Operation Buterbrod
Episode 3 - Thesis
Mati
was fond of reading, as was Muzhik. In fact, it could be said that they
bonded over their varied taste in literature in a very fond way. Muzhik
had a passion for history, even calling himself something of a wannabe
scholar for it. To him, history was how humans learned empathy, gained
courage, found bravery - if it was all absent in their upbringing.
Between the two of them, the concepts of Don Quixote came up the most
often.
Muzhik admired the protagonist, even if he was a warning. Ultimately, his interpretation of the book was far from simple. To him, he understood the ‘delusion’ of it all. Was it so inherently wrong to believe that idealism, as eccentric and strange as it could be, could be used to benefit and enrich one’s life? All humans suffered from delusions of some sort.
In the USSR, there were many who actively sought to defeat these delusions, at the cost of creating many of their own. Of course, there are only two major truths in life, Muzhik would preach. The first one: there is no infinite truth. The most wise of men recognize that their truth is entirely that of their own perspective. While perspectives change, men will seek out things that simply reaffirmed their beliefs. And while perspectives grow, as people do, in morals and ethics, there is also decay.
The major truth was that all things were only as relevant as the beholder saw them. Religion was only as real as the heart believed it to be. And science was only as true as one’s heart was willing to accept. Throughout history, the wise have condemned themselves to foolishness and fools have suddenly gotten a spark of brilliance, as if struck by lightning. Either way, all civilizations come to an end. All dreams conclude and a new reality is born upon waking. To approach anything with true permanence, was ignoring the second major truth, that
Muzhik so firmly believed in.
This second truth? It was nothing more than the fact that every human being desperately wanted to survive life and the existence of death consistently proved that humans will not. But to say death is as permanent as life, it cannot be said so easily. Even fools have made people ask questions that resonate into solutions, or questions that will one day lead to solutions, in the hearts of strangers. Why else would the delusional and insane preach on the corner of streets? Truthfully, the meek, the weak, the ill - often share the same soapboxes as the brilliant and the revolutionary.
The USSR’s experiment was the introspective look upon the same street corner. At the end of the road, everyone shared the same poverty. Not just physical poverty - but a poverty of the spirit, the exilement of dignity. Dignity stolen by men who ran the nation, who gambled their money in foreign casinos in Germany.
Russia was a Great Power, one of the Four of Europe. For centuries, it had defeated Empires, crushed nations beneath its heel and while the cost was often great, the Russian bear was most loved by its neighbors when it slept. And once the bear awoke again, it would feel the worst kind of hunger.
Russia is imperfect, as humanity is. The USSR may wish to fix the human condition, but the morals will always be cutting into themselves. A rose harmed by its own thorns. Ambition is a scary thing. A vine can climb a wall in hopes of tasting rain water, but it may nestle itself too close to a rooftop shingle and find itself blocked off light and soon, composed of cobwebs, as insects feast upon its green.
Muzhik was smart enough to know that he knew nothing. Thus why he had marked himself as a peasant and nothing more. He may know more than other peasants, but a man who lives by the river is still a man who lives off of fish alone and will always be at the mercy of the ecosystem around him. That is fate and one must accept that there is hunger in this world,
as well as comfort. And the cruelest men once knew what it meant to be hungry, thus why they clutch to their comforts so greatly. But the most evil men - are those who never knew hunger, but eat while others starve.
As Muzhik had stated many times, he was not a communist as much as he was a Soviet. To him, the word “Soviet” and “Comrade” meant something very in particular to his own personal ideology. The idea that all men were equal, that humans, regardless of class, race, culture, language and history - shared this world together. And while humans desperately carved borders between them, wrote words that separated them and pounded their chest, declaring
they were this or that - humans all bleed red and all humans know hunger. For even the comfortable may wake with an empty stomach.
The story of Don Quixote had slowly become Muzhik’s own. He had seen himself as a knight at one point, completely indoctrinated by his own idealism. So much so, he wished that the future he wished to build - one without crying children or hungry men, was
possible. In the end, the USSR had existed for some years and while it had built a country in a way that the Tsars could not, building communism is a task that is as possible as putting men in the sun.
