On the train «Moscow-Kazan» I was watchful. There was just one companion in the four-person roomette. For some reason I was distrustful of him. He was over 60. By appearance he was absolutely harmless. He changed his trousers, having had the roomette’s door open wide. Utterly correct and calm fellow. Silently polite one. Such ones have a frugal white bread sandwich with them – neither vodka, nor a fried chicken leg. But noone can trust the aged. They have seen so much through their life, that noone can vouch for their psyche... Intuitively I always guessed, that pensioners are dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Who knows what ideas they have hit upon for so many years...

I have once travelled in a roomette with a polite pensioner. I was lying on the upper couchette, below was lying the feminine part of a married couple, on the upper couchette, opposite to mine – the masculine one. On the couchette below the masculine part and opposite to feminine one there was the pensioner. He was either dead drunk (but showed no sign – it’s small wonder to learn to do so for so many years), or a latent maniac (what is not so uncommon, not so uncommon), or even something else. But he, having fallen asleep (and we all the rest – half asleep), muttered something about accounts and bills... Then the girl started screaming. The aged lunatic accountant took her body, lying on a level with him, for something, which delved into the tissue of his twilight meditation.«Vitya, oh Vitya-a-a...!!! Look, what he is doing with me». Through the gloomy unpleasant train-wheel dream I tried to imagine what exactly. It occured to me only the snack bar. The guy hanged down from his cochette and leisurely jabbed at the bed-sheet heap on the lower couchette: «Sleep, skunk». The pensioner murmured some sleepy word, which sounded like «sorry», said in Swahili, and temporarily retired into his shell. But his oneiric emittings filled the four-persons roomette and hindered me from thinking about my own dark.

«Disgusting old man», it kept running through my mind.«Dangerous man». He was dangerous because of the only fact, that for years his wrapped-up soul became crowded with multiple fragments, discontinuity of visions, of implex stuffy desires, of dark yellow mental flesh pieces, which are horrific, because still not able to reunite with each other... The horror of foul soul of the young is fresh. The horror of the old sours. It is more passive and listless, but at the same time more toxic. Indeed: «dangerous old man».

This one from the train «Moscow-Kazan» was also dangerous, though gave no sign. His snoring was the most suspect thing. Only ill, unpleasant people, who do not look after themselves, snore. When they sleep, they dregs think only about themselves. One should think about something else.

I fell asleep nevertheless, having had decided to be not deep in the sleep and to look by the edge of my consciousness after the companion, door, lock, hung suit, which I beforehand had taken wallet and keys from (I suffer from kleptophobia), but it seemed to me that the suit was endangered too, you can never know for sure. In short, I fell asleep. In the roomette through my narrowed sleepy eyelids the dark was seen. It structured my dreams, its verge was erased. Each jerk of «Moscow-Kazan» wheels hurled me out to the pit. I was starting and casting a half-open glance at the suit. I avoided to look at the aged one. Once I travelled in the sleeping-car with a fat girl. She cried all the night. I liked that incomparably more than snoring. Theoretically, going further, such travel would be worth commercialization – «a roomette with a crying girl». There are people, who would pay heaps of money for it. I am persuaded, that there are ones who would pay for snoring too. And its every sort would have its own tariff. Snoring with whistling, snoring, emulating gasping for breath, slight snoring, snoring, ending with a muttering, snoring, sounding like a moan... Formerly I always listened to what people muttered in the sleep. Then I felt ashamed of that, or, what is closer to the truth, understood a compass of those messages in aggregate. Now I can recall the range of the statements myself. Sleepy speech is confined with oneiric language. Grammar, morphology and vocabulary of such language do yield to regular study. There is nothing what would slip us away. Nothing.

The train jolted and stopped. From the window the subdued voices were heard. Some people talked to one another. It was meddlesome music. The snoring of the aged one faded. Having had lain for about ten minutes, I decided to look, what was going on. The platform was swarming with people. It was the dead of night. They were approximately equally dressed, but all carried various big glassy items in their hands. The first thing, which I saw more clear, was a man in waterproof jacket with a huge – metre-sized – crystal wineglass. He raised it over his head and passed to some imaginary one from the near (not mine) roomette. I imagined a big city somewhere behind where they all (and that one with a huge wineglass) got out. But a train was standing on the oppisite side of the platform and fenced the view. I would have liked the stupid train to be off so that I could see lights, crossings, a bridge where this all appeared from. It did not started off just for so long a time for my interest to what is behind it to disappear. Then it slowly crawled away. It showed the thick forest. Not a single light. «Moscow-Kazan» moved to the right direction.

