I thought for a minute. “No.”

“On the north?” the handicapped man pressed me.

Then I realized something. “Don’t you see,” I said, “looking at maps has spoiled people. There everything is level and flat, and when they’ve located things in terms of directions, they think that’s all there is to it. But a country is not an atlas. It has mountains and gorges. So of course it must touch on something both above and below.”

“Hmm,” my friend reflected. “You’re right. What could Russia border on, on those two sides?” Suddenly the ailing man looked like a little boy.

“You know!” I cried.

“On God, maybe?”

“Yes,” I confirmed, “on God.”

“I see,” my friend nodded, full of understanding. Only then did a doubt enter his mind. “Is God a country, then?”

“I don’t think so,” I replied, “but in primitive languages many things have the same name. There is certainly a kingdom called God, and the ruler of it is also called God. Simple folk often can’t distinguish between their country and their emperor; both are big and kind, frightening and big.”

“I understand,” said the man at the window slowly. “And do the people in Russia notice this nearness?”

“They take notice of it every chance they get. The influence of God is very powerful. No matter what people bring there from Europe, objects from the West become stones as soon as they cross the border. They might be precious stones, but just for the rich people, the so-called educated; but the bread the people live on comes from over there in that other kingdom.”

“So the people must have more than they need of that.”

I hesitated. “No, that’s not the way it is. Certain circumstances make the imports from God difficult.” I tried to draw him away from this thought. “But people have taken over many of the customs from that vast neighboring country. The whole style of ceremonies, for example. People speak to the czar as though to God.”

“So people don’t say, ‘Your Majesty’?”

“No, they call them both ‘little father.’”

“And people kneel to both of them?”

“People prostrate full length on the ground before both of them; they touch the ground with their foreheads and cry and say, ‘I have sinned, forgive me, little father.’ The Germans who see that call it a completely undignified form of slavery. I have a different view about it. What does kneeling mean? It has the sense of saying, ‘I am in awe.’ The Germans feel that, to express that, it is enough merely to remove their hats. Well, now, the salute, the bow, are both also more or less ways of expressing the same thing. They’re abbreviations that have come about in countries where there was not enough room for everybody to lie down full length on the ground. But abbreviations are just used mechanically, without people any longer being aware of their meaning. For that reason, it’s a good idea, wherever there’s still space and time for it, to spell out the whole gesture—the whole beautiful and important word awe.”