En av alla hans erfarenheter fran den forsta tiden i fangelse, precis innan han flyttadas vidare till lagret (ur kapitlet ”That Spring”) :
There was also a young man from Kiev in the cell, Valentin. I can’t remember his family name. He had big eyes that were beautiful in a feminine way, and he was terrified by the interrogation. There is no doubt that he had the gift of precognition – perhaps only in this moment of excitement. More than once, he went around in the cell in the morning and pointed: Today they are coming for you and you. I saw it in my dream. And they came and got them…the very individuals he had pointed out. One might add that a prisoner’s heart is so inclined toward mysticism* that he accepts precognition almost without surprise.
On July 27 Valentin came up to me. ”Alexandr! Today it is our turn.” And he told me a dream that had all the characteristics of prison dreams: a bridge across a muddy stream, a cross. I began to get my things together. And it was not for nothing either. He and I were summoned after morning tea. Our cellmates saw us off with noisy good wishes, and many of them assured us we were going to freedom. They had figured out by compraing our less serious cases.
Perhaps you don’t honestly believe it. Perhaps you won’t allow yourself to belive. You can try to brush it aside with jokes. But flaming pincers, hotter than anything on earth, suddenly close around your heart. Suppose it’s true?
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Eftersom han i forbigaende namner medfangarnas forsakringar om frihet, sa ska jag for den som onskar har skriva ned en bit av slutet av kapitlet. Citatet borjar efter att de forts in i en ny cell, dar de vantar pa att forhoras ytterligare:
It turned out that each and one of us had been imprisoned for nothing much.
No one touched us for three hours. No one opened the doors. We paced up and down the box and finally, tired out, we sat down on the slab benches. And the little twig kept bobbing outside the opening, and the sparrows screamed as if they were possessed.
Suddenly the door crashed open, and one of us was summoned, a quiet bookkeeper, thirty-five years old. He went out. The door was locked. We started running about our box even more agitatedly than before. We were on hot coals.
On more crash of the door. The called another one and readmitted the first. We rushed to him. But he was not the same man! The life had gone out of his face. His wide-open eyes were unseeing. His movements were uncertain as he stumbled across the smooth floor of the box. Was he in a state of shock? had they swatted him with an ironing board?
”Well? Well?” We asked him, with sinking hearts. (If he had not in fact just gotten up from the electrical chair, he must at very least been given a death sentence.) And in the voice of one reporting the end of the universe, the bookkeeper managed to blurt out:
”Five. . . years!”
And once more the door crashed. That was how quickly they returned, as they were only being taken to the toilet to urinate. The second man returned, all aglow. Evidently he was being released.
”Well, well, come on?” We swarmed around him, our hopes rising again. He waved his hand, choking with laughter.
”Fiften years!”
It was just too absurd to be believed.
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*Jag tycker det ar konstigt hur vissa manniskor idag anvander ordet ”mystik (mysticism)”. Den menar da ofta nagot mystiskt, skumt, laskigt, hedniskt, farligt, demoniskt – eller kristet blandat med detta. Men det ar inte det ordet betyder! Laser man aldre bocker, eller nyare som vet vad ord betyder, sa betyder ordet inget annat an en religios tro, i vilken man bl.a. tror att man kan leva personligen med Gud, dar denna Gud ar aktiv i vara liv och kan gora mirakel (samt ge en visioner etc etc) D.v.s. , ”mysticism/mystik” ar inget annat an en, skall vi saga, ”vetenskaplig” term for religion bland annat sa som den gestaltas i Bibeln. Bibeln ar full av renlarig mystik. Fornkyrkan var en varld av mystik. De gamla vackelserorelserna var (ofta) mystika. Vad innebar det att sa manga neo-frikyrkliga (jag talar nu ej om rorelser som Oas, eller Livets Ord, eller gamla svenska frikyrkor – bloggen aletheia kan sagas vara en representant for de jag talar om) nu helt plotsligt vander sig emot ”mystik” Vander de sig verkligen ifran detta? Eller vill de bara skaffa sig ett nytt ord for samma foreteelse?…
Jag har någonstans hans bok: ”From under the rubble” som han skrev någon gång i mitten av 1970-talet, då han skrev en slags ideologisk vision om det framtida Ryssland som skulle växa upp efter kommunismens fall: Ett kristet Ryssland skulle återuppstå ur ruinerna av den kommunistiska staten.
OOOOH. Jag vill lasa den:) Igar laste jag faktiskt en liten mening ang. detta i Gulag-Arkipelagen (precis innan har han berattat om ett mote han hade med en del sovjetiska domare, vilka berattade att de holl med honom om en del saker, att de ville reformera samhallet etc etc – men att de sett varre ting an honom) :
And I sat there and thought: If the first little tiny droplet of truth [med litet t] has exploded like a psychological bomb, what then will happen in our country when whole waterfalls of Truth [stort T] burst trough?
And they will burst forth. It has to happen.