Ordinary Wonders

by Oloesia Nikolaeva

“‘Call EMERCOM!’1

  “They were already ready to call EMERCOM, those Latin Americans, and they did call them … but they were told that no, this was on the territory of a foreign sovereign country, and they couldn’t just come to us like that on a whim, they had to meet and vote on it!

  “The Honorable Ambassador, meanwhile, was barely still standing—truly, this was hardly the time for him, after a Christmas dinner, with a Christmas tree and a roaring fire, after the meat on the spit and hot drinks, to sort out international affairs! But what if they would really be stormed by all kinds of people right now, who knows, what if they would poke and prod their way through the entire residency with their microphones and cameras?

  “‘We are extraterritorial here,’ he explained to me for some reason.

  “In the end, I calmed our prisoner down by telling him that professionals were on their way to free him, so it would be better for him to rest before their arrival on that little rug, while I myself returned to the ravaged hall, settled into a large armchair, and dozed off.

  “In the morning, our people from EMERCOM arrived. The Honorable Ambassador emerged right on cue—rubbing his bloodshot eyes, he came out to meet them.

  “In one stroke, they sawed out a little window around the lock, released the captive to freedom, dug around in the lock, and said to the ambassador:

  “‘What kind of a bootleg lock is this? Where did you get it, on the black market?’

  “‘It’s a good lock! A Spanish one!’ He defended himself. Then he said. ‘My colleague in the economic section probably bought it on Mozhaiskii Market! I’ve suspected him of fraud for a long time!’

  “My fiancé was finally free. He embraced the ambassador:

  “‘Well, now you can pour me a glass of whisky, friend!’

  “So off we went to some distant room, into which yesterday’s guests hadn’t been allowed; we sat down on the couches there, and he and the ambassador drank themselves silly, so silly that I had to call a taxi and almost carry my fiancé home myself. There.”

  “Great story,” I said. “And I’m so happy that you have a fiancé, Irina Lvovna.”

  “What are you talking about!” she quickly jumped up. “Don’t you get it? I was just calling him that out of a sense of irony! Do you think that I can marry a person who has disgraced me the way he did? He spent the entire night in someone else’s bathroom! It’s a joke! No, such things don’t happen without a reason. These things only happen to a certain type of person.”

  “You exaggerate! I’m telling you—it could happen to anyone …”

  “No, excuse me, not nearly anyone! This could only happen to a clown! Ha-ha-ha! It’s just funny! He slept, you see, curled up on that toilet rug in the bathroom! He even yelled to the EMERCOM people that he was extraterritorial! Then he went and got drunk! What a sad, sad man! And how did he make me look in the ambassador’s eyes? My late husband, by the way, was a Party member, a journalist! My new suitors have some competition. I have, after all, high standards, a high sense of self-worth!”

  “But what difference does it make to you, Irina Lvovna, what that ambassador thinks of you?”

  “What did I look like to him, I’d like to know? A fool! But I have a very high standard of living!” She couldn’t seem to let it go. “If something like that happens to a person, it’s a sign of their poor internal state of affairs. It’s an alarm bell for me.”

  Apparently, that night at the ambassador’s residency left quite a mark on her, because every time she and I met afterwards, she recalled it in one form or another. Most of all she blamed her at-the-time fiancé. She not only wished never to see “that Spaniard” again, but refused to speak to him on the phone altogether.

  And so, one evening, having bathed and locked all the windows and doors to keep the cold January drafts out after her hot shower, she went to bed, read a little, and before turning off the light, decided to use the bathroom, and the door slammed shut behind her! How did that happen? She wasn’t planning on locking it! But it happened—she tried to open it, but the door wouldn’t budge. Something had jammed inside. She pushed against the door with her shoulder, her hip, but it hurt too much, and it wasn’t budging! It was a strong door. So poor Irina Lvovna stood in just her nightgown in her tiny “facilities,” with no one to help her.

