The Way of Muri

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Authors: Ilya Boyashov
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overnight shelters for the benefit of like-minded wanderers. Until quite recently, these shelters had been equipped with secret hiding-places. Rural shelters, typically on the outskirts of villages, were connected to the nearest wood by underground tunnels of up to several hundred feet in length. Three hundred years previously the ‘runners’ had been motivated by the search for a legendary country by the name of Belovodye; following a philosophical reinterpretation of this hazy notion contemporary adherents were searching for their own ‘internal’ Shambhala. They were able to comprehend the secrets of their closed doctrine only gradually, ascending its steps one at a time like Masonic initiates, even though they knew from the outset that they would never reach their ‘Promised Land’ because it is impossible to attain perfection.
    ‘
Ex oriente lux
!’ 7 exclaimed the professor. ‘
Magna est veritas, et praevalebit
!’ 8

    Meanwhile the cat kept running…

    Not long before the civil war broke out, an observatory had been built on one of the snowy summits of the Julian Alps. The dazzling, ice-covered steps leading to the telescope tower were like Jacob’s Ladder. Any attempt to ascend or descend these steps invariably became a Sisyphean task, and for this reason a rope had been stretched from the door of the wooden hut all the way up to the top. It was grasped every day by a well-known agitatorof scientific peace – the eccentric astronomer Petko Patić, from Zagreb.
    Patić’s life had arguably been an uphill struggle for some time now. Seven years previously, this forward-thinking senior lecturer had shared with the academic council his discovery of the regularity of supernova explosions in galaxies E130-M and N-115 and in the spiral galaxy D104-2, which had recently been detected by Zilbert and Kate. According to Patić’s calculations, the interval between explosions was exactly 1,324 years. Keen to share his discovery with the experts, he set forth his theory in detail at a meeting of the Yugoslavian astronomical community. Unfortunately, his irrepressible enthusiasm was not reciprocated. They listened to what Patić had to say, but his prediction of a supernova explosion in galaxy D104-2 in 1991 was met with understandable scepticism. During the hour-long debate that followed, Patić lost every shred of his former authority. His zealous approach and the ensuing exchange of insults led, predictably enough, to professional ostracism.
    In 1991, when the promised event failed to materialize, Patić reviewed his chart and admitted that he had made an error in his original calculations, albeit only by a few months. The astronomical community responded once again with derision, but he had no intention of capitulating. In 1992, that fateful year for Croats and Serbs, the disgraced dreamer sought refuge in the observatory, which was operated by his former classmates. They were now burdened with families and earthly concerns and not remotely interested in his insights and breakthroughs. Patić wasn’t invited to join in their routine observations, but as he had no interest in commonplace phenomena this didn’t bother him in the slightest. While he was living there as an outcast, perfecting his chart, significant changes began to occur in the world around him. War broke out, and his sympathetic friends immediately dispersed. Patić remained alone with an Albanian technician who wouldn’t leave the mountain for fear of the raging inferno below.
    The technician, whose name was Mirko, continued to oil the mechanisms and look after the generator, for which they still had several canisters of fuel. But Patić’s mind was elsewhere. He bit all his fingernails to the quick in anticipation of triumph. When his computer broke, the astronomer continued his calculations with pen and paper. His concentration was as intense as that of Newton, who once famously boiled his watch instead of an egg.
    Latterly, the conversations

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