4.(26-27) House of Mamka/Opium Wisdom

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26. House of Mamka

Mamka seats Olga and Boris in northeast corner sofa against a wall in kitchen: Boris at corner end and Olga at end closer to window.

She lights wood alcohol lamps, brews fresh opium tea, brings it on tray and sits down in rocking chair, across the small sofa table from them and tells about building the house. “My man, Andreyev, design; he and I build. foundation, Golden Ratio rectangle.”

 She explains:  Leonardo da Vinci and the great Michelangelo  and the painter Rafael use secret of Golden Ratio and today people see in it beauty without know why."   

   Olga realizes they are in the presence of a top esthete in the form of a little, old aboriginal woman.

   Mamka resumes. “We dig foundation one and half meter deep and line it with cement rock then lay hardwood double-board for floor cellar. I use cellar to store ice block cut from frozen winter lake. Outer wall we build with tree log. We make sawmill on river that feed lake. Log, we mill and carve so one log fit into other log and we put sod in crevice between log. Outside view give log-cabin effect, inside flat board wood wall you see. Window we arrange for room lighting and four-meter ceiling give space to room. On second floor, we make attic with skylight opening to allow stargaze and radio with antenna." She pauses, then continues

   “I use stove for heating from September to May and during other time cook and boil using reflector disc, and inside house use wood burn.”

   Finished talking, Mamka goes to brew more opium tea while Olga from her place on sofa inspects the books on nearby desktop among which she spots Encyclopedia Britannica, Russian 1924 edition, some other reference books, and the complete works of Tolstoy and Balzac in Russian. The windows give good reading light over left shoulder of reader in chair at desk even in late afternoon. Open ceiling space to attic skylight gives, in daytime, a light and airy feeling. Most of all, Olga notices the air is filled with the very pleasant fragrance of pines.

   Mamka returns with fresh tea. “Because this once in lifetime visit, I stay up late tonight.” 
   Olga laughs at that, replying “I did not come 2000 kilometers to sleep.”

   Mamka indicates they should drink more tea. She lifts her cup to nostrils and takes slow deep sniff that suggests ingrained behavior of a long-held pleasure.
   Olga observes, with eye alert to artwork, that the cup Mamka drinks from is an exquisitely worked objet d’art, its inside inlayed gold and outside ceramic blue with glinting starry star design.
    Mamka, noticing Olga’s interest, explains “Czecho soldier is guest in 1918 and he donate. It ideal cup for drink opium.”

27. Opium Tea

Since first cup of opium tea, Olga is feeling more than unusual. Her brain cells are unused to opium and, like child experiencing first orgasm, the immediate effect of the dose is shockingly good and four hours later just before the next tea, with opium lower in blood but still high enough for good effect, she experiences subtle well-being with deep contentment of mind.

   Her brain cells are opening and synapses are connecting the previously unconnected.ones. Putting 1 and 1 together she now gets a new 2 and it is more correct than the 2 she got before opium. Memory access is also increased; forgotten facts and experiences crowd her mind.

   A scientist acquainted with Olga's mind might test it and discover that in Olga's normal state she would have quickly turned away from an “impossible to understand” subject with a dismissive “How boring!” but with this level opium in brain she now finds it fascinating – the opium stimulates intellectual appetite. It adds an increase in patience for intellectual enjoyment through its sense of expanded time plus the physical pleasure. Time that had previously seemed a too rapidly passing five minutes bringing Olga that much closer to the always background anxiety of her dying and death becomes, under opium, a joyful expanded timelessness within which she exercises mind on intellectual questions previously impatiently shrugged aside.

   As the opium increases in brain with her sips of the tea, Olga notes loss of usual petty paranoias of life – the worries of getting ill and dying, of losing money, of being deprived of things she enjoys, of getting into accidents or experiencing other bad things. And now without these usual, constant worries her concentration on important matters of her life increases, enhancing her ability to think up creative alternatives to life problems.

   All this Olga suddenly experiences in the seconds of sitting back after drinking her 2^nd cup.
   Mamka senses Olga's realization because she has had it too. “Do you share your new thoughts?”

