maybe,’ I reply. ‘That’s all we have, isn’t it?’
‘But we’re afraid to use it most of the time. For most of us, truth is merely facts. That’s where we feel safest.’
We walk further into the forest and stand by a pond which is seamlessly coated with snow so that it has become one with the surrounding land.
‘What do your instincts tell you now?’ he asks me.
‘About what?’
‘About where we’re going, you and I. Us.’
‘I don’t think about it. I don’t think about you much when we’re not together,’ I say, and it’s true. ‘I have my survival to think about.’
He holds my hand through our thick gloves.
‘And what if you did think about us, Rabbit, about where we both want to go?’
‘I can’t think about it,’ I say.
‘Or won’t,’ he says.
I am silent.
‘Let me tell you, then. My instincts say we should get out of all this. Retire, if you like. Remove the obstacles, our work, these forces around us, everything that conspires and will continue to conspire against our future. Let go of everything that restricts us from being true together. My instinct says we should reduce us to just you, me and the spirit that joins us.’
I consider what he’s saying. I fear the treason he’s suggesting. His to me, or mine to my country? I don’t know. And if Finn is true, what might it do to me, this treason? And I have other fears too. But these fears are of the wrong things; they are fears of a change in my life so massive I can barely imagine it. My fear is of leaving everything familiar to me, everything in my life up to this point, in exchange for Finn and uncertainty. It is a base and useless fear. I know that what I should be afraid of is the opposite. I should be afraid of not leaving everything familiar to me. I should fear not changing.
We walk around the trees now, there’s no path, and step over broken branches with a coating of snow that bulges over them like baggy trousers and dwarfs the things it settles on.
‘It’s the flexibility of snow that pleases me most,’ Finn says. ‘The way it joins the most uneven surfaces together in beautiful, soft curves. It unites the whole landscape. It seems to heal the earth.’
But I’m not really listening. I coldly assess the thought that Finn has put into my head, the thought of him and me, with nothing to disturb us. Then I look for the familiar and bring us cruelly back to the present.
‘Who is Vladimir Putin?’ I ask. ‘I want to know what you think.’
Finn looks at me, to give me the opportunity to reconsider, perhaps.
‘That’s the question,’ he replies at last, and a shadow crosses his face; a shadow of grief, maybe, that a moment devoted to us and us alone has lost a rare opportunity.
He picks up a stick and dusts off the snow to reveal fungi still clinging to its rottenness.
‘History is a broken toy,’ he says, carefully handling the stick. ‘It breaks and gets fixed and breaks again. Bits fall off and are replaced. It breaks over and over again and everything is replaced and everything remains the same. History is like the axe that has its handle replaced over and over. Is it still the same axe? It functions in the same way. History is just a toy in the sense that people want it to function in the same way, and it does. It still breaks and is still mended in just the same ways.
‘What happened with KoKo in 1961 in East Germany sowed the seeds of a plan and the Plan grew and grew in ambition but it was always interrupted, thwarted by events and forces. When the Wall came down in 1989, we in the West thought it was all over. The Cold War was won. That’s how it seemed. The end of history, some idiot called it. But like so much in history our thoughts were coloured by our hopes- and our ill-conceived perceptions. You see, the past wouldn’t go away. The Plan only lay dormant. Yeltsin, he was the real hope. But he himself and events around him conspired against a truly new Russia. In the nineties,
‘But we’re afraid to use it most of the time. For most of us, truth is merely facts. That’s where we feel safest.’
We walk further into the forest and stand by a pond which is seamlessly coated with snow so that it has become one with the surrounding land.
‘What do your instincts tell you now?’ he asks me.
‘About what?’
‘About where we’re going, you and I. Us.’
‘I don’t think about it. I don’t think about you much when we’re not together,’ I say, and it’s true. ‘I have my survival to think about.’
He holds my hand through our thick gloves.
‘And what if you did think about us, Rabbit, about where we both want to go?’
‘I can’t think about it,’ I say.
‘Or won’t,’ he says.
I am silent.
‘Let me tell you, then. My instincts say we should get out of all this. Retire, if you like. Remove the obstacles, our work, these forces around us, everything that conspires and will continue to conspire against our future. Let go of everything that restricts us from being true together. My instinct says we should reduce us to just you, me and the spirit that joins us.’
I consider what he’s saying. I fear the treason he’s suggesting. His to me, or mine to my country? I don’t know. And if Finn is true, what might it do to me, this treason? And I have other fears too. But these fears are of the wrong things; they are fears of a change in my life so massive I can barely imagine it. My fear is of leaving everything familiar to me, everything in my life up to this point, in exchange for Finn and uncertainty. It is a base and useless fear. I know that what I should be afraid of is the opposite. I should be afraid of not leaving everything familiar to me. I should fear not changing.
We walk around the trees now, there’s no path, and step over broken branches with a coating of snow that bulges over them like baggy trousers and dwarfs the things it settles on.
‘It’s the flexibility of snow that pleases me most,’ Finn says. ‘The way it joins the most uneven surfaces together in beautiful, soft curves. It unites the whole landscape. It seems to heal the earth.’
But I’m not really listening. I coldly assess the thought that Finn has put into my head, the thought of him and me, with nothing to disturb us. Then I look for the familiar and bring us cruelly back to the present.
‘Who is Vladimir Putin?’ I ask. ‘I want to know what you think.’
Finn looks at me, to give me the opportunity to reconsider, perhaps.
‘That’s the question,’ he replies at last, and a shadow crosses his face; a shadow of grief, maybe, that a moment devoted to us and us alone has lost a rare opportunity.
He picks up a stick and dusts off the snow to reveal fungi still clinging to its rottenness.
‘History is a broken toy,’ he says, carefully handling the stick. ‘It breaks and gets fixed and breaks again. Bits fall off and are replaced. It breaks over and over again and everything is replaced and everything remains the same. History is like the axe that has its handle replaced over and over. Is it still the same axe? It functions in the same way. History is just a toy in the sense that people want it to function in the same way, and it does. It still breaks and is still mended in just the same ways.
‘What happened with KoKo in 1961 in East Germany sowed the seeds of a plan and the Plan grew and grew in ambition but it was always interrupted, thwarted by events and forces. When the Wall came down in 1989, we in the West thought it was all over. The Cold War was won. That’s how it seemed. The end of history, some idiot called it. But like so much in history our thoughts were coloured by our hopes- and our ill-conceived perceptions. You see, the past wouldn’t go away. The Plan only lay dormant. Yeltsin, he was the real hope. But he himself and events around him conspired against a truly new Russia. In the nineties,
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