Chapter 10
When David described
some of this to me later I encouraged him to continue. I emphasised the
positive and downplayed the negative. His mood was mixed and as we smoke and
drank he began to confide in me. He needed me at that moment and, I too, needed
him. I knew he was one of the best chances I had of fulfilling my task. Galina
was deeply in. I couldn’t even reach her at all. We had barely even spoken. She
had been pleased to see me, but my story had always been that I was interested
in finding out about meditation and Indian mysticism. I had written to her that
I’d found my own path dull and finally a dead end. I wanted to try something
else and had met some people in Kaliningrad who had showed me something about
yoga. I described some of the books that I had read, some of the classics of
Vedic literature. She’d suggested that I come to this gathering of like minds.
But then that was my cover story. I was an interested participant. I hadn’t
come to see her. She had only done me a favour by helping me to find this
meeting. I had some more cards that I could play, but I hoped that that might
not be necessary. If David could win her round, that would be altogether better
in the long run. My leverage, at that point, with Galina was limited. I could
only really talk to her in passing. We were friends, but not so close that she
would have expected us to talk incessantly. Anyway, her role now was as a
devotee instructing an initiate. Whenever I started talking to her about life
outside, she reminded me that we must focus on our inner life, on saying our
mantra and on listening to the guru. I couldn’t argue against her position, as
that would have blown my cover.
It was only David who
could argue, for he didn’t need any cover. He’d been clear that he was there to
see her. But I couldn’t take that line. Even David could not attack directly.
His goal was similar to mine, but also different. Imagine if he had fallen in
love with a girl from Japan, he would have done everything he could to respect
her beliefs and her culture. If they had gone together to a Shinto temple, he
would not have criticised her beliefs and practices, rather he would have
respected them and discussed them in a friendly way. He would have said that he
wanted to learn and would have listened patiently as she told him of each
little thing she did in the temple. Indeed, such a person, in love with a girl
from Japan, would have tried to eradicate from his mind any negative thoughts
about Shinto or Buddhism, because these would be negative thoughts in part
about the girl he loved. It is for this reason people sometimes convert when
they marry. But even if they don’t convert, they treat the beliefs of the loved
one with respect. A lover doesn’t make jibes about idols and ancestor worship.
David’s goal was not to
turn Galina away from Krishna. When every day there were discussions, he knew
that Galina was either listening, or probably would later hear what had been
said. Therefore, he was careful in how he argued. He did not attack, he only
defended and if that defence contained a veiled attack, he veiled it very
carefully with his excellent maskirovka. He didn’t care what Galina believed so
long as she believed in him.
I continued to help a
little with the vocabulary and as we sat together in his room at the end of
each day our discussion would range over the issues involved. In this way his
thoughts developed like in a tutorial. In this way I was able to describe some
new defensive formations and ways of outflanking attacks. I told him, for
instance that it was only by focussing on externals that people felt they had
the need to travel to India to find enlightenment. Boethius or Bunyan after all
could find God in a prison cell. Though, let alone faith need not be influenced
by surroundings. So why travel all the way to India to sit in a nunnery? Galina
had exactly the same mind in Kaliningrad as she did there. Why choose someone
else’s religion if you are seeking mysticism and that which is beyond the
ability of all of us to think. Wittgenstein found this in a prisoner of war camp.
It is not as if Christianity lacks mysticism. I thought these people were
looking for something exotic, something strange, but this exoticism only masked
the shallowness. They were imitating someone else’s practices and doing so
rather badly. It was as if I went to Japan for a while and looked on as people
performed the rites of Shintoism. I might read some books on the subject and
then return home and set up a Western branch of Shintoism. But it is likely
that I would miss something. What I would miss would not necessarily be a lack
of understanding, but I would miss the mundaneness of every day Japanese life. Shinto
would be something that was integrated into Japanese life, something that was
done more or less automatically without necessarily too much thought. With my
newly found enthusiasm and obsession I could easily change this into a cult.
So, too, here. There
were millions of Hindus in India who went about their daily lives and sometimes
went to the temple. But it was just that. It was a part of everyday life. It
wasn’t an obsession. These Indians did not say a mantra all day long. They did
not listen to endless lectures about whichever God they focussed on. Their
Hinduism was therefore mild and gentle and the reason for this is that it was
theirs. It was their culture. This western imitation however, was as far away
as possible from ordinary life. I saw a lot of intelligent Russians dressing up
in face paint and wearing saris, pretending to understand something that they
were not. They imitated and aped what they thought Indians would do, but they
were all deeply undercover. They all played a role, just as much as I did. They
all had their funny sounding Indian names, but in a few days they would return
to ordinary Russian life. For many of them this was just a sort of role-playing
game. They came here because there was an emptiness in their life and this
somehow filled it. Many of them I knew did not take it all that seriously. I
had had a few words with Vera and she’d made it clear that she was just
interested in Hare Krishna as another form of esotericism. It went along with her ankhs and her crystals
and whatever else she could dream up. She was therefore quite safe and in no need
of rescuing. She still lived with her parents, I think.
But Galina took these
things seriously. There was an intensity about her. There always had been. I
think also there was a greater emptiness in her than in the others. Her need
was greater and so she had searched harder. Only love could fill this
emptiness. Only David could.
He could get through to
her. I knew that during their walk in the woods he had got through to her. The
Hare Krishna smile had gone. Her eyes had flashed like they had done when he’d
first met her. She’d stopped saying her mantra. Only he could make her stop
saying it forever.
