Ordinary Wonders

by Oloesia Nikolaeva

“I came home, and at that moment, Igor Isakov, a good friend whom I had hardly seen in the past two years, arrived, and stood there smiling.

  “‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘I’m paying back an old debt.’ And he placed fifty rubles on the table.

  “‘What do you mean, Igor, when did you borrow money from us?’

  “‘Two years ago, maybe three—I don’t remember.’

  “‘I don’t remember either. Maybe you borrowed it from someone else?’

  “‘It was from you for sure!’

  “‘Fifty rubles?’

  “‘Fifty! When you loaned me the money, I even told you, I don’t know why, that I was taking a math class that had two smart Jewish boys and only two smart Russian ones, and even those were called Abramov and Isakov. I remember that you laughed …’

  “I took the money with great disbelief and immediately took off to the station with it. There I bought four tickets in a sleeping car (for one adult and three children) for the Tallin train to Pechory1 for the way there, and for the way back—no sleeping cars were available—four economy-class tickets for the Pskov train to Moscow. I paid in advance (that was possible then) for the beds. The cashier counted it all up and pronounced:

  “‘Fifty rubles for everything.’

  “Down to the last penny! No more, no less!”

  “You see, Genka?” sighed Tatiana, “and you said that God was no accountant! And here we have both credit and debit! He has everything counted, measured, and weighed, even the hairs on our head are all accounted for! (Mt 10:30). Nothing extra!”

  And more than enough, I thought, remembering the Pskov Caves Monastery and how wonderful was the time we spent there.

  Come and See1

  In the middle of January, around the year 1991, the poet Iurii Kobulanovskii called me and downright ripped into me:

  “There you are sitting in your home in Moscow, when Fr Sergii Vishnevskii is perishing from cold and hunger in his remote village …”

  “Wait a minute—Fr Sergeii—isn’t he the rector of the Church of the Mother of God of the Sign on Ryzhskaia Street? Why is he in a village and why is he perishing?”

  “Little do you know! He asked to be sent to restore the church where he used to be an acolyte in his childhood. But this church is in the wilderness, deep in the forest, and there are no residents in the entire region during the winter! No stores, nothing! We need to save him!”

  “But where is he? Where is this wilderness?”

  “Well, listen. You need to get to Rybinsk, my native town—there you will be met by Boria, my childhood friend. He is not a believer, and is soon planning to emigrate to Israel, but he will help you to find Fr Sergii. So take some food and go.”

  As it was, I had already planned to go to the Pskov Caves Monastery to see my spiritual father! However, since Fr Sergii was perishing there in the snow, we must help him. I gathered all kinds of grains, pastas, flour, sugar, sunflower oil, salt, matches—all the necessities—and set off directly for Rybinsk.

  It must be said that the weather in Moscow was, despite the fact that it was Christmastime, very sluggish: everything was melting, leaking, dripping, and so I, in response to this weather, went dressed in a flimsy jacket, thin tights, and a light scarf.

  But by morning, in Rybinsk with Boris (Boria)—who was already mentally in blooming Israel—I was greeted by our renowned chieftain, Father Frost.2 While I slept on the train seat, thundering ice fettered the waters and stiffening snows engulfed the earth; my breath produced huge amounts of steam when I stood on the platform and introduced myself to Boris, and he hastily described to me the various turns in the road, legs of our journey, and layovers still to come.

  At first, we were supposed to ride on a trolley bus to Myshkin. There we would transfer to another bus until some turn, and then we would walk along the highway, trying to hitch a ride from a passerby. This way we would reach the village. But from the village, we would have to walk on foot through the forest with no road for several kilometers. Then—a wonderful view would be revealed: Fr Sergii’s church on a curving river bend, glistening in the ice!

  First and foremost, I gave Boria some of the bags with provisions, and he, staggering a little, courageously took them out of my hands. His frail figure was slightly distorted, but he managed to preserve his balance, and we trudged along to the bus stop.

