Page 9 - Revelation
P. 9

Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova.   Revelation

                     A Friend

                  For as long as I can remember the greater part of my earliest recollections as a
            child was always associated with the forest, dearly loved by all members of my

                   family. We lived in a couple of houses very
            close to it and went there almost every day. My
            grandpa who I adored with my whole little heart
            was like a forest spirit to me. It seemed that he
            knew  every  tree,  flower,  bird  or  path  and  he
            could  tell  about  that  absolutely  awesome  and
            unknown to me world for hours, never repeating
            himself or getting too tired to answer my foolish
            child’s questions.
                  I  would  never  miss  these  morning  walks
            with him for anything in the world. They were
            my favourite fairy-tale world which I shared with
            nobody. To my huge regret, I understood who

              my
            grandfather really was only many years later, but
            then he was just the nearest, warmest and most
            fragile human being with bright lively eyes who
            taught me to listen to nature, talk to the trees and
            even to understand the voices of birds. Then I                    Vasily Nikandrovich
            was just a little girl and sincerely thought that                       Seregin
            such things were quite normal; or maybe I did
            not think about it at all. I remember my first acquaintance with a "talking" tree. It was
            an old and enormous oak, too huge for the little hands of a child.

                  — Do you see how big and kind it is? Listen to it. Listen...  – the gentle and
            enveloping voice of my grandfather whispered. And I heard...
                  Until  now,  as  if  it  happened  yesterday,  I  vividly  remember  that  feeling,
            incomparable  with  anything  else,  of  a  confluence  with  something  incredibly
            enormous and deep. It was a feeling of strange visions of strange far away lives which
            began to drift suddenly before my eyes and deep feelings of joy and sadness, too deep
            and complicated for a little child. My familiar and usual world disappeared and instead
            of  it  everything  shone  around  and  spun  in  the  incomprehensible  and  amazing
            whirlpool of sounds and feelings. I felt no fear, only huge surprise and desire that it
            would never end...
                  A child is not an adult. He does not think of anything as wrong or that it should
            not be (according to our "accepted" concepts). Therefore it did not seem strange to
            me  that  it  was  another,  absolutely  different  world,  which  was  very  exciting  and

            beautiful. And this world was shown to me by the man my little child's heart trusted
            with all its natural, pure and open simplicity.
                  I always adored nature. I was tightly connected with any of its manifestations,




           Back to content

                                                           8
   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14