   “My Confessions as Opium Eater with due respect to Mr. De Quincey?”

   “Yes, I read De Quincey. I admire to be another De Quincey. My Andreyev introduce me to opium. He start experimenting as medical student in Moscow.”

   "Like Sigmund Freud with cocaine?” interjects Boris, and Olga is surprised at his knowledge since the Party line has Freud as a bushwa charlatan much inferior to Pavlov.
   Mamka nods. “Yes, doctor use drug much to improve mind.”

   “Improve mind?” Olga questions, but “Well it is doing nicely for mine. But still, this stuff makes addicts that end in opium dens don't it? In a Sherlock Holmes story he has to rescue a character from an opium den. Who needs that?”
   “Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle use opium. It explain his popularity” says Mamka.
   Olga frowns. “But we are always reading or hearing how it dulls the mind and removes motivation and energy leaving only a useless zombie where before was energetic person?”

   Mamka replies: “Opium dulling is from too much too soon. It ignorance from bad reporting by writer who know nothing. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein say: About what one not know, one better not speak”.

   Olga replies: “If everyone listened to Whatziznamenstein, it sure would be quiet.”
   Mamka chuckles. “I count one, or with De Quincey two, those who know about what they talk or write on opium. They know because they experiment.”

   “Don't you mean guinea pig,” Olga says, trying to sound smart.

   Mamka laughs. “Andreyev give self wide range of dose, he try through nostrils, drinking, injecting; he repeat experiment several time and compare result then work on more experiment, more year. I have notes he wrote. He record his response to opium each dose and he find low dose act as mind stimulant or, with too high dose, as depressant. He discover way of taking opium is key to good use: inhale or inject give sudden high opium in brain – bad.  He experiment brewing opium tea and figure out best dose for good effect that give no bad effect.”

   Boris interrupts “Pardon Mamka, for being someone who talks about what I little know but when I am Assistant Commissar on illicit drugs I look into the question by reading books. Does not there remain problem opium is powerful addiction? They say no one remains satisfied with low dose because tolerance develops and opium user increases dose and goes to dangerous overdose.”

   Mamka replies: “Yes, I read that.  It come from ignorant observing of opium addict who take too much too soon. Andreyev experiment contradict it.”

   Olga had seen addicts in Tokyo who use an opiate and she witnessed cold turkey withdrawals. She asks “If you stop opium, don't you feel bad, horrible?” And Mamka answers “Opium, like legal drug, produce tolerance where body cell become accustom to it, and then low level no longer as much effect as at start. Stop after long use give withdrawal – Andreyev and I experience it in experiment. Muscle ache, sweating and mind depressed – you no good for nothing. Also become anxious on withdrawal – scared of dying, of losing money or mind. It make unhappy but not crazy and it go away in few day. And consider the meaning for us. I grow the poppy easily, my habit need no equipment – only what you see to make the tea and I drink six cup a twenty-four-hour day that make happy, make mind work better and not do bad to body. So give me reason I stop.”
   Silence.
   “Now nice newlyweds, have you appetite?  I not yet feed you because opium best before eating.”
   Despite having eaten nothing since the helicopter lunch, Olga feels only slight appetite.

   “It the opium my kids, it substitute for eats. You never see fat opium eater, from De Quincey to me.” She goes to ice box returning with tray on which are identical plates of sliced strawberries and apple, and salad of lettuce leaves and tomato triangles.
   Olga had thought about Mamka's last. She reaches for plate saying “You convince me, Mama Mamka. I am fanatic for skin-and-bones slim.”
   “Be not so quick wife mine,” Boris says. “It is one thing for Mamka to depend on opium tea; she grows her own flowers. But, dearest, do stop and think! How to grow poppies in your flat in Tokyo? Where to get seeds? To grow them you need plot of land, lot of land; you must become farmer! And do not think one will not notice. Especially because you are foreigner and married to Soviet diplomat, the spy police will be at your door before you can count four!”
   Boris is enjoying his voluble outburst, and Mamka meanwhile steps and fetches plates of baked potatoes and steamed mushrooms. Olga feels too good for sarcastic repartee and Boris continues.
   “So you will have to buy your opium because capitalist greed limits choice. They only retail the profitable opium to smoke or snort, or to inject; they will get you buying your drug on the black market at outrageous price since no medical man is going to supply a round-the-clock habit. So you will end up telling lies, cheating and getting money however you can to support habit.”
   Mamka brings in plum wine and pours it into cups. They pause for a sip.

