But Tatiana believed that the Lord would heal her Genka, and constantly visited monasteries, appealing to elders with the request to pray for him. She visited Elder Kirill, Fr Ioann (Krestiankin), Fr Pavel (Gruzdev), and even the lowly Alesha from Oskol.
But she was ill herself and badly needed an operation. However, she couldn’t even imagine being admitted into the hospital and leaving her “little one” without her supervision, but even that wasn’t the main problem, I think. If push came to shove, she could have placed S. with a trusted friend who would have looked after him, fed him, and done his laundry. The fact of the matter is, she was so consumed with love for her husband, so occupied with the thought of his salvation, that she could not psychologically transfer her energy and attention from him to herself. That’s why she kept evading that operation, delaying it, putting it off more and more, and she let the moment pass.
He survived her by two years. All that time, he was very depressed, but he hardly drank. He just lay on his couch, remembering his life. He became practically blind, but interpreted all that symbolically, as if to say: this vale of tears was coming to an end, but what images could he now behold with his spiritual eye! My husband, as a priest, often visited him, confessed and communed him, until our friend departed into eternity.
As for Mother Tatiana, I saw her immediately after the funeral in my dreams. She looked joyful and happy. We came to a magnificent dining hall together; in layman’s terms, a luxurious, very high-ceilinged and vast, restaurant, and she said, laughing:
“Well, my dear, now you will treat me!”
When I woke up, I envisioned long tables set up at the church in memoriam, with lit candles and all sorts of food, and thought that was what she meant by “treat me” in my dream.
She knew that I loved her.
When a husband and wife have spent their lives in mutual love, how unbearable it is for them to be parted by death! How good it is to die together. As it was in the ancient times: “They had their fill of days and died on the same day.” But alas!
I read in one of the lives of the New Martyrs how the Bolsheviks came to a village priest, pulled him out of the altar by the beard, and dragged him off to be shot. His matushka ran after them and begged them with tears to shoot her together with her husband. They pushed her away and swore at her, but the woman didn’t relent. Then those gallant KGB men, to finally shut her up—so be it—placed them both against the walls of the church and aimed their rifles at them. The matushka, radiant, nestled close to her husband, and in an instant they were both shot dead.
It is written in the life of St Spyridon that he was married, that he and his wife lived piously and gave birth to a daughter, then the wife died. Further on, following this calmly written statement, the subsequent events of the saint’s life are described in turn. So it should be in the life of a saint: the genre prevents anything unnecessary, anything psychological. But in reality, however modest and humble he was, he probably suffered, and wept, and grieved. Even Christ, learning that Lazarus had died, “groaned in the spirit” and “wept,” because, as it is written, “He loved him” (Jn 11:33, 35, 36).
So did Spyridon love his wife—how could he not have loved her, when he loved everyone? It was through love that he, having taken in a hungry and exhausted stranger but not having any Lenten food with which to feed him (it was a fasting period), gave him meat. In addition, to prevent his guest from being dismayed, he even shared the meal with him. Through love, he conversed with the idol worshiper Olympus, attempting to lead him away from the deceit of idolatry. Through love, he gave the needy money and food. He healed, resurrected the dead, and quieted storms.
When his wife died, St Spyridon was left with a daughter in his arms, the orphaned Irina, and he raised her and cared for her with all his heart, as do all good parents. Then she also died, as it is said, “in the bloom of her youth.”
Irina was probably also a very good and loving daughter. A rich woman gave her all her treasured items to look after—in other words, she could be trusted, and the woman knew that she wouldn’t betray her or deceive her, that she wouldn’t act wrongly. So the saint’s earthly life was full of grief and many things that he could only have overcome through great suffering and patience. It only seems to us, looking back from afar and through the conventional language of the saint’s life, that the saints were always given everything easily.
