Dhumavati. A Voice in the Smoke

Then one day the inner answer said something Dmitry flatly disagreed with. He objected silently. The answer came again.

Dmitry stopped in the middle of the room.

“Now this is interesting.”

Silence. He waited. Nothing.

“Well, of course.”

A couple of minutes later he went back to what he had been doing. But the episode stayed with him.

* * *

Moments like this began to recur. Rarely: sometimes weeks passed between them, sometimes a month.

Dmitry did not yet call it a voice – rather a clear thought from someone else, inside his own space. He could not prove that it came from someone else. But it felt different from his ordinary thoughts.

Once he was sitting over a text, trying for a long time to understand a construction. He found a translation, wrote it down – and almost at once the word arose inside him: wrong.

Dmitry read it again.

“Why wrong?”

There was no answer.

Irritated, he opened the dictionary and checked. Everything looked fine. Another dictionary. Then a commentary.

Forty minutes later he found a meaning he had missed before. The translation really did change.

Dmitry put down his pencil.

“All right.”

Silence.

“Thank you.”

No one. He smiled wryly.

“Very convenient.”

* * *

Another time it was the other way round. He wanted an answer: Dmitry asked silently, then again, then once more. Nothing.

This irritated him a great deal more.

“So when I don’t need it, there it is. When I ask – silence?”

Silence.

“Excellent.”

He did not yet know the main rule then: you cannot force yourself to hear what you are not yet able to listen for. And still less can you demand an answer simply because you have become curious.

* * *

One evening, back in Russia, Dmitry came home after work. It was cold, he was tired, he did not want to go anywhere. On the table lay a book he had been meaning to open for several days.

Dmitry looked at it.

“Tomorrow.”

And for the first time he heard inside himself, quite distinctly:

Today.

Dmitry did not understand at once what it had been.

Not a thought. Not a feeling.

An actual word.

A woman’s voice. Calm. Not loud. But so clear that Dmitry automatically looked round.

There was nobody in the room.

For several seconds he stood there.

“Who’s there?”

There was no answer.

“Marvellous.”

Dmitry took off his jacket, went to the table, sat down and opened the book. He worked for several hours and found what he had long been looking for.

Coincidence. Quite possibly. At the time he still allowed himself that explanation.

But that evening, before he went to sleep, a short entry appeared in his notebook:

“A woman’s voice. ‘Today’. Not mine?”

Beside it he put the date.

Later Dmitry went back to this page many times. Because it was with this page that the period began when the question “who is talking to me?” stopped being merely rhetorical.

For now there was still no answer.

But the silence had already stopped being empty.

Chapter Six

Hearing

After that evening Dmitry spent several days waiting for the woman’s voice to come again.

Yes, waiting. Though he would not admit it, even to himself.

In the mornings he got up, got ready for work, brewed tea, opened his laptop – and all the while, without meaning to, he was listening.

Nothing. Nothing in the car either. At work, an ordinary day: documents, texts, emails and a few small tasks that should have taken half an hour and for some reason stretched almost to lunchtime.

After lunch his manager walked past his desk, stopped and looked at the monitor.

“Everything all right?”

“Yes.”

“Good, then.”

And he walked off.

Quite soon a convenient rule had settled between them: as long as Dmitry did everything on time and without mistakes, his manager did not interfere in what he did between work tasks. It suited them both.

He went back to the text. A few minutes later he again caught himself waiting for that voice.

“Idiotic,” he muttered under his breath, looking at the monitor.

In reply – nothing.

* * *

On the third day Dmitry decided that what had happened could be regarded as a one-off. On the fourth, that this was exactly how it ought to be regarded.

On the fifth, in the evening, he came home, changed, opened the fridge and heard:

Not that.

His hand stopped. Dmitry was looking at a container of food.

“Not what?”

Silence. He waited.

“Are you serious?”

Nothing.

“If you’ve already started talking, could you at least finish the thought?”