  I repeat, she lived in the house by herself after her husband died. Her upstairs neighbors were in Moscow, and the others were out of earshot. She was completely helpless. She didn’t even have any tools on hand—they were all on the other side of the door. There wasn’t even a soft little carpet on which to lie down … just cold tile underfoot. Scream or not scream, no one would come anyway, no one would set her free—not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow, not in a week. Irina Lvovna became despondent. On the one hand, the situation was most comical and idiotic, but on the other hand, it was even tragic. No one would come there in one week, let alone two! A month! Though she blew the very Horn of Jericho!2 The upstairs neighbors would perhaps come in the spring, with the first greenery. The phone, of course, remained in the bedroom.

  She began to think how she could get out. The problem was that she and her husband had at one time added on to the dacha: it was a small house, and they had widened it. That presented an absurd problem: there was a window in the bathroom, but it opened onto the boiler room. And it wasn’t that simple to just crawl out into the boiler room, because there, under the very window, were the stairs leading to the cellar. A person jumping through the window, if anyone could even be found willing to do that, would risk falling three meters down, and not onto an even surface, but onto one of the steps. Some thrill-seeker could perhaps crawl out and try to creep along the narrow ledge lining the walls of the boiler room, but that’s what would make him a thrill-seeker!

  Irina Lvovna, on the other hand, was the esteemed widow of a Party member and a journalist, a lady, what’s more, with a curvy figure. She sat and sat in her place of captivity, but there was nothing else to do—so she opened the window and crawled out. She flattened herself against the wall, and oh so carefully, step by step, with a prayer on her lips, began to inch along over the black abyss, until she reached the entrance to the boiler room, where there was an even surface and from where the descent of the stairs started.

  All good. She made it that far. But the boiler room was locked from the outside! And the key was in its spot on the key holder next to the hanger, so this was also just the appearance of freedom, but actually a trap. On top of it all, it was January—bitter cold, the time of the famed Epiphany frost! The boiler was being heated under the house, but here, in the boiler room, it was freezing cold. What’s more, Irina Lvovna was in her nightgown, and barefoot—she had tossed her slippers off when she was crawling along the ledge. Then she saw some sort of bundle in the corner and remembered: she had stashed some things of her late husband’s away at one time, and kept some old things here—curtains, towels. She had always intended to give it away to the homeless, but had never gotten around to it. So she searched through all those things and found some clothes for herself: her husband’s worn out, striped terry robe and slippers. She wrapped a towel around her head. She threw a curtain around her shoulders like a shawl for extra warmth. She tried to open the door to the boiler room, but immediately understood that it was useless. Next to the door was a thick, unshuttered window. She hit it with a brick and it shattered.

  Irina Lvovna took out the glass, nearly cutting herself, crawled out into the snow, began to walk toward the door to the house, and realized that it was all locked. She had closed the security latch herself, had shut the windows with her own hands. Now what?

  She wandered off wretchedly in her size forty slippers, in her robe and curtain, through the whole neighborhood, and came directly to me. She began to knock on the door, then saw a light in the window, and started to throw snowballs at it.

  I was home alone. I couldn’t see anything that was going on underneath my window from my lit room. Then I turned of
f the light and peered out. A strange human figure was standing on the snowbank, wrapped in rags. I got scared and started to look for the stun gun that someone had given me the year before and that lay somewhere, uncharged. But suddenly I heard a heart-wrenching shriek—the figure knew me by name, and the voice sounded familiar.

  I carefully opened the door, and Irina Lvovna, bare legged, looking highly fantastical, even exotic, all covered in snow, tumbled inside.

  “Irina Lvovna!” I burst out in surprise. “What a great disguise! What are you, celebrating Yuletide? I never expected it from you … you’re all covered in filthy rags!”

  And I broke out laughing.

  “Don’t you laugh at me!” she said curtly, before launching into the explanation for such a ridiculous appearance and her late visit. “I used to laugh at people, too, and look what came of it!”