Yes, the idea is beautiful, but humans will burn before they even get close enough to know the heat of that star’s true potential. There were talks, in fiction and the like, specifically some that Mati read - science fiction, it was… of men on other planets, men leaving the planet. Truly, Muzhik felt this was more science fantasy than fiction. In the end, he hoped that to be true.
“Mankind must learn to live alongside one another, before they can think they can live among the stars.”
That was his statement on the matter. But once again, this was his own dying ego and his own war with his idealistic, knight-like mindset. Muzhik had never been persuaded of anything that was not passionate to his heart, but he had grown to accept that while all men are born equal, not all institutions will see this fact as true. In the same way that all humans will bicker and fight each other for comfort, they will do anything to be less hungry. Survival makes
humans tribalistic and the comfortable days are deceitful. After all, those godless Tsars, they had more spoons of silver than they had hearts among them all. But deep down, especially during their final days, they must have realized how afraid they were to die. Knowing their god would not greet them.
Knights of yore were no different and yet, what was it about Don Quixote that was so damn enduring to him? Ironically, even though it was arguably the most significant piece of fiction ever made, the crowning jewel of human literature besides the bible itself in all of its influences on storytelling, narrative, characterization - even the fact it had become relevant in intellectual circles regarding politics and even theological debates… Mati did not care too much for it, despite its status as perhaps being Spain’s greatest contribution to culture besides the
classical guitar and packaged cigarettes.
In the end, Muzhik realized that he is Don Quixote. Not because being a knight, a moral person, an idealist - was a bad thing. But the fact that communism, the Party and all of its backstabbing factions, were entirely impractical. That was the brilliance of the book. One that he read during the darkest of days in Barcelona.
Indeed, before he had come to Euskadi, ironically embedded with both Basque and Galician resistors to the Junta - he was there in Barcelona. Just in time to see the bottom to top revolution completely flip from top to bottom, head over head, tumbling endlessly into the uncertain abyss.
The endless purges against former allies, the anarquistas having open street fights with the Shock Troops of the International Column, the roof tops banging in and out with the ever chipper squeals of rifle and handgun fire - it was all delusional. Muzhik still had a mission to stop the fascists and in the end, that was the only thing that kept him moving forward toward the harsh winds.
But he read the entirety of Don Quixote, a truly intimidating book in length alone - on those Barcelona rooftops, waiting for the next big move. Waiting for the International Column to fully move the Aragon front. And much like a certain Knight that chased windmills, there was no true evil foe to face. Franco and the Second Republic were equally incompetent windmills that saw each other as giants. The difference was that the USSR could only stretch so far without aggravating the Germans, who had become just as involved as their Italian comrades.
Deep in Euskadi, near the mountains of southern France, a secret war was fought for an ancient goddess. The existence of this alone had crushed Muzhik’s delusions of a truly perfect, Soviet world. How could one remain a militant atheist with the knowledge that the Germans had also sought this power? But more than anything, it was a compromise of ideals. Communists using this indigenous, hidden, esoteric magic - where the two tribes of men and spirits conjoined and overlapped into one - it had been what broke his determination.
Not even Stalin’s paranoia had left him so distraught. Nor the things that paranoia had made him do against former comrades. Yet, he still played the fool. Even if he knew it in his heart, the truth of this arcane magic was the true intention of both superpowers, as they traversed the woods for this Elemental Being. Muzhik remained the fool, the Peasant who still left salted bread out for the Domovoy house spirit. After all, who was to say that back home, in the deepest forests - the gods and spirits of the old Slavic tribes did not exist in clandestine conditions either?
Despite having personally seen unexplainable things in these woods, Muzhik proudly bit into the delusion of an ideology that could not co-exist with true human nature. That nature being, inherit self destruction and mindless gnawing and biting at one another. Like the ever aggressive Steppe Wolves of the Russian Far East, humans were doomed to thrash one another - to fill their stomachs or simply for sport.
