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“Maybe the Lord created dogs to remind us sinners that there is such pure love – without any ulterior motives or prejudices,” notes journalist and writer Dmitry Likhanov. The main character of his new book is a dog. The touching story of a white husky named Bianca became an occasion to talk about a person – about loyalty and betrayal, the transience of life and its essence.
Psychologies: How did you get the idea to write a novel about the life of a dog? Share your intention.
Dmitry Likhanov: Actually, the whole story of Bianchi is not fiction at all. This is the story of a purebred husky named Taiga, who was brought to a northern village and left there in the care of local residents. This, in my opinion, is the main idea of the novel. It is about that thoroughbredness, especially not only canine, but, first of all, human nature, which can be easily destroyed if placed in an alien environment.
The same thing happened with Taiga. She could have a great future, but everything turned out not at all the way nature intended. Her children degenerated and died, and she herself was shot by her own master. I know this dog and its owners. I have hunted in this area for almost 20 years. Taiga’s story cut me to the heart at the time. So I decided to perpetuate it.
Fragment from the novel “Bianca”
“You know, Bianca,” Ivan Sergeevich said, “I’m not a young person, after all. I’m already over fifty. And life doesn’t work out. My life doesn’t stick. Previously, everything seemed to be ahead. All the best is yet to come. I looked back, and life flew by. And nothing good ever happened to her. No family. Not wives. No children. I don’t have anything. What is there! He didn’t even make friends. I’m not talking about work. Twenty years in one place. Before, I remember, everyone was striving for something, looking for something, but now I don’t want that either. Life has become boring, Bianca! Not interested! Unbearable! It became sickening to live in our country. Everyone thinks only about food and about money to buy this food. In ten years the people have turned into cattle. In a slave country, where everyone’s own skin is dearer. The sage Confucius is right, the sage Confucius is right: all that is needed for governance is for the people to have a full stomach and an empty head. He spoke, of course, in those centuries about the Chinese, but, Lord, how all this is in tune with today’s Russia.
The dog, in response to the bleak voice of the owner, turned to him a sensitive muzzle, caught his eye. But he kept looking down at his feet.
“Yes, and how am I different from them? Ivan Sergeevich asked, I don’t understand who. – Yes, nothing! The same creature. I don’t even resist. I can’t stop a brazen girl. I don’t dare to yell across. And for you, little animal, to intercede even more so.
Is the deep and habitual feeling of unhappiness that distinguishes some of your characters a characteristic of you yourself? Do you see this as a sign of a midlife crisis? Or are you diagnosing our society?
My age has long been above average, and the feeling of social unhappiness, the premonition of some approaching collapse in the world, forces me to talk about this not only from the pages of newspapers and magazines, but also in a literary way that is accessible to me. In recent years, the country has become even more thieving, poor, even less educated and enlightened in the broad sense of the word.
At the same time, store shelves are littered with appetizing silage, which cannot even be called food, since it is harmful to the human body. Our ersatz economy creates a feeling of prosperity and has been fooling people with the illusory happiness of consumerism for many years. I never tire of quoting my beloved Lao Tzu, who argued in the fifth century BC that in order to rule a people, it is necessary that he had a full stomach and an empty heart. However, the situation in the world is no better. People live well, quite, calmly, but absolutely meaningless.
Your heroes – both dog and human – face betrayal. For whom is it easier to survive, what do you think? Are you familiar with this test?
I don’t think a man can take betrayal any easier than a dog. That’s why he’s still human. Although dogs love patriarchally and purely Christian without any ulterior motives or prejudices. As a rule, this is not always characteristic of a person. Only saints or deeply religious people can love like this. Christ Himself commanded us to love one another unselfishly.
But the human heart, faith and soul are too weak to follow this commandment in everyday, worldly life. This is the source of many of our troubles. Maybe the Lord created dogs to remind us sinners that there is another kind of love. I myself, of course, also experienced betrayal. Yes, I betrayed myself. My wife and I betrayed each other for several years until we broke up. Perhaps because there was not that same unconditional love between us. And forgiveness in the heart when these betrayals were revealed.
