Mystery – what is it? Just a word having some sense or a set of sounds, in their rustling phonation bearing some puzzling effect, thus making you think of the ambiguity of this word?
So, one side of its meaning is a literary work but again either a detective story or a mystery. And what is a mystery as a literary genre then? It is a thriller or a horror book (or a film), whatever making you tremble even because of the slightest rustle. And the quieter the place you are in becomes, the tenser the atmosphere gets. You feel not only the beating of your heart but the blood running through your veins. And you cannot make yourself put the leg down from the chair for there is a treacherous and piercing thought in your head, ‘There’s something over there, right under the chair, the evil spirits came to catch me and carry away to the great Unknown’. And the fearful fact is that we cannot prove the non-existence of all those vampires, and beasts, and werewolves. Another exclusive trait of this genre is that of keeping you interested and excited up to the end of the story leaving you full of thoughts about supernatural and anomalous things happening (as they say on TV) all over the world, black art or just magic giving you so much power and possibilities… And so is the story we’ve recently read. The very title of it is already puzzling: ‘W.S.’. You don’t know what it’s fraught with and it makes you become interested, it makes you READ it. And now when the main aim is realized it starts mixing you up: all those letters and their contents, the initials and their similarity to those of the character, all that uncertainty causing a burning desire to clear everything up and thus read it up to the end as soon as possible. And the denouement is so unpredictable… and depressing because the final end is Death. But not all the mysteries are like that. At the end they may turn everything to ridiculous provoking laughter and leaving you lost in meditation on how complicated and silly the relationships between people are. For example, ‘Scary Night’ by Chekhov, the master of humour. It tells us about some strange accident happened with the character: having come home he saw a coffin in the middle of the room, then he went to his friend and it was the same with his flat. And you share the feeling of blind fear with him. And you are in tension up to the end of the book. But then comes the sigh of relief and not only that: you laugh and, analyzing the story, understand that all the names and developments were created just to make fun of another human’s quality: greed.
But literature is not the only thing where we can find mystery. The other meaning of the word is ‘…something strange or unknown that cannot be explained or understood…’. And this very wide sense of the word presses me with enormous strength because as you go deeper into that definition you begin to think about all that mystique around you (we all know that very little is known and explained in our world). And you begin to feel a miserable helpless thing, a primitive gazing at the electric discharge as if it were God’s anger. And all that only depresses and confuses you though sometimes it leads your mind to some philosophic discovery, for example, the sense of life… But still mystery in this meaning is a dual matter: a lot may be mysterious now and ordinary, mere then, for instance, these words: ‘…the Lord detached Land and Water, the Land was named Earth (Amen, for Goodness sake!) and there was the Morning and the Evening of the second day. But on the first day He created Light. And the eternal Darkness was broken, and since that as the Testament says the terrible struggle has been going on up to nowadays…’ If you read them – it’s just the interpretation of the Bible. But imagine the situation: you’re sitting on the sofa and watching TV, your favorite channel; but suddenly it switches off and the screen begins ‘snowing’. You wait but nothing changes… then you decide to come up and check the antenna. But all of a sudden the silence breaks and you hear some dull music (let it be Mozart ‘Lux Aeterna’) and some dull voice starts to pronounce these words slowly, one by one, gradually increasing its loudness and expressiveness… What would you feel then? A lot of such situations happen. And this one proves the essence of mystery to be in people’s minds, imagination and emotions.
And I’m not the exception. Now, I’m sitting at the table and trying to write what you see… Still music is playing… And involuntarily my glance gets the window – there are curtains on it but a slot between them lets me see the outside: complete darkness is there and nothing more… Oh, no, peering I notice the Moonlight: its silver and blue light drops on the snowy ground and that, coloured by day, now seems just gray or something like that!.. Oh, there is someone walking slowly. His steps are somewhat heavy. And I can even imagine his face: pale or bluish with sharp features and shadows… He’s dragging some sack. What’s in it? Where’s he going?! No, he can’t be… a murderer?! All that is flashing in my mind and… I catch myself at dreaming. I look at my watch and find that it’s already far past midnight and I’m going to bed… The rest of the story will stay enigma… MYSTERY…