Beginning

I thought for a while and realized that I had to start from a completely different place. From the cemetery. Usually at the cemetery all stories end, one way or another, but for some reason mine wants to start from there.

Even if I definitely didn’t want to kill and hurt you, it’s not always possible. We must not forget that we are clumsy material beings in this gross material world, and once we touch, we can no longer be responsible for the consequences. And if don’t touch... well, if don’t touch, then there will be no plot, and you will have nothing to write about in your stories.

Part 1. COLOGNE.

In early October 201 *, a woman was sitting on a bench near the crucifix at the end of one of the alleys in the Melaten cemetery in the very center of the ancient German city of Cologne. In a black cloak up to the toes, covering her entire figure, with picturesque and heavy folds descending to her feet. She sat so still that she could easily be mistaken for one of the gravestone statues that abound in this cemetery. But she was alive and breathing, and tears were trembling on her lowered eyelashes. She prayed...

I'm not gonna tell you her story, biography, genealogy, or even how and why this Russian ended up in Cologne (where there are no those Russians, really, they are everywhere!), but I know what she was praying about, and I will tell to you.

"Lord," she said, directing her inner gaze to the crucifixion, "I am so tired, so tortured already, you know!" - and so on in the same compassionate way, as usual... it was unusual that she immediately got a quiet and meek response: "Be patient just a little more." And that's all... the storm in her soul subsided. The sun lit up her face. The day immediately changed, became bright, full of sounds, rich and meaningful.

She got up, quietly walked along the alley, same quietly left the gate... and here (I would like to say) she disappeared from our field of vision and we never saw her again!..

But it's not the case. After all, we know where she lives, we will calmly walk beside her, listening to her radiant and smiling thoughts, but while she is walking, think: how many stories in our life end this way - the person whom we unwittingly watched for several minutes got up from the bench, smiled at something, went out the gate - and disappeared from our lives forever. We will never meet him or her again, we will never know his or her story and what happened there, over time, in his or her life.

But this time we got lucky.