Fragment from the novel “Bianca”
“For the last time, the puppy breathed in the tart sweetness of spring and finally calmed down. Bianca did not immediately realize that he was dead. She walked in circles, stubbornly hurried to get up, it even seemed to whisper something of her own, inaccessible to the human ear, until she finally felt the heat flowing out of her baby’s body, cold and stiffness approaching. She nudged the puppy one last time, with her paw. She raised her head to the sky and howled. She howled doomedly and hoarsely, splashing all the pain and boundless loneliness into the low sky and the goldfinches rushing about in the sky, which suddenly washed over her heart in a heavy, merciless wave, squeezed it and did not let go, as long as invisible dog tears rolled from her eyes, as long as tearing apart the soul the howl resounded both the master’s house, and the nearby wasteland, and the distant forest, in which even the tiniest birdie, even the royal elk, suddenly froze and shuddered from this animal moan, from this eternal sound of grief that escapes from the breast of a mother who has lost her only son. And as if the sky heard this groan. Thickened with asphalt clouds. It lit up with a flash of lightning. It suddenly poured down in a large, fleeting rain.
It always happens like this: from spring rain, the earth is suddenly filled with purity, forgotten during the winter, breathes ozone, joy, divine power – again and again affirming the eternal victory of life over death.
Scenes of birth and death are almost the key ones in your novel. Do these moments bother you or delight you more?
It is not for nothing that the birth and death of a person are called sacraments, since these events in the life of each of us, with all the civilizational development of mankind, still remain its main secrets. I have met with many leading scientists who know the process of the origin of life literally down to the molecular level. New technologies make it possible to edit the genome, create eggs and sperm from omnipotent stem cells, an artificial womb is being designed, but no one except God can design the moment of the birth of life.
Just like understanding what happens at the end of a human life and what transforms all lifelong thoughts and experiences of a person. To be honest, I would like these secrets of humanity to forever remain the Divine prerogative and every time lead the inquisitive mind of this humanity into a dead end, as they lead its greatest representatives, such as Newton or Einstein.
What are your own recipes for coping with the fear of death?
At one time, the Tibetan Book of the Dead helped me a lot, which explains in sufficient detail everything that happens to the human soul after death. But even the patristic literature speaks of this in detail. I advise you to read “The Ordeal of the Soul of Blessed Theodora” on the same topic. By the way, I have an unfinished novel on this subject. I started writing it about seven years ago, after the death of a close friend, but stopped halfway through. This novel is about love after death. And it is called: Amorte, combining two words Amor and Morte – death and love. I hope to finish it someday.
Fragment from the novel “Bianca”
“The last minutes of life – whether a dog’s or a human’s – cannot be unraveled and comprehended by the living. Does every creature of the Lord feel horror or relief when it finds itself on the threshold of the impenetrable, irrevocable before an unknown, different life? And why, then, having crossed the line, feels lightness, a state of grace, previously unknown euphoria, and earthly joys, even the brightest ones, seem to be something insignificant, insignificant. So insignificant that you don’t want to return to a past life. Especially souls immaculate, young. I would like to believe that they are destined for universal eternity. And universal joy.
If Bianca were human, she might have thought something like this, but she was just a husky. Her whole being was overwhelmed with love for those whom she once brought into the world – and lost.
This bitter morning turned out to be sunny and transparent. An autumn leaf was falling, and in this fall there was also the sadness of parting, of death. But the forest birds chirped loudly like spring, the threads of the web hovered weightlessly over the dry stubble, through which the boundless blue atmosphere spread in all its vastness. The beauty of the universe gave birth to a bitter and at the same time bright presentiment: life will continue even if we leave this world. It will remain the same, inexpressibly beautiful, and we, perhaps, will find a different world – a better one.
About the Developer
Dmitry Likhanov – journalist and prose writer, was a special correspondent for the Ogonyok magazine (1985-1989) and a columnist for the Top Secret newspaper (1989-1994), author of several stories and collections of short stories, winner of the extreme journalism award (2012) and the Golden Shelf award Russian journalism” of the Union of Journalists of Russia (2015). His new novel Bianca was published by Eksmo in September 2018.