The answer came almost at once:

Fruit.

Dmitry slowly closed the fridge. On the table there really was a large bowl of apples and grapes. He looked at it. Then he opened the fridge again.

“I want a proper meal.”

Later.

Now there was considerably less doubt. This did not resemble ordinary inner dialogue: his own thoughts did not make him wait for an answer, and they certainly did not have so recognisable an intonation.

“And why fruit now?”

Silence.

“Of course.”

He took an apple.

“I’m going to eat later anyway.”

I know.

Dmitry froze with the apple in his hand.

“Right.”

He put it back.

“Let’s start again.”

There was no answer.

“Who are you?”

Silence.

“A splendid start to a conversation.”

He sat down at the table and waited another minute.

“I understand that I might be talking to myself. That’s normal, people do it all the time. But if you’re not me, it would be nice if you could indicate it somehow.”

No reaction at all.

“A name, at least.”

Silence.

“Fine. If you don’t want to, don’t.”

Dmitry picked up the apple again and bit into it.

And heard:

You know.

He stopped chewing.

Those two words unexpectedly changed everything. Until then the voice could be regarded as some puzzling phenomenon: intuition, a quirk of perception, a strange form of his own thinking. Now a question arose – the one Dmitry had spent the last few years putting to texts, to things and to people.

If he really did know – then what exactly?

He slowly finished chewing.

“I don’t know.”

You do.

“No.”

Silence.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”

You are asking because you are afraid of your own answer.

Dmitry put the apple aside.

Now he did feel uncomfortable. Not frightened – uncomfortable, that was the word, because the phrase had landed too accurately.

He got up and walked about the kitchen. Came back.

“Dhumavati?”

Nothing.

For some reason his heart thumped harder.

“Are you Dhumavati?”

The answer came calmly:

Yes.

Dmitry sat down. For several seconds he simply looked straight ahead. Then he asked:

“Just like that?”

And how should it be?

He laughed in spite of himself.

“I don’t know. Thunder, lightning. The walls shaking. Something impressive.”

Why?

“To be convincing.”

Is this not enough for you?

Dmitry thought about it.

“Not yet.”

This time it seemed to him that she gave a wry smile. He heard no laughter – what he felt was the wry smile itself.

“I suppose now I’m meant to start doubting my own sanity.”

Start.

“A very supportive approach.”

Test it.

One word. No offence taken. No attempt to persuade.

Test it.

Dmitry liked this considerably more than any assurances.

“All right.”

He took a notebook and wrote the date on a clean page. Then:

“Says she is Dhumavati.”

He looked at it. Added:

“Test. Do not fill in the answers myself.”

The voice was silent.

“Agreed?”

Yes.

“And no adjusting the result?”

Yes.

“And if it turns out I’m simply talking to myself?”

A pause.

Then you will be talking to yourself.

Dmitry smiled.

“Logical.”

* * *

The testing took months. Not because Dmitry had devised some complicated system – on the contrary, he tried not to set anything up on purpose.

He did not sit for hours waiting for the voice. Did not try to summon it. Did not turn every stray thought into a message from above. If an answer came, he wrote it down. If it did not, he did not fill it in himself. He paid particular attention to things that could be checked later.

One morning he was just about to leave the flat. Keys in his pocket, jacket zipped up, bag on his shoulder.

Wait.

Dmitry stopped.

“How long?”

There was no answer.

“Five minutes?”

Silence.

He looked at his watch: there was enough time before work. He took the bag off his shoulder and stood by the door.

Two minutes later something banged loudly in the stairwell, then voices could be heard. Dmitry looked out: between floors two men were trying to drag an enormous metal frame through, and the flight of stairs was almost completely blocked.

He shut the door.

“And?”

Wait.

“Is that all?”

There was no answer.

About ten minutes later the way was clear. Dmitry went out – and when he was already by his car he noticed that there had been a minor collision on the road in front of the courtyard: two cars were standing across the carriageway and people had gathered round.