“I’m Don Quixote.” Muzhik would finally admit, over a buterbrod meal and some tea. The two sat often at this table near the stove, enjoying each other’s existence as enduringly and lovingly without a spoken word for hours. But when they did talk, it would go far into the night. At some point, Muzhik had become the lone survivor of his mission and he was far too comfortable in Mati’s arms at night. A sin for a soldier, but a great victory for a man with a heart. “I have finally accepted it.”
“And who am I?” Mati would ask with a grin. “You’re more like Sancho Panza, the squire to your ideal future…”
“You tease me harshly now?” He laughed with what sounded more like a cough. “You are my Dulcinea del Tobos, but not imaginary. “Mixed with the prankster girl, Altisidora, of course.”
“How charming, my smart Siberian man…” The two spoke of each other in words as sweet as honey fairly often, sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously - but always with earnest love. “I’m as loyal as the horse Rocinante…”
“Ha!”
Mati blushed harshly, embarrassed at her own joke.
“Do you wish to be ridden as firmly as Rocinante as well?”
And the two would laugh, even through embarrassment. Through boldness and comfort, the two would bond more and more. But through stories, through creative conversations and the tremendous amount of company the two shared, the more they softened and melted. And, as if through alchemy, the more they went through the process of ingression.
One night, as the rain coldly battered the roof and pounded the grass outside, to pleasant rhythms but also the steady stream of rushing water that gushed from the gutters - it was Muzhik who held Mati, rather than the other way around.
And it was her, who decided to tell him a new knightly story.
Obviously, Muzhik held onto his ideals and
romanticism just to preserve his humanity until
the very end. That was the only reason he had any positive outlook in this world. The gregarious
introvert that he was, he could cherish life for the fact that he could fully embrace being a human
beneath his strong words and powerful symbols.
But Mati loved the genuine gentleman that he was. Thus, the story of Sir Bedivere had come to mind… Arthurian legend, as classic and also, as overused as it was - still could tickle the heartstrings like the delicate fingers of a harp player.
And while Mati explained it in an obtuse, sometimes disjointed way, the intention of the recounting was nothing short of perfection to Muzhik. Music to his ears and a story for his own heart.
Muzhik admired the protagonist, even if he was a warning. Ultimately, his interpretation of the book was far from simple. To him, he understood the ‘delusion’ of it all. Was it so inherently wrong to believe that idealism, as eccentric and strange as it could be, could be used to benefit and enrich one’s life? All humans suffered from delusions of some sort.
In the USSR, there were many who actively sought to defeat these delusions, at the cost of creating many of their own. Of course, there are only two major truths in life, Muzhik would preach. The first one: there is no infinite truth. The most wise of men recognize that their truth is entirely that of their own perspective. While perspectives change, men will seek out things that simply reaffirmed their beliefs. And while perspectives grow, as people do, in morals and ethics, there is also decay.
The major truth was that all things were only as relevant as the beholder saw them. Religion was only as real as the heart believed it to be. And science was only as true as one’s heart was willing to accept. Throughout history, the wise have condemned themselves to foolishness and fools have suddenly gotten a spark of brilliance, as if struck by lightning. Either way, all civilizations come to an end. All dreams conclude and a new reality is born upon waking. To approach anything with true permanence, was ignoring the second major truth, that
Muzhik so firmly believed in.
This second truth? It was nothing more than the fact that every human being desperately wanted to survive life and the existence of death consistently proved that humans will not. But to say death is as permanent as life, it cannot be said so easily. Even fools have made people ask questions that resonate into solutions, or questions that will one day lead to solutions, in the hearts of strangers. Why else would the delusional and insane preach on the corner of streets? Truthfully, the meek, the weak, the ill - often share the same soapboxes as the brilliant and the revolutionary.
The USSR’s experiment was the introspective look upon the same street corner. At the end of the road, everyone shared the same poverty. Not just physical poverty - but a poverty of the spirit, the exilement of dignity. Dignity stolen by men who ran the nation, who gambled their money in foreign casinos in Germany.
