“I’m a dead man!” he stated again and again. “They’re going to kill me!”
“They won’t kill you!” Vlasii waved his hand. “I’ll pray for you, and everything will be restored to you and multiplied.”
What happened next? They parted ways that evening, and in several days some official personages called our businessman and presented their apologies to him: this and that, there had been a misunderstanding, please accept your goods whole and undamaged. And sure enough, Riurik got his computers, earned enormous sums of money from them, settled his debts with the bank and creditors, and made enormous and rapid progress in his material well-being.
Since that time, he considered the simple monk Vlasii to be a holy elder who, no matter what he asked of the Lord, the Lord fulfilled it for him. He took Vlasii into his home in Rublevka, gave him food and drink, new clothing, new teeth, all but calling him “Your Reverence.” He felt just like a second Motovilov (a disciple of a saint) in the company of Seraphim of Sarov.
So Vlasii lived with him in luxury and comfort, teeth white as snow and of the very best quality, porcelain, like a Hollywood star’s. He wore a long, black raincoat made of the softest kidskin, a cashmere scarf, tinted glasses, a Swiss watch, a briefcase, and carried an English umbrella. All he needed was a cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth and a large ring on his finger …
Vlasii started to look like some Uncle Sam from abroad: the owner of factories, newspapers, ships, or a mafia boss, a “godfather.” But Vlasii himself lost interest in it all. The more you amuse the body, the more you oppress the soul. He began to ask Riurik to let him go back to the monastery, to freedom, to liberty.
But Riurik just said:
“They’ll only hurt you there again, and it would be difficult for me to reach you. I had better buy you an apartment in Emsk—it’s not far from your dear Holy Trinity Monastery and just an hour’s flight from Moscow.”
He bought him a glamorous apartment in the center of Emsk, in an exclusive building over the river. He furnished it with expensive furniture, filled it with all sorts of curiosities from overseas—a computer, a dishwasher, a home cinema. He set a monthly allowance for Fr Vlasii. So Fr Vlasii moved to his new spot.
But it still seemed to Riurik that he hadn’t given enough to his benefactor—and yet are there any earthly treasures that could fully repay spiritual gifts? He discovered that Fr Vlasii’s fiftieth birthday was approaching. He decided to organize a lavish celebration for him.
First, Riurik invited all Fr Vlasii’s fellow monks from Holy Trinity Monastery, but the abbot didn’t let them go. Second, he invited Vlasii’s acquaintances from Moscow. Third, he invited all the “newbies” with whom Vlasii had struck up an acquaintance and friendship after moving to Emsk. These were, first of all, his neighbors from the exclusive building, who, having heard that a “miracle-worker” had moved to their neighborhood, began to turn to him “for prophecies and healings.” In addition, he invited the acquaintances of the neighbors, since Monk Vlasii’s fame had already spread, and he had become like a candle placed to shine in a high place.
The festivities were set to last three days. Luxury rooms in the best hotel in Emsk were booked for visitors from other cities, sleeping car train tickets were ordered, and souvenirs with icons, spiritual brochures, and postcards of Emsk churches were purchased.
A get-together of all the guests was planned for the first day, then a tour of the Emsk holy sites with entry into the churches and the singing of troparia, then a celebratory dinner at the Pena restaurant, with congratulations for the birthday boy by costumed actors. And sure enough, Peter the Great himself came out, a big, strapping fellow in a wig and tricorne, appropriately dressed in a light blue waistcoat and white tights, which he had rented at a local theater. In his wake, a strange-looking figure in curious old-fashioned clothing rolled out toward the guests already fairly tipsy. The guests tried to guess, who could this be? Was it Columbus, the discoverer of America, or Byron, because he staggered a little and even seemed to be limping, or Pushkin, because what kind of a gathering would it be without him? As it turned out, this was a certain Prince Daumantas, founder of many great cities of Russia, including Emsk.
The next day the guests were driven seventy kilometers away on a tour of the famous Holy Trinity Monastery; there, Vlasii made an appearance like royalty, offering his friends, the monks, “great consolation,” which in the monastic tongue meant that he gave them several bottles of fine French cognac.
Afterwards, the guests went to a military airport attached to the local military sector, from which they were supposed to fly in a jet-propelled airplane over all of the Emsk Diocese and admire its beauty from a bird’s-eye view.
The third day was left for “dessert,” let’s say. Everyone went to the dock “with joyful steps” and boarded a specially rented motorboat which took them to an island to see an elder. However, the elder was very old and infirm, and saw almost no one these days: this was ensured by his two female cell attendants, sharp-tongued and imposing in appearance. So the guests, having reached the elder’s little house, remained standing there behind the picket fence, behind the padlocked gate.
Meanwhile, the air darkened to grey, the cold wind started to blow, a fine rain began to sprinkle down. Everyone huddled together underneath a large tree, whose crown served as a canopy at first. So they stood, hushed, pressing together, shivering with cold. And on top of it all, a fine stallion galloped over from some distant pasture. Happily clopping along, he trotted on the stones with abandon until he reached the pilgrims. Here, he stopped in amazement. He observed them with an enormous, and as everyone noticed, mischievous eye, and suddenly grabbed the purse of a lady from the city administration of Emsk with his teeth; she was participating in the birthday festivities since she was a neighbor of Vlasii in the exclusive house. He seized it and took off with it into the distance.
