Ordinary Wonders

by Oloesia Nikolaeva

  In the meantime, it was time for bed. It was cold in the third-class car, which was full of people, no room to swing a cat. In short—my grandmother laid Lena down in her felt boots, with her feet toward the aisle, and when they woke up, they discovered that someone had stolen the girl’s boots during the night. Then my grandmother cut off the sleeves of her fur coat, sewed them together, and put them on Lena’s feet.

  Fourteen years later, my father—now a veteran who had served at the front, a war invalid, a young poet, and a student of the Literature Institute—sat peacefully at home with his wife and mother-in-law. They ate dinner and told each other stories from the war. Papa remembered how he was on his way to the institute, and in his car, a sleeping girl’s felt boots had been stolen, and then, in order to shod her bare feet, her mother had cut the sleeves off her coat. My grandmother’s face changed, she looked at him with an entirely new expression, and gasped softly. She began to describe those cadets who had joked and read poems; then it was my father who looked at her strangely, got up quietly, began to rummage around, and took out a tiny piece of paper—a newspaper clipping. He unfolded it and handed it to his young wife. On it she read: “When I come back in victory, you will be my wife.”

  Not in vain did the Apostle Paul mostly take the apophatic route in his definition of love’s expression: according to him, “love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:4–6). In other words, it keeps its distance from any spiritual impurity, it flees the endless provocations of self-love, it leans away from temptations as from a thorn prickling and poisoning the soul. It is free from passions that strip the man of his youth, and in this way it remains outside of them, against them, in spite of them, in defiance of them. As for its actions, it is merely written that it “suffers long,” and in this action it is sooner directed internally, oriented toward its own depth, as well as in the fact that it “bears all things.”

  Christ said: “By your patience possess your souls” (Lk 21:19). Love, tried by patience, does indeed gather together the scattered forces of the heart, and centers them in itself, converting the varying energies into a single will of a ruling Eros transformed. This rule is so great that even the powerful and natural instinct of self-preservation gives way before it, and a sacrifice brought to it in love is sweet and desirable to the soul. “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).

  This love is commanded to us by the Lord and is called by Him “My commandment”: “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). “Abide in my love” (Jn 15:9). “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). Two of the very first commandments begin with “love.” Apostle John witnessed that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). The Holy Gospel in its entirety is an annunciation of love by Love. In essence, it is all about love; love that is new life in Christ!

  Love “does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:6–7).

  The mistress of the villa where we were staying has two children. Not too long ago, my Georgian friend, Karinka, worked for her as a nanny. Karinka had a university degree in philology, but was forced by circumstances to become a nanny, though she was also happy when I referred her there.

  I’ve known Karinka and her husband, Shalvah, since I was seventeen years old. They had just gotten married when I came to Tbilisi to try my literary hand at translating the Georgian poets. Soon they gave birth to a brilliant little girl, Suliko. She studied music from age three, was taken to a music school at five, and was already playing as a soloist at nine: she played the piano with an adult Georgian symphony orchestra and even went on tour. Shalvah worked for several years as a diplomat in an African country, where they had a house with a pool and a staff: they had a maid, a chauffeur, and a gardener. Then they wanted to go back home, and they returned to Georgia in 1989.

  Soon, fleeing the hardships of war, they moved to Moscow. They moved a lot, renting places to live. They tried to sell their Tbilisi condos: two fabulous apartments in the best neighborhoods of Tbilisi. For that money at the time you could only buy a small, one-bedroom apartment in Mariino. Suliko rushed into a marriage—for love, naturally. In a year, having given birth to a little son, she and her husband divorced and she abandoned music completely.

  At that point, Shalvah began an intense love affair on the side and soon left Karinka. She remained in a foreign city with no husband, no house, no work, no money, a divorced daughter, and a grandson in her arms. That’s when she went to work as a nanny for these well-off people. They grew to love her so much that they almost considered her a part of the family. But after working there for several years, she began to slack off. Some straw broke the camel’s back—either she didn’t like the tone in her employer’s voice; or she remembered that she had graduated from the school of philology at Tbilisi University; that she was the daughter of a writer and had been the wife of a diplomat; that she had at one time had her own luxurious house; that her daughter had been a wunderkind, for whom worldwide fame had been predicted, but who had instead became a single mother with sad eyes and had found a job—and even that with difficulty —in some office selling cotton, and was now flying to Kazakhstan.

  Looking at Karinka, I thought: could I, finding myself in a similar situation, in a foreign country, among strange people, have simply forgotten myself and gone to work as a nanny or a cleaner? I don’t know; probably, for the sake of feeding my children … I was, after all, sent by the ministry of propaganda to perform God knows where; I did read my poetry at both factory residence halls and Red Corners. The female warden would walk in, turn off the running television with authority—interrupting the showing of The Seventeen Moments of Spring or an Italian miniseries about Captain Cattani and causing a wave of strong dislike and protests from the poor temporary residence workers huddled together around the television screen—and present me to be picked apart by them, prefacing my performance with an edifying speech about the importance of cultural enlightenment and growth. And then, shrinking inside from bitterness, disappointment, shame, and the general absurdity of the whole situation, I would read my poetry to them. For this mockery of both them and myself, I would be paid seven-and-a-half or, if the performance took place in the region around Moscow, eleven rubles. And what of it: I had two tiny children at the time, my husband had just graduated from the Literature Institute, he couldn’t find a job anywhere because he was not a member of the Komsomol, his articles weren’t being published—on the contrary, they would be returned, for example, by Literary Matters, with a severe rejection or the question, written in red pencil in the margins: “What about your view of Maxist-Leninist ideology?” No, it is sweet to sacrifice yourself in a single moment, to flare up and be burned down, but it is unbearably difficult—slowly and patiently—to carry out your ordeal of love day after day, day after day.