Of course, it is understood by a believer that a departed one hasn’t disappeared or vanished, but that his soul is alive and his body awaits resurrection … Nevertheless, Christ knew that He was soon going to resurrect the departed Lazarus, but He still didn’t hold back His tears when He heard that His friend had died. Therefore, we also are not forbidden from crying in our love, and suffering, and from experiencing this suffering in full.
If you drive south along the sea from Paleokastritsa, you will arrive at a steep coastline where you can climb down and then climb up again to Mirtiotissa Monastery. Only one monk lives there—a Romanian.
We got there too late—the service had finished and the monastery was closed. So we settled into a taverna not far from the monastery. Smoking jars with burning coffee inside were scattered around to ward off pesky and greedy wasps that apparently loved the meat there. As soon as they saw (or smelled) a piece of meat or sausage, they immediately and greedily attacked it, stinging anyone who tried to get in their way. We ordered everything Greek: tzatziki—yogurt with garlic and cucumber; saganaki—fried cheese; moussaka—eggplant with meat. Also, fried squash covered with a crunchy breading, calamari, enormous shrimp, small fried fish, and kleftiko—lamb stewed with all sorts of things—and some local rosé wine. What can I say, there were also days in our life when all we had was black rye bread fried in Lenten oil, or onion baked in the oven.
Back in Agios Stefanos, I put on the CD with the Liturgy and organ-accompanied singing, but it turned out to be blank—not a sound, not a rustle, nothing. Disappointed, I turned on the TV. Some American political program in Russian came on. The moderator was asking a Russian journalist about the upcoming elections, and she was branding them as obviously rigged. In general, she could hardly be considered “Russian,” since she had already lived in America for many years and taught at an American university, but I remembered her from back in Moscow. Then she was married to an aging writer whom she had taken from her friend and had borne him a child, and when our country’s difficult times came, she took her son and moved with him to America, leaving the old man completely alone, so he died alone. When she was luring him away from his wife and when they stealthily met in strange apartments in secret, they probably considered it love …
Well, as far as the election, manipulation, and the farce of it all, I agree with her. I haven’t gone to vote in a long time. But she suddenly began to urge people to go out on the streets and protest. I can just imagine what would happen if they then suggested that she back her own words and lead the movement herself. Go ahead—step right out in front of the columns and under the banners with your loudspeaker in your hands right on Pushkinskaya Square.11
No, it doesn’t cost her anything to sit in an armchair on television and call the people to protests and demonstrations and then watch the fire of a Russian revolution burn from America.
I never understood such “love”: taking the husband away from his family, meeting with him “for an hour” in someone else’s apartment, whose noble hostess goes somewhere else for a while and passes the time at a friend’s, at the movies, or simply walk the streets, sniffling loudly with her nose, because she didn’t have the strength to turn them down—what if it’s true love? Then marrying the husband amid scandal, parading him about for a year or two or three, and then leaving him—sick and good for nothing by this point—to the mercy of fate. Such romances have their special mark, their gentlemanly pattern: “flowers, candlelit dinners, wine, fruit, good music …” In my youth, when I first began to be courted by young men, I couldn’t bear that style and intonation in courts
hip. Anyone who approached me with a similar proposition, even if it was completely innocent and from a pure heart, inspired feelings of near-revulsion in me.
When I was still resting in winterly Gagra, where my parents had sent me for the winter break to recover from overwork—which was really lovesickness for my future husband, as yet still in the dark about it all—and when, suffering from shingles brought on by my unrequited love pangs, I rested there among the coalminers, one old artist, vacationing nearby with his granddaughter Nastia (now an artist of recent fame), introduced me to a Lithuanian fiction writer either named Vitas or Vitautas.
“He told me in confidence that he really likes you and is asking for an introduction. Is that all right with you?”
Well, we were introduced. He was a mature, stout man, intelligent, in a suit and golden glasses, in my eyes an old man of thirty-eight years as compared to my nineteen. He was staying in the room next door. What came next? “Hello.” “Hello.” “How beautifully the snow is lying on the mandarins!” “The winter sea has its own unique hue.” Boring!
