Two trams screech to a halt in an effort to keep from hitting a stray dog chasing a foreigner across Victory Square. The unique harmonic frequencies set up by the screeching steel wheels upset the space-time continuum, catapulting two men out of their disparate surroundings. Karl, a 19th century German philosopher and Stanley, a politically correct English literature professor from the eastern liberal establishment in the United States, find themselves in Kyiv in Baikava Cemetery at dusk. They have gotten acquainted and have already engaged in several arguments. As they walk, they come across a funeral on the Monday after Easter. They stop talking for a moment to watch from a distance.
The smoke rose from the ashes of leaves and swirled into the fog around the budding trees and weather-beaten tombstones. The gravediggers stood by whispering and waiting for the last three handfuls of dirt to be thrown on the coffin. They wondered when they could finish and get paid. The few mourners had now left one by one, and all but three men had vanished into the low-lying cloud. One could not even see the tops of the trees, and it seemed that the roof of the world had fallen.
The last three mourners stood over the grave grasping handfuls of dirt. So, they were going to end the final scene. Stanley heard one of the workers cursing softly in Russian and he watched as he ground his cigarette out with his heel. Even in death, someone is hurrying you along! The last three handfuls of earth hit the coffin lid with a hollow sound.
The workers shoveled the dirt in less then a minute and walked on it, tamping it down. They then picked up the bouquets and placed them unceremoniously on the grave. The husband of the deceased pressed some bills in the outstretched hand of the lead gravedigger. Without a word, he turned and walked off. Stanley and Karl were alone again. The light was dying in the west and perhaps the red sun was indeed going into exile. The two walked over to the graveside.
"Well, it's better not to live with any fictions," Stanley said. "The final act is bloody, no matter how fine the rest of the play." He placed his hand on the tombstone next to the fresh grave and squinted at the Cyrillic inscription and on another nearby. His mind drifted and he looked into the dark woods. What if this Ivan fellow now felt the footsteps above his grave ... what would he and his neighbor, Marina say to us...?
"Isn't he clever." said Dead Ivan who lay rotting and listening six feet below. "He repeats that quote as if he thought of it himself. At least, give credit to Pascal. The dead always get blamed for everything and are never given enough credit. This injustice makes one bitter. And get your feet off my head, you ridiculous postmodernist," he thought.
"Shut up." That was Dead Marina nearby, who was now turning into dust under her rosary after a birch tree had grown straight up through her coffin. "We never get any company. I want to hear these two."
"Your theology is perfect now dear. What more do you want to learn?" said Ivan.
"I want to know if the questions ever change or if they are still the same." Marina whispered.
There was no sense in reasoning with dead women, Ivan decided.
Stanley shook his head to clear it, blinked and looked over to Karl. He rubbed his thin face with both hands.
A few minutes before, Karl had told how he been had scared into behaving when he was a little boy. His grandmother used to tell a ghost story in a raspy voice that moved at times from the edge of panic to hysteria.
Grandma's bedtime story went that one might never quite eavesdrop on conversations between the dead, except when the wind pauses just before a rain and the air becomes perfectly still. Only then, when all the branches and leaves stop moving, and there is complete silence in a cemetery, an almost imperceptible sound arises. Whether the dead seem to be whispering, murmuring, cursing, screaming or shouting, their voices may still only reach the ear of the living like tiny tink-ling bells. Some swore on their life that you could hear distinct voices, too, amidst the sound of bells.
The men brushed the raindrops off an old bench near the fresh grave and sat down amidst the tangle of headstones surrounded by wrought iron fences. The cloud of fog imprisoned their vision to the small circle of graves around them.
"I am not living with any fictions," said Karl. "There is no one to whom one may appeal for justice in this world! This woman apparently followed her own misbegotten faith, lived a good life and died after senseless suffering. Where's the justice in that?"
"You are always teaching me with your questions; your questions really are just a mask for your superiority complex, big brother," said Stanley. "You said once that people never pose problems they can't solve."
"Honestly, Stanley, can't we forgo the nonsense? You are a Marxist at heart, I know. Can't we just compare our thoughts about this and arrive at a synthesis that can be objectively true?" said Karl.
"Thesis and antithesis and then synthesis?" said Stanley.
"Don't mock me or deconstruct my speech, please." Karl said. "Let' s start where we agree." He pointed at the grave. "That woman is dead, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"Her faith in a god is something we both recognize as superstition, isn't that right?" offered Karl.
"Her faith in God was valid within her experience, that is, if it gave meaning to her life," countered Stanley.
"If her faith was not objectively true, then the meaning she experienced was only an illusion. I said once that religion is the opiate of the people," said Karl. "If she believed in a mirage, her life would then have no real meaning."
"Her perspective had no value then?" asked Stanley.
"Value? Her perspective was only a reflection of the world she once saw. Our thoughts are only chemical reactions within our mind. Value comes only in change, which is simply dialectic materialism. Our sister interpreted the world; my goal has always been to change it," said Karl.
"Think about what those words mean, Karl," Stanly said. "Your rhetoric and syntax is the source of your meaning, correct?"
"Rhetoric has nothing to do with it. I am talking about objective reality as defined from the senses and science. I am talking about changing that reality by sparking conflict."
"I have always been suspicious of your altruistic aims. Hasn't your dialectic been proven simply to be another paradigm and excuse for oppression?" asked Stanley.
