Loch Ness is located in the central part of the Northern Highlands of Scotland
In His Ancestral Castle
Richard lived practically like a hermit in Urquhart Castle – the abandoned family Blockhead estate, on the shores of the lake – avoiding meeting anyone. He was like a rock thrown into water. He caused ripples on the surface, but he himself had to go to the bottom. Only now, in exile he started to realise how exhausting it is to support the reputation of appropriacy and benevolence. But solitude is like a secret that cannot be kept for a long time, and sooner or later a person will want to reveal his guarded treasure.
And yet, at the beginning Rick lived completely alone trying to comprehend what has really happened, and how did his performance become a symbol for the new ideals and liberation from the suffocating chains of culture. He responded to himself at once: there are no heroes anymore. There are no saints. Skills exist, but saints and heroes do not. So he must have hit the tender points of the contemporaries.
He often mused on the well-known expression: ‘Freedom of one, ends at the tip of the nose of the other.’ He thought that lately some men have grown excessively long noses and that life itself became a thick forest. They only talk of freedom, but in reality they don’t even allow you to make a step aside. How is that?! Raise your nose and twist around all you want, right?!
Some pierced their noses and attached bells to them
‘A Weightless Soul’ – this is the name of a human, thought Dick. ‘And it does not want any responsibility or duty to anyone. He thought about it some more and concluded that the souls of many people find appropriate bodies, live in them, but are too fearful to leave its confines. People like this are born like things, and live like things, and promote others to treat them like things. But in Richie’s body a life force free from the self-blame whirls, foams up, and spills over. So for those who may trespass the castle’s territory by accident, Richie put up his personal motto onto the fence: ‘Person is that who can be anyone’. Just so that the visitors would know who they are dealing with here, and be aware that the owner of the castle may do anything his heart desires. On the gate where people usually warn the passers-by that they have an angry dog he has a plaque:
‘Dear guests, may we remind you that any law is forbidden on the territory of the castle except for the places specially preconceived for this purpose.’ [73]
That was his clear sign that he is done with the human civilization. They may suppress all they want outside of the estate, but within its boundaries Richie announced all cultural dogma ‘non grata’.
From time to time Rick had an urge to step ‘besides himself’, to become unlike his recognizable self. He often felt bored with being himself for a long time, and while observing the debates he frequently wanted to take one side one minute, or another one at another. Sometimes he even wanted to become a stranger to those who took him for their own kind, and see if the attitudes would change. He wondered if they would act surprised, outraged, if they would curse him, or if by any chance they could accept him in the way that they had not known him before. Rick was neither curious to know more than he saw. To him a man became so boring once his past was revealed! This is why every time he saw his friends he wanted to meet them as if anew.
A macabre castle of the Blockheads, Urquhart, on the shores of Loch Ness
He often asked himself, what was it that would not let him be different, what was it that made his remain the same in the eyes of the world. Should he have been born in another time, he would have been different! He always came to the conclusion that it was a habit of not wanting to upset the loved ones, but mainly anonymity and a fear of loneliness. Lately he did not seek recognition at all because once recognised, he often felt like a target.
Like a billiard ball he hit another ball, ran away so that he could collide again and fly away again; away from his known self. So that nobody could say: ‘We know him! This is…’ He is not ‘this’! All that others knew of him was nothing more than traces of him touching the world around, moreso because his angle of collision had never been in symmetry with anything; whatever he happened to hit hither and thither he would roll. Where? That would depend on what he thought while that was happening.
And why wouldn’t he become different?!
He often heard in his surroundings that a human being should define himself, or establish an identity: political, religious, national, sexual, or in some other way… But he had decided firmly that he would not identify himself with anything else for a long time. Then he would be bound by obligation, but that existence would not be human anymore, it would be an imitation of a thing with features programmed in by someone else. For only those are free, who did not become part of another.
But he was particularly bemused and apprehensive that every connection, every life situation in the world was ready to set up his destiny. And there was nothing to hint at which destiny was really his, and if he was doing his own thing. And what would that mean?! Does it simply mean that a human being is a resilient creature and can adjust to anything?! Or was that to mean that one can only quit the old and begin something new? Evidently that was the reason why Rick avoided being managed by any idea for a long time, so that he would not turn into a ‘distance runner’ who does not notice much around him while he runs. He appreciated going where he felt the pull, where he wanted to go, since he thought that life is nothing but a continuous explanation of thyself to thyself.
Many locals had heard about Blockhead’s feat in Riga from the newspapers, and his unexpected arrival to their parts. Some, especially curious countrymen tried to call on him and moor the boats from the mainland to the island, but as soon as they approached close enough some unknown force pulled them back. Quite often the rowers found their oars broken, and the motor-boaters found their propellers bitten off, so they frequently had trouble making it back.
And sometimes the boats were even turned upside down. They started gossiping that Rick had secured a personal contact with Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster and she sometimes visited him, and it was her controlling access to Blockhead. But the daredevils who were willing to undertake certain risks in order to see yet another monster were always plentiful, and some even managed to reach the island unnoticed by swimming. ‘But he is just an alligator in the person’s skin,’ said those lucky enough to have returned. And that excited the minds of the locals even more.
As soon as the new master appeared the lake has started to make huge bubbles in places. They separated from the surface of the lake, floated into the air and burst with deafening noise in the skies. Many thought that it was the Loch Ness monster who passed these gasses, and it was her way of giving signals that she was preparing for the meeting and soon would be en route to Richard’s castle. At any time of year the lake had always attracted crowds of tourists, but now it was turning into a stampede. People from all over the world came to see two monsters at once, the Loch Ness monster and the Peeing Briton.
Chekhov on the Island
Meanwhile Richard found himself rather engaged with the history of the island, and as he sorted through old documents in the castle’s library[74] he found the pages of an unknown biography of the famous writer Anton Chekhov. In the dusty honorary visitors book, Richard read the entry that evidenced one Russian, Mr Tczechov visited there in the 1890’s. He came to the healing springs to cure consumption. Then he met Richie’s great-grandfather who had just returned from England, having caught their ideas of re-formation hither and thither. Mr Blockhead Senior met Chekhov by accident, on the springs where he was treating his gout and other ailments. When he found out that a famous writer and a coughing doctor from Russia was using the springs right next