Chapter 3. The Nobel Laureate.

March 3, 2047

Involuntarily glancing at the wall calendar, fifty-four-year-old François-Xavier Ruelle suddenly shuddered—he was experiencing truly contradictory feelings at that moment, the most vivid of which was a sense of horror: exactly on this day, 24 years ago, the very event occurred that now led him to this velvet armchair, to this extraordinarily exquisite house, and, most importantly, to this kind of fame—François-Xavier Ruelle was the greatest writer of his era. His name had repeatedly appeared on the list of the most significant and important contenders for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

And yet, despite the fact that he currently lived in a truly wealthy three-story mansion, despite the fact that he had a strong and loving family, and also despite the fact that he possessed a truly exceptional fame and, accordingly, immortality, François-Xavier was truly alone, for there were no truly loyal and devoted friends in his circle—it was for this reason that he became a melancholic. Still, it must be admitted that the permanent pilgrimage of young writers occasionally dispelled his melancholy, but did not destroy it. In these moments, moments of enlightenment, he felt himself to be something akin to Rousseau, Germaine de Saint-Preux, Tolstoy, or Nietzsche.

And yet, despite the aforementioned loneliness and melancholy, Monsieur Ruelle was not unhappy—he was constantly searching for answers to his own questions; he was continuously studying himself. "Here on earth, we are constantly searching for answers to our own questions—every day we find answers to these questions, but we will be able to find the true answers to these questions only while being beyond the bounds of physical existence!"—François-Xavier repeated to his young, still fledgling literary pilgrims as if it were a mantra.

It should also be mentioned that François-Xavier very sincerely loved to engage in antinomies of various depths with naive adherents of his own literary cult—the topics of these conversations touched upon almost all aspects and spheres of human life… The year 2047 was a post-war year, and therefore many of their speeches periodically concerned not only the nature and character of war but also, most importantly, peace—François-Xavier with unshakeable conviction persuaded his young, whether physically or spiritually, adepts that agreements between states can be reached only when the stakes in this diverse game are something valuable and important: he often compared world politics to a market, where the main trading operation is exchange—the people must be convinced that they truly need this product and the only possible option to achieve this goal is only exchange.

At times, François-Xavier would intentionally, with the help of a small spark, produce a great flame of unrestrained antinomies in this world about human fame, calling it a carnival mask, in some ways similar to rabbit ears—it is not part of a person's flesh: at the first gust of strong wind, it is blown from a person's head, as if it had never been there at all. To some of his pilgrims, he assured that human fame is flies on the head of a tiger or a lion: they are not part of him.

So, completely giving himself up to the consumption of the sacred-mysterious fruits of loneliness, like Emperor Diocletian, François-Xavier Ruelle completely despised public life in favor of private life, for he saw the greatest happiness in that—and those who came to him for advice or guidance received them: he was not stingy with advice, but he valued his time too dearly, beyond the material. "You have come to me to find advice—I endow you with its essence: come to my flower garden—admire these flowers, study them, feel their stock, touch their nature,"—this is how François-Xavier addressed those who wanted to partially know the truth: and after they, his pilgrims, studied these flowers, describing their scent, charm, and shortcomings to their mentor, Monsieur Ruelle, with a melancholy inherent in his nature, answered them that in looking at the flowers at those moments, admiring their nature or despising it, they, without suspecting it at all, were studying themselves. And so he advised them to look at everything—at the stars, at the sun, at the trees, at the grass, at the sky, at the rain, and, most importantly, at a person. "The most important miracle in the entire Universe is you yourself, for your structure, not only physical but also spiritual, is perfect: it is harmonious in its chaos and chaotic in its harmony," he told the adepts of his cult with sadness in his heart and tears on his cheeks, which were completely furrowed with wrinkles.

From time to time, he would bring some of his pilgrims to a dung heap and point to a diamond that he had deliberately thrown there some time ago: "Here is a dung heap. There is a diamond in it. The dung heap, however, remains a dung heap; it does not become a placer. The diamond, while in the dung heap, does not become dung, but remains a diamond. How did it end up in the dung heap? That doesn't matter in the least. The question is slightly different—is it appropriate to look for diamonds in dung heaps?!" At other moments, he expressed his opinion to this world about existing religions: "Your main goal in this world," he told his pilgrims, "is to reach that very spiritual age when a person begins to respect religion and despise the church! I have always respected religion, but the church—never! Every person who truly seeks to know the truth should be able to define, distinguish, and separate these concepts, just as one should be able to distinguish spirit from matter. The church, I repeat, the church, but not religion, destroyed millions of people for certain reasons—how is it better than fascism or red terror? Fascism and communism exterminated people for their reasons, and the churches—for theirs!"