merearly

[merearly]

This fiction is in remembrance of Alexei Navalny, the martyr.

Heaven On Earth

A bone-chilling wind pulled him back to reality. Alexei realized he was not in heaven but had woken up from a doze due to the cold. After prolonged sleep deprivation, his health was even more miserable than vegetables under freezing rain. He remembered that his most recent memory was of passing out unknowingly a few hours ago, while his cellmate was still struggling with his uncontrollable vocal cords. He tried to sleep on the cold, hard pillow, even though it made every vertebra in his neck painfully aware.

He began to observe his surroundings and realized he was on a vehicle. Where else could I go? he thought, nothing but from one purgatory to another. Was this his trial? Like Khodorkovsky, who spent ten years in prison, changing his perception of time. And what about himself? Had he changed anything... He was no longer afraid of the cold; he no longer needed sleep. The image of Khodorkovsky, a round-headed, sharp-nosed Jew sitting on the train, leaning over to him, saying, "This is not the end of the fight, but the beginning of the real struggle.”

Then Alexei remembered a New Year's Eve many years ago, when he was grabbed and spent the night in jail, surviving on thick socks passed in by a friend, before being dragged to court the next day. These horrific experiences were not unfamiliar to him, just the cold. He had returned from Germany after being poisoned, underwear poisoned, doused in green antiseptic – these trials were like the scars on a knight's face, the medals of valor for the brave, and his armor.

"Oh, today is Christmas." Alexei suddenly realized, hoping this wouldn't mean his team would have to work overtime during the holiday. He laughed to himself, remembering the summer he was transferred to IK-6, how his team panicked when they suddenly lost track of him.

What was the point of it all, what meaning did it all have? he asked himself again. The Slavs lived under the yoke of the Mongols for many years, under the reign of Ivan the Terrible and Stalin for many more years. If there was any difference between the present and history, it could be summed up in a joke: Nicholas I was Genghis Khan with a telegraph, Stalin was Genghis Khan with a telephone... There was never any difference, always anachronistic, always a failure. He certainly wouldn't dream "what if" dreams like a cowardly daydreamer: What if Yeltsin wasn't a damned drunk, what if Putin had fallen early in the metals case, what if the winds of freedom had swept the world. Building happiness in illusions is easy, but that wasn't his mission. The tsar tried hard not to crucify him with his own hands, and for this reason, martyrdom became his fate.

Cold, still cold. Moderate cold makes the mind clear, but excessive cold blurs the line between reality and delusion. He saw his tall friend, the eternal 55-year-old playboy, his soul floating in his prison cell, existing in a form of gas and consciousness. "My dear, I won't be able to attend your funeral, alas! Dear Sakharov Prize laureate... I was actually pondering your future, it's quite simple really, either like me or like Khodorkovsky." Nemtsov waved his hand, "You'll be joining me soon!"

"No, I must find the third way, someone has to finish it."

"I no longer care, ideals only attract the living. Sakharov, ah, Sakharov, I met Boris Yeltsin at Sakharov's funeral, he told someone he wanted a son, to pass on his name Boris. I told someone, I'm also Boris, he's missing a son, and I lacked a father, I felt a father-son bond in my relationship with Yeltsin. You see how much I cared back then. Now, much has changed, but not for the better, fortunately I'm already dead, I don't care anymore, the dead have no principles or mercy."

"Do you know what I'm most afraid of?" Navalny propped up his emaciated head with one hand, like a starved kangaroo. The ghost of Nemtsov raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. "I'm afraid that one day I'll drink gin, numbly watching Putin's propaganda on TV, then shed regretful tears. Then I'd truly become a pitiable and despised beast." Tears rolled in his green eyes.

The ghost of Nemtsov wanted to embrace him but couldn't, he could only try to press his head close to him, "You won't, you won't. Do you know why? Because you're alive, you have humor, you are active thought itself, you are a new story, but they are just imitating the old czarist executioners; you are the story waiting to be told, while they are the forbidden words."

Suddenly, his illusion shattered. A prison guard grabbed his leg, dragging him off the prison van, pulling him along a dim concrete path, and locked him in IK-3, at this point Navalny did not know he would spend his last less than two months of life here. He was still prepared to repeat the request rejected by the previous prison; he wanted a balalaika, he wanted to tell his cellmates he was a black belt in taekwondo, it would be great to have a kangaroo, but in this minus 32-degree environment, he wasn't sure if that counted as animal abuse.

Alexei Navalny, he wasn't good-looking at all, the close set of his eyes, casting shadows in their sockets, made him seem more villainous, but anyway, it was all over, he had left the tsar's cruel Earthly heaven for the real Heaven. Peter Aven once wrote of Berezovsky's life: A man's life story cannot be great without tragedy. This also applied to Navalny's life.

It was an ordinary afternoon at first, the president sitting in front of the crowd with a microphone; the political prisoner walking near the Arctic Circle in winter, then he felt heart-piercing pain, he knocked on Nemtsov's door once again.

And this time, Boris opened the door.