{"id":1763,"date":"2024-04-04T22:57:48","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T22:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/letters-written-on-the-death-of-ilyitch-lain\/"},"modified":"2024-04-04T22:57:48","modified_gmt":"2024-04-04T22:57:48","slug":"letters-written-on-the-death-of-ilyitch-lain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lampbylit.com\/magazine\/letters-written-on-the-death-of-ilyitch-lain\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters Written on the Death of Ilyitch Lain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Letters Written on the Death of Ilyitch Lain<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Andreyev<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a02 Weeks<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It would not be well for us to meet again before these things come to pass. I have no obligation to your happiness but what I take upon myself. To culture relations further would be irresponsible. You should not bear more pain than what is already levied naturally upon us all.<\/span><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t understand it, Marcia. I don\u2019t understand it myself. It is far beyond me, but I know it enough to see what is to be done. Consider it for a moment, our state of being. This fickle swamp of desires which composes things.<\/span><\/p>\n

It should be said that I am not keen on dying. No man is, other than the ill, and I am not ill. In fact, madness is the crux of man. It is his happy cross to carry. But I have shouldered my load, and here I am without the visions that carry us each onward. And so I must die. You don\u2019t understand it, Marcia. I don\u2019t understand it myself. Three days now.<\/span><\/p>\n

I love you. I love you more than you could ever love me. I am cursed with emotion like beasts, all raving and snorting and rolling in filth. Radical and untamed. Therein lies the heart of it, I suppose. Emotions. Flesh and Blood. My little fancies only bury me further and further underground. I can\u2019t breathe, Marcia. My blood is afire. I am not keen on dying. I will explain before I go, and in greater detail. I am trembling from alcohol shakes now, and I cannot write much more. I will check the cupboards for what spirits remain untouched.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have already written the prior. He recommends that I hold off on the hanging until he might arrive. It would be foolish to do so, lest I be stolen from my course. He understands little. Less than you and I. Seeking God would only drive me further into it. But, do you know that I still pray, Marcia? That I am still faithful? He asked me, the Abbot, \u201cHow is it a man of God seeks Hell with such a peace?\u201d There is no peace in me. I cannot stand the thought of Hell. I cannot stand the thought of heaven, either. Communion with my God could be no less frightening than the deepest umbra of outer darkness. That eldritch thing who breathed into the dust. Spaceless. Timeless. Filled by righteous anger. And here am I, mortal and finite, a feeble, vile thing. To be joined there? Completely? To revoke my coil and be cast headlong into the heart of the infinite? We are human dear. We fear the unknown. There is nothing less known than he.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And so, I am trapped. A trapeze swinger, sweating and on the verge of the descent. Rope walker. Chain dancer. \u201cChains.\u201d Fitting. Eldritch, Fleshly chains. The Devil is laughing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Annihilation could be no less sweet than earthly pleasure reaped boundless on a table never breaking. Would the oceans turn to morphine, and the sky to perfume, and if wave engulfed me in the heat of a tide, I would spit out each drop and bite my thumb until I am drowned in naught but hunger pains and the stench of old blood. If only to hide from the bilious atrocity of it all. But there is no annihilation. There is no rest for the weary. There is only heaven, or hell. That is what awaits me. There will never be peace for us, Marcia. There will never be rest. The immortality of the soul has buried us above ground, from the moment of the birth. Naive, wailing infants, brought forth into the world in expectation of such great pleasures and such profound virtues. But the midwives and mothers are fools. And the infants know. They must know. Why else do they cry, Marcia? The moment of eternal birth. What else is there to cry for?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

1 Week, 4 Days\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wish you would not trouble me, Priest. I am gone. Today is the day. This letter will no doubt find you riding furiously in some vain attempt at divine heroics. But you will not find <\/span>me<\/span><\/i>. I will be gone. I will be hanging from the rafters, and I will be smiling all the while. I will be smiling! I will have gone triumphant, Father. I will have left a martyr. And you will see me, and you will say the rites, and I will be buried in the cemetery for suicides, and God will be questioned for that which he cursed us with, and I will not receive answers, as no man ever has. Heaven is silent. It will always be. But I will have laid down his little game, and having come into this world foreknown, my death will have been likewise ordained. I was born to die, Father. But in the pedigree of victims, I was born a martyr.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seeing things are, in fact, as they very much are, I will not return to the seminary. I know my value, and I know this will not sit well with the board, but you could not change my mind. A stain on such unreproachable men! What will the clergy say?! Bah.<\/span><\/p>\n

