I’ve always hated my father. Maybe not since I can remember, but since I started asking questions. Questions like, “Why do not you go to work?” or “Why are you so angry when you come home in the evening?”.
Again and again I got the same answer: “Some questions are more beautiful than answers.”
I curse this sentence. He accompanied me all my ruined youth. Apologizing for the laziness and uselessness of my father. But he also shaped me, guided me. I have stubbornly resisted seeing even a spark of truth in him, that I have dedicated my life to counter-proof.
So I travel for over ten years through Russia and write reports. Reports of places that are so saturated with superstition that no one asks why they should be so ominous.
I saw a lot during my travels. Mother Russia has lagged behind in some areas, as no one in the West could imagine. We shot the first human into Earth’s orbit and at the same time witches were still being burned in some villages. It is hardly believed, but even in the north, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, pyres are still not a rare part of a village.
I still feel sick thinking about my last trip. Troetskoe, a community of 400 souls who allegedly had problems with so-called “Oborotney”, demons in human form. I was told that the last incident happened just three weeks ago.
It had taken some time for me to get some locals to talk to me about it. The people were simple, simple and incredibly stupid. In a pub I had invited some farmers to several rounds. When it was getting late, I did not even have to address the topic myself. Some had been there themselves, boasting about it. When I realized what had happened, I rushed outside and had to vomit.
At a family party, a joke was told at a late hour. A one-year-old child sat at the table. The mood was exuberant, the joke was well received and everyone burst out laughing. Taken away by the good mood, the child also began to laugh. And then the drunken villagers got scared. The child could not even talk right and sex understood it nothing. For her, the only explanation for the laughter was that the child was actually a demon in human form, an obotoy. They threw it into the fireplace that same evening.
A disgusting story all in one, but not a rarity in a country that does not value enlightenment as much as protection against capitalism. It is not even a taboo. The uncle of the killed child was also in the pub and bragged loudest with this “heroic deed”.
I’ve only researched a part of the myths in the north, but that’s enough for the moment. I was already able to fill two books and the money should be enough for a little holiday. A holiday that I would have needed a long time ago.
At first, everything made me cynical. But lately I’m just feeling bitter. I can not see these idiots anymore. Sell their power cables to the iron industry, then be forced to live without lights, and suddenly they realize that they are afraid in the dark. Fear becomes superstition and superstition becomes stupidity and stubbornness. In the worst case, they eventually lynch anyone to give vent to their fear. I’m sick of it all.
So I decide to go back south. Many believe that it is always cold in Siberia, but that’s not true. In the summer it is usually 30 degrees in the shade in the south and there are hardly any clouds. Exactly what I need now. Holidays in the sun.
I sit in the first train I get. My goal: The Altai.