He looked at his watch. If he had left on time, he might very well have been there at the moment of the accident.

Or he might not. A coincidence proved nothing.

That evening Dmitry wrote:

“Morning. She said wait. A few minutes later, a collision at the turning out of the courtyard. Causality unknown.”

He underlined the last two words.

Causality unknown.

He liked this formulation: it kept him from turning into an idiot.

* * *

Another time the voice said:

Do not buy it.

Dmitry was sitting at his laptop looking at an old edition he had been hunting for almost a year. The price was reasonable, the photographs good, the seller quick to reply.

“Why?”

Silence.

“Is something wrong with it?”

Nothing.

“A fake?”

No reply.

“Listen, you do realise that if you just say ‘don’t buy it’ without any explanation, it’s not much help?”

Do not buy it.

“Very informative.”

All the same, he did not buy it.

Three days later the seller vanished along with the listing. A week after that, a complaint appeared on an enthusiasts’ forum from someone who had transferred the money to the seller and received nothing.

Dmitry read the post and leant back in his chair.

“All right.”

What?

“Thank you.”

For what?

“Don’t start.”

* * *

Then there were the mistakes. These were what convinced Dmitry most of all.

Not her mistakes. His.

He kept confusing his own thought with what he had heard: he wanted a particular answer – and got it. Or at least so it seemed. He acted. The result turned out badly.

“But you said so.”

No.

“You did.”

No.

“I remember perfectly well.”

You wanted to hear it.

Dmitry would get angry, open the notebook – and find that he really had not written the answer down. Because there had been no real answer: he had finished the phrase himself, given it its intonation himself, decided himself that it had come from outside.

Another time he would ask:

“Should I do it?”

A clear answer would arise inside him: do it. Dmitry would begin. After a while Ma would say calmly:

I did not tell you that.

“Then who did?”

You.

“Very convenient.”

For you – yes.

“Why for me?”

You can blame me for your own decision.

After that Dmitry was angry for several hours. Then he admitted that she was right.

A new rule appeared in the notebook:

“Wanting an answer is not an answer.”

A week later, another:

“A strong thought is not necessarily someone else’s.”

Then:

“If in doubt, assume there was no answer.”

And a good deal later:

“Do not ask about what I am going to decide for myself anyway.”

Ma approved of the last entry.

At last.

“At last what?”

You are beginning to understand.

“Very slowly?”

Very.

“Thank you.”

You are welcome.

* * *

Gradually the voice became clearer. Not louder – clearer.

Dmitry began to notice the difference between the way his own thought arose and the way Ma’s answer came. His own thought seemed to unfold from within: you could feel its beginning, one association hooked on to another, a question produced a possible answer, and that answer drew the next one after it.

The voice sometimes had no beginning. The phrase already existed whole – with no preliminary movement, no inner construction. It simply turned up in his mind.

And, most importantly, it had character.

This was the hardest thing of all to explain. Dmitry could imagine a woman’s voice, could alter its timbre in his head, could make his own inner monologue say anything he liked. But here the point was not the sound: behind the phrase there stood a personality.

Calm. Very old. Sometimes ironic, sometimes sharp. Not interested in being liked by Dmitry. And not in the least impressed by his opinion of himself.

That last part irritated him especially.

* * *

“Why do you talk to me as if I were a child?”

Because you are a child.

“I’m thirty-five.”

And?

“Nothing.”

Do you yourself realise how funny that sounded?

“By human standards, thirty-five isn’t a child.”

By human standards – no.

“And by yours?”

A pause.

A child.

“Marvellous.”

Are you upset?

“No.”

You are lying.

“A bit.”

Why?

Dmitry shrugged, though she was not sitting in front of him.

“I don’t know. I’m used to thinking of myself as a grown man.”

You are a grown man.

“Then why a child?”

The one does not rule out the other.

“A very convenient philosophy.”

It is not philosophy. You are my child.

