Iskandar Kadyrov teaches us to hear what is left unspoken."The quietest grief is the one that leaves no visible mark."
This phrase is not a marketing slogan; it is a precise diagnostic instrument with which the novella "The Empress" dissects the reader from the very first page. The third installment in the Path to the Fool cycle is a landmark event within a project of a very special nature. It is here that the framing narrative is introduced for the first time: a boy and his grandmother with a deck of Tarot cards. This narrative scaffold is not mere ornamentation; it is a fundamental structural decision. It legitimizes the very act of speaking about the terrifying—the fear of barrenness, the terror of non-creation, the dread of inner void. All of this is voiced not directly by the author, but channeled through the grandmother’s voice, through the intonation of memory, care, and transmission. The horror is softened by warmth, but in doing so, it does not cease to be horror. On the contrary, it becomes unbearable.
The Architecture of Emptiness
Kadyrov abandons linear storytelling in favor of three parallel streams, separated by the times of day: morning, daytime, and evening. This is not merely a stylistic device; it is a philosophical assertion. Emptiness is not static. It lives through its day like a living creature. It has its own morning bustle, its daytime struggle, and its evening surrender.
The woman in the morning thread is a body reduced to a machine. Thermometers, schedules, charts—Kadyrov shows with surgical precision how a woman terrified of her own barrenness becomes a warden to herself. Control, here, is a form of despair. And the first crack in this system—the hand unclenching of its own accord—sounds like a verdict on the entire construct of willful effort exerted over nature.
The sculptor in the daytime thread represents creative barrenness translated into physical violence against the material and himself. Eight years of "self-inflicted violence"—the phrasing is intentionally harsh, almost criminal. Kadyrov does not romanticize creative torment; he exposes it as a pathology. The shattered rough cast lying next to a stopped clock is one of the most powerful images in the novella. It is the moment when the violence ceases not because inspiration has arrived, but because the strength has run out. And it is precisely in this halt that the first honest gesture is born.
The mother in the evening thread is the climax of the novella. A candle burning down to the wax without her participation is an image that operates on the level of a Buddhist parable. The acceptance of emptiness as the acceptance that life may conclude without your active participation in it. This is not capitulation; in Kadyrov’s vision, it is the first true breath.
The Symbolic Framework
Special mention must be made of the recurring symbols, which in "The Empress" acquire systemic cohesion for the first time. The clocks—for the first time in the cycle, they do not oppress; they simply lie there. This is a crucial shift: if in previous novellas time was an instrument of pressure, here it becomes a neutral witness. The red bird in the morning thread, pecking at the fruit and flying away, is an image of perfect, utterly indifferent life force. The bitten apple remains; life continues without human intervention. The garden, as a recurring motif, connects all three threads, transforming the novella into a single, unified space.
Its Place in the Cycle
"The Empress" is a turning-point novella. It is here that the Path to the Fool cycle acquires not only depth but also architecture. The framing plot with the boy and the grandmother is a promise that what lies ahead is not just 22 independent texts, but a single canvas with its own mythology.
Kadyrov writes about female fear with an intimate precision rarely found in contemporary literature. He does not explain, he does not comfort, he does not moralize. He demonstrates three ways of being silent—and forces the reader to hear their own resonance within that silence.
This is prose that makes you want to sit quietly. And that, perhaps, is the highest praise for a text about emptiness.