Ordinary Wonders

by Oloesia Nikolaeva

  “Boren’ka had a stroke! But he’s still young!” sighed the old lady. “He can’t speak, he can’t move! The Lord definitely tied him up! Shut up his mouth! Clothed him in a shirt of humility!”

  “What are you saying?” I exclaimed. “As if God was a paramedic or a priest warden!”

  “I only say what I know. Boria brought a whole revolution onto his own head! He kept saying—I’ll ascend to the seventh heaven, I’ll overturn everything there and bring it all to order! Yes, he said that. And the Lord, you see, said to him in reply: just you get up off your couch, you fool! Or just turn over … and he can’t! And before that he kept boasting: I’m the chief commander! Called himself Bobkinchondro or something …”

  A strange suspicion arose within me … I glanced inside the room … the priest was bending over him, anointing him with chrism. When he moved a little to the side and began to read the prayers, my suspicions were confirmed …

  “But he rejected the Church herself,” I said, dismayed. “How can be given communion? What if it’s against his will? It could turn out that it was done by force … or did he manage to repent before all this?” I asked the old lady carefully.

  “Maybe, maybe not … the Lord had already closed his mouth and taken away his hands. So we don’t know if he’s for it or against it—but it doesn’t even matter,” she grumbled. “As for ‘by force,’ I’ll say this to you, my dear: maybe the dead don’t want us to pray for them either. But we don’t ask them: we just pray and that’s all! Maybe our enemies don’t want our prayers either. As for atheists—it’s a fact that they don’t. The same applies to babies. Are you going to ask their permission? The psychologically ill belong in the same category. It turns out we pray for them without their permission, perhaps even against their will. We carry them along by force …”

  The old lady made a gesture with her dry little hands as if she was truly dragging someone along with all her strength by a rope, and that person was resisting.

  “The only thing is, the soul is a Christian by nature!” she continued. “The soul desires this in any case! So there is no ‘by force’ in the end!”

  When we bade farewell to the old lady, I went to see Boris in spite of everything. He lay, victorious and still, his gaze affixed unmovingly on the ceiling. His facial features had sharpened, and he looked more like a sculpted image of his own self. It was as if the artistic idea of the Creator had shone through in his image: a faster, ascetic, chain-wearer, and passionbearer. A hesychast and stylite.

  A thought wandered into my mind, that perhaps the Lord had indeed fulfilled “his heart’s desire”? And as bold as his ancient grandmother had seemed to me, something inside me urged me to agree with her, especially as she herself was already gazing into that place where earthly logic falls apart and the laws of our fallen world cease to exist.

  How the Vatican Shod Our Bishops

  My husband was going to the Council of Bishops, which he was required to attend as part of his priestly duties. Around the same time, the journalist Dorenko had made a thrilling announcement on the radio, just in time for the start of the Council: he claimed that there was a special boot shop in the Vatican that made shoes for the Pope himself, and conjointly for the entire Roman Curia. And now, apparently, hearing about this wonderful shop, our archbishops had also sent their orders there and were now sporting their Catholic custom-made shoes.

  My husband, who had a constant problem with footwear—all his shoes rubbed his feet raw, were too tight, fit wrong—became very interested in this unexpected piece of information, and meeting his old friend, an archbishop, at the Council, immediately relayed everything to him.

  “Really?” the bishop said in surprise. “Strange, I haven’t heard a word …” And as if they had planned it, they both lowered their gaze and began to examine the papal footwear on our bishops.

  The first one to catch their attention was an elderly bishop from central Russia. He slowly walked along, shuffling his feet, shod in plaid felt slippers.

  “Maybe he has bad feet,” guessed my husband’s friend, the bishop.

  The next to come along was a younger bishop from the south of Russia. He had simple imitation leather boots.

  “Well, he’s still young, he’s just a vicar bishop,” noted my husband’s friend, the bishop.

  The third to appear was a seasoned archbishop from Siberia.

  He wore visibly used shoes with worn-down heels, beige ones that were relatively dirty.

  “His cell attendant let that slip,” our bishop reproachfully shook his head.

  But the other bishops, on closer inspection, had shoes that were not any better, if only cleaner and in better condition.

  “We-e-ell,” my husband sighed, disappointed, “the Vatican didn’t expend much of an effort.”

  “What, were you really hoping that the Catholics had shod us?” the bishop smiled.

  Then my husband remembered that his bishop-friend’s diocese was in Belarus and that he had suffered much at the hands of Roman Catholic priests and bishops there, who were luring members of his parishes to the Byzantine Catholic Church. And he thought—maybe it was better that our bishops were shod in the old-fashioned way. If worse came to worst, they could stop by a shoe store in Thessaloniki on their way to Mt Athos, and, unsuccessfully trying to remain incognito, hastily try on one or two pairs, until they were discovered red-handed and called out to by a zealous Russian pilgrim or pious tourist:

  “Your Grace! Your blessing!”

  What of it? That actually happened …

  The Little Cloud

  Once, when my husband, Fr Vladimir, was on duty at his Church of the Holy Martyr Tatiana, a middle-aged woman and her adult daughter came to talk to him. They both had tortured, unhappy faces.

