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Siberian Memories
Why Lenin is the Beast of the Apocalypse
A Siberian Memory
translated from the original Esperanto
by the author
Leland Bryant ROSS
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Somewhere between Irkutsk and the Urals, I don't remember exactly where (Ulan Ude, perchance?), we had acquired a fellow occupant. Please understand, the compartments had four beds each, and there were six of us. So Mommy and the three other, younger kids occupied one compartment together, and Daddy and I filled half of another. Okay then, we got ourselves a co-occupant. The newcomer was a Ukrainian, vice-director of a collective farm, who had been vacationing in Siberia and was now going back home to the Ukraine. At first, and until after the shooting of Bobby Kennedy, the vice-farm-manager hadn't spoken to us much. He wasn't unfriendly, but he wasn't very communicative, and we certainly had no common language. But at last, on the last evening of our co-occupancy, he decided to communicate something.
I had already gone to bed myself, and was sleeping in one of the upper beds (the other being unoccupied). The Ukrainian came to the compartment, where Daddy was sitting on his bed reading. He brought along an orange, which he showed to Daddy with gestures indicating that they should share it. Having signed thus far, he closed the compartment door and said, touching his chest,
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Having assured himself of that, the Ukrainian peeled the orange and gave half of it to Daddy, setting aside the pieces of orange peel, and pulled a box of matches from his pocket. He took out of the box 15 matches and lined them up on the little table by the window. Then he said to Daddy, "Bee-blee-yah?", and Daddy understood and dug his New English New Testament out of his bag. Luckily John's Revelation stands at the end of the New Testaments of all tongues and churches, so the Ukrainian was easily able to find the text he was looking for. He leafed through the book to Revelation 13:18 and pointed at it so Daddy could read and understand:
(Here is the key; and anyone who has intelligence may work out the number of the beast. The number represents a man's name, and the numerical value of its letters is six hundred and sixty-six.)After this the man rearranged the fifteen matches to show the number of the beast. Then he messed up the matches, and reordered them thusly to form a typically Soviet star, which can also be regarded as the "pentagram" of Satanism. Then there followed a Russian word that Daddy didn't recognize, þåòô. Consulting his dictionary, Daddy found that it meant "devil". And finally the Baptist rearranged the matches, and showed this to Daddy, who recognized the Russian spelling of "Lenin", (ìåîéî). Having assured himself that Daddy understood the earthshaking significance of the lesson, the Ukrainian broke the matches each into several pieces, carefully mixed the pieces together with the orange peel, and put the whole thing in the wastebasket under the table.
Thus it was that my father learned that Lenin was the Beast of the Apocalypse of John — a fact with many grave consequences for us all. ;-(
(ðÏÄÍÏÓËÏ×ÎÙÅ ×ÅÞÅÒÁ)
MIDI
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