“My purse, my purse!” she whimpered. “It’s all lost!”
In the meantime, the stallion trotted around the house of the elder, tossed the precious purse along the way, and headed back in our direction once again.
“What is this?” wailed a lady from the Emsk mayor’s office, who had also managed to enter into Fr Vlasii’s circle of friends. She turned her back to the stallion flying in her direction and guarded her purse with her own body.
But he nonchalantly seized the edge of a shawl dangling from her shoulder with his teeth, yanked at it, pulled it from her shoulder, and galloped away again.
“Horses are a bad omen!” Riurik anxiously commented.
“That’s if you see them in your dreams,” the others corrected him. “This one’s not a dream.”
So they continued to stand under the tree. They sensed that the celebrations were coming to an end.
Monk Vlasii’s beneficence was also coming to an end.
After the celebration, when all the guests separated and parted ways, he mechanically continued his banquet—with starving artists from the theater playing the part of Peter the Great and Prince Daumantas in his victory parades, with his house neighbors, or simply with people he met at the shop. Perhaps this was why his potato nose became reddish-grey, his little eyes even smaller, and his acerbic tongue sharper. People said that his bygone glory had gone to his head and pushed him over the edge. Rumors reached Moscow that he had publicly thrashed the lady from the city administration with his belt as a disciplinary measure, and that he had threatened a representative of the local duma with the psalm of damnation: “Let the usurer consume all that he hath, and let the stranger plunder his labor” (Ps 108:11).
Alarmed by these rumors, Riurik came to check up on his beloved “little elder” and found him in the company of crazed and rowdy drunks surrounded by mayhem: scraps, leftovers, and empty bottles lay everywhere. In response to the cries of the shocked Riurik, Monk Vlasii said reasonably that even Christ ate and drank with the publicans and sinners. Everything might have been smoothed over for Vlasii this time if he h
adn’t decided that very moment to “take the edge off.” And since Riurik was keeping close watch over him, he was forced to do this in the bathroom, and then toss the empty bottle—the incriminating evidence—out the window. But it so happened—what a temptation!—that this bottle fell directly onto Riurik’s parked Mercedes, smashing his windshield and damaging the hood. And since Riurik had recently begun to drive around with bodyguards, they immediately determined the who, what, and how, and instantly reacted, breaking into the apartment and smoking Vlasii out.
Naturally, Vlasii fell from grace for good—so much so that Riurik took everything away from him at once. Worst of all, he shouted in his face so rudely, so defiantly:
“I don’t need your prayers anymore! I’ll take care of myself somehow! Look at how far I’ve gone! It’s possible!”
So Vlasii departed in sackcloth and ashes—poor as a church mouse, naked he came into this world and naked he went out of it—back to where he belonged, back to the monastery.
The most surprising part was that a year or two later, Vlasii suddenly received the news that Riurik had been ruined in the end. What’s more, he was under investigation, under orders not to leave town, and facing criminal prosecution.
“He’s taken care of himself!” Vlasii noted. “He’s gone far! What an idiot: ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away!’ (Job 1:21).”
He sighed meaningfully, and what’s more, completely good-naturedly.
Halvah
One day I was driving to Pskov Caves Monastery with an acquaintance—a very secular and nonchurchly lady, but one who was drawn more and more toward the spiritual life. This was during Great Lent, in the beginning of perestroika, when it was very difficult to fast because there were hardly any Lenten products in the stores except potatoes, cabbages, and onions. And if there were any, it was by special order and given out in exchange for tokens, and only in specific stores assigned to those particular lucky tokens.
Incidentally, in this time of half-hunger, Orthodox Dutchmen would come here to Russia to either study or train at the Academy attached to the Holy Trinity Lavra of St Sergius. Accustomed to Dutch Lenten delicacies—nuts, sugared fruits, enormous shrimp, oysters, snails, crawfish, shellfish, crab, and calamari—they became horrified when they toured our stores at the beginning of Lent, and cried out in a loud voice:
“How do you keep the fasts here? As it is, you live in hell!”
Moving on, my travel companion and I would get supplies in exchange for our writing commissions. So I always had reserves of buckwheat groats, flour, millet, and rice. Some of these I took with me to Pechory, since we were planning on stopping at the home of a wonderful, but very poor, nun, and I wanted to not only load her up with our goods, but also throw in a few fruits and vegetables.
As soon as we settled into our sleeping car, my companion woefully cried out:
“Oh no! I forgot it! I forgot it!”
“What? Your ticket, your passport?” I asked, frightened.
“No, the halvah, I left the halvah that I got from the writers’ supply! I had especially prepared it to take it with me. How nice it would have been to open it up and have some right now with our tea!”
Well, it was too bad, but what could be done? I didn’t have any halvah with me, either. We drank our watery tea on its own and went to bed. But she continued to complain from time to time:
“How could I forget it? It was such good, fresh halvah! I could feel how soft it was through the packaging!”
