Ordinary Wonders

by Oloesia Nikolaeva

  According to the monks, Fr A. was at first a monk at the Holy Trinity Lavra of St Sergius, from where he was sent “out of the public eye” to the Pskov Caves Monastery.

  This is why. During Soviet times, he would perform exorcisms on the demonically possessed in the lower church of the Dormition Cathedral, and many people came to him from all over. Yet the Lavra was an official “tourist attraction” during the Brezhnev era [1964–1982]—foreign delegates and official persons would often be taken there. This was of great ideological importance, as it was supposed to serve as a witness to citizens of foreign governments of the lack of persecution of the Church in our country and a complete freedom of conscience.

  One day, a group of important bureaucrats, what’s more, of a foreign capitalist background, were brought there. And one of our own greatly important officials, a worker with serious responsibility, gave them a tour of the Holy Trinity Lavra.

  They admired its magnificence, the unearthly beauty of the monastery churches, the unique, wonderfully fresh air, while the responsible worker, to prevent them from getting carried away by all this opium, began to tell them anecdotes about the monks—about an underground passageway that they supposedly used to crawl out far from the monastery borders and freely walk around the towns at large, about the chemical substance that they added to the water, and then passed it off as holy water—in short, much nonsense. And then he added something “for humor’s sake,” some obscene inside joke, contorting his face into an ironic grimace, as if to say, “you and I, we know better!”

  All this time they stood huddled together in the Dormition Cathedral courtyard, along which Fr A., already vested in his epitrachelion1 and cuffs, was walking to do his “exorcising” in the lower church. And something caught his attention while he was walking by, so that he paused for a minute next to the tourists—some phrase spoken by the responsible worker gnawed at him and put him on his guard: he even stepped a little closer to him to listen. But as soon as he came nearer, that godless orator’s appearance changed: he puckered his lips, pressed his hands to his chest, bent them at the wrist like a puppy “begging” on its hind legs, howled like a dog, and finally he even began to bark.

  The sightseers exchanged glances, but since the bark sounded very real, they decided that he was playing a joke. And with great talent, one may add—just like a German shepherd. And so they smiled, laughed, and even broke into applause: what an actor!

  For a minute or two he continued to yelp. He clutched his throat but couldn’t seem to stop. All red in the face, eyes bulging—any minute they would burst out of his sockets—but he kept going—woof-woof-woof-woof-woof, woof …

  Fr A. stood for a while next to him, stood some more, then covered the man’s head with his epitrachelion—and that silenced him. The elder then said to him:

  “My dear man, you need to seek treatment. You are ill. You have a demon inside you! Come see me, I’ll help you.”

  And with that he went inside the church.

  Several days later, this elder was sent away to the distant, rural Pskov Caves Monastery, farther away from observing eyes and crowds. Just in case. Otherwise, who knows what other high-ranking official would visit the Lavra, and who knows what other confusion might arise in Fr A.’s presence: what if that official started to bray like a donkey, neigh like a horse, or crow like a rooster, dismaying the people? You never know …

  Two or Three Days

  My good friend, the children’s author Gennadii Snegirev, often traveled to the Little Hermitage to visit Archimandrite Seraphim (Tiapochkin). The elder loved him very much, and whenever he invited him to a meal in his priestly home, he always seated Gennadii next to himself.

  So one time the Snegirevs visited with Elder Seraphim, took confession from him, received holy communion from him, and began to prepare for the journey home. With this aim, Gennadii’s wife Tatiana had specially ridden on a rattling bus for fifty kilometers to Belgorod, had stood in line at the ticket office, and had purchased their tickets back to Moscow.

  She then returned to Rakitnoe, arranged with a taxi driver in advance to take them to the train station, packed her things, bade farewell to the hostess in whose cabin they were renting a room, gave her whatever money she had left, and the Snegirevs began their journey home.

  They stopped by Elder Seraphim’s home to ask for his blessing for their return travels. But he only said to them:

  “It would better if you didn’t leave today!”