  She was all shivering, and now, in the warmth and in the light, she looked very pitiable—not a trace was left of her high sense of self-worth …

  I seated her on the couch and listened to her incoherent rambling while she drank tea with raspberry jam. Finally, having warmed up a little, she announced:

  “I didn’t believe a word of what you were saying here, that what goes around comes around. But it’s all true! God is looking out for me after all! He really taught me a lesson!”

  “Of course,” I replied diplomatically, “He cares about everyone!”

  “Not everyone!” she quickly and peevishly retorted. “You simply don’t know that! For many years I closed and even locked that door to the bathroom, and it always opened, without fail! And now—this was all done on purpose! Do you understand? Especially for me! Tit for tat! Payback! To teach me a lesson!”

  And she lay down on a pillow, covered herself with a throw blanket, and fell asleep.

  “And how is your Spaniard doing?” I asked her a few days later.

  “He called me yesterday. He said: did you hear the news? I asked, what news? He answered: that Latin American ambassador was promptly reassigned. His replacement will be sent soon. So we’re expecting a huge party in the residency in the near future—to welcome the ‘new guy.’”

  The Delusional One

  There is a term in Orthodox asceticism—spiritual “delusion.” This is when a person begins to have a high opinion of himself and imagines that he has followed God’s bidding and has “overcome the order of nature.”1 In our time of ignorance, of abundance of spiritual paths to follow, excess, and self-importance, victims of such “delusion” have greatly multiplied. This is understandable, for after the fall, man became proud and ever searches for ways to satisfy his pride, but “if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.”2

  For example, I had a friend who would “warm up her drinking water.” She would sprinkle some powder from her hands into a glass of water and drink the water, which had indeed become warm, claiming that it was healing water. In the end, she was diagnosed with some sort of illness, from which she literally dried up and began to look like the iconic Baba Yaga.

  Another acquaintance of mine dabbled in spiritualism and went in so deep that spirits began to appear to her in waking and talk to her without the use of a ouija board. They instilled in her the idea that she was the Earth Mother, and that she was able not only to prophesy, but to shoot flames from her eyes. I heard that she would walk around her dacha neighborhood and submerge it into total darkness, extinguishing one light after the next. Then she caused a fire in her own dacha and the whole thing burned down …

  Also, I knew a boy who had paranormal abilities—he could read whatever he was sitting on. They would place a newspaper on a chair; he would sit on it and read the front-page articles. But—thank God—he was baptized, and this dubious talent left him.

  Yes, it sometimes happens that the evil spirits will immediately leave their victim as soon as the person is baptized and “renounces Satan.”3 But it also happens that they prevent or even stop a person from being baptized. Once, my friend was driving his delusional brother to a priest with the request to baptize him. They agreed that this would take place the following day. But that same night, this brother sat down in his room in a lotus position and saw Jesus Christ come down from the icon and say to him: “You don’t have to be baptized, you’ve already achieved great heights.” So the baptism never took place because the delusional brother said, why should I?

  But sometimes the demons delude the baptized as well—churchgoing people who partake of the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. It is impossible to bring these types of people to their senses without God’s direct interference.

  I had an acquaintance named Boris, whom I had at one time, having just been baptized myself, considered practically a saint. First of all, he regularly fasted and was an ascetic. Second of all, if he said anything at all, it was simply “yes, yes; no, no,” as it is instructed in the Gospel.4 Third of all, he never looked you in the eye, considering this to be impertinent, but instead always looked slightly lower down and to the side, constantly lowering his eyes. He held his gentle hands before him, on one of which was wound a long prayer rope: there was no bustle in them, no loud gestures. He would hint—and very subtly, humbly—that he’d reached 500. In other words, he was making 500 prostrations per day! It was discovered, also through certain implications and utterances of his, that he slept on the bare floor. And what was most impressive—in a tent. This tent wasn’t put up just anywhere, but in his own apartment, since he was forced to share a room with his grandmother. So he was an ascetic and an anchorite at the same time. A stylite of sorts: his tent measured one and a half square meters! So he sat in it for days and nights at a time, only emerging from time to time on especially important spiritual matters.