  It was an old, rattling bus, toiling away at a speed of fifty kilometers or so per hour and shaking so much that it could have fallen apart at any point during the journey, and we with our pastas and buckwheat could have ended up in a ditch buried under the snow. But all this was nothing compared to the cold that devoured the warm air escaping from the bus heater, and took the immobile passengers prisoner, fettering their hands and feet with its chains.

  Here I finally realized that instead of a happy journey in the flurries, instead of a Russian fairy tale with festive frost lining the trees, instead of a warm meeting with our kind and beloved Fr Sergii, I instead faced icy torment, the sensation of my cold and smarting spinal cord freezing to my very skull, and frostbite in my extremities, which were barely covered with cloth gloves and light booties. My companion, however, was not much better off—he was all crumpled and shriveled up, as if he wanted to squeeze into a little crevice and preserve all the remaining heat in it. I immediately repented of the fact that I didn’t take a few bottles of good old cognac along—how we would cheer up then and warm ourselves up a little!

  In the meantime, we reached Myshkin, where we were supposed to transfer to another bus, but first we decided to warm up a little and went into a hole-in-the-wall shop near the bus station. There stood something like a cast-iron stove, and, laying our bags all around us, we settled down at a table. Boria looked wretched—his lips had turned blue, his eyes were rolling back in his head, and he needed to be fed immediately, but there was nothing in the run-down little shop except some dirty, brown pirozhki with fruit filling, so we ordered two cups of hot tea each, served there exclusively in mayonnaise jars.

  Finally, having warmed up to a certain extent and wrapping our scarves several times around us—I around my head and Boria around his neck—and loaded with bags, we hobbled off to the local bus. As soon as we climbed aboard, we realized that it was a far cry from that Rybinsk bus that we had so abused in our hearts, which had at least tried to fan us with a warm stream of air. But no sooner did we express our disappointment than the driver, having just left the borders of Myshkin, where we had everything—even a café with a warm stove and tea—and finding himself amid vast and many-layered forests, came to a sudden stop.

  “Halt!” He said. “Everyone out!”

  “What do you mean, get out? How, get out?” The people grew anxious.

  “Get, out, I said,” he repeated, waving the disconnected gear unit with his hand, “the bus will go no further.”

  So we all piled out onto the highway. Boria tightened his scarf and tied it around his skullcap, which made him resemble one of the Frenchmen fleeing Moscow in disgrace in the past.3 His eyes, in which all the trials of the Jewish people seemed to be reflected, were fixed somewhere in the distance—probably where the blessed Promised Land appeared to him, where the warm Red Sea that had sunk Pharaoh the persecutor along with his horses and charioteers gently lapped … 4

  “Well, Boria, we must go on!” I said.

  We walked several scores of meters along the deserted highway, avoided a ridge, and began to slowly descend down a hill. Suddenly, I noticed that there was nobody around. The broken-down bus had somehow disappeared from view, and the passengers who had also set out on their journey vanished. Boria and I were all alone in the snowed-over expanse.

  “Let’s pray to St Nicholas the Wonderworker,” I said, “and some car will come by to pick us up. That’s what I always do.”

  “I’m not a believer,” responded Boria in a weak voice. “I’m an agnostic. I’m afraid it won’t work.”

  “What do you mean, it won’t work!” I mumbled wi
th frost-covered lips. “Let’s try and see!”

  And I began to recite “The truth of things revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith …”5 in a cracked voice. Surprisingly, my voice began to get stronger, and I seemed to get warmer. “An icon of meekness,” I barked out.

  “Iurii Mikhailovich Kublanovskii also tried to lead me to the faith, but nothing can be done with me!” admitted Boria. “I don’t believe, that’s all!”

  “A teacher of temperance,” I continued.

  “He made me feel so ashamed! He told me: come and see! Here, with you; he sent me to Fr Sergii.”

  “… Therefore thou hast achieved the heights by humility, riches by poverty,” I articulated.

  “So I’m coming and seeing. Coming and seeing,” Boria uttered somewhat helplessly.

  “O Father and Hierarch Nicholas, intercede with Christ God that our souls be saved,” I finally finished.

