The sleeping ice desert was glittering under the silver streams of moonlight, and there wasn't any smallest occassional sound, that could suddenly break it's peace, seemed to be eternal, like the saint union of evil and kindness. Everything, that only could be seen by human eyes, was white and sparking, like the wedding dress of bride, was innocent, like the childish soul, but life has already left this lonely place forever. And now, even without crosses and monuments of crying angels, made of dark grey stone, this desert was so much alike with the huge graveland, lost in the middle of nowhere. It was the second sadly-famous Cervetari - the broken temple, where hundreds of sinners were moveless and speechless in their last endless dream. So the dark wandering figure, almost completely hidden in the black long coat and in the several wool scarves, really seemed to be only strange and useless detail in this deadly peaceful picture. The figure made a few steps more, then heavily fell down in the shining snow and didn't move anymore for a quarter-an-hour, but then the pain of the frosty pricking needles became too sharp, and the wanderer slowly sat down and washed the face by the melting water from snowflakes. It was a young deadly pale girl with black, like the gloomy night, hair, lying, like a snakes on the shoulders and braist, and shining eyes of the strange color, mixed of hazel, green and grey. The girl, hardly breathing, took a look around and helplessly tried to stand up on the feet, but fell down again on the back. It was her last trying to save the life, this little bright bird, that's rushing around in the cell and dreaming about the eternal freedom. The strength and the warm, already becoming senceless and useless, slowly, but surely, drop by drop, were leaving her dancing in the shiver body, and the blood in the narrow veins was turning into the ice. The steps of saint Mother-Death, blessing and gifting the peace, were becoming louder, the cold breath could be heard much closer with every moment, and the girl, collecting the last powers in the palms, made a weak, but sincere smile. Lying on the back, she took the last sight in the night dark-blue sky, to the far indifferent stars and then finally closed her eyes, crossing the hands of the braist, that wouldn't be touched by the breath anymore. It was the thirteenth night of her lonely wandering in the heart of the northern deserts, finding it's final point on this sparking ice graveland. Embracings of Mother-Death have finally brought her so awaited peaceful dream: she was falling asleep with the only thought about her own beauty, seemed to be the beauty of the flower, lovely covered by the snow.
CHAPTER II. THE MESSENGER OF MIRACLE.
It was the early morning, colored by the dark cold sun and gifting the frosty kisses of winter air, when the girl, suddenly woken up, got free from the arms of Mother-Death, opened her eyes again. She firstly thought that everything she sees could be nothing else but the hell: hell was the empty silent desert, made of sharp silver ice, and it's never been the huge goblet of fire and heat, like the jews always drew it in their books. She decided that it was all just a lie, but the next minute let her know, how freaky wrong she was: it wasn't the hell and it wasn't the death, it only was life, that damned torment named Life. She hasn't set herself free from this torment and it couldn't not to make her scared: alive, she's alive again and it only means that she's doomed to be hurt again... again and again - this pain will be eternal and the salvation never could be found.
- But my beloved Christus, how could it happen with me?! - histerically thought a girl and quickly stood up on her feet: the movings, deadly painful yesterday night, have already become naturally easy and free - as they have always to be alike. Somehow it made the young girl panically scared, and, immediately putting of the scarves and the coat, she surprisingly saw the smooth white skin, that's never known the pain from the hits and never kept the wounds from knives and the ugly touches of wild fire, - all these freaky signs have disappeared, just like if they wouldn't ever exist.
- I know, you still haven't believed, - suddenly the melodic silent voice sounded in a couple of steps behind her. - Only a few people believe: majority is blind and cause of it sure that I'm a liar. But how can it be true? I only try to save the life, can you see?
The girl turned around to see the human, who has just finished that unimaginable way to find her on this ice graveland. It was a blue-eyed boy of her age, beautiful and shining like the angel. He was looking at her with a childish smile, but a girl strangely was feeling the dead cold, rushing from this smile deep under her skin, and the peaceful sight of his eyes seemed to be a poison, freezing the blood in the veins... she was feeling like if her body has been torged in the pricking ice chains somewhere on the top of the high hill, where only the winds and wild birds were the masters - and she thought it was the only thing that the doomed sinner could feel in front of the face of the light angel, messenger of God.
- Who are you? - asked the girl, looking straightly into his eyes, and then, ain't waiting for the answer, continued. - Don't try to answer me, I don't need your answer anyway.
- Why not? - said the boy. He's only come a little bit closer to her, but the girl momentally made a several steps back and waved her hands, ordering him by these tough gestures and wicked sight to stop immediately.
- Why not? - teased she. - And you still haven't understood? No matter, who you are, you have to learn: I've never asked you to come and to save my life. I've been absolutely happy only when I started to realize, that the death's been already rushing to take me... and because of you she ranaway, she left and now I don't know, how soon she will come for me again. You must never do what you've done.
- But I...
- I don't care what you're gonna tell me! Leave me alone and let me leave too!...
She shouted so loudly and unexpectably, that a boy movelessly stood up on the same place and looked at her with a huge surprise. The sight of the girl was full of the hate and contempt, and her white, like a snow, fingers were squeezing the wood scarf with a wild cruelty, wishing that scarf once to turn into the boy's neck.
- You are wrong, - finally whispered a boy, when a girl put a scarf back on and the scary fires in her eyes started to disappear. - Only the God has the real power and the strength to decide, when each of us has to die... but sometimes people think they are wiser than their Savior and start to decline their God... it feeds the Devil... I'm only able to help to these people. You should know: nobody else but the God can gift a ressurection. It's really not important, who tries to save you: if you're still alive, it only means that your time to leave hasn't yet come. And you have no right to decide, is it right or wrong: you'll never rich to the sky, like the God, so let Him always stay above you on your own.
The girl coldly threw the last sight on his pale face and sat down on the snow, looking firstly around theirselves, and then again in the dark sky, indifferently watching the frozen earth.
- Are you praying about the death? - suddenly asked the boy, but didn't receive even the slight sign of attention: the girl was only keeping on looking somewhere, too high to see anything, and didn't answer. Then her strange fellow came so close to her, that he could to hear her breath, deep and easy, like the breath of sleeping the child, sat down next to her and touched her hand, trying to share his own warm with her.
- My name is Damjan, - said he almost hopelessly, not even dreaming, that a girl will pay any attention to it, but suprisingly to him she quickly threw a sight from the blinding cold sun on him and silently, with a slight smile, answered:
- Damjan... it is a very beautiful name...
- Then may I ask you, what is yours?
- My name is Lyanka, - answered she again. - Lyanka Rosalia Tellman...
Damjan momentally stood up from the ground, like if the snow would turn into the burning metall, and the sight of his widely opened huge eyes was reflecting all his fear and shock.
- You... you are Jewish? - with a shiver in the voice asked he. - Jewish?...
- Yes, - suprisingly calmly answered a girl. - I am Jewish.
- Jewish, - fanatically excited, repeated her words Damjan. - Jewish... I knew I'll have to find you some day... Adam has found Eve.
- No, - suddenly declined Lyanka. - Satan has found Lilith.
CHAPTER III. THE DAMNED NATION.
It was already evening, dark and deadly cold, like the heart of demons, when Damjan and Lyanka finally reached to their sanctuary for the another winter night - to the small hidden hollow, where even the winds were speechless. Boy and girl were carefully holding each other's hands, making the steps by the ice-glass, but they still hadn't been ready to destroy that tough invisible wall between theirselves. They were walking their way silently, and no one of them hadn't throw even the only occassional sight to the strange fellow-wanderer: they still had been next to each other, but not together.
There wasn't any origin of light or warm in their lost sanctuary, not even the only spark of peaceful home fire, but the January frost strangely couldn't rush into this place and turn the air into the snow. Damjan and Lyanka sat down on the frozen ground opposite each other, still holding the hands and looking by eyes into the eyes, but couldn't dare to begin the conversation. The casual well-known feeling of time and space now was quickly disappearing away forever, leaving it's place for the moveless emptiness.