The glassy guys were left behind – we had set out for the East. I fell deeper asleep, having no more fear of the pensioner. I considered, that if necessary I could hit him with the huge wineglass, which was extended onward and upward by that crystal goose. [1]

I got concentrated on what I should impart to Tatarstan president Mentimir Shaymiyev. I had no complete plan. Just a rough draft. The Third Capital. [2] The dark of fleetingly glimpsing impenetrable forest belts along the rail way, being mixed with roomette darkness and couchette scratching, and also with serious walking of conductor-ladies – you can not mix up their step with anything else – not to say that helped, but took part in decision-making.

Then I saw a dream. The dream looked like a text. I as if saw it, lived through what was in it, but at the same time described all by the text. Hence follows the lucidity of words and even letters, which were seen distinctly – they could not be more lucid.

The text began as follows: this happened in the city Oshym oshym. There was no quotation marks and that place-name was written just so – Oshym oshym. The first word was with a capital letter, separated without hyphen, the second one – with a small letter. The city Oshym oshym. So was it written in the dream, so should we also remember.

Once the letter was sent to me via e-mail. Someone asked me in English whether I know the city, named Joffur. And the explanation why he applies for information exactly to me was as follows: «a person with the last name Dugin may know what is Joffur». He had found my address by Altavista, and did not know whether he was addressing a Hong Kong firm or a Netherlands clinic. I then sent reply and suggested it to be a capital where the winged demons live. Where «a girl is delight for a tiger and a boy is infernally double-genitalized» (it’s N.Klyuyev – I have a suspicion, that Klyuyev wrote this verse – «Hanged heels over head...» – having read Ewers’s «Alraune» and Meyrink’s «Golem»).

After the correspondent had received my answer, he heartily thanked me and said that this place-name Joffur had been importunately coming into his sleep.

Oshym oshym... All happened just in that city. That city is (was) found in the most south point of Australia. The doubts could be of every thing. But not of this one. This is the Southern extremity of Australian continent, like Cape of Good Hope or Needle Cape is the southern extremity of Africa. Don Miguel Serrano wanted to buy a piece of territory on Tierra del Fuego («Land of Fire» [3]) for purposes, known to him exclusively, but paused on it only in order to purchase Konstantin Vasilyev’s original pictures, slides of which I sent to him. Oshym oshym is the city of Austalian «Land of Fire».

Then the story of Oshym oshym city cataclysm displayed itself before me. The black storm fell on Australia. The continent Australia was anyway dark, neither a single dot of light, nor a lighthouse, nor a settlement. Nor inviting firefly scattering of taverns. It was a dark continent and it died in a dark way. Like crystal goose forest, out of which the wineglass guys had come out.

The surges of the storm were warm, but very high. Half way to the skies. They fell upon the extremity of Australia ponderously and fatally, having crushed everything what there was, having dragged everything to the deep. The black city without lights Oshym oshym was washed off. So, together with it, was I. Trying to grasp at something, I spread out arms of my body of dreams... In vain. Just black water. Having written this, I realized that there is an obvious reminiscence about Golovin’s: «I dreamt about black waters and cities under the surface. People quietly gathered in groups, discussing if they could help the disaster, and then as lilac corpses floated into the night to The Master» (cited from memory).

Can a reminiscence be experience? Can I say «I dreamt about black water»? No. Just a textual coincidence, I dreamt about the black ocean-flooded Oshym oshym city, which was darker-than-night even before.

I was taken by the surges and could not return, and there was nowhere. She that gave me the life (very doubtful life, so much reminding of something else) was dying. [4] But for very long period of time. Maybe I had her dream. The dream, swines, isn’t a private property. And life, swines, isn’t a private property, we will take everything from you, we will give you everything for free.

«Moscow-Kazan» – it’s conceptual. Try this travel, you will know yourselves.