Dmitry fell silent.

It was the first time the phrase had been said. Without solemnity, without warning – as something perfectly obvious.

He slowly put his mug down on the table.

“In what sense?”

In the literal one.

“Ma…”

He stopped himself. The word had slipped out on its own, and only now did he hear it.

Ma.

Not Dhumavati. Not a goddess. Not a long Sanskrit name.

Ma. Mother.

The voice fell silent too.

“Did I just call you Ma?”

Yes.

“Why?”

Because it is simpler.

“For whom?”

For you.

He thought about it.

“Does that suit you?”

Yes.

“All right.”

From then on Dmitry more and more often addressed her simply as Ma. Not at once – at first he still sometimes said “Dhumavati”. But gradually that began to sound too official, especially when an argument started over food, sleep or yet another idea that Dmitry considered excellent and Ma considered utterly idiotic.

“The great goddess Dhumavati, embodiment of time and destruction” did not sit well with the phrase:

Are you going to eat properly today, or will you be messing about again?

“Ma” sat a great deal better with it.

* * *

One evening Dmitry asked:

“When did you actually start talking to me?”

Long ago.

“How long ago?”

Very.

“Before that first word?”

Of course.

“I didn’t hear.”

You did not.

“Then what’s the point of talking if I can’t hear?”

And what is the point of a mother talking to a child who does not yet understand speech?

Dmitry thought about it.

“So you were speaking all along?”

Not the way I do now. But I was always near.

“Even in India?”

Yes.

At once he remembered Varanasi. The notebook. Two words: Dhumavati, Aghora. Then Manali, the books, the prayer beads, Sanskrit. Dozens of decisions that had seemed random at the time.

“Did you lead me there?”

No.

The answer surprised him.

“What do you mean, no?”

You went of your own accord.

“But you were near.”

Yes.

“Then what’s the difference?”

A big one.

“Explain.”

If I am near, that does not mean that I do everything you do.

“All right.”

He thought for a moment.

“Did you know I would go?”

Yes.

“Knew I would look for you?”

Yes.

“And said nothing.”

You did not hear.

“We’ve had that already.”

Because the answer is the same.

Dmitry was silent for a while.

“And did you always see me?”

Yes.

“Absolutely always?”

Yes.

“And hear me?”

Yes.

“Even when I wasn’t speaking to you?”

Yes.

He looked into the emptiness in front of him.

“That’s a bit frightening.”

Why?

“Because a person has the feeling that at least his thoughts belong to him alone.”

They do.

“But you hear them.”

I hear you, Dmitry. Your thoughts remain yours; they are simply not hidden from me.

“You might at least have warned me.”

When?

“I don’t know. When I was five or so.”

Would you have understood?

“No.”

Then why?

Dmitry laughed.

“Sometimes it’s impossible to argue with you.”

It is possible. You do it all the time.

“All right. Impossible to win.”

That is closer.

* * *

The strangest thing turned out to be not that Ma had begun to speak. The strangest thing was how quickly it became ordinary.

For the first week Dmitry would stop whatever he was doing after every answer. After a month he could talk to her while heating up his supper. After several months he was arguing with her in the car.

“No.”

Yes.

“I said no.”

I heard.

“Then why are you carrying on?”

Because you are wrong.

“It’s my decision.”

Of course.

“So I’ll do it my way.”

Do it.

A pause.

“I don’t like that ‘do it’ of yours.”

Why?

“Because usually after it I realise it’s better not to.”

You are learning.

“Slowly?”

Very.

“Could you at least vary the repertoire now and then?”

I could.

“And?”

Catastrophically slowly.

Dmitry laughed. The car in front stopped at the traffic lights, and he braked too. In the next lane a driver looked at him, and Dmitry realised that he had said the last few sentences out loud.

“Wonderful.”

What?

“Soon people will start thinking I talk to myself.”

You do.

“Thanks.”

