Ordinary Wonders

by Oloesia Nikolaeva

  At that time, several other people had already approached my husband with the same request: the wife of the Russian ambassador in Germany, my classmate along with his children, the daughter and grandson of a People’s Artist of the USSR; Zhenya Popov himself dreamed of baptizing his newborn son Vasenka, and we were planning to go to the Church of the Transfiguration in Peredelkino, where they performed the mystery without abbreviation and by full immersion, as was proper. So we invited Ch. there as well, to baptize them all together.

  True, as soon as Popov found out that Ch. was going to be there, he immediately backed out:

  “To baptize my Vasenka in the same font as that devil—no, I’m not ready to do that. Let’s separate them—Vasenka tomorrow, Ch. at some other time.”

  So Vasenka was baptized alone in a small font, and several days later a varied assembly of catechumens were baptized in the company of their godmothers and godfathers.

  “Keep in mind,” warned my husband on the eve of the baptism, turning to Ch., “great temptations await you. The evil one will try to place obstacles on your path to salvation, but you must be ready and bravely continue to move toward your goal.”

  “What kind of obstacles can there be?” Ch. flippantly waved him away.

  “Well, at the very least, you can oversleep or become ill, your water pipe can burst, your key can get stuck in the lock, you can get stuck in the elevator or twist your ankle, the train could be canceled. Or you will wake up tomorrow morning and suddenly think: ‘What am I doing, am I losing it in my old age? What is this fantasy? What have I stuck my nose into? I lived just fine for sixty years without baptism, and now what is this strange behavior?’ You’ll turn over onto your other side and go back to sleep.”

  “No,” Ch. shook his head. “That can’t be. I will definitely come.”

  They agreed to meet at an appointed time at the commuter train. And sure enough, when we reached the platform, Ch. was already standing at the train. But he looked scared and subdued.

  “What happened?”

  “This,” and he showed us his right arm hanging lifelessly by his side, “my arm is numb. I can’t lift it or move it. I think I may have had a minor stroke at night. What should I do? I can’t even cross myself!”

  He tried to take it with his left hand and place the sign of the cross over himself, but it wouldn’t obey him.

  “It’s all right,” my husband cheered him up, “you can cross yourself with your left hand.”

  “A temptation, just like you warned me,” muttered Ch. as he sat down inside the train.

  We finally reached Peredelkino. Several hieromonks who were near and dear to us served there at the Church of the Transfiguration, along with the abbot, who was also a friend.

  Not anticipating any complications, our friendly group of neophytes awaiting holy baptism moved forward to the church. But it wasn’t to be so easy. Just the previous night the warden had gotten into an argument with the abbot, and had taken off who knows where early that morning, taking with him the keys to the locked baptistery.

  “I would baptize you all,” the abbot shrugged his shoulders, “but I don’t have any spare keys, and it’s unclear when the warden will return. If you want, we can wait, or come another time.”

  My husband gazed at the significantly sized flock of varying ages and races that stood in the church courtyard, awaiting their birth into life eternal, glanced over the focused and stroke-ridden Ch. with his limp arm, and understood that it would be much more difficult to gather everyone together again the next time. So he said:

  “Let’s go take a walk for an hour—we’ll go to the grave of Pasternak, Tchaikovsky, and by then the warden will return!”

  Splitting up into small groups, everyone amicably followed him.

  “Let me tell you in the meantime about my time working in the NTS,”1 offered Ch., finding himself paired with my husband on the pathway. He was expressing his gratitude in the form of sincerity; he was also convinced that his stories in one way or another were parts of one great history.

  My husband nodded.

  “Well, I was brought in—I had specially traveled to Germany with false documents and had met with their representative there … I became such an authority there that in the end I began to head the organization and began to break it down from the inside by inserting my own people. At one time there was almost nobody left except our people, and they all worked for us: it became a sort of branch of the KGB. And to those people who were not connected to us, we would give all sorts of phony assignments—we would set them up to work at a Soviet plant or factory, or even send them to the Public Housing and Utilities Unit to get some sort of list of residents and employees … So they imitated work but were really performing a farce. Such were our victories. Soon it was time to close down the operation, and I wrote a report to the command, which had just recently changed: Andropov2 had come into power. Everything was written up in the report—the mission had been accomplished, and the NTS no longer existed, since it was entirely made up of our own people. And then what? Once in office, Andropov delivered a lecture to a secret assembly of the KGB, and we heard the following: ‘At the moment, the NTS presents a real danger to us’ ‘What, has he gone mad?’ I exclaimed. ‘What danger?’ But my director told me, ‘You just sit there and be quiet. Are you unwell or something?’

  “And sure enough—just after this secret lecture, rumors began to spread among enemy circles that the KGB was mobilizing its powers and resources in a battle against anti-Soviet organizations, including the NTS. At this, the CIA became involved: they directed a flow of funds to our boys in the NTS, since the Soviets were so scared of it; from their end, the KGB increased our financial support, and so a snowball was sent rolling down the hill, growing larger and larger at every turn: titles, ranks, promotions, awards … These were the games we were forced to play,” sighed Ch.