Then suddenly he said to me:
“I recently had a book published in Vilnius. I would like to celebrate. Come visit me in my room this evening. I have wine, fruit, cognac, good music.”
Well, as soon as I heard about the wine and good music, something inside began to sound an alarm, like in Gaidai’s movie, when Nikulin senses that an unseen evil power is approaching his diamond arm.
“Thank you very much,” I said politely. “But I want to work tonight.”
No matter how hard he tried to persuade me, I merely answered:
“My calling takes precedence!”
So what happened next? He went to his room and drank his fill of the wine, and perhaps the cognac after that, and in his inebriated state began to knock on my door in the middle of the night. He claimed he wanted to find something out or clear something up. My internal alarm went off again, and I said to him:
“You’d better clear it up from behind the door.”
Of course, instead of clearing anything up, he began to knock on the door with his fists and try to break in, but the door was strong, and he didn’t achieve his goal.
For a while, everything quieted down, but he apparently went back to his room, drank some more, and climbed over the wall separating our balconies. I had my door cracked open a little bit: I was sitting and writing poems, fanned by the sea air and the night breeze; then suddenly—boom! Something heavy fell right onto my balcony—he had clumsily fallen down, hit his knee, and cracked his glasses.
Oh, I was both angry and scared, and threw myself to my balcony door to lock it. Just as I locked it, he jumped up and started pounding on it. He was throwing his full weight on it, and the door trembled: in contrast to the strong front door, it was fairly flimsy, and had glass in it.
“Well,” I thought, “if he breaks that glass, what do I have to defend myself with?” Even though I was a strong, tough, rosy-cheeked nineteen-year-old, he was still a large, solid guy. I couldn’t run away from him through the other door into the night—there young Georgian guys were walking around in the dark, flashing the whites of their eyes:
“Hey, blondie! Come on, let me take you out!”
I began to rummage around the room to find a weapon or a stick, but found nothing better than a toilet plunger and a hanger. I stood in front of him behind the glass—the plunger in one hand, the hooked hanger in the other, and began to wave them at him triumphantly, with a severe expression on my face, my eyes blazing, and my teeth bared, yelling a war cry. Apparently, that made an impression on him, because he crawled back. I kept watching him through the glass to make sure that he would fall over completely to his side. But he had apparently wasted all his energy, his leg was hurt, his glasses were shattered, his sparse hair was disheveled by the subtropical breeze. He froze standing out on the balcony in his shirtsleeves in February, though we were in Gagra, and now he couldn’t manage to climb back over. But I kept strict watch, and as soon as he even glanced pathetically in my direction, expressing bitter defeat with his entire figure, I would raise my plunger and turn the hook on the hanger in his direction.
In short, he didn’t make a single appearance in the dining room of the writers’ house the next day. And the day after that, the old artist who had introduced us said to me:
“Forgive me, but it seems to me that our Vitas (or Vitautas) has fallen in love with you. He talked about you the whole evening last night—you made quite a lasting impression on him.”
I can imagine! I tried to picture myself, all severe, like a regiment with its banners, with my plunger and my hanger in either hand …
It was a few days after that when I heard that mysterious voice urging me to call my future husband. Later on, I found myself in Moscow.
No, of course it wasn’t all perfect when I, trembling from fear, stepped over the doorstep into his home, though I really wanted to talk about something intellectual and enlightened, something that would reflect my feelings, but I was so afraid. Vosnesensky has a really wonderful line: “I didn’t know, cynic and clown that I was, that love is a great fear.” So I brought along my best friend from my schooldays, just to be safe.
“Tell him how wonderful and fun we all are,” I asked her.
We went into the house. He had a young poet-decadent over, who was very genteel in appearance and had just finished his book of poems called À la Pasternak, and we all sat down in the kitchen to drink tea.
