Chapter 9 - Words Without Meaning

     

      The next day was our last day in Russia. It became a day of healing for me. The exuberant joy, and also the feeling of shame that emerged later for the terrible things that were being committed by humanity against each other that I had become ever-deeper committed to prevent, both became replaced by something that created a deep sense of peace. This occurred on that last day. It occurred almost as a surprise. The entire conference schedule for the last day had been changed. The final speeches, ceremonies and summations were all cancelled and replaced with a cultural celebration.

      We were not told to whose credit it was that our last session at the conference should become a cultural uplift. All that we were told was that someone had arranged for the city's symphony orchestra to close the conference. Evidently the ruling council recognized that a celebration with classical music would reach deeper and say more than any political dignitary would. They might have even recognized that classical music is rooted in one of the greatest period of renaissance and is therefore more suited to speak to the heart in the way that each person needed it.

      I had a faint suspicion that Nic might have had a hand in the change in plans. That's why I wasn't totally surprised by it happening. I also wanted to believe that it might have been Olive who had accomplished this brilliant feat. It would certainly be her style to do that. I felt that Nic, too, was sensitive enough to the real needs of people to do such a thing. However, I felt that Olive understood those needs more deeply from her own experience.

      As it was, I couldn't locate either one of them among the crowd of people. They simply weren't anywhere to be seen. I tried to contact them through the front desk, but to no avail. I kept an eye out for them in the hope that I might see at least one of them after the concert. But this didn't happen, either. Of course I understood that a personal meeting with either of them wasn't really necessary anymore. I knew what they both stood for. This understanding also seemed to be confirmed in the music.

      The music was Brahms' Fourth Symphony. Logically it should have been Beethoven's music to mark such an occasion. Personally, I loved hearing the Brahms. The Fourth of Brahms was the last symphony by a great man, as if it were composed in celebration of a life lived to the full. That's how I felt about the conference too. My struggles had turned into the satisfaction of knowing that my coming to this place had been worthwhile. The symphony brings out a sense of satisfaction with life, as if Brahms was saying farewell to a beautiful world that he was glad to have been a part of. I remembered the music of his Fourth Symphony as a melodic ode to life itself, carried on the wings of joy as it were, speaking of peace and power.

      The music left me with a deep sense of deep peace. In this peace there was no feeling of loss, or sadness for not seeing Olive again, or shame for what I should have done and had been unable to do in terms of changing the world, or even discontentment over the unrealized little step of embracing Tara more fully. Nor was there any apprehension anymore about meeting Sylvia again with a full disclosure of what lay behind and ahead.

      This peace was built on a platform that Raymond the psychiatrist knew nothing about, but which Brahms had known and Olive and Nicolai had somehow discovered. Perhaps Brahms had been on that same path that we are all on, except perhaps in a simpler world, though it probably didn't seem simple to him. And then, perhaps today's world might appear simple to someone like Nicolai, hence the ironclad hope that he had conveyed with his speech on the second last day of the conference. The world also seemed to be simple enough and beautiful all at the same time, to Olive Osipov. Somehow, the names Nicolai Vasili Berendeyev and Olive Osipov remained stuck in my mind when the conference ended.

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Stories about  Love from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche