The Charm School

by Nelson DeMille

  Betty Eschman said, “We’re passing the Marine guards now. Here goes.”

  As she approached the sidewalk, one of the militiamen stepped out of his booth, walked into the driveway, and held up his hand. Betty Eschman blasted the horn and stepped on the accelerator. The militiaman jumped back and shouted, “Pizda!”

  The Ford cut right and proceeded up the street. Mrs. Eschman asked, “What does pizda mean?”

  Lisa replied, “Cunt.”

  “Why, that son of a bitch!”

  Jane Ellis added, “I’m going to make a formal complaint. I’m tired of their harassment.”

  Patty White laughed. “I never saw a Soviet citizen move so fast.”

  Hollis asked, “Anyone behind us?”

  The two women in the front looked in their side-view mirrors, and both reported that they didn’t see any cars.

  Betty Eschman cut onto the embankment drive and accelerated up the nearly deserted road that hugged the north bank of the Moskva. It was not the most direct route to the British embassy, which was on the Maurice Thorez embankment opposite the Kremlin, but Hollis knew it was a fast road, an easy road on which to spot tails. Also it passed directly beside Novodevichy Convent. Hollis settled back against the door and looked at Lisa. She stretched out her legs and put her shoeless foot in his groin. “Am I crowding you?”

  The two young women in the back chuckled.

  Jane Ellis said, “What’s going on back there? Behave, Sam.” The women all laughed. Hollis thought his original idea of riding in the trunk might have been better. The Moskva and the road turned south in the river’s great loop below the Lenin Hills. Hollis said, “You’re all going to catch some harassment when you return. Sorry.”

  “Screw them,” Jane Ellis said, who added quickly, “Oh! We’re going to church.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Betty Eschman announced, “There’s the convent straight ahead.”

  Lisa said, “Pull off into that little park in front of the convent, and we’ll tumble out.”

  Hollis said, “Thanks for the lift, ladies.”

  Jane Ellis responded, “It was an honor to have the holders of the Joel Barlow award in the car.”

  Betty Eschman cut off the embankment road into the park and stopped on a paved lane. Hollis and Lisa opened their doors and got out quickly. The car pulled away, and Hollis watched it disappear around the curving river road, then he looked around and said, “I think we’re alone.”

  Lisa brushed off her black trench coat. “Hell of a way to get to church.”

  “Let’s move away from the road.”

  They began walking through the park toward the high crenellated walls of limestone and brick that surrounded the twenty-acre convent grounds.

  Lisa asked, “Are we still fighting?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Are you sorry?”

  “For what?” Hollis asked impatiently.

  “For being difficult. For sleeping on the couch. For—”

  “Yes, yes. I’m sorry.” He looked at his watch. “What time is the service?”

  “At ten. The Soviet government has designated two times for Christian services in all of Russia: ten A.M. and six P.M.”

  “Keeps it simple.” Hollis regarded the ornate battletowers of the convent walls. “Incredible place. Nicer walls than the Kremlin. Which way in?”

  “Follow me.”

  They made their way around to the north wall, which held the Church of the Transfiguration. A stream of people, mostly elderly, came from the nearby metro station and passed through the massive church portals. Hollis looked up at the spires and gold onion domes rising over the wall, set against a sky of Moscow grey, and he became aware of a fine mist settling on his cheeks. “I won’t miss the weather.”

  “No.” Lisa took his arm, and they joined the people going through the arched gates. Lisa asked, “What were you talking to Seth about until four A.M.?”

  “Sex, sports, and religion.”

  “He doesn’t know beans about any of those things, and neither do you.”

  “We figured that out about four, and I left.”

  “You know, every human life needs a spiritual dimension, or it isn’t a complete life. Do you feel there’s something missing from your life?”

  “Yes. Sex, sports, and religion.”

  “I thought I was part of the team. You two are not being fair. You can’t use me and keep me in the dark.”

  “Take it up with Seth.”

  “I don’t think you want me talking to him.”

  “You can talk to whomever you please.”

  “Remember you said that.”

  They passed through the tunnellike entrance of the gate church and came out into the convent grounds. The people around them glanced curiously at Lisa’s well-cut trench coat and examined her footwear. Hollis wore his baggy blue overcoat, narrow-brimmed hat, and shoes that squeaked. Hollis recalled that Captain O’Shea had stood in line two hours for the Soviet shoes. The leather was synthetic, the shoes were a size too small, and the cordovan color was a bit on the red side. O’Shea claimed that was the best he could do, but Hollis always suspected he was getting even for the two hours in line.

  Hollis and Lisa walked arm in arm, following a wet cobblestone lane covered with broken branches and dead leaves. Lisa said, “That’s the Lopukhin palace. Boris Gudonov was elected czar there. Also, as Sasha said, Peter the Great put his sister in there. Peter used to hang his sister’s political supporters outside her windows.”

  Hollis regarded the long stucco palace. “If the windows were as dirty then as they are now, she wouldn’t have noticed.”

  Lisa ignored him and continued, “Novodevichy used to be a retreat for high-born ladies as well as a nunnery. It was also a fort, as you can see, the strongpoint on the southern approaches to Moscow. Odd sort of combination, but common in old Russia. It remained a nunnery until after the Revolution when the communists got rid of the nuns—no one seems to know exactly what became of them—and this place became a branch of the State History Museum. But they never really cared for Novodevichy.”

  Hollis could see that the gardens were choked with undergrowth and the trees so badly in need of pruning that the branches touched the ground and blocked the paths.

  Lisa said, “But it’s still lovely and peaceful here. People come here to meditate. It’s sort of the unofficial center of the religious reawakening here in Moscow.”

  “And probably crawling with KGB because of it.”

  “Yes. But so far they seem content to take names and photographs. No incidents yet.” She squeezed his hand. “Thanks for coming with me. You can visit Gogol’s grave while you’re here.”

  “I might just do that.”

  “I thought you might. That’s why you’re wearing that silly outfit.”

  “Yes, it’s business.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The lane took them into a paved square from which rose a beautiful six-tiered bell tower. On the far side of the square was a white and gold multidomed church. Lisa said, “That’s the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk.”

  “Is she home?”

  Lisa announced, “If I ever get married, I think I’d want an Eastern Orthodox wedding.”

  Hollis wondered if she’d ever informed Seth Alevy of that.

  “Did you get married in church?”

  “No, we were married in a jet fighter, traveling at mach two, by an Air Force chaplain on the radio. When he pronounced us husband and wife, I hit the eject and blew us out into space. It was all downhill after that.”

  “I see I can’t talk to you this morning.”

  Hollis regarded the throngs of people. Most of them were old women, a few old men, but there were also a number of young people—teenage boys and girls and university students. Here and there he saw intact Muscovite families.

  As they passed the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk, many of the people in th
e square stopped, bowed, and made the sign of the cross toward the cathedral. A few of the old women prostrated themselves on the wet stone, and people had to step around them. Hollis recalled the first time he’d been inside the Kremlin walls, when an old woman suddenly crossed herself in front of one of the churches, bowed, and repeated the process for several minutes. A militiaman walked over to her and told her to get moving. She paid no attention to him and prostrated herself on the stone. Tourists and Muscovites began watching, and the militiaman looked uncomfortable. Finally the old woman had risen to her feet, crossed herself again, and continued her walk through the Kremlin, oblivious of time and place or soldiers and red stars where crosses had once risen. She’d seen a church—perhaps of her patron saint, if Russians still had such a thing—and she did what she had to do.

  Lisa watched the people performing their ritual outside the cathedral that had been closed for worship for seventy years and was now the central museum of the convent complex. She said, “After seventy years of persecution, their priests shot, churches torn down, Bibles burned, they still worship Him. I’m telling you, these people are the hope of Russia. They’re going to bring about an upheaval here.”

  Hollis looked at what was left of God’s people here in unholy Moscow and didn’t think so. It would have been nice to think so, but there were neither the numbers nor the strength. “Maybe… someday.”

  They crossed the square, and Lisa steered him toward another church, a smaller single-domed building of white stucco. She said, “That’s where we’re going to mass. The Church of the Assumption.”

  “It needs some care.”

  “I know. I was told that the churches of Moscow and this place in particular—because it’s so close to Lenin Stadium—got some quick cosmetics for the 1980 Olympics. But you can see how rundown everything is.”

  Hollis nodded. He surveyed the ancient trees and buildings of the fortress-convent. It was well within the city limits now, not two kilometers from Red Square, but from inside the walls there was no sign of any century but the sixteenth. He could easily imagine a grey, misty October day in the early 1500s, soldiers on the battlements watching the woods and fields, ready to ring the alarm bells of the huge tower, to signal the Kremlin of any approaching danger. And on the paths the nuns would stroll, and the priests would be sequestered in prayer. The world may have been simpler then, but no less terrifying.

  Lisa stopped about ten yards from the church. Hollis saw six men outside the doors stopping some of the younger people and the families, asking for identification. The men jotted information from the ID cards into notebooks. Hollis spotted another man, posing as a tourist, taking pictures of the people going inside. One of the six men at the door got involved in an argument with a young woman who apparently refused to show her identification. Hollis said, “I assume those men are not church ushers.”

  “No, they’re swine.”

  Hollis watched a moment. The young woman finally managed to get away from the KGB without showing her identification, but she didn’t try to enter the church and hurried away.

  The old babushkas moved ponderously past the KGB men, ignoring them and being ignored by them. These black-dressed women, Hollis had learned, were invisible. They were also free, like the animals and proles in George Orwell’s nightmare world. Free because no one cared enough about them to enslave them.

  Lisa said, “They don’t usually stop anyone who looks Western.”

  “Well, I’ll look Western. I’ll smile.”

  “But your shoes squeak.” She took his arm as they approached the doors of the church. The KGB man who had been arguing with the young woman intercepted them and said to Hollis, “Kartochka!”

  Hollis replied in English, “I don’t understand a fucking word you’re saying, Mac.”

  The young man looked him over, waved his arm in dismissal, and began to turn to someone else when he noticed Lisa. He smiled and touched his hat, then said in Russian, “Good morning.”

  She replied in Russian, “Good morning to you. Will you join us in celebrating Christ’s message to the world?”

  “I think not.” He added, “But be sure to tell Christ that Yelena Krukova’s son sends his regards.”

  “I will. Perhaps you’ll tell Him yourself someday.”

  “Perhaps I will.”

  Lisa led Hollis up the steps of the church. He said, “I take it you come here often.”

  “I take turns among the six surviving Orthodox churches in Moscow. That fellow back there must have permanent weekend duty. I’ve seen him nearly every Sunday I’ve come here for two years. We have that little ritual. I think he likes me.”

  “That’s probably why he volunteers for Sunday duty.”

  They entered the vestibule of the Church of the Assumption. To the right of the door sat a long refectory table laden with bread, cakes, and eggs. Adorning the whole spread were cut flowers, and stuck into the food were pencil-thin brown candles all alight. Hollis moved through the crowd to examine the display. “What’s this?”

  Lisa came up beside him and said, “The people bring their food here to be blessed.”

  As Hollis watched, more food was laid on the table, more flowers strewn over it, and more candles lit. Off to the side he noticed an old woman standing at a countertop selling the brown candles for three kopeks apiece. Lisa went to her, put a ruble on the table, and asked for two candles, refusing the change. Lisa took Hollis’ arm and led him into the nave.

  The church was lit only by the weak sunlight coming through the stained-glass windows, but the raised altar was aglow in the fire of a hundred white tapers.