  This Sunday, we set out a little earlier in the morning than usual to Kerkyra to Liturgy at the cathedral with the relics of the holy Empress Theodora. Her relics had also been transferred from Constantinople during its occupation and pillaging. Here also, as at the Church of St Spyridon, the church singing was accompanied by an organ, and it was so beautiful that after the service, during the moleben before the relics of the holy empress, at which many Greeks had gathered with gallant military deportment, in white sailor’s uniform jackets, I went to look for a recording of the local liturgy in the church stores of Kerkyra. I couldn’t find one anywhere, until I was sold the single existing—and last remaining—CD at a small shop for ten euros. It’s not like I now always wanted to pray to the sound of an organ; no, I simply wanted to be able to, from time to time, occasionally, at some point, on a dark winter Moscow evening, listen to those Cor
fu prayers, and be carried back in my soul’s flight to the churches of the holy empress and the saint.

  This time, we decided to cross the island across its middle in order to reach the coast opposite to ours—the western coast. There, in Angelokastro, an impenetrable medieval fortress still overlooks a mountain, and a little further south, in Paleokastritsa, there is a monastery with a miracle-working Icon of the Inexhaustible Cup. Here and there, along the narrow winding road, we came across settlements with amazing pink houses covered with climbing ivies and vines, and welcoming travelers with the inevitable scarlet bougainvillea. Enormous palm trees, lemon trees covered in little yellow lemons, and enormous cacti with succulent orange pear-like fruits grew there. We even stopped at one such untended cactus and picked several fruits. They reminded us of both figs and kiwis. Splendor and tranquility reigned all around. The local Greeks, if we even met any, rode around on bicycles and talked in tavernas over glasses of good local wine and unassuming snacks of tzatziki, saganaki, moussaka, or even lamb kleftiko. Nowhere did it feel like there had ever been battles waged here over the harvest or crops. All that existed was the lovely September day, the high and unreachable sky, the good life; why not refresh yourself in the taverna in between jobs in the company of neighbors, or relatives, or friends, and discuss the latest news?

  The monastery in Paleokastritsa was open and active. Fifteen monks lived there, so during the day, when there were no services, it was closed to the public. They only opened it before the Liturgy and the evening service. We waited for the proper time and approached the miracle-working icon of the Mother of God, hung on all sides with the traditional silver offerings.

  I remembered one of our friends—a priest who served in a church outside Moscow consecrated in honor of the Icon of the Inexhaustible Cup. There were always a lot of people there, especially women who came to order a moleben for their alcoholic husbands. They would pray fervently: “Lord, help my husband to give up drinking,” and cry bitter-bitter tears. One such woman—among those praying and weeping—suddenly came up to the aforementioned priest with the following claim:

  “I came here last Sunday and ordered a moleben with the blessing of holy water for my Vaska to stop getting drunk. Well, he did stop—he had an epileptic seizure and is now lying completely paralyzed, he can’t lift a finger. What are these methods of yours? I never agreed to that. It would be better to make everything like it was before. It would be better for him to drink than to lie around inert. Father, make it like it was before.” “You do not know what you ask” (Mk 10:38).

  As for my friends, Tata and Marik, the process of miraculous healing from alcoholism took place less painfully. Marik was a bohemian—emotional, a poet. He drank every day—to alleviate stress, to overcome depression, to cheer up a little. In the morning, he would drink a little beer, then on his way to work at the Journal he would refresh himself with a shaken cocktail in a can; during the day at lunch he would again turn to beer; on the way back, he would buy a gin and tonic at the shop; and in the evening, he would allow himself to relax a little with a bottle of wine. The most terrible thing was that this last “relaxing” bottle of wine could have some unforeseen and irrational effects on him: either he would sit down to write poetry, or he would throw a fit and yell that he was surrounded by untalented dimwits who couldn’t recognize his talent, or he would enjoy mistreating Tata, and this even went as far as physical abuse: everything, including broken ribs, abrasions, bruises, concussions. Tata would run away from him into the night and find refuge somewhere and come to the firm decision to divorce him, but the next day Marik would literally crawl to her on his knees and kiss the ground that Tata’s foot might have trod; he would weep, wringing his hands and swearing off alcohol, and in the end she would give him “one last chance.” He would even take measures to stop drinking, but this would only throw him into despair; he would stop writing his poetry, and go back to drinking, taking beer once again in the morning, and setting everything back on its course anew. This continued for more than twenty years.