  “So said Iurii Mikhailovich: come and see …”

  At that moment, a car appeared from behind the hill. I went onto the road and blocked its path. It was an old jeep with a canvas roof. The driver unhappily opened the door:

  “Where to?”

  “We would be grateful for anything,” I answered.

  So we reached the village from where the long journey through the forest awaited us. However, we were already so frozen stiff that it would have been total madness to set out on that road right away—we wouldn’t have gone a hundred meters before freezing like the coachman in the desolate steppe.6 So we knocked on the first door we saw:

  “Will you let in some travelers to warm up?” I mumbled with great difficulty.

  At that time they still let strangers in. And we settled down near the lit stove. An hour we sat, two … but we had to go on to reach Fr Sergii before dark …

  Again, we loaded ourselves with our bags, now lightened a little by the several kilograms of buckwheat and millet we had given as a gift to our hosts for their hospitality, and trudged on farther—two pilgrims.

  Happily, there was some sort of road through the forest after all. Of course, a light car would not have been able to go through, but a tractor could. It was a tractor’s tread—and along that we went.

  Meanwhile, the chieftain Father Frost was no longer trifling with us—everything had been prepared for him before the feast of Theophany: glistening snowy garlands had been hung up everywhere, the fir tree skirts shone … His presence there was so palpable! He himself, it seemed, would emerge at any moment from the forest brush: “Are you warm, maiden? Are you warm, dear?” And I would answer him: “I’m warm, grandfather! I’m warm, dear one!” And I would sit down on my bag under a bush, curl up, and go to sleep.

  “Boria, why are you going to Israel if Iurii Mikhailovich is guiding you to the Orthodox faith?”

  He was barely stumbling along after me.

  “My wife is Russian. She’s the one who wants to live in Israel. I myself don’t.”

  “Boria, you should turn to God, ask Him to reveal Himself to you. And ask Him to show you your path.”

  “No,” he whispered faintly. “It won’t work. I am an unbeliever. An agnostic. Iurii Mikhailovich said to me: come and see. But to turn to God, to ask Him—he didn’t tell me to do that. I’m coming and seeing.”

  But even if he was still somehow coming, it was clear that he wasn’t seeing. He was automatically opening his unseeing eyes and helplessly blinking. It seemed like the Snow Queen had already put blinding icy lenses over his eyes.

  “I heard that there are still wolves in this forest,” he finally said. “Hungry ones …”

  “Come on, let me recite the Christmas troparion to you. Did Kublanovskii at least tell you about Christmas?” I said, surprised at my own self.

  “I read about it on my own,” I barely heard him reply.

  In the meantime, it had gotten darker, the wind grew stronger, the snow on the ground came flying up, and it seemed that everything around us began to howl—either it was a snowstorm or really a wolf. I couldn’t feel my body, it was so frozen solid and covered with frost that it was like glass. My feet seemed brittle and fragile: if I fell down, I would break into little pieces.

  I remembered a story that told how one Muscovite drove his wife to the airport. This was on a winter evening, and he went in light shoes, because the heater worked well in his car. And so he escorted his wife and turned back home. Suddenly, his engine overheated. He got out of the car, took a water bottle from the trunk, and began to walk “toward the lights”—he thought there was a settlement there. Meanwhile, the frost got harder, as they say, and the lights teased him with their seeming proximity. In the end, while he walked, knocked on doors, explained his situation, walked back, and poured the water in, he got frostbite in his foot—so badly that it needed to be amputated. This story was told to me by Dr Krotovskii, who had treated the poor man. It served as an example of how sometimes, a fatal storm can arise from a small little cloud, how an innocent episode can grow into a tragedy. As for me, by the way, I could develop bronchitis or pneumonia from the slightest draft. I became afraid. I began to pray …

  But while reciting the Christmas troparion to myself, I stumbled over the words “the light of knowledge,” repeating them several times. And this light, it began to radiate within my body.

  “That’s it!” said Boria. And he sat down on his bag. “I can’t go any farther.”

  “Let’s build a fire?” I suggested. “Maybe someone will notice us here and pick us up. You know, the people with the tractor.”

  And I sat down on my own bag next to him.

  “Do we have much farther to go?” I asked.

  He turned his head:

  “How should I know?”

  “Do you mean—you’ve never been here?”

  “No.”

  “So all this time we’ve been guessing our way?”

  “I was told—from the village via the highway to the forest.”

  The wolves began to howl louder. It became completely dark. We were going to freeze any minute now, and Boria would find himself at the warm sea in the Holy Land. And I would come home …

  Then, through the trees, a light seemed to flicker. I closed my eyes and opened them: it didn’t disappear, but kept burning and burning …

  “Light!” I exclaimed. “There are people there!”

  “It’s a mirage,” my companion uttered hopelessly. He had no desire left to go anywhere …

  Nevertheless, we dragged ourselves in that direction.

  The trees parted, and an enormous church rose before us. Small houses pressed around it, and inside one a light was burning. Fr Sergii opened the door to our knock.

  Well, first of all, he was not alone, but with his kind matushka, Alexandra. Second of all, he was not starving or perishing from the cold because the Lord had fed him already without our help: he had millet-buckwheat-pasta and vegetable oil in reserves to spare, as well as rice, salt, and matches. Third of all, it was warm and festive in his and matushka’s home: the lit stove sputtered, the decorated Christmas tree glowed, it smelled of fresh pirogi. Fourth of all, Boria and I caused them not a little worry. We were immediately sent to the heated stove to warm up, fed tea with raspberry jam and pirogi, pampered and nursed. Fifth of all, Fr Sergii could not understand for a long time who Boria was, who he was to me, and why he had so suddenly come to his door. He kept telling him of the night service he would arrange tomorrow in his church in honor of the feast of Theophany, and expressing his readiness to entrust Boria with the role of acolyte.

  The next morning Fr Sergii, wrapping me up in some sort of coat, took us to show off the surrounding area—the river from which he drew water in buckets with his own hand, the tree on which the miracle-working icon of the Mother of God had been found many years ago, and the church itself—two stories, for winter and summer, with two altars. The summer portion had been completely destroyed and defiled by atheists, but the lower portion Fr Sergii was slowly restoring. Despite all its neg
lect you could sense the presence of the Holy Spirit there, because the Divine Liturgy was served in it.

  Then matushka and I read the prayers before holy communion and the canons, and towards nighttime, Fr Sergii set off to prepare for the service, disappointed that he would remain without an acolyte on such a great feast, as Boria had already admitted to him that he was merely “coming and seeing” for now, according to the advice of Iurii Mikhailovich Kublanovskii.

  Fr Sergii blessed me to take a few blankets to church in addition to the coat, since the frost had become considerably acute, a real Theophany frost, and the church was quite expansive, while the metal stove that only weakly warmed its surroundings proved to be very small. So matushka and I stood by this little stove in the middle of the church in our blankets. The service began. Here I realized that matushka and I would be the readers, and the singers, and she would also play the role of altar server. She and I were quite hoarse by the end of the vigil, and I shivered from head to toe like an autumn leaf, despite the coat, little stove, and blankets. Fr Sergii, who came out to hear my confession, noticed this and threw his winter ryassa over me as well.

  “As for the Liturgy,” he said, “let the angels sing it for us.”

  And he simply turned on a recording in the altar with a church choir singing.

  But the angels also sang there …

  When Fr Sergii gave me holy communion, my tongue stuck to the spoon from the frost …

  Then came the blessing of the water … the appeal to the Holy Spirit: “And the Spirit in the form of a dove.”

  “Come ye all, and receive the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of the fear of God, from Christ Who is made manifest.” 7 Having blessed the water, Fr Sergii brought the cross out to me and matushka, and ordered us to go home and lie down on top of the stove while he cleaned up in the altar.

  At the house, we were greeted by Boria, sleepy and radiating warmth. “You slept through the whole thing!” I said to him.

  The next morning he and I set off on our journey home. I told Fr Sergii what terrors we had endured in the icy desert and how close we had come to despair. But he simply waved his hand: