
Risking their lives is one thing,
but what life becomes
is completely different.
In 1945, this man was in a German concentration camp.
He was still a small child.
A German doctor freed him.
He received the certificate confirming he had been freed,
and went to the officials for a flat to live.
But the 40 year old certificate wasn't recognised
because Himmler's signature was not there.
He was told that people could only be freed
if Himmler personally signed the document,
and they refused to give him a flat.
This man developed a headache.
He didn't know where to get Himmler's signature,
as Himmler had committed suicide.
He is no longer alive.
Then this man's wounds began to bleed,
and he began to drink.
And so did his wife.
Even she no longer believed
that her husband had ever been in a concentration camp.
Their son started taking them to town
and they all begged -
the son, the father and the mother...
...each on their own.
The son would protect his father.
Only he believed his father's concentration camp story.
My little one, you have your own light.
It's pure, a sacred light.
You should try to preserve it in poverty.
Only this light can lead you out of the system.
And if you ever hear about the Apocalypse, don't be afraid.
For us, the end of the world is the only salvation.
It will be our only chance to leave the system.
It's not enough to be resurrected to break out of it.
It's also necessary to ascend.
This woman's name is Maria.
She told me she is ready to give me her flesh and blood.
She meant her son.
When in a psychiatric hospital,
a nurse told her that she had a Mona Lisa smile
and that her hair would be shaved off.
She kept her hair. It's in her bag right now.
In hospital she was given injections
which would make her infertile.
But she escaped from the hospital, pregnant -
to the joy of all mothers.
A long time ago the Christians knew
that one shouldn't use contraception,
that the womb should be free.
There, in the womb, is a place with the same name
as that spot in the Universe
which was the origin of life.
If you look at people through the eyes of a pauper,
you'll see that their unhappiness
comes from their fear of poverty,
their fear of being excluded from society,
while their salvation can only happen
if they are excluded.
Jesus came here, to society, as the King of Judea.
He came as a King, that's why he could lead the life of the poor.
He gathered his followers from among the semi-destitute -
poor fishermen, beggars, prostitutes,
who, nevertheless, had regular incomes from their work.
They had already gone through earning a living,
and were now ready to give it up in order to become destitute.
"There is no hair under the hat."
Maria said that...
...there isn't a single hair under her hat.
I thought I would fulfil all her wishes, yet she left me.
I was copying her movements, copying her movements,
adopting her poses, killing the man in me.
I thought I would fulfil all her wishes, yet she left me.
I was copying her movements,
adopting her poses, killing the man in me.
Once a woman brought Romany Gypsies to Srulik.
Srulik used to live with Gypsies -
when he was in a concentration camp.
Those Gypsies, just like these Gypsies,
were from this city.
And those Gypsies sang and danced
and danced naked in gas chambers.
Those Gypsies helped young Srulik escape.
And these Gypsies came to give him a funeral.
For several nights before his death, Srulik hadn't slept,
and kept stroking a black pigeon.
Every morning a girl would come to him.
She worked at night, and every morning.
Srulik would tell her about the language of the birds
and the pigeons he slept with.
He said these pigeons conceived from him.
He called them "my dear pigeons".
"Their eggs are my eggs...
"...and there are many baby birds
"now in the city, fathered by me.
"It seems someone grassed on me
"and they started taking the eggs from me."
Srulik said, "As soon as one of my birds sits on the eggs,
"a police officer usually accompanied by lab workers storms in.
"They confiscate all my eggs,
"put them in a special box
"and take them away.
"Bandits! It happens every month.
"Those eggs have baby birds conceived by me - little Sruliks!"
Night time for the destitute
is equally full of fear and of the unexpected.
Every evening, when the sun is setting,
this woman starts getting ready
for her night time hallucinations.
Her hallucinations are her world
in which she meets her husband.
Her husband died of starvation many years agO.
During the day, she begs for money and buys food.
But she is unable to eat it.
She puts it on the table at night for her husband.
And by about midnight he eats it.
But she can't see him.
In her hallucinations
she sees her neighbours, but not him.
Then the most difficult minutes come.
It all starts with the appearance of a huge red spot in the sky.
It looks like the sun, but it's not the sun.
"This spot doesn't let me see my husband."
Then her childhood girlfriend comes.
She is coming right now.
During the day she roams canteens,
and collects bread left by people.
"My girlfriend also lost her brother to starvation.
"But she keeps blaming me,
"saying that my parents ate him during the famine.
"Parents were giving their children anything,
"so that they could survive during the famine.
"Sometimes they wouldn't tell children what they were eating.