You know of the flesh and soul, Father? You have read Paul\u2019s letters? Surely. The cloth is a life of scholarship. Both you and I have studied the scriptures, and studied them well. We are alike in that way. You for things divine, and I for things infernal. You know Paul well. And now you know Dr. Ilyitch Lain. I have only continued his work.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why I sought the knot: Paul was correct. He was more than correct, in fact, for no man less than Christ himself ever taught truth more fierce than Paul. Fickle, heinous, Adamic Paul. And Paul taught of the flesh most of all. The gnostics saw this, mad as they are. There is something which has alluded man regarding the flesh. But it did not elude Paul, and it did not elude myself. It is only by calling, ordained from birth, that distinguishes him and I. Both however: martyrs.<\/span><\/p>\n

The flesh is what composes us, Father. It is there when we come into this world, and is there when we leave it. And what is the flesh? It is the animal. It is Darwin\u2019s corpse. It is the thing within us that we gained on the morning Eve stood lying through the Apple in her teeth. Before God himself, she gave story on story and laid blame on blame, and the serpent laughed all the while, because he knew that we became as he that day: Animals. We had lost the supernatural. We were cleaved fresh from the divine. From that day on, heaven grew silent, for we had lost heaven, and tumbled eagerly into Earth. Lucifer fell.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so, like the Animals, Man grew depraved. And we were handed over to the beasts. Like beasts we pillowed with women, and sired heirs for our prideful estates, and with each generation, in both body and soul, we grew further estranged from the God we once loved. We evolved, as all animals do, and we lost the soul with each trembling step forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

The flesh is all there is, Father. We have but a spark of the soul left within us. But what does it mean, Father? What does it mean for us, and our children, and the beasts we took for idols? Our life is but a series of desires. Emotions. Delusions. We became as beasts do, and we lived, and made more living, and as parents we fed pridefully on the meat of children, and grew fertile in the wombs of Women who knew us not. Who knew us only as a means to an end: Children. Babies. Infants. Spawn. Children are cast aside in the street, but are not worthy of our love, for what genes do we share? What has the flesh to do with them? It needs them not. No. \u201cMake more,\u201d it says. \u201cBe fruitful, and multiply.\u201d And so we did. And all our lives we slave to the desires of this flesh. Each of our actions is just another mockery of the serpent. The Devil himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you know what the \u201cSatan\u201d means, Father? Have ye studied the Hebrew? You teach Greek as my colleague, but surely you are familiar with the language of God\u2019s people. It means \u201cThe one who is opposed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We eat, and drink, and be merry. The wise see it. There has never been a book like Ecclesiastes, and even it lost sight of what was important. It can only bear the weight of our condition for so long before it shirks the load and seeks parable and proverb and empty, pretty words. But Paul took up the cross where Solomon could not. He spoke of the war of the soul and the flesh, and he spoke the truth: it is a war we have lost.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what is to be done?<\/span><\/p>\n

We are to rot.<\/span><\/p>\n

But not I.<\/span><\/p>\n

I will slay the flesh, Father. Where it says to live, I will say to Die. \u201cLive! Live and make life! Eat! Drink! Be merry!\u201d Each word a hiss. Each from a scale. Each from a forked and crooked tongue. No. I wish to live, but my soul longs to die. And where Paul was called to carry the Gospel, I was called to its action. He, the mouthpiece, I, the sound of the horn. And I will not go quiet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

1 Week<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mother, come. Help me. I beg you, please. I have failed us. I have failed us all. I could not do it. I formed the knot! I pushed the stool! I did all that was required of me! But the moment came, and went, and I could not go through with it. The snake is laughing. The Devil shakes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0I need you here, Mother. You did this to me, and you must fix it. I did not ask to be born. It is through nothing but the satiation of your flesh that you conceived me, and so here I am, in all my vulgar glory. I have asked nothing of you until this day. You will come here. You will hang me. And I will laugh all the while. Thirty-Three years with me on earth. Has that not been enough for you? Enough to let me go?<\/span><\/p>\n

I suppose I must thank you for the efforts you made to bring me to this moment. Though you sinned through my conception, you did the best you could with what evil you wrought. It was through your support, moral and financial, that brought me through university. St. Petersburg is not cheap for living, as I have come to know very well. It was through your connections in the petty bureaucracy that allowed me to attain employment clerking, and it was through this work that taught me fine writing. Without it I would have never earned my tenure. And now I teach. Or, I taught. I have no time for the Humanities anymore. The pantries are bare here, in my hovel of an apartment, but I have no need for food or drink. I only wish I had saved some Vodka. It might be through this oversight that I failed my task. Even now my stomach churns at the thought of just a drop of that Slavic nectar. And tobacco? An unthinkable luxury.<\/span><\/p>\n