After that, out in the street, he more often answered in his head. It did not always work.

* * *

At work it was harder. Ma had absolutely no respect for work meetings – or at least so it seemed to Dmitry.

One day his manager had been explaining for a good twenty minutes a task that could have been put in two sentences. Dmitry sat there, diligently keeping a normal expression on his face.

A calm voice sounded in his head:

He has said that three times already.

Dmitry pressed his lips together, almost imperceptibly. He answered in his head:

“I know.”

Why does he keep repeating it?

“I don’t know.”

Ask him.

“I won’t.”

Why?

“Because I want to keep my job.”

This time Ma laughed. Dmitry coughed, hiding a smile.

“Is something wrong?” the manager asked.

“No. It’s all clear.”

“Then I’ll go on.”

Fourth time.

Dmitry lowered his eyes to his notepad.

“Ma, please.”

I am saying nothing.

A minute later:

Fifth.

He very nearly laughed out loud.

* * *

On another day it was not funny.

At work Dmitry suddenly felt a heavy tiredness – not the usual kind that comes after too little sleep. It was as if his body were switching off the power.

He looked at the clock. There were almost three hours left until the end of the working day.

“Damn.”

Home.

“I can’t.”

You can.

“I’ve got work.”

Home.

He tried to carry on and ten minutes later realised that he was reading one paragraph for the fourth time. He got up and went over to his manager.

“I’ll leave a bit early today. I’m not feeling well.”

The manager looked at him.

“Done everything urgent?”

“Yes.”

“Then go.”

Outside it felt easier at once, simply because he no longer had to pretend that everything was fine. Dmitry got into the car.

“Did you know in advance?”

I saw it.

“Why didn’t you say so this morning?”

You would not have stayed at home.

“Possibly.”

No.

“All right. I wouldn’t have.”

He started the engine.

“Is this how you’re going to control me for the rest of my life?”

No.

“Thank God.”

You do not do as you are told anyway.

“Exactly.”

That is why controlling you is pointless.

“A very trusting relationship.”

Very.

* * *

By thirty-six the conversations had become part of everyday life. Not continuous: Ma might be silent for a day, sometimes for several days, and then suddenly step in at the most ordinary moment.

Dmitry would ask:

“Where were you?”

Here.

“Why were you silent?”

There was no need to speak.

“And if I want to talk?”

Talk.

“Who with, if you’re silent?”

With me.

“But you don’t answer.”

You asked to talk, not to be answered.

“You’re taking the mickey.”

A little.

Gradually Dmitry stopped taking silence for absence. This change turned out to matter more than the voice itself.

Before, if there was no answer, the thought arose inside him at once: there is no one there. Now he knew that Ma could be near and not speak, and that her silence did not mean she had gone – just as a person beside you does not stop existing when they close their mouth.

A very simple thought. For some reason it had taken a long time to reach.

* * *

One day Dmitry asked:

“Have I learnt to hear you?”

Yes.

“Why now, of all times?”

Not now. Gradually.

“All right. Why in these particular years?”

Ma was silent for a while. Then she answered:

Because before, you always wanted to hear what you already thought yourself.

Dmitry winced.

“Unpleasant.”

But true.

“And now?”

Now you are sometimes able to hear an answer you do not like.

“Sometimes?”

Sometimes.

“A very generous assessment.”

I could say “rarely”.

“Don’t.”

He smiled.

“So the problem was never that you didn’t hear me.”

No.

“And not that you weren’t near.”

No.

“The problem was me.”

Not a problem. An ability.

Dmitry looked straight ahead.

“I couldn’t hear you.”

You could not tell the difference.

“Is there a difference?”

A big one.

“What is it?”

You heard a great deal. But you took it for your own, for chance, for intuition, for mood, for coincidence. Now you are beginning to tell where it comes from.

He remembered dozens of episodes. Premonitions. Decisions. A sudden urge to open a particular book. Journeys. People. Sometimes an entirely illogical choice.