Sensei of Shambala by Anastasia Novykh (poetry books to read txt) 📕

care of my sonny. How shall I live without him now?! Please, Gabriel, take me to him. I do not want this thrice cursed life any more, I do not want it! My God, have mercy on me, let me go to my sonny…”
I was standing very close by and saw how Sensei’s eyes changed. Some shine appeared in them, or more correctly, some soft, tender light that changed Sensei’s features. At this moment I felt that my lotus flower began to vibrate intensively. And this pulse force came not from my thoughts but, as it seemed to me, it came from Sensei. He bent over the woman, raising her.
“Rise, woman,” he told her in a very calm, quiet voice.
It seemed to me that his voice became somewhat unusual. The woman rose a little but did not stand up from her knees, continuing to beg him, but this time it was more quietly, looking directly in his eyes. Sensei tenderly put his hand on her head and said, “Do not worry, woman. Everything is fine with your Nikolai. He is a pious man. He has already been taken care of.”
The woman stretched her hands to him. Her eyes were lit with some sparkle of hope, but her face became stiffened in a single impulse of begging, “Let me, Gabriel, let me go to him…”
Such words of despair made me shiver. At this moment, Sensei’s face was covered with a light haze, and his face became even nicer because of it. My lotus flower pulsed even more.
“Everyone has his own time. You still need to take care of Ksyusha. You will be a guest at her wedding, you will await her firstborn, you will nurse him for a week. And on the ninth day, you will go to your Nikolai to tell him what a fine grandson he has got,” Sensei said calmly.
With each word of Sensei, the eyes of the woman became lighter and kinder. Teardrops of joy began to shine on her face. The woman broke into a smile. Not knowing how to express her gratitude, she began to fall down to his feet again. Sensei tried to raise her up from the ground. Then some old women who traded next to her ran up, lifted her from the ground, took her arms, and led her to the village saying, “Hush, Mashenka, dear, let's go, let's go home…”
The woman went quietly, with her face touched, whispering something to herself and constantly crossing herself. Other old women began to collect her scattered goods. All these events happened within one minute.
At this time, Nikolai Andreevich drove up. Having come up hastily to our motionless company with Yura and Ruslan, he inquired what had happened.
“Some old bag freaked out,” Eugene said, as he was standing far from the Teacher. “She fell to Sensei's feet, all in tears, asked something.”
Sensei silently lit a cigarette, after everything that had happened. When Nikolai Andreevich began to ask, he changed the topic to usual things, having answered shortly, “Yes, things happen in life. A woman is in sorrow.”
“I see… And why did you stop here? We did not plan it.” Nikolai Andreevich asked Kostya.
“Well, we wanted to buy some strawberries.”
Our company walked once again around the market with Sensei. Having chosen ripe berries, Sensei bought a big basket for all of us. Another old woman, packing strawberries into three packets, tenderly spoke to us.
“You, children, do not take offence. Not even a month has passed since the woman’s son Nikolai died in a crash. He was her only son, her hope and support. Her husband died a long time ago… And such sorrow again. He, her sonny, was so young. A little daughter of his remained, Oksana, she is five. Masha's destiny is a heavy one. She brought up her son almost alone, and now she has to support her granddaughter together with her daughter-in-law. I don’t understand what happened to her. She has absolutely lost her head from sorrow.”
“Yes,” Nikolai Andreevich agreed with sympathy. ”Stress can cause even worse mental disorders. I remember there was one case…”
Having listened to eloquent examples from his practice, my consciousness calmed down a little. “Well,” I thought, “it’s no wonder she rushed to the very first man.”
As we drove, the guys cheerfully chattered about their matters while eating ripe strawberries. During Kostya’s latest joke, it suddenly dawned on me. At this moment, I precisely recalled that woman’s babbling and Sensei’s answers. “Stop! She didn’t mention the name of her son, and moreover she did not say the name of her granddaughter. But Sensei precisely named Nikolai and Ksyusha. I nearly choked on a strawberry because of this discovery. I did not want to eat it any more. Recalling Sensei’s face, my lotus started to vibrate again, distributing pleasant sensations all over my body. I physically felt the presence of Sensei nearby. More accurately, I did not feel Sensei himself, but I felt the force that came from him at that moment. And I felt so nice and cozy, as if someone had wrapped me up with soft petals. In this state of bliss I dozed off.