Russia was a Great Power, one of the Four of Europe. For centuries, it had defeated Empires, crushed nations beneath its heel and while the cost was often great, the Russian bear was most loved by its neighbors when it slept. And once the bear awoke again, it would feel the worst kind of hunger.
Russia is imperfect, as humanity is. The USSR may wish to fix the human condition, but the morals will always be cutting into themselves. A rose harmed by its own thorns. Ambition is a scary thing. A vine can climb a wall in hopes of tasting rain water, but it may nestle itself too close to a rooftop shingle and find itself blocked off light and soon, composed of cobwebs, as insects feast upon its green.
Muzhik was smart enough to know that he knew nothing. Thus why he had marked himself as a peasant and nothing more. He may know more than other peasants, but a man who lives by the river is still a man who lives off of fish alone and will always be at the mercy of the ecosystem around him. That is fate and one must accept that there is hunger in this world,
as well as comfort. And the cruelest men once knew what it meant to be hungry, thus why they clutch to their comforts so greatly. But the most evil men - are those who never knew hunger, but eat while others starve.
As Muzhik had stated many times, he was not a communist as much as he was a Soviet. To him, the word “Soviet” and “Comrade” meant something very in particular to his own personal ideology. The idea that all men were equal, that humans, regardless of class, race, culture, language and history - shared this world together. And while humans desperately carved borders between them, wrote words that separated them and pounded their chest, declaring
they were this or that - humans all bleed red and all humans know hunger. For even the comfortable may wake with an empty stomach.
The story of Don Quixote had slowly become Muzhik’s own. He had seen himself as a knight at one point, completely indoctrinated by his own idealism. So much so, he wished that the future he wished to build - one without crying children or hungry men, was
possible. In the end, the USSR had existed for some years and while it had built a country in a way that the Tsars could not, building communism is a task that is as possible as putting men in the sun.
Yes, the idea is beautiful, but humans will burn before they even get close enough to know the heat of that star’s true potential. There were talks, in fiction and the like, specifically some that Mati read - science fiction, it was… of men on other planets, men leaving the planet. Truly, Muzhik felt this was more science fantasy than fiction. In the end, he hoped that to be true.
“Mankind must learn to live alongside one another, before they can think they can live among the stars.”
That was his statement on the matter. But once again, this was his own dying ego and his own war with his idealistic, knight-like mindset. Muzhik had never been persuaded of anything that was not passionate to his heart, but he had grown to accept that while all men are born equal, not all institutions will see this fact as true. In the same way that all humans will bicker and fight each other for comfort, they will do anything to be less hungry. Survival makes
humans tribalistic and the comfortable days are deceitful. After all, those godless Tsars, they had more spoons of silver than they had hearts among them all. But deep down, especially during their final days, they must have realized how afraid they were to die. Knowing their god would not greet them.
Knights of yore were no different and yet, what was it about Don Quixote that was so damn enduring to him? Ironically, even though it was arguably the most significant piece of fiction ever made, the crowning jewel of human literature besides the bible itself in all of its influences on storytelling, narrative, characterization - even the fact it had become relevant in intellectual circles regarding politics and even theological debates… Mati did not care too much for it, despite its status as perhaps being Spain’s greatest contribution to culture besides the
classical guitar and packaged cigarettes.
In the end, Muzhik realized that he is Don Quixote. Not because being a knight, a moral person, an idealist - was a bad thing. But the fact that communism, the Party and all of its backstabbing factions, were entirely impractical. That was the brilliance of the book. One that he read during the darkest of days in Barcelona.
Indeed, before he had come to Euskadi, ironically embedded with both Basque and Galician resistors to the Junta - he was there in Barcelona. Just in time to see the bottom to top revolution completely flip from top to bottom, head over head, tumbling endlessly into the uncertain abyss.