The mantra was the key
to the brainwashing. There had been a discussion one night about the difference
between telling the rosary and saying the mantra. David had said that when he
said his rosary, he focussed both on himself and on the object of his prayer. He
didn’t lose his self and that was not his goal.
That was not his tradition and it was not his path. In this way he
explained the differences between what he believed and what the others believed
without criticising. This was always his way. The criticism was implied, never
stated. He defended his beliefs ably and showed how they were incompatible with
the Hare Krishna beliefs. In doing so he
pointed out where following Krishna led, but it was always up to the Krishna
follower to conclude that this wasn’t the path and this wasn’t the direction.
Yet, despite his able
defence, I worried about David, too. I saw him get rather too involved in the
practices. Even if he was only there to see Galina, I saw his eyes glaze over
like hers did during the singing and especially during the dancing. Sometimes
in the discussion he was willing to concede a point that I would not have
conceded. Sometimes I wondered how far he would be willing to go for love. I
didn’t think he had any limits. Galina
had got him to come in the first place because she knew that he loved her. How
much was she willing to use that leverage? If she offered love in exchange for
following her path, would he take the offer? I wondered. I rather thought that
he would. But then I also thought he would just be going under deep cover. Yet
I worried for this was a very dangerous game to play. His love could rescue Galina,
but it was a two- edged sword. Her love, or even perhaps the promise of her
love, could take him places that were not quite safe. Even if he was in deep
cover, there is always the danger of going native. At what point does
pretending to be a Hare Krishna amount to being a Hare Krishna? Saying the
mantra all day will block out any other thought and any other self. Eventually,
the person who infiltrates the mafia, finds that all their friends are in the
mafia and their assumptions, even their actions are mafia actions. At this
point the cover can become so deep that it ceases to be cover at all.
I told him a little of
my own love for my husband as a way of expressing sympathy for his difficulty.
The path of love is not always easy and it can be necessary to do what it
takes. I described how I had met Petr in Denmark, how we’d got together and how
we wrote letters after that when he’d gone back to Russia. But our situation
had seemed hopeless. I couldn’t visit him and he couldn’t visit me. But he had
been able to arrange it so that he could get back to Denmark some months later
and I had faced a choice. I didn’t know him terribly well. We had spent only a
few weeks together and I would be going to a place I had never been. I had to
face some rather difficult moral choices too. I had to gain permission from
some people in Cambridge who had invested a lot of time and effort in me. I had
some rather difficult and intense discussions with Russians both in Copenhagen,
and later in Moscow and Kaliningrad. It wasn’t easy for our love to find its
place. I took some risks. There were times, especially in the early years, when
I was frightened. I have faced some very scary people over the years, but I
picked a path through them, because I knew what my path was. But most of all I
knew that I had love.
It was because of love
that Petr and I were able to find a way to be together. Without that I would
not have even considered going to the Soviet Union. But given that I did have love, I would not
have even considered not going. It is love that changes everything. It
motivates in a way that nothing else can. But the point is that I knew that
Petr loved me. I could see it. It was not a role that he played, nor was it a
role that I played. You can’t fool someone on this, not for long.
I told David some of
this, both as encouragement, but also as warning. If he could win her love, it
would be worth doing anything for Galina. Of course, it was worth flying to see
her, just for the chance of it. But it must be two-way traffic. There was a
feeling between them, but after all, in the end, she had said ‘No’. The
realisation of this sometimes hit him. It wasn’t always, but when tired, when
our conversation became full of feeling, I could see that he had found a
sadness here, outside Moscow. Part of him wanted to stick it out, but another
part was inclined to give up and go. After a couple of drinks he began once
more to express regret at coming. I thought it worth him staying on and seeing
what might happen.
“A proposal sometimes
does something to a woman,” I said. “It makes it clear that you are serious.
You have flown a long way and now you have proposed.”
“But she turned me down.”
“Yes, she turned you
down. But she will feel flattered. And, moreover, she will be thinking about
that proposal. Give her a chance. Sometimes women need a little time.”
“It’s like something out of Jane Austen.”
“Do you mean this
turning down a proposal as a matter of form? As if it’s necessary to say ‘No’
two or three times, because that’s the way it’s done?”
“It used to be that way
I think out of a sort of feminine modesty. It was expected. It was part of the
language game that they played.”
“I rather think Galina
is a little like that, but also like a heroine in one of these novels: she is
scared of love. It must have been something like the great unknown in early
19th century England and rather scary, too, given the chance of death in
childbirth. I don’t know how far you can take the analogy, but it’s not a bad
one. That’s why she loves Krishna so much. It’s a way of loving and, perhaps,
being loved without being touched.”
“Is she scared of that side of things?”
“Something happened to
her one summer a few years ago, she went from looking like a model to more or
less looking like she does now. She went from being someone who wanted to
attract a man to someone who wanted to repel all advances.”
“She does that with me, too.”
“No, David, I suspect
you are closer to her than any man alive. You are the one chance she may have
of ordinary love. She is very close indeed to loving you intensely.”
“Do you really think so?”
I said I did, but I
wasn’t sure. But I thought there was a chance. He was the best card I had to
play. Otherwise, I would have to play the last card. I thought he could save
her. Anyway, I had seen that she, too, sometimes glanced at him. She was less
indifferent than she sometimes pretended.