- You can tell me straightly, what do you want to hear from me, - finally said Damjan with a slight shiver in the voice again, - and I will tell you it all.
- I know, - answered him Lyanka, and the flash of cold fire shone in her huge eyes, like the wild lightning in the storm. - But there's nothing what I would like to hear from you.
- Are you sure?
- I am. We may spend the time until the sunrise together in this place, but at morning you will leave and I will leave too, and we will never see each other again: we surely have two different paths.
- No, Lyanka, - both gladly and sadly declined Damjan. - Since this moment we have the same path. Until the very end.
Lyanka hopelessly looked at the empty blind sky, covered by the darkness, like if she was trying to see there any sign from somebody who had left her forever and whom she was mourning about all the life or even before she was born... but the sky was indifferent again, and even the liar-moon tonight hid it's rays of cold silver light behind the clouds.
- All right, - with a hard breath finally said Lyanka. - You can explain me why you are so sure that we both are doomed on each other, can't you?...
Damjan slightly smiled to her, pushing her cold white hand to his chest, but the sight of young Jew still had been full of suspection: she didn't believe him and it seemed to be that she wouldn't believe to none of the words he'd ever say.
- I've never known neither where I was born, nor who was my father, - he started his story anyway. - The only thing I surely remember from my childhood is the huge tormenting wanderings all around Scandinavia, since the first years of my life, - it all seemed to be the one endless road nowhere...
- Were you all this time alone? - asked Lyanka. She surely was trying to make her voice sounding coldly and indifferently, but the notes of compassion were too clear to hide it anyway.
- No, - answered a boy. - I have always been with my mother, no matter, where we were wandering - in Finland, in Sweden, in Norway... she's been with me all the time and she's never let me to leave her...
- And you haven't ever even try to escape?
- No, Lyanka, I haven't...
- Why not, if you wanted it so much?! - missunderstood in the girl's voice has already become loudly shouting, and it somehow has been making Damjan furious.
- Because I loved her! - shouted he. - Yes, in spite of everything she's done, I anyway loved her, can you understand? Or you haven't ever loved somebody?!
Lyanka has momentally become silent, like the small fish under the river, torged in the ice chains, and put her pricking sight down, somehow through the frozen earth.
- No, - finally answered she by the whisper. - I haven't ever love somebody, and nobody's ever loved me. It has always been so natural for me, that I don't imagine another life for myself.
Damjan looked at her pale childish face with an absolute attention and then suddenly asked:
- How old are you, Lyanka?
The girl didn't answer him momentally, like if she was trying to decide, had he the right to learn something else about her or not.
- I... I am sixteen, - finally said she without any sure in the voice and then added. - Or something like that...
- Something like that? - surprisingly repeated Damjan. - You don't know your exact age?
- No, I don't, - agreed Lyanka. - I've never known my real parents and my real date of birth... I was adopted by one family about ten years ago. They were finnish, but we lived in Finland only for the several months, as they were always travelling all around the Europe in the small half-broken bus and only earning some money by selling the childish clothes, sewed by my step-mother... I've never heard even the only word from Hebrew and have never been in Israel... I know, why did you ask me about my age, Damjan: you wanted to say, how freaky it is, when the young girl declines the love... but you should try to understand me, as I am now trying to understand you... I'm sorry, but we have too much in common.
She soon has found out, that Damjan really needed some minutes of silence to become able to continue his monologe again, and, not even understanding why, she's been ready to give him this time and to wait for him patiently.
- You... you said, - Damjan's voice finally sounded again with a slight notes of fear, - that your step-mother was earning the money by selling the clothes... you don't even imagine, how lucky you were... you weren't doomed to see all the deadful sins by your own times since the childhood...