  In the meantime, it was time to return to the church. We arrived, and the warden had indeed returned, but was still angry at the abbot. My husband went off to discuss it with the abbot. Then the warden said:

  “Well, all right, I’ll open the baptistery for you. But this is the problem: our hot water’s been turned off. And the font, inasmuch as you plan to be baptized with full immersion, will not only take two hours to fill up, but the water will be freezing cold spring water. Who would dare to dunk himself into such water?”

  Very well. My husband took all the catechumens to the holy spring, having explained to them that we would have to wait a little longer while the font was being filled up. He didn’t dare tell them about the ice cold water: for man is weak and afraid. What if his charges would get frightened, refuse to be baptized, and go home? As for waiting—why not wait? It was May, the lilacs were blooming, the apple and cherries were blossoming, dandelions were flaming in the young grass, the sun was warm but not hot. They went by way of the old cemetery and Pasternak’s field to the holy spring. Ch. scooped some water with his left hand and washed his face. His right hand still hung lifeless and dangling by his side. Not in vain did he roam the spring fields and ravines after my husband, sharing his inside information with him in the fear that “there won’t be any time left” and desiring no matter what to be baptized unto forgiveness of sins; then, whatever came next would not be so frightening.

  We came back to the church once again. The priest was already awaiting us in his epitrachelion—the font would be full at any moment. Not a word was said about the ice-cold water.

  And so the blessed hour was upon us. The priest led everyone inside and baptized the infants in the small font, into which two kettles-full of boiled water had been poured. The adults he sent in their baptismal gowns down the stairs into the large ice-cold font, and standing at the edge, dunked each person’s head three times: “In the name of the Father, amen; the Son, amen; and the Holy Spirit, amen,” so that none of them would remain merely “sprinkled”3 but be loyal children of the Church.

  Everyone left the baptistery with
faces transformed and a certain mysterious, unearthly light in their eyes. Then Ch. suddenly lifted up his right hand as if nothing was wrong with it and made the sign of the cross over himself.

  “Your arm … it’s working!” my husband exclaimed in surprise.

  “Oh yes? I’d forgotten all about it!” he broke out into a smile.

  “How was the water?”

  “What of it? It was clean!”

  “But it was ice-cold spring water!”

  “Really?” all the newly baptized were surprised. “Was it really ice cold? We didn’t feel it!”

  “It was good water!”

  “Just fine!”

  So my husband asked the warden:

  “So the hot water was turned on after all?”

  “No, we still only have cold water …”

  With that, we departed, wondering and rejoicing the entire journey.

  Ch. became a model parishioner. Every time he saw me in church, he meaningfully raised his right hand to his face and carefully made the sign of the cross. I felt sorry that Zhenya Popov didn’t want to baptize his Vasen’ka together with Ch. that time. What a touching and symbolic Christian picture that would have been: “the calf and the young lion … together” (Isa 11:6)!

  Soon, Ch. died and was given a Christian burial. There, he will be met by the Lord, Who Himself, without regarding the faces, will divide the sheep from the goats. Everyone will be mixed together and divided: the former will stand at His right hand, and the latter at His left—NTS, KGB, CIA, “our boys” and “the Germans,” Party members and non-Party members, the Reds and the Whites, the black, yellow, orange, green, pink, and blue … and somewhere amongst them—all of us.

  Five Months of Love

  In September 1996, my husband received a telephone call from Maria Vasilievna Rozanova in Paris—she was the wife of the writer Andrei Sinyavsky. She told him that Sinyavsky was dying, he was completely paralyzed, including his brain, and all he wanted was for Fr Vladimir to confess and commune him before death.

  “Hurry,” added Maria Vasilievna, “they say he has days, if not hours.”

  We were friends with the Sinyavskys, and Andrei Donatovich’s illness was a huge blow to us. Fr Vladimir would have been happy to rush off right away and fly to his dying friend’s side, but how? He had just returned from vacation, from which his superior impatiently awaited his return, as he had had to serve all that time in the church alone, so it was unlikely that he would be allowed to leave again. That was one thing. He had no French visa—that was another thing. And no ticket to France—three. And four—he literally had no money to buy the ticket.

  So my husband told Maria Vasilievna:

  “It’s impossible.”

  And then immediately added:

  “Wait for me. I’ll administer holy unction, too.”

  Then he hung up the phone in total disbelief at himself.

  Moreover, we had been expecting a visit from our friend, Andrei Chernov, from the Literature Institute, since the previous night. Soon he appeared on our doorstep, leading behind him an unknown, modest-looking, and not very remarkable person.

  It turned out that this was a recently established banker who wanted to donate a small sum, namely 500 dollars, to some good cause. That is why he asked Chernov to bring him to a priest, so that he could help him decide what to do with the money.

  Fr Vladimir told him about the dying Sinyavsky, who was in need of his final communion, and the recently established banker happily placed the money on the table:

  “I knew that you would advise me to spend it on something worthy!”

  So the money for Fr Vladimir’s flight was found.