  “Father,” they said, “we have a poltergeist in our home. Grandfather, who’s deceased, comes to us at night. We can’t bear it anymore. We don’t feel comfortable at home. Someone advised us to come to you. Please come and bless our apartment.”

  “But what’s happening at your house? Why have you decided that it’s a poltergeist and that it is specifically your grandfather?”

  “Who else could it be? When he passed on to the next world, that’s when it all started happening. A little grey cloud began to appear in our kitchen in the evenings. It just hangs there over the table, and at night it becomes more dense and begins to stink.”

  “Begins to stink?”

  “Well, yes. It smells, and we can’t say that it’s a faint smell. It reeks. A terrible odor. A stench. And it grumbles.”

  “What do you mean, it grumbles?”

  “It curses and swears. It’s not above an obscenity sometimes. And all that in the voice of Grandfather. It’s all we can do to not run away.”

  “Was your grandfather properly buried? Was he given a Christian burial?”

  “No, and we don’t go to church ourselves. And he was such a blasphemer! He could hardly walk, and spoke with difficulty, but still spoke such blasphemy! He would find his voice very quickly. Where did he get his strength? But now he is just driving us insane. Believe it or not, I am a doctor myself, a senior physician,” said the mother, “and as soon as the little cloud began to appear, I thought, that’s it, I’m going crazy, I’m having hallucinations. I went to see my colleague—the senior physician in neurology—and started to tell her about all this. I thought maybe she could prescribe me some pills, administer some treatment. She said to me: I’ll come over and we’ll see what this little cloud is all about. She came and I sent my daughter to spend the night with a friend. Closer to midnight, that senior physician and I sat in the kitchen, and there was that little cloud: stinking, cursing; we were uncomfortable listening to it! And suddenly the head of neurology admits: this little cloud is not in my area of expertise because it is not a product of your psyche, since I saw it as well. So we would need some other specialists to help. My daughter heard about this the next day and admitted that she was also seeing the little cl
oud every night, but was scared to talk about it, thinking that she would be sent to the psych ward.”

  “Fine,” said Fr Vladimir, “I’ll come bless your apartment, and take a look at your little cloud at the same time.”

  I drove my husband to the given address. As soon as we entered the clean, spacious apartment, a little dog, a lap dog, suddenly jumped out at him from a corner and broke out into an angry, yelping bark, trying to bite his foot and pulling his cassock to the floor this way and that.

  “Come here, dear, come here, you ball of fur!” I bent down to it. “We smell like our cat, that’s why she’s barking at us.”

  “R-ruff!” It violently snapped its jaws, barely missing the fingers that I had just managed to pull back, and began to choke on its frenzied barks.

  “Chakra,1 what’s wrong with you?” the mistress of the apartment gently addressed her. “We can’t understand it: she’s been barking like that since morning. She always used to be such a peaceful, affectionate little dog.”

  “Let her think about her behavior,” the daughter picked up the dog and shut it up in the bathroom.

  In the meantime, my husband went through into the kitchen; the mistress led the way, desiring to show him where exactly Grandfather was appearing in the form of the foul-smelling and acerbic cloud.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured the two disconcerted women. “I once blessed the department of journalism nearby and came to sprinkle holy water on a closet full of cassette tapes, metal film reels, and other cinematic equipment; when I sprinkled the holy water and said three times—‘Let every evil demonic activity be put to flight’ —the shelves collapsed and the film reels scattered all over the floor. The professors themselves, who were present at the time, said: ‘Apparently, there was a lot of evil encased in them.’ We’ll put to flight your little cloud, too.”

  And at that very moment, the crazed lap dog tore into the room, having somehow managed to escape the closed bathroom. Hatred and fury burned in its little black button eyes that could otherwise have been cute. It threw itself at my husband, but the women rushed to intercept it, and got there in time to grab it and take it back behind the closed door. But this time they also locked the door.

  Fr Vladimir laid out his Book of Needs and Gospel on the table, placed his holy oil, holy water, candles, and little box with charcoal there, and began to light up his censer.

  The dog was in a rage, snorting and howling in a low growl. One would think that it had changed from a lap dog into a Rottweiler.

  We were forced to bless the apartment under the accompaniment of that crazed barking.

  But Fr Vladimir read the prayers and the Gospel, marked crosses in holy oil on all four sides of the apartment, and moved through the entire space of the apartment with his holy water, brush, and the powerful words: “Let every evil demonic activity be put to flight!” He generously sprinkled the cursed place over the kitchen table, the windows, doors, objects, walls, curtains, closets, couches, chairs … then it was the bathroom’s turn.

  The daughter opened the door and tried to pick up their prized trophy dog, but it snapped at her finger, ran out, frantically ran about the apartment, rushed into the kitchen in a panic, and, while the priest sprinkled the place of its recent confinement, jumped onto the stool, from the stool to the kitchen table, and there, continuing to bark in the same harsh and severe manner, relieved itself and soiled the table.

  “A-a-ah!!” the frightened women cried out in horror, seeing the obscene traces next to the holy oil. “Chakra’s possessed! She’s never been like this since the day she was born, she was always so tidy, please forgive us, forgive us! Grandfather’s spirit must have lodged itself in her—that blasphemer!” they said, trying to come to her defense. They were all disheveled and red in the face.