  So Tata and I started to go to church together and order molebens to the Mother of God, asking the Heavenly Queen herself to intervene and have some sort of effect on Marik.

  And what next? A short while later, he began to get pimples on his face. He stood in front of the mirror, examining them, and soaked them in some sort of tonic, but that didn’t cure them. Then he turned to the doctors. They said: it’s your liver. You can’t drink any more under any circumstances, or you’ll be covered in pimples. In general, Marik was a fairly attractive man, and it turned out that he treasured his looks very much, so the pimples deeply disturbed him, and he went so far as to give up drinking to preserve the beauty of his face.

  “Not bad,” Tata said, “such an effective instrument did the Mother of God find for him—pimples! You know, he had ischemia, too, and acute coronary syndrome, but that didn’t stop him! But pimples on his face!”

  My godmother Tatiana’s husband was an alcoholic. He would drink every day. If he didn’t drink, he would take Nembutal. If not Nembutal, then he would smoke a joint (he had it delivered). At the same time, he was a supremely talented and intelligent person, a writer, the classic author of children’s literature, S.10 His medical history stated: “Paranoid schizophrenia, alcoholism, multiple drug use, is published in Murzilka and broadcast on the radio.” S. explained it in the following manner:

  “I’m crazy myself, and my wife is the ‘wife of a writer.’”

  He also said:

  “In order to be crazy in this country, you have to have a strong mind and nerves of steel.”

  And also:

  “If you want to appear insane, say the truth and nothing but the truth.”

  If he ever left the house, he would invariably end up in some sort of story, and so it was said about him, like Gogol’s Nozdrev, that he was a “man of story.” “Mother Tatiana” would follow him around like a little child and eternally assign bodyguards to him from among their friends. But her husband’s daily high was what worried her the most, and her worst fear was that he couldn’t be saved.

  “Genka,” she said, “the Apostle Paul himself wrote that alcoholics will not inherit the Kingdom of God!”

  She tried everything: she treated him, admitting him into the hospital, but he would chat up the attendants, the orderlies, and even the nurses there, and they would diligently bring him alcohol and pills; she prayed for him in monasteries; she even bought a house in the country for him, where he could feel the beneficial effects of his native nature, fill his lungs with the sweet and pleasant smoke of the Fatherland, and lie it out, like Emelia from the story, on a warm Russian stove, but the cottage was burned down by drunk fishermen. She tried inviting their close friends to the house, so that they, sacrificing themselves, could pour into themselves the reserves of alcohol, leaving less for him to imbibe. She herself almost became a victim of the “syndrome of Neuhaus’s wife.” Whenever Heinrich Neuhaus’s wife saw him with vodka, she would selflessly try to consume it, pouring it into herself, in order to say to him: “There’s nothing left!” So the poor thing almost drank herself to death, though he ended his days quite well, and even found the time to start an intense love affair with a young French pianist.

  So did Tatiana bravely adopt the same method, in essence “… to lay down her life for her friends” (Jn 15:13), though she was able to quit just in time. And in general, she created an atmosphere of normal life in the house, where everything went along at its usual pace: editors would come over, to whom S. would dictate his wonderful stories about adventures and animals; their friends would gather—someone was always celebrating a birthday, a namesday, a wedding anniversary, a dissertation defense, the opening of an exhibit, the release of a new book; a neighbor would run in for a moment on one matter or another and end up staying over, enjoying watching them and listening to them; some foreign acquaintance would stop to spend the night; a traveling monk would find shelter there. It created a strange s
ituation in which people would flock to that warm house overflowing with bread and salt, where Tatiana always fed everyone from the bottom of her heart, literally: people who were eternally much more settled and better off than their hosts, but who flocked there to receive comfort and love and to come to terms with life.

  After a bout of drinking, S. would lie on the couch like a patrician in ancient times, with his guests enthroned around him—sometimes these were people who would not really be compatible together were they to find themselves together anywhere else—and he would tell them amazing stories that would later be passed down orally from person to person, slowly losing their connection to their author and becoming legends. S. was a master of the oral tale, a prodigy in the paradox.

  There was a time when Tatiana would secretly dilute the vodka with water, and what’s more, the proportions of the latter would increase more and more, until S.’s shot glass would contain nothing but water. He would drink it and say in amazement:

  “Unbelievable, what has it come to? I drink and don’t get drunk.”

  Then Tatiana learned that there was a wonderful Orthodox elder who lived in the village of Rakitnoe, Belgorod Region, by whose prayers miracles took place. She took S. to the elder. This was Archimandrite Seraphim (Tiapochkin). He received him with love and said:

  “Why did you take so long to visit me, my dear?”

  He blessed them to stay with an old local woman and invited them to lunch with him every day in his little priest’s house.

  During that time, my friends would live near the elder for entire weeks, if not months. S. conversed with visiting priests and monks, and himself began to look so well that people would often take him for a priest in the church house and ask for his blessing. God knows to what wonderful changes of life this could have led, but soon the elder died, and my friends forfeited their blessed haven and returned to Moscow, where they were again thrown into the midst of that mindless whirl of guests and passions.