relief and freedom that ran counter to their ascetic days at Novosibirsk.
At the end of the afternoon Elsa walked home, down Wild Goose Lane again, and noted the heaviness of the dark leaves all around her. If there was any white fluttering, it came not from mysterious birds aloft in those trees, but from a place deep inside her. When she opened the door to her cottage she saw that everything was as she had left it: the opened book lying face down, cup of tea half-full on the end table, and light closed out by her heavy curtains.
She thought, “I’m home,” as if out of habit, waiting to see what voice from her past would answer her. But her answer was only the flickering shadow of a bird on the wooden floor, magnified by the cloth-covered window.
Eight and a half Earth-months later, Elsa and Omar were on their way to Lhasa. At first, Elsa did not want to go: Why venture away from Novosibirsk? If Omar needed to study the landscape, couldn’t he do it online, with the help of Wynnet’s hologram receivers? But Omar had decided that a short trip away from Novosibirsk might infuse their work with a new energy upon their return, and he felt he needed to see this landscape he was charting. It was very important to him. Since his requests (and needs) were very few, Elsa decided to honor this one. Her only reservation was that her due date was approaching. Omar, however, was not worried. Those dark, calm eyes reassured her once again. Lhasa’s birthing assistants were as good as any in the world.
Tibetan faces, even in her largest cities, still held secrets, secrets from a distant and purely agrarian time. They were not guarded secrets, Elsa felt; nor were the Tibetans reticent to give them up. But who but they could understand them?
Still, Elsa felt that she could understand something of these people and their secrets, for she had read them (she was now sure) on Omar’s face as well.
At the airport terminal they were met by one of the most beautiful young men Elsa had ever seen. His broadly triangular face contrasted with deep, round black eyes, thin coral lips and wandering, soft hair. It was no wonder he spoke in gently accented, calm and polite English. Even his movements were strong and tender, as if coordinated by some deep inner rhythm of his, one that was innocent of the troubles of the world.
He carried their bags to his sand-colored vehicle and lifted them to a cottage on the outskirts of that robustly contemporary city. The dwelling was of the post-occupation, “New Tibetan” type—built with an eye toward integrating a living space with all aspects of human life: religious imagination, toil, recreation, rest. A vaulted foyer gave way to the courtyard, whose centerpiece sculpture was an abstraction of divinity, colorful and reflective of flooding light. Around the courtyard were set stone benches and pots of fragrant herbs, as well as sand wells which held incense sticks.
Elsa and Omar, as anyone who entered such dwellings, walked toward the light of the courtyard, where they offered short prayers in silence. From the back of the courtyard a few steps dropped to a living area, where food was prepared and eaten, children played, and all communications devices found use. The living area gave way to a short, skylit hallway, which in turn led to other rooms of rest, relaxation, study, and play.
The library room, far in the back of the house and flanked by nothing save the open Tibetan air, overlooked a small gully filled with blue meconopsis, yellow impatiens, and woodland ferns. The room’s one window, large and single-paned, had a teakwood frame, as if holding an animated work of art. Elsa stood before the window as Omar scanned the multilingual volumes on the shelves.
She turned to say something, but found no words. Omar’s back was turned to her; he had found something to amuse him. So Elsa turned back to the window, and faintly felt her child move inside her.
Kolya was born again at dawn the following day, in the room that offered Elsa a view of the library door, and even a sliver of its window. He peered out through filmy eyes and forgot all that he had been, for his life had been reawakened, passing this time into the hands of Elsa. As a ghost, Kolya had made a choice. For even in that existence, nothing was certain. He had felt that Elsa would help bring him a rich new life, though he did not know what that life would bring.
With the convergence of Elsa’s and Kolya’s spirits came a new power, and Elsa would be first to tap it.
She stood by that remarkable window again two days after Kolya’s rebirth, and felt that she had been tied to the earth again. She was again now responsible for one of its offspring: the cord that had been cut left the baby tied to her, and her to it. Omar took Kolya from her arms, and said: “What should we name him?”
“Kolya.”