  The nave had no pews and was packed wall-to-wall, shoulder-to-shoulder with about a thousand people. Hollis became aware of the smell of strong incense, which competed for his olfactory attention with the smell of unwashed bodies. He could see, even in the dark, that whatever exterior cosmetics had been done in 1980 had not been carried through inside. The place was in bad repair, the water-stained stucco crumbling, and the heating had either failed or was nonexistent. Yet there was still a magnificence about the place, he thought. The gold on the altar gleamed, the iconostasis—the tiered altar screen made of individual icons—was mesmerizing, and the ruined architecture was somehow more impressive and appropriate than the fussily kept cathedrals of Western Europe. Lisa took his hand, and they made their way forward, finally meeting a solid block of bodies about midway through the nave.

  Long-bearded priests in gilded vestments swung censers and passed a jeweled Bible from one to the other. The litany began, repetitious and melancholy, lasting perhaps a quarter hour.

  Immediately after the litany ended, from somewhere behind the iconostasis, a hidden choir began an unharmonized and unaccompanied chant that struck Hollis as more primitive than ecclesiastic but nonetheless powerful. Hollis looked around at the faces of the people, and it struck him that he had never seen such Russian faces in the two years he’d lived in Moscow. These were serene faces, faces with clear eyes and unknit brows, as if, he thought, the others really were soul dead and these were the last living beings in Moscow. He whispered to Lisa, “I am… awed… thank you.”

  “I’ll save your spy’s soul yet.”

  Hollis listened to the ancient Russian coming from the altar, and though he had difficulty following it, the rhythm and cadence had a beauty and power of its own, and he felt himself, for the first time in many years, overwhelmed by a religious service. His own Protestantism was a religion of simplicity and individual conscience. This orthodox service was Byzantine Imperial pomp and Eastern mysticism, as far removed from his early memories of white clapboard churches as the Soviet “marriage palaces” were removed from the Church of the Assumption. Yet here, in these magnificent ruins, these medieval-looking priests spoke the same message that the grey-suited ministers had spoken from the wooden pulpits of his youth: God loves you.

  Hollis noticed that the worshipers crossed themselves and bowed low from the waist whenever the mood
seemed to strike them, with no discernible signal from the altar. From time to time, people would manage to prostrate themselves on the crowded floor and kiss the stone. He saw, too, that the murky icons around the walls were now illuminated by the thin candles that were being stuck into the gilded casings that framed the icons. People were congregating around what he presumed to be the icons of their patron saints, kissing them, then moving back to let someone else through.

  For all the ritual on the altar, Hollis thought, the worship in the nave was something of a free-for-all, quite different from the mainstream Protestant churches he’d once attended, where the opposite was sometimes true.

  Suddenly the chanting stopped, and the censers ceased swinging. A priest in resplendent robes moved to the edge of the raised altar and spread his arms.

  Hollis looked closely at the full-bearded man and saw by his eyes that he was young, no more than thirty perhaps.

  The priest began talking without a microphone, and Hollis listened in the now-quiet church where nothing could be heard but the young priest’s voice and the crackling of the tallow candles. The priest delivered a brief sermon, speaking of conscience and good deeds. Hollis found it rather unoriginal and uninspiring, though he realized that the congregation did not hear this sort of thing often.

  Lisa, as if knowing what was on his mind, whispered, “The KGB are recording every word. There are hidden messages in the sermon, words and concepts that the clergy and congregation understand, but which the KGB cannot begin to comprehend. It’s a start anyway, a spark.”

  Hollis nodded. It was odd that she used that word: spark—iskra in Russian. It was the word Lenin often used and what he named his first underground newspaper—Iskra. The concept then, as now, was that Russia was a tinderbox, awaiting a spark to set the nation ablaze.

  Hollis heard the young priest say, “It is not always convenient to let others know you believe in Christ. But if you live your life according to His teachings, no power on this earth, no matter what they deny you in this life, can deny you the Kingdom of God.”