I said I would learn my Father’s lesson. I learned it many years later, when I became an actual man.

By “Man”, I don’t mean the usual brawn and health, what we men call “our prime” when the awkwardness and foolishness of youth is shed off. 

I mean, “Man” when a man realizes what he truly is as himself- what is he to the world, what he is to himself. 

I learned, too, that some men, like myself, must lose every sense they have of themselves to find what they truly are. As the old saying goes, “To find something, you must lose it,” - like the coin in Christ’s parable.

You wonder what the “ugly mess” I refer to.

It was that hideous mess that started in ‘18. February is the month, I believe, where all tragedies spring from. I bet Christ was crucified in February if we had an accurate calendar of His Time. 

This revolution, it did wonders, I guess, for these peasants in the North. They’ve gotten their trains, tractors, their schools, and whatnot. 

We in the South? The fiery, dark sons of the Steppe?

Enough blood to soak the earth and choke seven generations’ worth of throats.

How did Lermontov put it?

“...the food of man will be death and blood- and hunger’s hand will clutch them by the throat…”

He must have been our own Apostle John, and the Caucasus was his Patmos- look what we have now!

Famine, too! If we starve, the pretty Northerners go hungry too, so I am a bit satisfied at that. 

Hate me for the sentiment (or lack thereof), but we have nothing but spite as our bread now. 

First the Reds turn neighbor on neighbor, chewing each other like dogs in a pack-pile, then we starve, and now mothers are slaughtering their kin to survive. 

Ah, god, what a mess. 

What was it for? For ideas? For this stupid, stupid thing called “progress” Well, what they call “progress”, anyways. 

You can progress, you can become modern, smarter, earn the quickening sophistication of the world, all without killing your brother because he might like the idea of owning something besides his own soul.

Ah wait, we don’t have souls, either. They took that away. I suppose our names are left? If they bother to recognize it on their registers.  

My Father learned his own lesson of reconciliation because he stole something from a man, a man who trusted him as his brother.

I learned mine because a man, whom I trusted as my own brother, stole something from me. My trust. A betrayal is nothing more than a theft, really.