44

I woke up because someone was shaking me by my shoulder.
“Wake up, sleepyhead, we’re almost there,” Tatyana said.
At the next stop, we limbered up our numb legs. The air smelt of sea and freshness. While Andrew, Victor, and Volodya tried to repair the pinging engine of the Zaporozhets, we had a snack in the nearest outdoor cafe.
In half an hour, our motorcade was at the resort area, where people with beautiful chocolate color bodies lounged around in a carefree way in their bathing suits. Sensei's car headed our column. Andrew could not concentrate on the road as he was trying to look around but not break any traffic laws.
Passing by one of boarding houses, Eugene pointed out to us a billboard he saw from the window. There was written in huge, bold type, “A well-known sensitive of international class, chiropractor, fortune teller, magician, and wizard Vitaliy Yakovlevich… carries out medical and recovery sessions. Sessions beginning at 20.00 daily.”
“Who is he?” Tatyana and I asked the guys.
“I don’t know,” Kostya shrugged his shoulders.
“Look, isn't it that the "Neanderthal man," the one who hung spoons on himself? Do you remember?!”
“Yeh, that odd fellow?! Maybe. If I'm not mistaken he was also Vitaliy Yakovlevich. What did he call himself… the Pantocrator of Space and the whole Earth…”
The guys began to noisy recall that case, laughing at the tricks of this ‘deity-tramp.’
Meanwhile having crossed the resort area, we drove to a peninsula that measured about 12 kilometers. It was necessary here to have a car in order to get to a secluded place and camp as we wanted. It seemed the local authorities didn’t want any more adventurers in the neighborhood, as a huge pipe was laid across the only road. Right there in the bushes, though, the guys found two extremely wide boards, which were left by caring drivers. After placing the boards on the pipe, our drivers rolled the cars to the closed side of the road like professional stuntmen. Only Nikolai Andreevich's trailer made them sweat.
Having reached one of the most beautiful nooks of nature, we chose a place that was not too spoilt by campers. Having collected all the garbage left by careless tourists, we burnt it and began to set up camp. Sensei again appeared to be a talented and skilled leader. He took into consideration all trifles of camp arrangement, even a possible storm. All the guys were busy and enthusiastically helped Sensei and each other. All Kostya's things turned out to be really useful, having transformed our camp into a cozy, comfortable mini-town. Kostya did not miss any opportunity to emphasize this fact, reminding us that Andrew was a sadist and tortured him the whole way in the electric chair. Tatyana and I arranged a kitchen. The guys put up a special tent for food and gave us a kerosene camp stove for cooking.
Life in our camp started at full speed. After lunch, we bathed in the sea like dolphins and warmed our bones on hot sand with great pleasure. The senior guys floated in the sea in an inflatable rubber dinghy. Nikolai Andreevich read a book and Sensei dozed in the shadow of an umbrella, having covered himself with a towel. We decided to play cards. Kostya tried to count cards, but it was practically impossible as there were too many of us and we played with two stacks of cards. At his next failure, Kostya started to count card combinations in his head according to his special arithmetic system. While doing one of these odd calculations, he raised his eyebrows as if surprised and asked, “Sensei, what is the largest prime number you can think of?”
Sensei answered without opening his eyes, “In short or in full?”
“In short, of course.”
“2 to the 13,466,917th minus 1,” Sensei said simply, as though the question was about a usual multiplication table. “This number can be divided only by 1 or itself. I think that is the largest prime number that I am capable of counting in my head.”
Kostya turned to his side in surprise. Then he started to calculate something energetically again. Sensei, having opened his eyes, added, “If you want to calculate my IQ, you are wasting your time; it is much lower than yours.”
After saying these words, Sensei turned to the other side and plunged into somnolence again. Kostya was slightly shocked, “Say! Sensei is cool! How did he know about IQ? I just thought it.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew, “this question remained a sweet dream in his memory until it turned into a rotten one waiting for the answer.”
The guys laughed, having won again.
In the evening, Sensei failed to meet our expectations that he would tell us something unforgettable, sitting at the fire beneath the stars. Right after dinner, Sensei went to sleep, probably because his accumulated weariness had affected him. And we sat at the fire for a long time, laughing light-heartedly and telling each other different stories from our lives.

45

In the morning, I woke around seven o'clock because somewhere nearby seagulls shouted disgustingly. I heard the guys’ conversation of the guys, as they had left their tent upon hearing the noise.
Stas said to Eugene in a sleepy voice, “It's so early, but Sensei is already fishing. I wonder what he is going to catch from the seacoast, moreover with a fishing rod. Let’s go and check.”
My curiosity became much stronger than sweet dreaming. I hastened to get out of my tent. Sensei peacefully sat on a folding chair with a fishing rod in his hands. Nearby stood a three-liter jar half filled with water. A few seagulls ran around him shouting indignantly. When we came up, the seagulls flew up and hung in the air near Sensei, examining us from above with curiosity.
“Sensei are you fattening up the seagulls?” Stas grinned, looking at the empty jar.
“Not exactly. They are teaching me how to catch fish,” Sensei answered without any shadow of confusion.
We took it as a joke and laughed.
“Why didn't you wake us earlier? We could have brought a fishing net …”
“Oh, forget about the fishing net. I just wanted some fish soup.”
Just for fun, Eugene demonstratively glanced into the empty jar, turning it around in the light, and said with humor, “Yes, the soup will be rich with such fish.”
At this moment, the seagull that flew above us dropped a small fish, which fell right next to Sensei’s feet. Everybody laughed.
“Look, Sensei! There's a fish for you,” Eugene said with humor,