"My beliefs are merely science applied to sociology. Darwin provided us with means to understand that we are simply intelligent animals arising from natural phenomena. You'll recall I wanted to dedicate my second volume of Das Kapital to him. Survival of the fittest - that is the law of nature. To return to our original consideration - this woman's faith - there is no basis for her hope. Now Stanley, let us not be children any longer and agree on this."
"I cannot categorically deny that her faith did not have some positive benefit in her life." said Stanley.
"You are my own 'brother' and I will tell you this. You are simply a self-indulgent watered-down Marxist. Your sentimentality and lust for experience defines your relativistic approach. Meaninglessness is the logical end of your alleged reasoning. Your life is not purposeful. It is simply accidental."
Stanley was a bit stunned at this intolerance. "Really, Karl, I would think you were beyond this level of personal attack."
Karl laughed at his sensitive little brother. "I'm simply attempting to frame the debate in proper terms," he said.
Stanley smiled. "I would simply hope to create an academic system where educated people would speak correctly and not ignorantly." He stopped short. He wanted to take those words back as soon as he said them, but then again, let people make their own meanings and draw their own conclusions.
"You see what I mean? The origin of your species is Darwin, Nietzsche and your elder brother." He thumped his chest. Karl smiled and ran his hand through his immense shock of hair and uneven beard.
Stanley continued: "Can't you see how outmoded your ideas about class warfare have become? There is no basis for such a broad conflict as all that, as I believe there are no valid meta-narratives which only serve to mask contradictions and instability in every culture."
" Well, all right, instability and contradiction in cultures - There you go again, you pathetic watered-down Marxist! Nietzsche viewed conflict as the prerequisite condition for creativity. So, your little interpretive communities are simply garden-variety revolutions whereby you postmodernists create meaning?"
" There you go again, Karl, with your manifesto mentality," said Stanley. "Who are you to dictate to the masses what is best for them? That is only the reality you've chosen to believe. Freedom itself is only, as Foucault said, an illusion, a construct, so how can you tell the workers of the world that they have nothing to lose but their chains?"
"Do you deny that there are economic inequities? How do you propose to address them?" Karl's voice was beginning to rise.
"The world is organized by fictions and the projection of individual viewpoints. Reality is fragmented now; and human consciousness can no longer be addressed en masse anymore by a grand narrative. People are not the 'keys of a piano,' Karl."
"People are the product of their environment and may be conditioned in any manner we choose. What they are afraid of most is freedom. As Dostyevsky wrote, 'Give people bread, mystery and religion and they will follow you anywhere.' The religion is atheism." Karl's eyes grew intense.
"We're talking about this woman's faith, Karl, remember?" Stanley pointed to the grave nearby blanketed with flowers. "She believed in a god and her experience is something one may not argue with. One may not argue with personal experience. Every 'text' has many meanings. She interacted with her text, and it gave meaning and happiness to her life."
"Stanley, honestly. In the end, we are both talking about tyranny. I am talking about tyranny of the state wielded for the good of the people, and you are talking about tyranny of the self over all other considerations; be they commitment to ideals, values, friends, morals or what have you. Let's be honest," said Karl.
"Honest?" Stanley smiled at his brother. Karl was dark, frowning and so much the terribly serious intellectual. They sat on the bench in silence watching the drops of moisture running down the tree branches and the tombstones.
The light had slowly faded and the fog blanketed everything again. The dampness pressed on them from every side and it grew very still and they could hear their own hearts beating in their ears. There was not a sound, nor a bird or anything to disturb the living or the dead. It seemed that the whole world had ceased to exist.
After several seconds, both men looked at each other in surprise with the same question. Were they both imagining the same thing?
Ever so faintly, out of the dark fog, came a sound like the tinkling of bells. Both brothers held their breath. The sound began to grow until there was no mistaking that it was not imagined. The sound grew and both now strained to see through the fog to whence the ringing came. Stanley broke into a cold sweat. "I must be going out of my mind," he thought.
The bells were now ringing softly on every side now. Still nothing moved in the fog. A few drops of rain fell on the backs of Karl's hands as he rested them on his knees. He turned on the bench and looked behind him. Something was moving through the cemetery. "Oh, my God," he gasped.
Something moved to their right, too, and several bells rang at once. Then, through the fog they saw something jump, no, leap over a rusty fence. A small head with two curved horns faintly appeared from behind a stone and then pulled back quickly. More bells. Karl and Stanley were mesmerized.
Another faint silhouette darted through a wrought iron gate. They heard footsteps in the wet leaves behind them, and a tall figure emerged out of the dark cloud that lay heavily on the earth. The apparition walked straight toward the brothers and then stopped barely ten feet from them. He lifted his serene face and looked squarely at the two petrified men.
He spoke in a loud voice: "Christ has risen." He raised his hand as he gave the traditional Ukrainian Easter greeting. He then smiled as his herd of goats burst out of the fog from every side. The animals surrounded the grave covered with flowers and began eating the bouquets that had been placed on the fresh soil. One of the goats lifted his horned head and stared blankly at the two intellectuals. The little bell around his neck tinkled softly every time he chewed on the lilies.
"Foolish goats." the old man murmured. "They have no respect for the dead."
Dirk Mroczek is an educator and freelance writer. He and his wife have lived in Kyiv since 1993.
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