“Kolya? Yes, that sounds fine. After all, he is a Russian baby, isn’t he?”
“And Tibetan.”
“Tibetan. I have a Tibetan child,” he said. “He will bring Tibet with us wherever we go.”
“That’s right.”
“It has always been one of my favorite places,” he said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Geographically, it’s interesting. And—”
“Yes?”
“And I think the landscape of a people is governed by the landscape they live by.”
They spent the following days in the library, in spite of the living area, though at times Omar found himself standing in the prayer courtyard, smiling and asking himself: “Why?”
While nursing the baby, Elsa sometimes poked into one of the many books surrounding her, and Omar sat reading ancient Arabian books in astronomy, alchemy, and mathematics, as well as English and Russian translations of Tibetan holy books. In one corner of the library a shelf supported the familiar volumes of Letters from Novosibirsk. Omar discovered them, and Elsa laughed to herself: they seemed so out of place. Omar found contributions that both of them had made; and while Omar was intent on reviewing his, Elsa cringed at the thought of reminding herself of those faraway convictions.
“Let’s take a walk in the garden,” she said, reminding him that he had come to Tibet to survey its landscape.
“You know, Elsa, this map I published—the first—was the best. I doubt I could come up with it now.”
“Hmm.” She was half-listening, and not at all concerned.
“Come on,” she repeated. “Let’s go. The sun is out. And it will be good for Kolya.”
The world on the other side of the window did not bear much resemblance to its counterpart. From the library this garden, though vibrant and animated, bore the quiet of glass over it. And with that quiet came not the garden itself, but a portrait of secrets and emblems. The red-speckled yellow impatiens on their long stems had aroused feelings of contained excitement in Elsa, just as did pictures from her childhood. The blue meconopsis swayed in the hollow spaces of her heart—reminding her that there were things, like Himalayan flowers, that she had never known in the world. The fine evergreens and long ferns became the backdrop for musing about her first love, so much did they remind her of the Danish woods.
But out in the garden, on the other side, with Omar and Kolya, she had new senses to contend with: sounds and smells and textures that enveloped her, and filled her with so much of the bared Earth that she could not retain a discriminating, or meditative, faculty. With her was the deep memory of Kolya’s birth, of her own participation in the flowering of life. The iron scent of her blood mingled with the damp earth’s, and drew her down until she felt that there had never been another home for her but this garden.
After they had returned to Novosibirsk she took a renewed interest in gardening. She tidied up her cottage and felt a new energy swelling inside her. She tended her house and garden as well as she tended Kolya, and her contributions to Letters from Novosibirsk came to a categorical halt.
17.
Wynnet was indecisive.
In spite of his dysfunctional dreams, he had never felt this way. Wynnet always knew what he thought, what to do, and how to do it.
But now his convictions could no longer be justified. For his life had found paradise in Novosibirsk, and now that paradise was broken. If he
were forced to return to a previous way of life, how could he continue taking everything he’d worked for for granted? The only decisive thing left for him to do was to take action to preserve Novosibirsk as he had come to know it. Thus the following letter:
In this my fiftieth contribution to L. from S. I will write of life here in Novosibirsk.
This is the most necessary letter I’ve written from Novosibirsk, because in it I will call for help in supporting a colony whose ideals are declining on a >45° slope.
A child has been discovered here. And worse, its mother (and 82%-chance father) are current residents, alongside inhabitants such as myself who have not interrupted our work with such self-indulgent pettiness.
My monitors report no professional activity in the dacha of Elsa Helsingfor, and significant reduction of activity in the dacha of Omar Bengzi, the cartographer.
I have already contacted lay-based LOS organizations globally to scout for worthy replacements of these two. I expect listings of candidates to begin arriving tomorrow morning at 9:30 N.S.T.
If you believe, as I do, that the fate of our planet lies in the heart of Novosibirsk, then do support the immediate removal of Elsa Helsingfor, Omar Bengzi, and their offspring.
So tidily, Wynnet scanned the letter he had just written. He stood ready to disseminate it electronically,