  While he was talking to the banker, I got a call from another of my friends from the institute, now the chief editor of the magazine Stas, who asked me to quickly write an article about Akhmatova1 for the latest issue.

  “I’ll pay you in advance without waiting for the magazine release, just as soon as you bring me the article.”

  The next day I brought him the article that I had written overnight, and he handed me three hundred-dollar bills. So it turned out that we had enough money for my ticket, too, since I also wanted to bid farewell to the beloved writer. Moreover, Fr Vladimir always felt somewhat helpless in France, as he didn’t speak French, so it was better for me to be by his side.

  By the way, this was the only time that I was paid so much money for an article and that I was given the payment immediately, before the issue was released.

  Happily, the attaché on cultural affairs at the French embassy at the time was a wonderful man with a Russian background—Alesha Berulovich—and his assistant, Annique Pousselle, was a friend of ours. When they learned about the dying Sinyavsky, she helped us get visas that same day; we booked our tickets; now all that remained was the matter of the church rector, Fr Maksim. The situation could even arise that in spite of his sincere desire to release Fr Vladimir, he would not be able to: services must continue at the church, and if Fr Maksim had a lecture at the academy, and if Fr Vladimir would just leave, there would be no one left to serve. My husband understood this very well and thus called his rector with some trepidation. But he unexpectedly and calmly said:

  “Of course you must go.”

  In short, if it pleases God, He will do the impossible: three days after Maria Vasilievna’s call, we were already sitting in her home on Rue Fontenay-aux-Roses.

  “Sinyavsky is very bad,” she said. “Every day there’s something new—his leg will grow numb, or his hand—the tumor keeps growing and pressing on his brain. The doctors here consulted together and gave him no more than several days to live. In addition to it all, he has caught a bad cold: he slept with the window open last night, his blanket fell onto the floor, and he couldn’t pick it up. But I beg of you—don’t tell him that he is dying. When he heard that you would administer holy unction, he became terrified—don’t you receive unction before death? He even made me read about it in the encyclopedia, though it does say there that it’s done for healing.”

  “For healing of soul and body,” confirmed my husband.

  Fr Vladimir went upstairs to Andrei Donatovich’s office, which was on the second floor, and they had a long discussion there, after which Andrei Donatovich received confession and holy unction, and we set off to Fr Nikolai Ozolin, a priest who served and taught at the St Sergius Theological Institute, to ask him to prepare the Holy Gifts the following day.

  While we walked to the institute, a terrible pulsating sound began to echo all around us: buk-buk-buk-buk, and it grew louder and louder; then strange-looking young people began to cross our path, jumping up and down with horns on their heads. The horns were attached to their heads or constructed out of their own hair, and vile-looking tails dragged behind them from between their legs. These jumping and writhing people kept increasing more and more in number, until a crowd covered the entire street, and in the midst rode a bus from which issued that “buk-buk-buk” noise increasing to impossibly loud pitches. It turned out that this was a protest against the arrival of the Pope of Rome in France, and so all hell had broken loose. The faces of the protesters were smeared with black grime, and they grimaced and jumped up and down, holding up two fingers in the sign of the letter “V” for “victoire.” Victory.

  “They are demons,” we guessed, pressing against the houses to avoid being trampled.

  Finally, we reached Fr Nikolai, and he promised to give us the Holy Gifts the next morning after Liturgy for Sinyavsky.

  Walking along a narrow Paris street on our way home, we ran into our friend, Professor Krotovskii, and his wife. Professor Krotovskii was a Godgiven doctor who had been performing surgical wonders for many years, saving people from death or disability. He was deeply saddened when he heard about Sinyavsky, and offered to personally examine his X-rays and test results—maybe the Parisian doctors were overexaggerating? What if there was still some hope? Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as we thought …

  So we we
nt to Maria Vasilievna’s home together with the Krotovskiis. But alas! As soon as he looked at the X-rays and studied the papers, his expression fell and he said:

  “It’s even worse than I expected … It really is a matter of hours, not even days.”

  The next day, Fr Vladimir communed Andrei Donatovich, and we flew back to Moscow. Two days later Maria Vasilievna called us and asked Fr Vladimir to come to the phone.

  “That’s it,” we thought. “Memory eternal!”

  However, Maria Vasilievna directed their conversation in an entirely different direction.

  “Vigilianskii,” she said quite playfully, “guess who is sitting in front of me at this very moment and drinking tea?”

  “I don’t know, Maria Vasilievna, it could be anyone, from Gorbachev to Limonov.”

  “But it isn’t,” she boldly replied. “In front of me is sitting … Sinyavsky. He came down from the second floor by himself today and is now sitting here before my very eyes! But that’s not all—they took new X-rays of his head, and there was no tumor there! The doctors can’t understand it themselves!”

  Over the next five months, Andrei Donatovich would come down to the kitchen in the same manner to drink tea; he would work on his latest novel, meet with friends, bidding farewell to this life and preparing himself for the next one. Fr Nikolai Ozolin came to him several times with the Holy Gifts and communed him.

  Fr Vladimir told him:

  “You will live for as long as you have the desire to be with God.”