"But we didn't eat her brother!
"Yet she comes every night and tells me, 'lt was you.'
"But I didn't eat him.
"What they once put in my mouth when I was ill...
"...wasn't meat."
Chapter Vll
MAGIC FLUTE
The further you move away from the system,
the stronger its pulling power.
You think you are going mad.
You realise that the system has no boundaries.
At the transitional levels
the system is no longer of material nature.
It has given up annexation of territory
because it doesn't secure its future.
The future of the system is in the system itself.
What is truly terrifying is not what is happening,
but where things come from and where they go.
Generational succession has become invisible and sudden.
One generation succeeds another at a lightening speed -
in a week, even in an hour.
If you don't keep up with your generation,
you fall and execute yourself. Execute yourself.
And there is no need for you to be arrested.
If at the moment of a generational succession,
you were asleep, you jump up in the middle of the night,
look at the door and jump out of the window.
That's why, my little son, if you are left to live,
and you hear about someone that has committed suicide,
you should know, he didn't kill himself.
Don't believe that those who commit suicide don't want to live.
They do want to live.
The thing is, they're not aware they're committing suicide.
One can only be aware of committing a murder.
I'm saying this to you now,
while I'm still quite young and before I get old,
so that we can understand each other.
I beg you, do not try to improve this system.
It would be better if you could learn to pass through it.
But it's also important for the system to pass through itself...
...in order to enter the future.
That's why the system destroyed half of its population,
and entered itself tO create a passage Way.
And by now, the system has learnt to pass through people
without taking their lives.
My little son, I don't want to test your patience.
I forgive you for everything in advance,
for everything you'll do if you stay alive.
And you, forgive me too,
forgive me for your mother, and for our incest.
I want to see so badly how you first look at me.
My little son, as yOu can see...
...I can't find my place in life.
It's possible it has never existed here.
I believe in our connection.
And the best confirmation that we are father and son
is that we can't see each other.
Take a step backwards...
...and the system will start threatening you.
Take another step backwards...
...and the system may offer you a place.
You should take another step backwards...
...and the system will offer you religions to choose from.
You should take another step backwards.
It's these steps backwards
that lead one to Golgotha.
It seems that the time allocated to people has passed,
and time has acquired its own form.
It's likely that the system
knows the days of your birth and death.
The sky remained the last hidden truth about the Earth.
Now the sky is disappearing,
and leaving the stars to be included in the system.
Now the system has also got hold of the stars.
The stars are also working for it.
The sky and the earth are dying in order to leave the system.
We are now almost living on a different planet.
My little one, your heart has its own body.
It's so transparent that it is invisible.
Its poverty is profound.
This is the eye of Jesus Christ.
That's why it's impossible to deceive it.
It even sees your parents as destitute...
...so that you can also see them as destitute,
as well as yourself as destitute, and your girlfriend.
Chapter Vlll
THE BORDERS OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
Once a man lived on Earth. His name was Abraham.
He was no longer young when he heard a voice say, "Get up and go."
So this man left everything behind and went.
The route he took became the border of the state of Israel.
There is no such state as Israel,
yet the border of this state cuts through everything on Earth.
That beggar said that the border of the state of Israel
lies across his face.
The system covers an ever increasing area.
It's always possible to recall a person from any place.
One day, in a canteen, in front of a bowl of soup,
you'll suddenly realise how tired and how ill you are.
Nobody will seem to be doing any harm to you.
Yet the state of things
will lead you to an almost unbearable condition.
It will be enough for you
not to find a place to wash your underwear or a shirt.
In a week you'll turn into a pauper.
What will happen then?
A very peculiar thing will happen:
Outsiders will seek protection with the authorities.
What's really terrible
is that the authorities will protect and take care of them
and will give them jobs.
This mute old man believes that the state of Israel
lies within the borders of his house.
He's reinforced the border of the state of Israel with a fence,
and one day every year he measures its length with a stick.
He finds new planks and reinforces the border,
so that the pile of rubbish doesn't overwhelm it.
There, inside the fence, is a pile, a pile of rubbish.
This pile of rubbish is his house.
It's one huge dust-heap.
At times this dust-heap doesn't let him in.
It presses on the door...
...and makes it hard for the old man to enter his house.
The doors don't open due to the rubbish he has collected.
Sometimes passers-by help him
and push him inside, to the dust-heap.
He can only make money by selling paper to the state...
...but the heap keeps growing.
Several times, people tried to wean the old man off his heap...
...and burnt it, but it would grow again and again.