  “What do you mean?” cried out Tatiana. “Fr Seraphim, we have tickets, and a taxi, and our things are packed—everything is ready!”

  “No,” the elder shook his head, “you’d better go in two or three days. Stay here a little longer.”

  “Oh, Fr Seraphim, we don’t have any money left, and all our business is waiting in Moscow. Maybe you’d better bless us after all—let us go! We’re all set to go already. Everyone at home is waiting for us.”

  “Two or three—” the elder softly uttered and lifted his hand for a blessing, “days,” he repeated, lightly tapping Tatiana’s forehead with three fingers, “or maybe even four;” he transferred his fingers to tap her on her chest, “whenever God,” touching her right shoulder, “will bless it,” he finally lowered his fingers to her left shoulder.

  The Snegirevs sighed and sighed, but there was nothing to be done but turn around and go back. The taxi was canceled. Belongings were unloaded and unpacked. Tatiana again went to telegraph for an urgent money order for their trip home. And the next day she again rode on the rattling bus for their tickets.

  “Well, that Fr Seraphim,” she thought, “he lives in some spiritual world, he doesn’t know anything about the real world to which we belong—all our affairs, cares, money. He’s already in God’s kingdom. And he thinks that we’re all there too, but for now we’re here, on earth.”

  With these thoughts she arrived in Belgorod. As soon as she entered the train station she understood that something was wrong: crowds of people were huddling around the ticket offices, storming the train station manager’s office, sitting on the windowsills or even sleeping on the bare floor.

  “What happened?” Tatiana asked.

  “Well, just last night two trains leaving Belgorod crashed into each other—a passenger train and a freight train. Many people died, and the rest are either in intensive care or the hospital. And the road to Moscow is blocked for now—they say that normal traffic will only resume in two or three days.”

  Tatiana returned to Rakitnoe and spent several wonderful days there, taking in everything around her as if she had been born anew.

  Flowers for the Shroud

  My friend Gennadii Snegirev and his wife, my godmother Tatiana, often visited the elder Archimandrite Seraphim in Rakitnoe and lived in his Little Hermitage for weeks at a time. They returned full of light and joy, and told me such wonderful stories that I, of course, also desired to go see him. But I sensed that something was preventing Tatiana from taking me with her. Perhaps she thought that I would bring along that spirit of the Moscow life that they so desired to escape, or perhaps she was of the opinion that a person must make some sort of effort on their part in order to see the elder. Every time I exclaimed, “Oh, take me with you!” she grew silent and looked aside.

  But I still wanted to see the elder very much—even my subconscious shouted this to me in my dreams. I had the same dream several times, in which I was standing on a subway platform: the train arrived, the doors opened, and there, right behind the open doors, stood Fr Seraphim—just like I had seen him in a photograph, with two pectoral crosses on his chest. And I could either remain standing where I was—on that platform—or I could jump onto the train car and ride away with him …

  I also had dreams of temptation from the evil one. In them, smoothly shaved gentlemen in bowler hats came to me; they seemed to be Protestant pastors. They doffed their hats in greeting me and invited me to join them, and in the dream I knew that they weren’t pastors at all but demons. At
that moment, I would try to cross myself, but my arm felt as if it was weighted down by lead, and I couldn’t raise it to my forehead … In short, this was a time of temptations, and I could not of my own will, without help, reach the elder.

  Then the Lord helped me.

  One day in April of 1982, I was offered the opportunity to go on a writer’s trip—to read poetry in the city of Shebekino in Belgorod Region—and I was promised a sum of money if I went. Since we sorely needed the money, I went. I spoke to local schoolchildren, dorm residents, and club workers, and then set off home. I held in my arms an enormous bouquet of wax-white flowers, calla lilies grown in a local greenhouse.

  I boarded the bus going to Belgorod, intending to switch there to the Moscow-bound train. But when the bus finally arrived at the bus station, I suddenly heard an announcement: “The bus to Rakitnoe will depart in five minutes from bus stop three.”