I saw a man smoking from the window last sabbath. I had attended mass, taking special care to pray for guidance as to what needed to be done, and though the pane has grown heavy with years of dust, I could still see the little ember perched at the tip of his maw. He was dressed in plainclothes, and looked pensive in a way, as he peered out over our little bend of the Neva. Lost in thought. I wonder what it was that he was thinking. It could have been nothing of substance, surely! Men do not ponder on the sabbath. None but them of the cloth. And yet, how pensive he looked. I wonder what it was that he was thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

You attended my first lectures, did you not? It was a happy moment for myself (as little as that means) to see my own mother listening content to the exploits of her first-born. I doubt you remember the subject. You never had a bent for the abstract. I taught metaphysics. A strange course to be taught in a seminary, but I was the only one fit to do so. Do you remember, Mother? Kierkegaard came first. Yes. The first of the Danes. The father of existentialism. He taught of the leap of faith. I\u2019m sure you have heard me speak of it. There is the naive man, the one who does not consider his place in the world. And there are those as I. The \u201cknights\u201d of resignation who, upon their leaping into the absurd, cannot land. It chains them there, frozen in abyss, staring longingly at the steady land beyond. The silence of God is too profound for them. And yet, on that sweet and foreign shore, there stand men. Abraham. Mary. Those whom he titled knights of faith. Them who made the leap, and in swift and unbroken motion, landed with grace. They saw the impossible and laughed. God need not speak for them, he had spoken enough. The simple man is the knight of faith. The man who can light his cigarette, and stare out into the Neva, and ponder the evils and the ignorances of the world, and smile all the while. God is enough for him. Christ left the tomb for him, though he was blind to the rolling of the stone. It is absurd. I cannot fathom it. The curse of existence is but a petty game to him, one so easy to play, easy to win, and one with spoils always offered to the God who dealt the hand. Eagerly. Without break in step. One seamless, unbroken motion, they kneel and lay the lamb on the altar. That man on the river. I think it was in his eyes.\u00a0 I wonder what it was that he was thinking\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One Day<\/strong><\/p>\n

I promised, Marcia, but I cannot check the craving. I must write to you once more. I have decided to live, though for how long I am unsure. I think these revelations lend themself to at least one more letter. At least until I can know for certain that I will continue on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vasily is still searching for me. I have written him and told him to cease the witchhunt, but he will not listen, and so I am in hiding. I do not wish to answer for my actions. I do not wish to face the board. The seminary has never understood. Their God is such a fickle one. They blaspheme with every moment they teach in that wretched school. Theology and Theodicy. What can Man know of a God such as ours? Fools. Let them speak their fables. I will begin a new ministry. I will bring God to Man, as Paul did. As Christ did. The temples of Man could never withstand the weight of our condition. Christ fought them. Christ died for it. For his work. But he died that I may live.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I do not shun what it was that I had decided, nor do I believe I was wrong, but I have advanced enough in my philosophy to understand that I may not have been thinking as clearly as I should have been. Whether through hunger, or withdrawal, or even those emotions I so often declaim, I was misguided.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not my life to do with as I please. I promised to die the day I found Christ. I laid myself down. And yet, I picked myself up once more, and wandered to where I wish, picking up the dust from whence I came all the while. It is a new suicide that is needed now. A dying to self. Yes, Marcia. I will die. And I will leave behind that wretched school which bound me in the chains of Adam\u2019s eager ignorance. They will not let me go easy, but I will find a way. I must die.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is something to life. Something that (like the war of the flesh and the end one should seek in lieu of it) I do not fully understand. You understand it far more than I do. But I will seek to enunciate it here.<\/span><\/p>\n

God is silent. It is his very nature to be. Transcendent. \u201cDivine.\u201d These useless human terms we fashioned hastily to capture even a shred of his meaning. He is so very far beyond us. And he decided to make this. All of this. And in the way he deemed best. I do not understand it, why he would make humanity with the knowledge that through his designing, they would fall and lose their supernaturality. But he did. And who am I to question? As he answered Jonah, when that great and angry fist was shaken on that great and angry hill overlooking that great and angry city of Assryian pride: \u201cIs it right for you to be angered?\u201d Who am I, Marcia? Who am I to question?<\/span><\/p>\n

I was made. I thought it was to die, but it may be for more. To preach my gospel to all that might listen. I am like Paul, yes, but maybe in greater ways than I had once believed. Surely this is a test? The hiss of the snake that rattles our bones? The fetid breath of the Devil-made flesh? An opportunity to give God something more, perhaps. Or an opportunity to seek him in spite of it. I do not know. It is not my place to know. Heaven is silent, but the earth is alive. I am alive, Marcia. And I wish to love life more than the meaning of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