Imagine this:
There are a certain number of young people within the system.
To find out how they differ from each other
they should be dissected.
Then their full potential will become known.
Constant pressure will force your psyche to move ahead of you.
It will adopt the mode of behaviour
to accommodate that pressure, and not to accommodate you.
If you can't catch up with your own psychic development,
you'll find yourself impotent in this system.
That's why, just as you would take a medicine,
take on the image of a pauper.
Remember, the image of a pauper
is always ahead of the system.
Adopt it.
Otherwise, people are going to be brought out
out of their usual state of being, to become different people.
Any human potential will be used, first of all, as a means.
Any human potential will be turned into a means.
And those gifted will unwillingly persecute
and kill those who are talentless with their life energy.
If you're unable to carry out focused psychological work,
then you'll find yourself among the socially ill.
This is the basic secret of the system.
Imagine such a blood-chilling allegory.
Only strong people will retain the ability to work.
They'll become teachers, priests, scientists, students.
God save you from becoming one of these!
It's like buying the clothes of a murder victim
from a second-hand shop and wearing them.
But you won't be able to move far in such clothes.
Children will be the first
to get used to these inhuman conditions,
and I'm afraid for you, my little one.
I haven't got much time left...
...and I don't know how to help you, and what advice to give.
I really don't know.
I can't offer a place of salvation to you.
You'll leave...
...and the one who deserves salvation more than you,
will stay.
You'll leave him...
...and run away. Run away? Where to?
The system has geographic boundaries no longer.
One thing is to run from a concentration camp, like Osventsim,
from barbed wire, far from Europe.
Another thing is to run today from the intellectual fascism.
Where can you run to to escape intellectual fascism?
Where can you set your foot?
The code of the place where we are now...
...used to be the code
of the latitude embracing all that's alive.
But today the code of this place is not that latitude.
It doesn't embrace but sieves into all that's alive,
into others' flesh and blood.
That's why the system will need you at any point,
wherever you may go.
People say that once this woman was very rich,
and that the mute old man loves her,
and wants to take her in, up to the mountain.
Every day, on her way from church,
she travels along the border of the state of Israel.
She says that she feels like Natasha Rostov -
her life is passing and there is no love.
The old man starts calling her, up to the mountain.
But she, just as with all his neighbours,
knows that the old man went mad after his son had left him.
The woman in the wheelchair is afraid of the old man.
She throws stones at him.
When she passes along the border of his state, he moans,
calls the neighbours and dances, holding his certificates.
These certificates show that he has a son,
and that this woman in the wheelchair was once his wife.
On the surface, the system may be in opposition with itself.
It may even fall into pieces.
But it's only the outward manifestation.
I don't believe the system maliciously plans anything.
It just wants to be.
The evil which comes from the system
appears only in my mind.
"Don't do evil in response to evil" is the first tenet of freedom.
Chapter IX
THE IRON BED
One beggar said that Christians are creatures mad with love.
They leave their dirty homes to go into town,
and it's often hard to tell them apart from ordinary people.
They seem to be the same kind of people as everyone else.
But they don't want their sexual life
to take place within the system.
That's why they make love through death.
Christians are people who have learnt
how to kiss each other through death.
It's possible, after all,
to kiss a girl through her clothes, her dress,
and they do the same sort of thing.
It's possible to kiss the death of another person
through one's own death.
My little son, I would like you to learn
how to kiss your girlfriend through death,
with your lips.
Kiss the air around her.
As soon as you start kissing your girlfriend through death,
you'll feel how your death is turning into her body.
And for this body you'll give your life.
Chapter X
THE PARLIAMENT OF BIRDS
My little one...
...I had a weird dream.
I was in our city, yet it was totally different.
It was covered in snow,
and instead of buildings and streets, there were cemetery paths.
Instead of people, there were tombstones forming families.
They lent against one another, holding each other up.
They led their own lives.
These were people who had changed a lot.
Answers to questions about life and death
were written across their faces.
They were crying with these letters.
It seemed to me that the letters were not letters at all,
but posthumous kisses.
They were all saying something, but I couldn't understand.
There were people everywhere.
The tombstones surrounded me.
They were wishing me only good.
My little son,
not to kiss your beloved is the same as to kiss her.
Not to kiss your beloved is the same as to kiss her.
That's it, my little one.
Do you remember Srulik?
I've just remembered how he waved his hands and said,
"This is my life..."
My little son...
This is my life.
A film by Artur Aristakisyan
Music by Giuseppe Verdi
and a poem of Naum Kaplan
have been used in the film
THE END