   Boris continues. “In Moscow I see what happens with reputable moral woman who starts opium. She becomes – Excuse my word – prostitute to support it and is blackmailed by pusher who becomes pimp and takes free sample. And even assuming – because you are successful nightclub singer – you will afford your habit and get opium easy, but, do not you realize that pressure of life in Tokyo and added anxiety of being arrested or blackmailed will drive you, despite Mamka’s research and advice, to taking even higher doses with alcohol and other drugs?

   And one day it will all go Pouf!” Here Boris makes the sound by puffing cheeks while snapping right index and thumb. “And I will be asked to identify body on slab of Tokyo City Morgue – another addict overdose.”

   Olga finishes the wine. Exquisite, she thinks and wonders how much her drinking opium improves the taste of the wine. As Boris goes silent she kisses him lightly on lips. “Thanks, love! When you were speaking now I had – what you call– Sudden understanding?”

  “It begins to clarify this thing we call opium addiction – and that may go for other drugs too, but right now it is opium we speak of so I want to follow this Mr. Whatsisname?”

   Wittgenstein,” says Boris, who, like a good communist in pre 21June 1941 Russia, admires all things German, even the sound of names.

   “Yes, whatevergenstein. Its got clear to me that opium addiction is a social thing not a drug thing, I mean if we consider the case of Mamka who uses opium around the clock for 30 years.” Olga looks at Boris. “Darling, how many days is that?”
   He makes quick mental calculation: “10,950 days for the 365 times 30, wife mine, plus additional leap year days every 4 years.”

   “Actually, exactness is unimportant to me, darling. I just love to hear you calculate.” Olga continues: “If we put Mamka in Tokyo, we got same person and same drug to observe effect in two different places. There is a scientific name for that kind of experiment, isn't there?”

   “Controlled experiment, for persons and drug but not place.”

   “Yes. So it shows the affect of place?”

   “Well, yes. The affect of the rules and customs of the place, if we are to speak strictly,” corrects Boris always a stickler for semantic accuracy.

   “So if we place Mamka in Tokyo tomorrow she will become suddenly what you call addict, doing anything to feed her habit but here under different conditions as described she is a superior person getting advantage by taking the drug.”
   “You imply that drug addiction has more to do with laws and customs of the country than with the drug?”
   Mamka gathers dishes on tray and comments. “Yes you got it well, kids. Opium addiction is from society saying the addiction exist and setting law, attitude and economic practice to suit.”

   “So,” Boris says rhetorically, “The society creates the evil then benefits and rakes in its profits. It is to be expected under capitalism.”

   “Who benefits?” asks Olga.

   “That is obvious, dearest. Businesses and police too, and the class of persons that treat opium addiction as sickness – counselors, physicians, psychologists and writers of books on the subject but most of all the big capitalists who invest secretly for tremendous profit with little or no risk. And also the low and high government officials who receive bribes.”

   “Then,” says Olga, “all it takes to change the system is to change laws and make opium the same as tea or coffee.”

   Mamka stops them. “Is correct what you say but will not change. So we not waste further energy on talk. This civilization corrupt and doomed. We intelligent future New People not to help it. We want it choke on own spit.”
   “I agree,” Boris says.

   Boris is that sort of communist, thinks Olga;  Or is it the opium he has just sipped?
   Olga is feeling a sense of wonderment. It is one of her rare times as with Seminar in Tokyo when she is touched by intellectual idea. Mamka gets up. “Now my kids, upstair and stargaze.”
         Read on; click 4.(28-29) Stargazing and a Quickie