You sent me money. I laughed when I received the parcel. Forty rubles! Your savings in whole. All the fruit of your pretty German-born sweat. It was as if you knew I would not leave you. Or maybe it was on faith alone, that fickle thing. I should speak on faith. Yes. But first, I must thank you, though I sent back your savings. I do not need bread and water, Marcia. I need to think. And for a very long time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Faith! Yes. Faith. I do not have it. Nor will I ever. At least, not as the priests call it. Faith is not belief, however. In my own human twisting of the thing, faith is action. It is life without the belief in it. It is a prayer to a God you do not know is listening. It is action for belief. I do not believe. But I have faith, dear. Not unshakable, not one of seamless motion, but a faith of fear and trembling. Much fear, and much trembling. Am I not the greatest of the saints then? Am I not a martyr still?<\/span><\/p>\n

Let the flesh rot. I will endure it. I will play the slave for now. But God is watching. And let him watch! Let him see the things I will do, in spite of this flesh! I will write, and make art, and teach others to do so as well. We will make a circle of brilliant, sacred music in the deepest ring of Hell itself, until the notes and the chords and our trembling, fiery voices ring out to God above. How I await the day of the Lord, Marcia. For the day this has ended, and the flesh is cast away, and I am awarded with \u201cWell done, my good and faithful servant.\u201d Let the mansion he is building burn. I do not need it. I built a house here from the dust he made me with. It is not a pretty thing, but it is mine, and it is caulked with the blood by which I was once enchained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let the serpent rot, Marcia. I will see you again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Post-Mortem<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vasily stepped cautiously into the darkness of the apartment. The sun had already set, despite having ridden furiously for the whole of the afternoon to reach St. Petersburg. It had taken a week to find Dr. Lain, and only after bribing one of the man\u2019s adjuncts with spirits was he given an address.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was clear the flat had not been maintained for years. Dust-layered hardwood and dirty white sheets covered much of the furniture. The only signs of life were the pantry doors opened wide and littered with nothing but mostly empty bottles of spirits, a bookshelf entirely free from dust and bursting with well-read literature, and an elderly woman sitting in the dark of the greeting room. She spoke.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve come too late, Father.\u201d Her voice seemed tired and thin, and there was a cup of vodka in her firm yet bony fingers. She had tears in her eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo he went through with it after all?\u201d Responded an awkward Vasily, searching for a place to put his hands. He settled on clasping them behind his back in a manner he thought seemed dignified and clerical. In reality, it only emphasized his look of discomfort.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe did. I tied the knot for him.\u201d She said this while nodding her head in a strange way toward the one extra room of the apartment. The door was cracked, but through the slit of the doorway and the shadows found therein, the priest could make out the outline of something hanging from the ceiling.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?!\u201d Uttered Vasily, incredulous.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was his wish. Who am I to deny him? Have you heard him speak, Father? He is quite compelling when he means to be. It was what earned him his tenure as a lecturer. \u2018Metaphysics.\u2019 How proud I was\u2026\u201d Her voice trailed off as she moved to stare out the window.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou should have stopped him.\u201d Responded Vasily, indignant. The Woman only laughed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWho am I to be angered?\u201d She spoke through the feeble little giggles. Before the priest could respond, she removed her hand from the glass, and thrust it toward the priest. In her palm was a crumpled note.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is this?\u201d The priest replied, taking the paper. It remained folded.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA letter.\u201d Was all the woman said in reply. Vasily opened it. It read as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

June 3rd, on the banks of the Neva, St. Petersburg.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr. Ilyitch Lain is dead. He is gone. He is no more. He is dead to the world, and to the cloth, and by his own hand.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

To the clergy who will inevitably find this: God will not forget you. He will forgive, but you will not be forgotten. You will answer, on the day of the Lord, for the thing you made him: A Man. You gave God the very thing that pollutes us. He is not of flesh, he is not of reason, he is of God, and nothing more. Let him stay in infinity, do not wrestle him down to earth.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Have ye not seen it? Has the mud not touched your eyes? Blind! Blind to all that was made clear on the day you nailed Christ and tree. Let the temple fall, and the veil be torn. Not one stone will remain on another. You act as if you have not read the Gospels. Pharisees. All of you. Let me die. Lay me in that grave wherein you buried your souls.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

My Marcia, you will hear of this surely. I am sorry I could not give you more explanation. Things will become clear to you. We will meet again, for I will rise again. Do not worry dear. The day comes soon.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

May the flesh rot around you all, and may the soul take its place.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n