I swam by the surface of the ocean, after the cataclysm of Australia and Oshym oshym city. Here the main thing begins. More precisely, It seemed the main thing in my sleep, in the train. The surges which carried me away were not just watery ones. A bit lower they were filled with something. I realized that I was sleeping on my back, but for all that the sensations were turned inside out, as if vice versa. On the entire surface, under the hands, grasping the void room under the dangling body, there was felt some paste.

«Aquatic plants», it came a thought. «No, something else», another thought. The rests. «The rests of Oshym oshym city?» «No.» Plastic?

Later, having returned to Moscow, when Kazan was past, I had another dream. In it the same woman as 20 years ago went along the road, which you cannot turn from, to meet me. Previous time she transported carriage, that time she was with a huge shaggy dog. Just as then, at the crucial moment, which radically changed my life, horror-stricken, I let out an inarticulate loud cry. Then I tried to scare her, that time it was half-alpine, half-imbecile yodel, addressed to the shaggy giant dog. The woman made a gesture, as if she said «calm down, why do so».

Later on I walked and recognized the locality, observed the tracery of verdure along the road and creepy creations, crossing the way.

I cannot understand (for the time being), what in all that is so radical, so decisive, «decisif» in sense of Parvulesco, who reinterprets after his own fashion (ah, that fashion!) a juridical term of Carl Schmitt (a footnote for «filosofer»: this name is written «Schmitt», not «Schmidt», colleague Panarin). [5]

We know too little.

Walking in Kazan (Tataria is our supreme self, those who doubt – to the melting furnace), I saw the inscription on the memorial nameboard: «Pushkin buldy». [6] This is right.

The third capital. Ivan the Terrible, the number of his wives is symbolic. As to the family name «Nagaya», it thunderstrikes those ones who read (attentively) the lines of Russian historical chronicles. [7] When I was in sixth grade, we boys and girls smoked on the loft of no man’s (so it seemed to us) barn, throwing cigarette stubs into the straw. The barn had burnt out, cops came to the class (747th Moscow school) and narrowly observed those at the school desks. Up to now I do not know exactly who burnt the barn. Porfiriy Korneyevich made Raskolnikov confess by a theoretical article, calmly and fearlessly published by him.

Afterwards (10 years nevertheless passed) not so far from that former – burnt – barn (just to pass the railway – it’s railway symbolism, «rohi-ahan») Golovin said on the riverbank with a metaphysical portwine in his hand: «Aging I come to conviction that everything exists». He meant an underground white owl Garfang and a dream master, and also a schooner in Vladivostok, which should have taken us away. Kupriyanov noticed, that he lacked money for taxi Moscow-Vladivostok, and it is yet dangerous to transport an admiral on other transport.

Then we did not go there. We go now.

Moscow-Kazan.

Mystery of cataclysm of the mysterious city.

Nothing is forgotten. We remember about it.

 

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[1] A sophisticated play on words: the famous city, where there is crystal works and the descripted souvenir items might have been produced, lies somewhere between Moscow and Kazan and is called Gus-Khrustalnyy, which means «Crystal Goose» (the translator’s footnote)

[2] Dugin put forward an idea to transfer some metropolitan functions of Moscow and St.-Petersburg to Kazan in order to ensure Russian government’s civilizational orientation toward the East (the translator’s footnote)

[3] This island is the southern extremity of South America (the translator’s footnote)

[4] At that period Dugin’s mother was near death after long-drawn-out disease (the translator’s footnote)

[5] About Panarin. He is a professor of Moscow State University, an «official» Eurasianist. On his book’s cover he is twice unobtrusively characterized as philosopher, and this word is written in cyrillic somewhat like «filosofer»; as to Carl Schmitt’s name, it is written as «Schmidt». (the athour’s footnote)

[6] Those words are obviously a part of a phrase in Tatarian. They do not make sense in Russian, though do not sound respectfully to a passable Russian nineteenth century poet Pushkin (the translator’s footnote)

[7] Nagaya (literally «Naked») is the seventh wife of Russian czar Ivan the Terrible (who annexed Kazan khanate to Russia) and mother of his son Dmitriy, who was killed under the obscure circumstances. Several pretenders acted under his name in 1604-1612. There is still great dispute among Russian historians whether the next czar Boris Godunov was privy to the murder (the translator’s footnote)