Ordinary Wonders

by Oloesia Nikolaeva

  Oh, how difficult it was to stop that dark and consuming stream of delusion!

  One night, I took a flashlight and called my husband: let’s go look.

  We went out beyond the enclosure and, shining into the darkness with our flimsy flashlight, began to walk down the winding path to the house under construction. It was almost done, though it still stood without windows or doors. We went inside and up the stairs.

  “The bedroom is here,” I guessed. “Here is the bathroom, and here is the office.”

  From the hole in the wall intended for the door leading out onto the balcony, a sea view opened up. The stars shone in the sky. Little lights occasionally flickered through the thick of the trees on the distant mountain—that was the road to Agios Stefanos. An unbelievable silence stood all around—not even a cicada could be heard.

  We began to feel uncomfortable standing there in someone else’s unfinished house, completely devoid of people, our flashlight tilted forward.

  “There is the swimming pool—it’s rather small,” I said, just in case.

  We went down and came out onto the path, intending to investigate the second house that was being displayed for sale, but it already had doors and windows: everything was locked, and our flashlight began to act up a little.

  Early the next morning, we saw a hedgehog crossing the path, an enormous bird with a blue head, red wings, and a yellow breast, and a snake warming itself on a rock. That night we saw enormous stars—a multitude of stars—and walked to an open space in the mountains from which you could watch the flashes of summer lightning: it was a thunderstorm in Italy, and it looked like it was heading in our direction.

  My friend, the prose writer V., led a tumultuous, bohemian life. He changed cities and countries several times, as well as wives, one of whom he beat terribly out of jealousy, while he punched out his competitor’s front tooth. He was almost summoned to court, but all ended well: he hired a good lawyer with the descriptive last name of Bucks and bought his way out of it. Then finally, in the twilight of his days, he “… returns full circle” (Eccl 1:6), sat himself down, and adopted the image of the repentant sinner. He had a wonderful son called Kolenka, a remnant of his former life overseas, whom V. himself called a “gift from the heavens”: he was a meek and bright-faced youth.

  Since he was a boy, Kolenka had served as an altar boy in the church, and was later accepted to the Moscow Theological Academy, where he studied with great success. At the mere sight of him, your heart would burst out singing “Axios! He is worthy! Axios!” to him. In general, everything suggested that he would soon enter the priesthood and pray for us all at the altar table with a pure heart. In addition, he had a girlfriend; they were like two peas in a pod—she was joyful and pretty, just like a ruddy, ripe apple.

  He called her just that: my girlfriend.

  “Can I visit you with my girlfriend? Can you give a copy of your book to my girlfriend?”

  He introduced her to his father, his father’s friends—everybody liked her, it looked like the wedding was not far off, then the ordination would take place soon afterwards.

  So a month passed, another, half a year, a year …

  I met him walking on the street, beaming.

  “Kolenka, how’s life?”

  “Thank God! I was accepted to the Theological Academy …”

  “And how’s your girlfriend?”

  “Just wonderful! She is so lucky! She got married—very happily and successfully—to my friend, a former classmate. He is a wonderful person, very spiritual, and sings so well! He’s already been ordained a deacon. They just returned from Greece, full of impressions: they were at the relics of St Spyridon, St Andrew the First-Called, St John the Russian. I’ve dreamed of going there my whole life, but they described everything to me in such detail and so realistically that it was like I was there myself, saw everything with my own eyes, and venerated the relics myself. I still have that blessed feeling.”

  My friend V., commenting on this, said with both Kolenka and himself in mind: “God is free both to grow grapes on a blackthorn tree and to grow figs on a burdock plant!”

  But still I asked him:

  “Maybe Kolenka didn’t really love that girl?”

  “What do you mean, do you really not get it?” my friend said in surprise. “Of course he loved her, he even bought an engagement ring for her and consulted with me about it: ‘Papa, you know better about women’s tastes’; he was scared that she wouldn’t like the ring he chose. But he didn’t have a chance to give it to her: he was so shocked that he just walked around repeating: ‘It wasn’t meant to be, wasn’t meant to be!’ So he just brought the ring to the Mother of God: whether he made some sort of pledge to Her or was just seeking comfort, I don’t know …”

  My mother survived my father by seven years. In the beginning she was hurt by him, just like a child: “How could he go and just leave me here?” Sometimes she even directed a rebuke at him: “Why, why didn’t you take me with you! You just left by yourself!”

  She suffered very much and began to go so blind that so she couldn’t read anymore and could hardly walk; she just lay in bed or sat on the couch, developed gangrene, and almost had to have her leg amputated, but—thank God!—they were able to save it.

  Then, a month before her death, completely helpless, she suddenly said: “You know, I thank the Lord for everything that He allowed me to learn and undergo these past seven years.”

  Her face became so illumined and her expression so open that she just looked like an oversized little girl.

  “If you have any love in you, hold on to it with all your strength—with all your hands, with all your fingers!” and she smiled as if she was holding on to an earth-shattering secret. By now, she has probably revealed that secret to my father.

  How wonderful life is here on the island of Corfu, after all! How uninhibited, how lovely! The locals stay busy by offering their hospitality to foreigners, sharing their joy with them and the beauty that the Lord gave them. Or they grow fruits and vegetables. Or they go fishing. The taste of that fish and those shrimp, mussels, calamari, octopus, and langoustine, freshly caught and taken from the nets, is different from anywhere else, from Paris to Moscow.

  Our life is complicated and often artificial, but here it is natural and simple. This is simplicity itself, with which St Spyridon—an uneducated person, perhaps even illiterate—vividly explained the mystery of Divine Triunity during the First Ecumenical Council before highly educated and wise men. They were all arguing amongst each other, trying to convey it in philosophical terms, but the saint got a brick and crushed it in his hand until fire burst out heavenward, water streamed downward, and clay remained in his hand.16

  Well, now there were only a few days left until our departure, and we drove throughout the blessed island again and again, lengthwise, across, and all around. Again we visited St Spyridon and the holy Empress Theodora, and again tried to return the defective CD, but again found the shop closed, so I never got the chance to take the sounds of the local singing with me. Meanwhile, the thunderstorm raging in Italy threw itself onto Albania and finally crashed onto Corfu. The wind roared with such thundering bass tones all night that we were frightened; it seemed to us that just so did God speak to Job out of the storm.

  The day after my husband came to visit me and I burned my hand while frying blini, he said as we left the institute: “Let’s go take a walk.”

  He took my hand in his and stuck it in the pocket of his fur coat, and so we walked …

  There was heavy rain that morning, but we could still drive to Kassiopi, turn toward the deep of the island, and ascend into the ancient village of Perithia, where there was once a multitude of churches, and where everything—both houses and churches—stood in half-decay, while tourists feasted in tavernas situated among the ruins and shopped for items made from olives. We bought an enormous—it came up to the knees—wooden duck with feathers made from olive tree roots. The duck stood on its webbe
d feet, lifting up its polished beak, and looked heavenward.

  In the old times, people chose places that were more or less removed from the ocean to live in, because pirates ruled the seas, and the settlements closest to the shore would suffer in the event of the pirates’ debarking onto dry land. Perithia had, without a doubt, been a wealthy village: it had such expansive and solid two-story stone houses, inner courtyards, almost fortress-like walls, and churches. But the voice of God thundered out from the storm, and the place became deserted, the fields emptied, the roofs began to crumble, and the houses decayed.

  While we were traveling, the rain kept falling and the roads became impassable, but we didn’t realize this on the highway. When we turned off from the main road to our own Agios Stefanos, however, when the asphalt came to an end and was replaced with sand and clay chippings, we felt it very much. The car would constantly skid on the potholes, the loose covering of the road would crawl under the wheel, and I had to hold on to the steering wheel with all my strength because it was suddenly trying its best to wrench itself free and swerve off to the side.

  I began to have dark misgivings: if the rain continued all night, then it could happen that in the morning, when we would have to drive on this same road to the airport and go up the steep hill, we could get stuck, or, losing traction, could slide all the way down. And in general, I thought, how frivolous it was of us to plan to leave for the airport early in the morning without a backup plan in case, for example, we got a flat tire, or we got stuck in this heavy clay, or our engine died, or if a snail of an Englishman was driving along at his ten kilometers per hour in front of us and we wouldn’t be able to pass him. What would we do if our delay on the road would cause us to miss our flight? In any case, it was too late to think of a backup plan now. It was late at night.

  That morning, at the crack of dawn, we loaded the car, and again the thought of all the possible accidents that could disrupt the easy drive in our car gnawed at me. I even examined the tires just in case. Well, OK: let’s say that I would have seen something wrong, what then? There was no wrench in the trunk, no screwdriver, no spare tire. We packed the suitcases into the trunk, the olive tree duck into the car, and were off. I simply called upon St Spyridon in my mind to help us and touched the fabric from his vestments pinned to the inside of my clothing near my shoulder.

  So, we made the first sharp turn, and now, pressing hard on the gas pedal, began the ascent, when hop!—another sharp turn, we slowed down, up again, upped the speed, careful not to press too hard and bury the tires in the clay. The car swerved but climbed on. Now we had to carefully pass over an enormous rock that threatened to pierce through the bottom of our car: “Holy Father Spyridon …” And … one, two! We jumped over it, and now the descent, and farther down—asphalt. Suddenly—an oncoming car: there was no room to pass each other, so we were forced to back up and press up to a fence on the right. I stopped, thinking it through. A young Greek looked out of the driver’s window. I backed up and paused, allowing him to pass. The oncoming car moved and carefully, almost touching, passed us by—the Greek looked out of the window again and said something to us. I thought that he was thanking us. He was probably a construction worker from that house next to us where we had gone at night with the flashlight.