  At that moment, something happened to me. I suddenly understood that I must switch to this bus and go to see the elder. I shouldn’t think about the fact that I must really go to Moscow, where my husband and children were waiting for me. I should rather not think about anything at all and just run to the ticket office, buy the ticket, and jump onto the steps of the bus. The voice on the loudspeaker was not merely the voice of the dispatcher, but the voice of my destiny, addressed specifically to me. And so I did just that.

  As soon as I got off near the church in Rakitnoe with my enormous bouquet, a woman dressed like a churchgoer—in a long dress and headscarf—approached me and said:

  “Well, thank God, you’re finally here. The priest said you were coming and told me to wait for you. We would have had nothing to decorate the shroud with.”

  She took my flowers and went into the church. It was Holy Friday.

  Monk Leonid

  When he found out that I was in Rakitnoe, my husband came to join me. The day after Pascha, the elder died, and we remained for the funeral and burial.

  Multitudes of Fr Seraphim’s spiritual children came together from all over to bury him and bid him farewell: bishops, priests, monks, laypeople. It was as if the elder was as his final action through his death bringing together all the people that he loved and remembered in his prayers. In any case, we left Rakitnoe having met people with whom we forged lifelong relationships. One became our spiritual father; another, our counselor; a third, our teacher; a fourth, our friend.

  And since we practically hadn’t left the church since Holy Friday—praying, confessing, partaking of holy communion, and listening to the Gospel, from which the priests took turns reading ceaselessly over the elder’s body as it lay in the middle of the church—this marked a genuine start to our life in the Church.

  It was in that very place, at the elder’s graveside, that we met Monk Leonid along with his novice, the old nun Pelageia. Monk Leonid emerged from his mother’s womb crippled: he looked like a woman down to his waist—like a nice, sweet, old lady—but his legs and enormous feet were that of a man. Because of this, he always had problems in men’s monasteries: at one he had even been given a “thorough examination.” He always looked back on this with tears.

  He had been a monk at the lovely Glinsk Hermitage until it was disbanded during Khrushchev’s time. He had nowhere to go, as his mother had refused to take him and had even tried to burn him in the village banya (steam bath), but the Mother of God saved him. And so he had no choice but to stand on the church portico and beg. There he was noticed by Pelageia, a secret nun who took him in, despite the fact that in the barracks where she lived—a communal eight-square-meter apartment—she already had a paralyzed nun living on her couch, the young woman Barbara. Barbara did nothing but pray, and the wall above her couch had become imprinted with a cross. It was even said that various bishops came in secret to stand in the presence of this wonderful young woman and to venerate the uncreated cross …

  When we became acquainted with Monk Leonid and Pelageia, however, Barbara had already reposed, and the two of them had moved to a one-room Moscow apartment several tramway stops from the Elektrozavodsk stop. Upon discovering that I write poetry, Fr Leonid became very interested and asked me to come see him in order to record his confessions. One would think that poetry is in no way connected to recording confessions, and yet he probably hoped that a person of letters could give shape to his repentant lamentations.

  “I am infirm, crippled from my mother’s womb, an invalid from childhood, I have paralysis, a nervous disorder, so there’s no way I can go to the elder, Archimandrite Kirill, in the Lavra, but I must confess to him. When you come, I will dictate everything to you, and you will take it to him, so that he can read the prayer of absolution.”

  Well, so be it. I began to visit him.

  “Fr Leonid, are you sure this is a sin?” I would often ask him after hearing something innocent and touching and lifting my pen from the notebook. “It’s routine, normal! Why do you have to repent of this?”

  “You just sit there and write what I say, don’t ask me questions,” he would reply, turning away and blushing. “And don’t look at me,” he would add, letting me know that in this situation I must merely become “the pen of a ready writer” (Ps 44:1), and not meddle with my comments and questions.

  We would occasionally fill two thin teacher’s graphic notebooks, and yet his confession, as I have now come to understand, witnessed to the fact that this was a man who led a holy life.