  But the dog wasn’t finished. It jumped up, grabbed the brush out of Fr Vladimir’s hands, and began to tear it to pieces, wallowing on the floor and growling.

  They managed to take the brush away with great difficulty, caught the dog again—this time using a robe instead of their bare hands—and again locked it up in the bathroom.

  We left, having comforted the poor women and assured them that worse things have happened during house blessings. We told them that sometimes the holy water prepared for the blessing suddenly begins to boil and splash the people present, scalding them; that their grandfather had obviously summoned the evil spirits when he was still alive; that such things happen …

  Two weeks later both of them—mother and daughter—appeared in Fr Vladimir’s church.

  “Well?” He asked them. “How’s your little cloud doing?”

  “It dissipated,” they notified him, “it’s gone. We’d almost gotten used to it. We almost feel as if we’ve kicked Grandfather out. As for Chakra …”

  “What happened?”

  “She threw herself under a car, on her own. We took her on a walk back then, as soon as you had left, and let her run around the garden. Suddenly, she ran away and took off at breakneck speed, and so we lost her. She was like our child. It was probably Grandfather paying us back.”

  At this Fr Vladimir couldn’t help himself and said:

  “Your Grandfather’s been in the grave for a long time now. But you keep blaming him for all your problems. Admit it, what were you yourself doing in that apartment? Why did you name an innocent dog Chakra?”

  They exchanged glances and looked down:

  “It was nothing. We just invited some psychic mediums to our home when that cloud appeared. For a long time they walked around the apartment with some sort of sticks and spinning frames, burning incense, making strange movements, but they couldn’t get rid of it. And before that, we had simply summoned Grandfather’s spirit—just to find out how he was doing over there. We got a brochure at the flea market: a guide to spiritualism. So we decided to try it out, just once. He himself wasn’t happy about it. He just said: “You shabby tramps, I’ll get you for this!”

  And? Well, it turns out he kept his promise.

  Sokratis

  That summer, the monks of Holy Trinity Monastery honored me with their trust: by doing so, in a way they accepted me into their male monastic brotherhood. I mean, of course, my three monk-friends—two iconographers and a poet.

  It was a hot summer, and under cover of night they would go out through a secret gate, to which only they had the key, get in my car, and we would drive to Lesnaia Lake. There we would build a fire, drink instant coffee out of a thermos, make instant noodle soup, and—why hide it?—sip Sokratis Greek cognac, which in the confusion of perestroika had been imported in large quantities to the small city of Troitsk and was being sold in the only shop on Market Square.

  At times, the monks would come to my white Troitsk house on a hill, and then we would sit under the apple trees in the garden, look up at the stars, have deep conversations about things great and small, and drink this all down with that same vitalizing, philosophy-inspiring, Hellenic tonic. Those were happy times.

  And at other times, either one or another monastic brother would approach me in the monastery with a typical black wallet made of thick rayon, put money in my hand, and ask:

  “Listen, my uncle is supposed to visit me here shortly—I would love to sit and have a good heart-to-heart with him, treat him to something, talk for a bit; we haven’t seen each other in a long time. Buy us a few bottles of Sokratis, please, will you?”

  Of course, I bought it. Then other monks found out about this, and also began to approach me with their black wallets. I couldn’t turn them down, either. But as it turned out, I would have to make three separate runs to the shop on Rynochnaia in one day—three runs for two or three bottles at a time!

  So is it any surprise that the sales clerk knew me very well and would reach for the case of Sokratis at my very appearance?

  And so, one time, I ran out of toothpaste. Since this little shop of mine sold everything that the Troitsk supply offered—Korean soups, vodka, cognac, potato chips
, Snickers, safety pins, soap, eye shadow, etc., I set off there at my usual pace.

  “Hello,” I leaned in through the little window.

  “Hello,” the salesclerk cheerfully replied. “Your usual?”

  And, without waiting for a response, she placed several bottles of Sokratis in front of me. “You want two or three today?”

  After that, I stopped buying cognac for the monks.

  “That’s it, brothers,” I said. “As it is, I’m already known around here as the local drunk. What if my husband comes and we go to that store to buy soap or something, and they greet me with: ‘Hello! Your usual?’ And plop! Put a pile of bottles in front of me. What would he think?”

  But the summer was already coming to an end anyway; a new abbot had been assigned to the monastery, who “tightened all the screws” and ordered the secret gate to be boarded up, while one of my iconographer-friends went to an elder and told him everything about the Sokratis.

  “Make it so, Father, that I and my monastic friends, the iconographers and poet, would stop drinking completely,” he asked the elder in a fit of repentance.

  So what happened? The elder sealed him with such a sign of the cross that he returned to the monastery a complete teetotaler. What’s more, he began to feel such revulsion for any wine that “maketh a man’s heart glad” (Ps 103:15) that he couldn’t even put it in his mouth. Even if he would, at times, have liked to—you know, in theory—take some comfort with his brothers, in his own circle of friends, the thought would turn his stomach.