The sting of that forgotten halvah was still fresh.
Finally, we arrived in Pechory, went to church, prayed at the Liturgy, stood through the moleben, stopped by to see my father confessor, and finally went to see the nun in her cell.
I dropped the bag of produce right on her table with a thud:
“Here you go, dear Matushka! Please accept our gifts!”
She unhurriedly arranged the bags and bundles on her shelves, fed us some Lenten cabbage soup, and then poured us tea.
“I have something to treat you with too. One minute, one minute.”
She dug through a chest, lifted something out, and placed in front of us … some halvah—exactly the kind that they had in the writers’ supply.
“Halvah!” my companion cried out in wonder.
“Matushka, where did you get it?”
“Last night a pilgrim came by and asked to be put up for the night. He gave me this halvah and then rushed off to the service, as it had already started. After he left, he never came back. He apparently found a better place in the monastery to spend the night. Why are you so surprised?”
“Only because the Lord granted me such a small but persistent wish,” said my travel companion. “It seemed that He wanted me to wait until I got back to Moscow. But I kept at Him—halvah, halvah! And so He finally gave in: take the halvah, you stupid woman! For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (Mt 7:8).
“Well, you know what you must do?” Matushka softly said to her. “Eat it to the glory of God, and just like that, you’ll turn your halvah into a hallelujah.”1
The Deceitful Onion Bulb
I noticed that sometimes we try to soften the truth at confession: we downplay the sins of which we are the most ashamed and grossly over-exaggerate the more insignificant ones, trying to direct the priest’s attention specifically to those. As a result, all sorts of misunderstandings can arise between the priest and the person confessing, because of which the priest can misconstrue the situation and even give an incorrect blessing. Of course, the specific secrets of other people’s confessions are unknown to me for obvious reasons. I can only speak with complete certainty about myself, but I have some circumstantial evidence that suggests that this happens constantly. In addition, I asked some priests of my acquaintance about this and they confirmed it.
For example, one of my good friends, who had carried on an affair with a married man for several years, went to confession to an old priest, who was, by the way, very strict, and still she received a blessing to go to communion and she went. The fact of the matter was that she, among the rest of her sins, added subordinately that she had a “boyfriend.” The priest apparently understood this as something innocent, like a bull terrier, and sympathetically nodded his head.
The same thing sometimes happens with priest’s blessings. Here much depends on how adequately, in what form, and with what words one describes the situation for which one wants to receive a priest’s blessing and subsequently often receives it.
Here is an example. I was sitting by myself at my dacha one autumn—my husband was on a business trip, the children were in Moscow, the neighbors were all gone. It was quiet and still. I fired up my computer and spread out my work—I could work with no one bothering me, dusk was falling, nature was all around, and it was beautiful! Suddenly someone’s heavy steps rustled at my window—were some homeless dogs running around? Then I saw a man’s head passing by my window; he was heading straight toward my front door. Knowing that I sometimes forget to lock it, I went straight there. But it was too late: the strapping figure of a man with an enormous backpack stood on my front porch.
“Who are you looking for?” I said, not recognizing the sound of my own voice, and cowardly hoping that he had simply mistaken the address.
“Me? You, Olesia Aleksandrovna!”
“Oh? And who are you?”
“I attended your seminar at the Literature institute yesterday, and I showed you my poems afterwards.”
I remembered. He really had approached me at the institute and had given me his poems. They were very bad. He had asked me if it was possible to rent a dacha where I lived. I answered that I didn’t know. Nobody was renting anything out at the moment.
“And what do you want?”
“I just decided to stay with you until I find a place to rent here,” he answered, already lowering his backpack onto the porch and getting ready to drag it inside.
“Wait a
minute,” I blocked his way to the house and showed him the chair on the porch. “I already told you that nobody is renting anything out right now. I also don’t remember agreeing to you staying here.”
“But the priest gave me his blessing!” he tried to put me in my place. “Oh, my phone is dead. Give me a charger to use, will you? And why are you keeping me out here on the porch?”
I thought a little. Maybe it was my husband who invited him to stay with us and just forgot to tell me, and he really couldn’t call my husband to confirm because his phone was dead.
“Which priest?” I asked him, just in case.
“The one at the church.”
“What church?”
“The one right here, close by. I passed by it and thought, let me just go inside. The priest was there. I asked him, could I crash with Olesia Aleksandrova and her husband, the priest, until things resolved themselves? I’m learning how to write poetry from her. So he gave me his blessing.”
“And did you tell him that we don’t know each other and that we never invited you? That my husband isn’t home, and that it would look all wrong if you stayed here with me in his absence?”
“Well, he was in a hurry. The service was about to start. He didn’t have the time for me to go into such detail. He gave me his blessing, so I have his blessing. So will you give me a charger or are you going to just make me sit here like this? Don’t you plan to do what the priest blessed you to do?” His voice started to take on a commanding tone.
I was taken aback, but immediately collected myself.
Ordinary Wonders Page 19