It was the only time, when she didn't let him to speak: she freely broke his speech by the loud laugh, where not even the any note of joy could be heard, - it was very cold, very cruel and mourning laugh, and Damjan, unfortunately to himself, understood very well, what did Lyanka mean and what she wanted to let him know.
- I'm sorry, Lyanka, - said he almost hopelessly.
- Forget it all, - answered a girl, who's momentally become suffering from pain again, like on the funeral ceremony. - Forget and go on. What was happening in your wanderings? Why you've mentioned deadful sins? Was your mother really...
- Yes, - answered Damjan, realizing in advance, what was Lyanka going to say. - You've understood it all rightly. My mother was a thief: she was only earning the money, always stealing everything that could be stolen and then selling it to other people... that was our only origin of money and our only possibility to buy the food...
- And where did you live with your mother?
- Everywhere that it could be possible to live... in the boxes, in the left broken houses, on the rooves... but mostly just on the streets...
Lyanka's slowly holden her head down and silently added:
- Not like we did... you had no the old small bus...
Damjan gently squeezed her hand, that's finally started to take it's casual bronze color and warm back.
- My mother was a thief... I know, she's been always stealing just to geth the only piece of bread for me and for herself, but... but it always hurted me so much... it's always been so painfully... everytime I was thinking about it, I felt like I was losing the ground under my feet, - he made a deep hard breath and sadly added. - Sorry for all these words, Lyanka: I know you anyway don't understand me, but...
- No! - suddenly shouted Lyanka. - I understand. I understand you very well... I only think that... that your mother's sins weren't the thing that hurted you most of all in the life... I think there was something else...
- How did you guess?! - surprisingly asked Damjan, looking at the girl with a real missunderstood. - How you COULD guess?
- I... I am Jew, - shaking the shoulders, answered she. - And Jews... Jews always payed by the curses and the anathemas for the gifts God presented them... and for their prophecies too.
- Yes... you are right again. But it's not the easiest thing to talk about... I'm sorry, but that would be better for me to stay silent and for you - not to learn anything about it...
- No, Damjan, - Lyanka was speaking silently, but toughly and surely. - It was you on your own, who offered me to listen to your story. And now, if you have already started it, you need to make it clear until the very end. Otherwise you had to be silent from the very first moment you saw me.
And Damjan, who really couldn't find any strength inside to decline or to argue with her, just kept on talking:
- I was only eight years old, when this strange thing happened with me... it was just a usual day, not worse and not better than all the other days I've already lived through... nothing could let me predict, that very soon all the things will change... it was a cold December evening, Lyanka... my mother had already been sleeping and I, suffering from the hunger and frost, couldn't fall asleep and so I had only been walking on the streets, when I met a very strange woman there... she was neither young, nor old, neither beautiful, nor ugly, neither kind, nor wicked... no... no, I'm wrong. I had to say it all another way: she was young and old, beautiful and ugly, kind and wicked - both at the same time. Do you understand?...
- Yes, - surely agreed Lyanka. - I understand you very well. I know what are you trying to explain me.
- She said that she wanted to try to predict my future... I told her that I had no money to pay her, but she answered she didn't need a money from me. Then I tried to explain her that I had never believed in all these prophecies, had been sure it was all just a lie, but she declined again and kept on insisting...
- And so did you finally agree?...
- Yes. She made me agreed.. and then she took my hand and started to watch with a strange attention on the lines on my left palm, like if there would be letters, completing whole the text of her prophecy... then she took out from her pocket the old pack of cards and asked me to choose three of it from the pack... I couldn't remember, what I have chosen, because I've never seen such kind of cards before and I haven't ever known, what did all these strange pictures mean... but it wasn't so important, because I still remember the prophecy that woman made for me...
- What did she tell you then?