The endless purges against former allies, the anarquistas having open street fights with the Shock Troops of the International Column, the roof tops banging in and out with the ever chipper squeals of rifle and handgun fire - it was all delusional. Muzhik still had a mission to stop the fascists and in the end, that was the only thing that kept him moving forward toward the harsh winds.
But he read the entirety of Don Quixote, a truly intimidating book in length alone - on those Barcelona rooftops, waiting for the next big move. Waiting for the International Column to fully move the Aragon front. And much like a certain Knight that chased windmills, there was no true evil foe to face. Franco and the Second Republic were equally incompetent windmills that saw each other as giants. The difference was that the USSR could only stretch so far without aggravating the Germans, who had become just as involved as their Italian comrades.
Deep in Euskadi, near the mountains of southern France, a secret war was fought for an ancient goddess. The existence of this alone had crushed Muzhik’s delusions of a truly perfect, Soviet world. How could one remain a militant atheist with the knowledge that the Germans had also sought this power? But more than anything, it was a compromise of ideals. Communists using this indigenous, hidden, esoteric magic - where the two tribes of men and spirits conjoined and overlapped into one - it had been what broke his determination.
Not even Stalin’s paranoia had left him so distraught. Nor the things that paranoia had made him do against former comrades. Yet, he still played the fool. Even if he knew it in his heart, the truth of this arcane magic was the true intention of both superpowers, as they traversed the woods for this Elemental Being. Muzhik remained the fool, the Peasant who still left salted bread out for the Domovoy house spirit. After all, who was to say that back home, in the deepest forests - the gods and spirits of the old Slavic tribes did not exist in clandestine conditions either?
Despite having personally seen unexplainable things in these woods, Muzhik proudly bit into the delusion of an ideology that could not co-exist with true human nature. That nature being, inherit self destruction and mindless gnawing and biting at one another. Like the ever aggressive Steppe Wolves of the Russian Far East, humans were doomed to thrash one another - to fill their stomachs or simply for sport.
“I’m Don Quixote.” Muzhik would finally admit, over a buterbrod meal and some tea. The two sat often at this table near the stove, enjoying each other’s existence as enduringly and lovingly without a spoken word for hours. But when they did talk, it would go far into the night. At some point, Muzhik had become the lone survivor of his mission and he was far too comfortable in Mati’s arms at night. A sin for a soldier, but a great victory for a man with a heart. “I have finally accepted it.”
“And who am I?” Mati would ask with a grin. “You’re more like Sancho Panza, the squire to your ideal future…”
“You tease me harshly now?” He laughed with what sounded more like a cough. “You are my Dulcinea del Tobos, but not imaginary. “Mixed with the prankster girl, Altisidora, of course.”
“How charming, my smart Siberian man…” The two spoke of each other in words as sweet as honey fairly often, sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously - but always with earnest love. “I’m as loyal as the horse Rocinante…”
“Ha!”
Mati blushed harshly, embarrassed at her own joke.
“Do you wish to be ridden as firmly as Rocinante as well?”
And the two would laugh, even through embarrassment. Through boldness and comfort, the two would bond more and more. But through stories, through creative conversations and the tremendous amount of company the two shared, the more they softened and melted. And, as if through alchemy, the more they went through the process of ingression.
One night, as the rain coldly battered the roof and pounded the grass outside, to pleasant rhythms but also the steady stream of rushing water that gushed from the gutters - it was Muzhik who held Mati, rather than the other way around.
And it was her, who decided to tell him a new knightly story.
Obviously, Muzhik held onto his ideals and
romanticism just to preserve his humanity until
the very end. That was the only reason he had any positive outlook in this world. The gregarious
introvert that he was, he could cherish life for the fact that he could fully embrace being a human
beneath his strong words and powerful symbols.
But Mati loved the genuine gentleman that he was. Thus, the story of Sir Bedivere had come to mind… Arthurian legend, as classic and also, as overused as it was - still could tickle the heartstrings like the delicate fingers of a harp player.
And while Mati explained it in an obtuse, sometimes disjointed way, the intention of the recounting was nothing short of perfection to Muzhik. Music to his ears and a story for his own heart.