  Well, the most important part was done. We drove onto the main road. In front of us was Kerkyra and not an Englishman in sight, no one at all. We drove and drove, throwing a parting glance over that already-familiar road—Sinies, Nissaki, Barbati. Suddenly, a man stood on the road waving his hands at us: stop! Stop!

  “What does he want?” I grumbled, displeased. “I’m not going to stop, maybe he’s a criminal.”

  “Have you seen any criminals around here? Stop. Anyway, I think it’s the same Greek we rented the car from,” said my husband.

  I stopped. The Greek ran up to us, deeply worried. “You have a flat tire. This morning my brother saw you—you drove past him. He called me. You won’t reach the airport like this.”

  I got out of the car—it was true, the left front tire was very flat. A little more, and the car would have thrown itself to the side. “What do we do?” I said, scared.

  “I’ll give you another car. Just leave it in the same place at the airport.”

  So we sat down and drove on. How amazing that the only Greek that we came across on that narrow road was the brother of the man who had rented us the car; amazing that he was able to notice the tire, amazing that he even recognized his brother’s rental car, and that he wasn’t too lazy to call and warn his brother. That the latter came out onto the road and blocked our way. There it was, my smothering night-terror, that dreaded flat tire! And how carefully and nicely St Spyridon arranged everything for us, how he counted everything to the minute, while I directed my prayers to him to prevent not only something terrible from happening to us, but even any difficult temptations.

  So we returned home. In the end, I didn’t do anything on Corfu, didn’t write any short stories on love for the Journal, didn’t bring back any keepsakes except icons of St Spyridon and the enormous clumsy duck carved out of olive wood with its head looking heavenward. I put it on the floor and saw how simple it was, how joyful, how happy. Its feathers, made of olive tree roots, boldly stuck out. I regretted not buying a second one: they could have stood together as a couple, next to each other.

  The only treasure that I amassed there was a childish sense of the mystery of life, an amazed and wondering perspective …

  And yet how I wanted to put something back into that sacred chest of St Spyridon from which I had taken so much. Just to open the creaking lid and put a treasure inside—let it stay there until that time when the heart would go begging and love would run dry. Then the saint would say:

  “Child, go and find your treasure where you placed it.”

  APPENDIX

  A Short Reflection on Miracles

  The philosopher Alexei Losev1 examined miracles as the concurrence of two planes of existence that materialize in the plan for a single individual. This plan is the combination of the individual’s predetermined outcome—i.e., God’s plan for that individual, His creative idea—and the historical plan that unfolds with time and with the individual’s evolution, which is the plan of destiny. These two plans suddenly combine in one inseparable image: The individual—suddenly and for at least a moment—expresses and fulfills his prototypal image in full, he becomes that which immediately proves to be both the material substance and the ideal prototype. This is the true place for a miracle. A miracle is the dialectic synthesis of the two planes of the individual when he completely and thoroughly implements within himself the goal of the prototype that lies in the depths of his development.

  Notes

  In Lieu of an Introduction

  1. This is a reference to the Trinity-St Sergius Monastery, north of Moscow, that has within its grounds the largest seminary of the Russian Orthodox Church.

  2. This is a story told about St Anthony the Great of Egypt in the Lives of the Desert Fathers.

  The New Nicodemus

  1. A matushka is the wife of a priest or deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church.

  Confusion

  1. An epitrachelion is a liturgical garment worn by Orthodox priests and bishops around the neck and trailing down the front from the neck to the hem.

  Monk Leonid

  1. This is taken from the kontakion of The Great Canon the Work of St Andrew of Crete (Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Publications, 2016), 11.

  2. These are Russian and French writers and poets from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  Another Source

  1. Samizdat was literature produced and distributed without official sanction as its contents would not have been approved by the regime.

  How I Battled the Gypsies

  1. The prayer “Let God Arise” (Ps 67:1) introduces the Paschal stichera and is found in the section of “Prayers before Sleep” from Prayer Book, Fourth Edition–Revi
sed (Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Publications, 2003), 59.

  2. From the Paschal stichera: Prayer Book, Fourth Edition–Revised (Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Publications, 2003).

  3. Zemfira is the main female character in Pushkin’s narrative poem “The Gypsies.”

  Non-Komsomol Gingerbread

  1. The Komsomol was the communist youth organization. Komsomol gingerbread is analogous to Girl Scout cookies.

  2. The priest is referring to Mt 23:24.

  3. This is said by the priest, during the Prayer behind the Ambo, at the end of the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.

  At Blessed Xenia’s

  1. This refers to Lk 23:34, where Christ says of those who crucified Him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

  The Hunger Striker

  1. Pirozhok is a baked or fried bun typically stuffed with meat or cabbage.

  Martyr Tryphon

  1. An akathist is a devotional hymn that is sung in the Eastern Christian tradition. They are often dedicated to a saint or a miraculous event.

  2. The Orthodox Church commonly refers to the sacraments, and in particular holy communion, as mysteries.