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Chapter 9 - An Organ RecitalI felt joyously free to speak with Ushi about sex and other sensitive matters on the streets in Moscow. It seemed that not many people spoke English. Maybe that was an illusion. In any case, it felt great to speak so freely about intimate subjects stomping through the snowdrifts to get to the theaters or back home from them. The State Theater, the concert hall, and the opera house all had retained much of their earlier 'red-velvet' imperial posh. After we checked our heavy coats that night, and rubber over-boots, and fake fur hats, we felt quite at home in those settings. In fact we always felt quite at home in the theaters and concert halls. We enjoyed the old 'palaces' for what they were, relics of an era that had ended. Their pomp evidently was as much a part of the people's heritage as the drab simplicity of their dwellings and the creeping poverty in their lives that were silently overshadowed with by a fear that nobody spoke about, except on rare occasions. Regardless of it all, the people were well dressed in the theaters, men and women alike. However, only a few could be seen holding each other's hands in the kind of continuing embrace that we found ourselves in, locked fast into a 'springtime' mood in the middle of winter, the springtime of our joy in one another. For us, being in the theater didn't constitute an interruption of our 'sexual' embrace of one-another. It was more than just a quest to eradicate even the most deeply seated isolation between one-another. It's light was its own merit, and this flow of light the theatres added another phase shift in the flow of enriching one-another. Holding hands as lovers do seemed so much richer for an interchange between two people than the sterile indifference that the black suited ornaments of society displayed that filled the theaters. Thus, the cultural element of our evenings wasn't a suspension of our loving. Rather, it added a unique splendor of its own. When we spoke about Antonovna, we both realized that the golden cocoon that she had spun around herself represented nevertheless a denial of herself. She had been forced to be a woman long before she became one, which made her to loathe the very thing that she was. It also appeared to have made her life insecure in other areas as well that lay not in the sexual dimension. "If this peace conference that had been convened in Moscow is to have any meaning for her," I said to Ushi, "I must help her to love herself in a full embrace of her humanity in order to bring peace to her soul. No one can be at peace being divided against oneself within, even if this is the state of the world at large. And she needs our embracing her to get the ball rolling." Ushi agreed. "No one can dance alone with oneself if one is divided against oneself. That's elementary Watson!" said Ushi and began to laugh. "Anton will never allow herself to be close to Nicolai for as long as she is divided against herself and cannot dance with her own soul," said Ushi. We both agreed that the best way to help Anton might be for ourselves to embrace to the fullest the very truth about our common humanity that she seemed to deny. We reasoned that an unfolding out-flowing love from our learning to dance ourselves would invariably embrace her as well and uplift her in some way. However, who would have thought that an evening in a cathedral, attending a recital of Bach's great fugues would enrich the sexual loving of two people such as ourselves beyond expectation, and enrich at the same time the acknowledgment of our scientific genius within us that likewise reflects our humanity? The two aspects became combined into a double dance from the heart. We never thought that tearing down the foundations for the isolation would open up such vast horizons. || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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