Here my lovely friend set out to arrange my fate—a strange inspiration seized her, and she began to richly narrate stories which, to put it mildly, were not necessary to tell to my future husband, especially at the first visit. For example, she recalled how in the ninth grade, we had drunk a bottle of Gamza wine on a dare in the bathroom of the Tretyakov Gallery … and followed it with Golden Key toffees. Then we went out to the rest of the people in the gallery, when suddenly the rest of the toffees spilled out all over the floor.
Mind you, the poet-decadent loved these stories, and he laughed loudly:
“What amusing girls you are!”
He even invited us to his literary dacha, left for him as an inheritance from his academic grandfather: “Dimochka Sakharov also visits me there—the son of what’s-his-name”—he made a meaningful gesture with his hand. “So come, it is always a pleasure to talk to such open people.”
My husband, however, was not so impressed by my friend’s stories—he sat there, politely feigning a smile, and when we came out of the entryway, my friend said to me straightforwardly: “Well? Did I completely ruin it for you?”
“You’ve ruined my life,” I said sadly, “but I still love you.”
My God, why can’t I think of anything appropriate for the Journal? All these unfitting stories keep popping into my head that have nothing to do with anything, it’s all nonsense: “wine, good music.”
Once I was speaking for the Ministry of Literary Propaganda in Gorky Park. It was all very dreary: an open stage, random people on the benches, mostly old retirees and lonely mothers with screaming children, and the atmosphere of a public house—people moving around and stopping at will, drinking beer, listening, yawning, talking, and moving away.
The amplification from the microphone was spotty, and the microphone itself gave out a loud ring. In theory, a situation like this is lifeless, not beneficial to anyone, and even harmful for the poet. On top of everything, I was nine months pregnant with my little boy. Only the prospect of getting seven rubles and fifty kopeks drove me to take this adventure on. In addition, Susan, the wife of American correspondent Peter Osnos, currently living in Moscow, had given me an array of maternity clothes, and things like “Enjoy your pregnancy” were written on every article of clothing in English. In theory, I was enjoying and flaunting my pregnancy—so glamorous were those loose lacy blouses, white trousers with a large elastic band for the stomach, and the freely flowing, long dresses covered in a fine floral print.
I was perf
orming as a duo with a considerably untalented poet, though a handsome one—Slava L. After coming down from the stage and signing the sheet along with a positive report to send back to the Ministry of Propaganda, we both sighed with relief. Then Slava L., sweetly glancing over at me, said to me meaningfully:
“Why don’t we go over to my place? We can sit by candlelight, I have wine, good music …”
I looked at him searchingly: was he making fun of me? There I stood in front of him, heavily pregnant, while my eldest, a one-year-old, sat at home with her father—which he knew, since I told him about it before our performance …
But his eyes burned with an inviting flame, and I understood that he was serious, that he hadn’t noticed my stomach underneath the loose, embroidered blouse, and as far as the daughter at home, well, what about her?
“Naturally, I’m grateful,” I said, “but I’m busy.”
The next day, I gave birth to my son. Several weeks later, I went to pick up my payment for my disgraceful performance, and met Slava L. at the cashier’s office.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Well,” I replied. “I gave birth to my son since I saw you last.”
“What do you mean, your son? I thought you had a one-year-old daughter.”
“Yes, then I had a daughter, and now I have a son, too. He’s going to be half a month old soon.”
I have two lives of St Spyridon. One was compiled by a Greek called Mikhalis G. Likissa, and the other was recently published in Moscow and written by A.V. Bugaevskii. In the second life, in contrast with the first, it’s claimed that in spite of the miracles performed by St Spyridon and the pagan priest Olympus’s witnessing to the saint’s extrasensory perception, St Spyridon was unable to convert Olympus to Christianity. The latter, though he treated the saint with respect, did not accept the Christian faith in the end. This is no less important or eloquent a fact of St Spyridon’s life than if he had, after all, managed to convert the idol worshipper.
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