- Firstly she said that I shouldn't be mourning about my mother's sins, because everyone chooses his own way, and I have to do the same. And then she took a shining sharp dagger, hidden under her clothes, and left a long deep wound from it on her hand. I was looking at her with a panical fear, but she gave me her hand and asked me to help her. Yes, I was shocked and I wished to runaway from that woman, back to my mother, but I quickly found out that something made me moveless. It was the scariest feeling I've ever learned in my life. She started to pray me, like if I was a Jesus Christ, to treat her wound, and so I put my hands on her and closed my eyes. I didn't understand what was going on, but when I opened my eyes again, I... I saw that the wound on her hand has disappeared and her skin has become smooth and clear again... somehow I treated her... last night I treated your wounds too... it was all the same, Lyanka, but tell me, who hurted your body so much?...
- Niko Rumminen, - answered a girl, and her eyes fulled by the cold pricking glitter of hate. - Always and only he... Niko Rumminen.
- Who is Niko Rumminen?
- Who WAS Niko Rumminen! - suddenly shouted Lyanka and momentally, like the flash of lighthing, stood up on the feet. Her body was shivering because of freaky excitement, and her mouth was colored by the crimson blood, while she was biting her lips. - WAS, already WAS, but not IS! He IS NOT anymore... but he was... Niko Rumminen... was my step-brother... the son of my step-mother. He was fifteen years old, when his mother adopted me... I still can't understand, what did she do it for, but Niko hated me all his life... every moment he spent next to me was full of this hate... and it was always mutual: I hated him too and I always wished him nothing but the death.
- But why, Lyanka? Was he insulting you?
Lyanka coldly smiled:
- Of course. He was insulting me everytime when his mother couldn't hear him: he was always tried to make her considering him to be so good and so kind boy, just a little angel... and she... damned finnish fool, she always believed him! He wasn't only insulting me, Damjan: just imagine, how many people in this world daily insult the Jews! There are millions of nasty words, but who from Jews wishes them them all a freaky death? Nobody does, and I did wish him death... not only for his insulting and not only for each of his kicks... he was hiting me everyday: he liked so much to invent the new scary tools for hiting me... he always though he was a messenger of the Saint Inquisition and I was a witch, who had to be punished for the sins she hadn't ever done, but COULD and WOULD make... it was his pleasure. And for so many times I showed to step-mother the signs of his inquisition tortures, but she never believed me... somehow he always strangely appeared in front of us and told his mother that I got all these wounds just because I fell down somewhere on the streets and now I was only trying to blame him, because I was a Jew, and all those Jews were and will be the damned nation, hating all the people in the world... the damned nation, that killed Jesus Christ...
She held her head down, and it seemed like she was hardly trying to hold back the tears, that didn't let her neither speak, nor even breathe any more. A girl, looking so tired and so broken, fell down on the frozen earth and hid the face behind the hands. But before Damjan gently tried to touch her waving, silver of the falling snow hair, Lyanka had already kept on speaking:
- I still can't understand, what I was so patiently waiting for and why did I let him to hurt me so many years without any trying to protect myself... I don't know how many years more it would long, if fourteen days ago he... he wouldn't try to own me... wouldn't try to take me with a force... he made me drinking the poisoned mixture, then... then I almost can't remember anything, because I felt like I was falling down from the highest mountain in the Universe... he rudely threw all the clothes from my body and then... then was nothing but the pain, much more sharp and deadful, than the pain of labour... and I was only hoping that it would be the end, the very end of it all, but I was wrong and... and next morning I woke up again... God damned, I woke up again!... why, what for, can you explain me, WHY?!... where is my blessed Mother-Death, why didn't she come to take me?! Hasn't my beloved Christus yet seen, how do I hate this damned life?!...
She squeezed the pricking snow, like the needles, in her hands, almost histerically crying, and Damjan was sencelessly trying to calm her down: everything's been done in vain. A few minutes, that were bringing the peace back to Lyanka, seemed to be eternity, but when this time has finally come, a girl tried to tell her story until the very end:
- I could forgive him none of the things he's somewhen done: I was always dreaming of revenge, and at that morning I finally understood that the time has come. I wanted his death to be as dirty and shameful, as everything he's done to me... and so I was only waiting for the night, until he fell asleep and then... then I took the knife and hitted him... ten or fifteen times... until his body turned into the red peace of meat... until it's become impossible to recognize his face... after that... it seemed like I have died together with him, but it was a lie again: I was alive... alive, like I am now... I hid that knife under my coat and ranaway nowhere...