  He never laughed excessively, for as it is said, “Hell is ever-mocking.” His only friend was a spiritual brother who was also practically a saint: this friend lived in Moscow, but traveled over the hills and far away every Friday to visit an Orthodox elder and serve as an altar boy for him, reading in church, helping to answer letters, and participating in the Holy Mysteries with him.

  So, the good man who helped me to be baptized would bring them both to see me, so that they could feed me spiritual bread, so that I would finally see the spark of eternal life in the faces of mortals and would myself be inspired to follow in their footsteps … I would meet them with much reverence and awe and ask them questions about the Faith and the Church. But apparently my questions seemed to them so basic, my spiritual ascent so low, that they, coughing somewhat strenuously and even exchanging coughs with one another—cough, cough!—and visibly lowering themselves to my level of relative simplicity, would answer with a few carefully and unhurriedly chosen words, and then again grow silent, lowering their gaze and noiselessly moving their lips—probably in prayer.

  Basically, our theological get-togethers were not successful—in addition, something or other was said about women—those vessels of weakness and sin—to the extent of, can anything of worth be poured into such a vessel? So we all parted ways for a while.

  However, several years later, Boris and I ran into each other at a service in a monastery and returned to Moscow together. We traveled together all night in the same car, and I was amazed by the obvious changes in him. Now he was open to the world—talkative, inspired, and smiling. By the third hour of our conversation, he informed me that he had ascended to the highest step of the Ladder of St John Climacus and had achieved complete passionlessness, so now he had no reason to hide from the world because the world wouldn’t ensnare him anyway. By the fifth hour, he told me that he held the Jesus Prayer in his heart constantly, and by morning I learned that the Lord Himself had appeared to him, had taken him to the seventh heaven, where everyone, including the Mother of God, St John the Baptist, and the Apostle Paul, were dwelling.

  At that point, the train arrived in Moscow and we parted ways.

  Then, in another two or three years, we met on the street and he blessed
me with a large sign of the cross.

  “Are you a priest?” I said in surprise.

  “I am more than a priest—I am an apostolic descendant by grace. Symeon the New Theologian wrote: let him who has not had a personal experience of Christ dare to participate in the priesthood! What, do you think that our priests and bishops have been made worthy of such a meeting? I assure you—no, they only know of it by word of mouth, from others. But I—I know it from God Himself!”

  “Oh, really?” I said, at a loss of what to do. “Have you spoken of this to any priests or bishops?”

  “What’s the point?!” he waved his hand. “They’re all brainwashed. They’re afraid! I asked them: ‘Did you ever see the divine light in the chalice while preparing the mystery of the Eucharist?’ And I could tell from the looks on their faces that none of them had. But now I manage without them—I just concentrate on internal introspection and Logos-meditation, and through that, I partake of spiritual communion. After that, the path to awareness of the energetic aura of the spirit was opened to me. I can enter into the realm of the airy tollhouses after death, I can ascend to the divine spheres of the spirit … and anyway, I was appointed the chief commander there in the presence of the elder and the Mother of God.”

  I began to feel uneasy, and hurriedly bowed to him and said goodbye, walking away with a heavy and agitated feeling inside.

  Soon I saw him on a television talk show, where he kept trying to either make some sort of passes with his hands, or to catch some sort of invisible beings flickering before his eyes … But I was most shocked when he said that God had revealed his new name to him, which was something like “Bomkinchondro Gottopaddakhai.”

  I didn’t even know how I should pray for him … I kept seeing him the way I had known him in times past: young, full of desire to go into the desert and forget himself and the world there for the sake of Christ.

  Two more years passed.

  One day a hieromonk of my acquaintance was planning to chrismate and commune the paralyzed grandson of his parishioner, a very old woman. But he had to travel far and was uncomfortable taking public transportation with the Holy Gifts. In short, I drove him there in my car and we went up to the apartment together. The sick man lay on the couch in the room there, thin, with long, grey hair. The priest asked everyone to leave the room so that he could speak to him in private, and the old lady and I sat down in the kitchen.