  He would constantly phone my husband, asking him to come, and giving him all sorts of instructions, and once, he even asked him to help him wash.

  “I haven’t washed in a year!” Fr Leonid sorrowfully said. “My body is all crusty. And without your help I won’t be able to climb into the bath or out of it. I have paralysis! And in general, I’m an invalid since childhood!”

  So my husband washed him. He helped him into the bathtub, soaped up his hair and body, scrubbed him clean with a brush, doused him with water from the shower … Then he saw—how strange! The soap bubbles floated around on the surface of the water, but the water itself was clean!

  “Fr Leonid!” my husband exclaimed in disbelief. “You probably had someone wash you just recently, you just forgot about it!”

  “Nobody’s washed me for a year already,” the other grumbled.

  “What are you telling me? The water’s still clean!”

  “Quiet! Don’t you tell anyone about that!”

  This was a way that the Lord responded to Fr Leonid’s holy prayers.

  Another time my husband was away visiting the Holy Trinity Lavra of St Sergius, and I was getting the children ready to go to church for the all-night vigil (this was on the feast day of St Nicholas). Before church, we decided to drink some tea. I began to prepare the stove, lit a match, and a piece of flaming sulfur flew right into my left eye—it even sizzled on contact. Right away an enormous leucoma began to form on my eye, right on the iris!

  I should add that in a month I was due to give birth to my third child, and my first two were still little. Nobody was home, a bitter frost stood outside, and black ice lay on the ground. In a word, things looked very bad. I even began to imagine living the rest of my life with only one eye. What humble resignation I felt: what could I do, it was all in God’s hands!

  Suddenly, as if he felt something was wrong, Monk Leonid gave me a call. I immediately told him of my terrible condition: there I was sitting with an enormous belly, tiny children, and a leucoma on my eye.

  “Pray for me, Fr Leonid!”

  “You just drop a few drops of olive oil in your eye! And don’t go anywhere by yourself!” he said and hung up the phone.

  By morning the leucoma had cleared up—but my eye was bloodshot, as if I had spent the entire night crying with the one eye. By evening that was gone, too.

  My husband returned from the Lavra and took me to see the eye doctor. The doctor examined me, checked my vision, and asked:

  “So what are you saying happened?”

  “Burning sulfur right in
my eye! It sizzled! Leucoma!”

  “But everything looks fine! There’s nothing there! Not a trace of anything.”

  And he gave a look betraying how sorry he felt for me that I was such a liar …

  But two weeks after that, I became gravely ill with acute bronchitis—I was so short of breath that I could only sleep sitting up, and coughed up blood. I also completely lost my voice and could only croak. They didn’t want to take me to the hospital, but I was due to give birth any day. But they didn’t take me to the birthing clinic either, because I had acute bronchitis. In short, I sensed my approaching death: “O my soul, rise up! Why art thou sleeping? The end draws near …”1 Either I would die, or the baby, or both of us together.

  Fr Leonid sent a priest to see me and give me holy unction. I had already accepted the possibility that my days were over, my time was up … After all, I had lived a good twenty-eight years—more than Lermontov or Yesenin, not to mention Rimbaud.2 Still, I felt unbearably sorry for everything and everyone: sorry for my life, children, husband, my sick and elderly parents … Then I began to develop Quincke’s disease; I was suffocating: if it lasted much longer my throat would completely close up. Only then did the ambulance take me to the hospital.

  “Yes, I’m praying for her, praying!” Fr Leonid told my husband, as if defending himself, as if he had done something wrong. “Let me go read another canon for her.”

  Finally, they delivered me to the hospital, but the nurse at check-in didn’t want to take me in:

  “Take off your cross immediately! Laboring mothers are not allowed to wear any trinkets!”

  With no voice, I could only gesticulate to her like a mute in response:

  “I feel so much better with it on! I won’t take it off!”

  “Well, then, I can’t admit you. Look—your ambulance already drove off. So you’ll stay here in the waiting room all night, not registered, all by yourself. Go on, take it off!”