- Killed, - finally said Damjan after the long tormenting silence. - You killed this boy... it means you have a blood on your hands... it means she was talking about you...
- What? - surprisingly asked Lyanka. Strangely, that she still could understand the sence of his speech: it seemed like she had become deaf, blind and speechless after telling the story about Niko Rumminen.
- I haven't told you all the truth about that woman, - answered her Damjan. - She hasn't only show me the gift of treating then wounds I have... she has also told me about one girl...
- One girl?...
- She said that there will be a day, when I meet a girl in the place, where the life can not exist... she said there will be a girl of my age... she said this girl will have the blood on her hands and the death in her mind... she said this girl will tell me about the Satan, who found Lilith, because all her life will be, as the curse of Lilith, a lonely wandering around the desert... she said this girl will be a Jew... and than she added that my father's name was not Janne Lumilla, like my mother always told me... but David Maimon, and that he was not finnish... he was a Jew... he was a Jew, because me and the girl I will meet will be the parts of the same damned nation... and the day when we will find each other will be the beginning of the same endless road... and there will be nothing else but hate on this road, but no one of us...
- Will ever try to escape from this road, - suddenly said Lyanka. - Like you hadn't ever tried to escape from your mother, but then finally did it... or like I hadn't ever tried to revenge to my brother, but then finally did it too.
CHAPTER IV. THE HERETICAL CIRCUS.
It was the beginning of the seventh year of their wanderings around Scandinavia, the first week of new January, pricking by the frozen needles, just like that passed January, when Damjan found Lyanka in the glittering ice graveland, as Satan somewhen found Lilith in the red desert. The silence and the darkness, that both were always surrounding them, covering each of their movings, have disappeared forever: now there was nothing but the blinding electric light of projectors and the noise, mixed of applausses, theatre prayers and wild shoutings of the excited crowd, taking the places in the heretical circus before the new play start. Damjan and Lyanka performed their roles in those places everyday for a dozen of times - and it was always the same, like the freaky nightmare, endlessly repeating and repeating everytime you fall asleep, until you won't lose your mind or die in that coma. Every morning, right at the moment, when the golden sun was rising up in the dark sky, the heretical circus opened the doors for a huge crowds of sick and disabled slaves of Jesus Christ, who were listening to the annoyingly loud prayers of Damjan, proclaiming "God bless you, amine!" and hospitably inviting them all to enter. And every morning Lyanka, hiding from the sunrays, from the sights of the crowd behind the circus arena, was silently waiting for the time, when Damjan will throw his hands up in the air, shout "Let the Christ's kindness to bless you!" and order her to appear from the darkness. And after that she will have to come out from the sanctuary, in the rays of dead light, stand on her knees in front of the faces of those ugly contemptable fools, half-humen or half-animals, and to take that pain once again. And Damjan, endlessly praying and singing the glory for Christus, will take a shining sword and, like the Archangel, bless it's blade by her blood... and she will have to be silent, to keep inside of herself any sound, any shouting of pain, will have to wait for the Miracle with a smile on her face. She will have to wait, when he will gently put his soft warm hands around her body, cold, white and tough, like the body of deadman, and will treat all the wounds he left on it, and the crowd will be shouting again that he is the angel, the messenger of Christus - no, that he is Christus, he is a God... and nobody will notice her pain, nobody will think about her mourn, nobody will imagine, how much does she hate this God for his cruelty, so smartly masked under the name of Jesus Christ and His blessing kindness... but he is not Christus, he is the Antichrist, the Beast, who always remembers about her sorrow and who will never let the Mother-Death to take her away and to gift her the eternal freedom far from the frozen earth, and that will always be sencelessly to pray him about the peace. This painful torture named the Life иwill have to be endless, and there will never be even the only escape from this road.