Yet now, suddenly, appeared two monks.
They were young, both in their twenties, simply dressed in black cassocks. One was tall and thin, with a small fair beard; the other with a broad, intelligent face, and bright blue eyes set wide apart that looked out with an extraordinary freshness upon the world. They smiled as the car approached. Sergei halted and rolled down the window.
‘There are monks here?’ The great Danitov Monastery had been sending out monks to several places, but he had no idea they had come down to Russka.
‘For three months,’ the tall monk smiled. ‘You are baptised?’
‘Most certainly.’ It was Paul Bobrov who answered from the passenger seat.
‘God has sent you at a propitious time,’ the monk with the blue eyes said. ‘Come and see.’ And the two monks turned and led the car in.
It was an unexpected sight. A dozen monks were standing near the chapel. Though, like the other buildings there, it had lost its windows long ago, huge sheets of transparent plastic had been placed to cover them. Several of the smaller buildings, Paul could see, had been partly remodelled and made habitable. Someone had started work on the inside of the gateway.
He also noticed that, for some reason, about forty peasants, mostly women but a number of men, were standing respectfully to one side; and that just by the church entrance, was lying a casket covered with a purple cloth.
They got out and stood awkwardly.
‘I’m afraid we are intruding,’ Paul said. But the two young monks would have none of it and rushed away, returning a minute later with a man of about fifty with an intelligent, enquiring face, who made them a gracious bow of welcome and explained: ‘I am the Archimandrite Leonid. May I ask how you happened to be here just now?’
When Paul told him why he had come, the Archimandrite seemed almost shaken. ‘You are a Bobrov? Of the family that founded this monastery? And your name is Paul? We are, as you know, the Monastery of St Peter and St Paul.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘These things,’ he said quietly, ‘are sent to us as signs. They do not come by chance.’ And then, smiling at them both, he said, ‘Please stay for a little while. It appears that your coming was meant.’
It was indeed an extraordinary coincidence, Paul considered, however you looked at it. He, a Bobrov, had arrived at the little monastery, just being reopened – and not just upon any day. For the very day before, the monks, diligently searching, had found the grave of one of their most revered elders, and that day, at the very hour when Paul arrived, were taking his remains into the church for a service of rededication. It was the Elder Basil, who had lived as a hermit many years in the previous century, out past the springs, in the company of a bear.
The service was not unduly long and was very simple.
The casket containing the remains of the Elder Basil had been placed at the north-east corner of the church. The interior of the building was a strange sight. Apart from the sheets of plastic over the windows, only half the space was, as yet, safe for use and a big triangle of cloth had been draped across a string to mark this area off. Behind it stood a step-ladder and several buckets, apparently to catch rainwater from the roof.
Though the Archimandrite had put on vestments, all the other monks were simply dressed in black, some of them showing signs of plaster dust. The people who crowded in were mostly poor-looking. There was nothing of ornament, no grandeur, nothing to delight the eye in that simple Orthodox service.
They sang a psalm and a hymn.
The sermon of the Archimandrite Leonid was, similarly, very simple and delivered with expressions of extraordinary gentleness.
They must all be grateful, he reminded them, for signs of God’s Providence, which signs by their very nature are wholly unforeseen. They remind us, he pointed out, that the Wisdom of God is great indeed and that, though we may glimpse it, we may not know more than an infinitesimal part of His great purpose. How else was it, he suggested, that at such an hour, on such a day, one Paul, descendant of the founder of this monastery, should appear by chance at the monastery gates, having travelled for thousands of miles? And was it not significant, he remarked, that having come in search of his earthly house, and found it gone, he should now have come all unaware to this, his spiritual house?
He turned then to the former life of the monastery – the centuries of its existence – and to the fact that now that life, after a short death, was resuming again.
But it was his words on the Elder Basil himself which Paul would always remember.
‘For many years, the Elder Basil dwelt in his Hermitage, praying and giving spiritual guidance; to him also are ascribed a number of miracles. But today, as we have his blessed remains before us, it is to the very start of his life as a hermit that I wish to turn.
‘It was always said that the Elder Basil had a gift with animals. It was remarked that a large bear would often appear, and that he would find this bear and talk to it like a kindly father to a child; and people therefore decided he had a gift.
‘In fact the opposite was the case. The Elder, at the start of his seclusion, was very much afraid when the bear appeared. So much so that, the first time, he cowered in his little hut all night and almost returned to the monastery the next day. The second night, the same thing happened.
‘Only on the third night did the Elder Basil understand what he must do.
‘For on the third night, Basil remained outside his hut, seated quietly on the ground. And he said the Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.” Not because he asked any longer that his body be saved; but rather that, he considered – “What can this bear do to me, who by God’s Grace have eternal life?”
‘And thus his fear of the bear disappeared. And so, my children, we here are not without fear. We know what has passed in former decades in the Russian land. But in rebuilding this monastery, and in remembering the example of the Elder Basil, we know that we must not fear the bear. We must love him. For perfect love casteth out fear.’
It was just then that, to his surprise, Paul realized that his friend Sergei was trembling, and that he himself was crying.
The monks had fed them. They departed in the late afternoon with an extraordinary feeling of lightness. And for a long time they drove slowly back towards Moscow in silence.
Only after an hour did Sergei speak.
‘We shall do it. We shall rebuild Russia, you know.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think we want pure capitalism, though. A sort of mixed economy.’
‘I dare say it could be done.’
For another hour after that Sergei did not speak. It was not until they were entering the suburbs of Moscow that he suddenly, said: ‘How long do you think it will take? Five years?’
‘Perhaps longer.’
‘Well, you may be right. Not more than ten, though. We’ll catch up in ten years.’
‘I hope so.’
‘There’s nothing Russia can’t do, you know. Nothing.’
‘I’m sure that’s right.’
Sergei Romanov smiled. ‘It just needs the right leadership,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll do it.’ Then an idea seemed to strike him.
‘By the way,’ he said. ‘There was something I meant to ask you this morning, when you were telling me about your business. Something I didn’t quite understand.’
‘Yes?’
Sergei glanced at him with a slight frown.
‘What is a salesman?’
Paul Bobrov did not feel like sitting in the gloomy darkness of the dining room that night. He glanced at his watch. Eight forty-five. The bar on the fifth floor was open for another fifteen minutes. He went straight to the elevators. A minute later he arrived at the glass doors.
Varya was alone in the room. Eight forty-five had passed. She had nothing against the fellow from this morning who spoke so beautifully, but habit was not to be changed.
‘Zakryt!’ she called, and disappeared into the kitchen.
The sun was setting as Paul Bobrov sat at his window and gazed out over the rooftops of Moscow. To his left, he could see one of those tall thick-set towers with which Stalin had decorated the city in the last years of his rule. Symbols of a new age, like the Empire State Building; symbols of uncompromising power, like the bleak walls of the Kremlin.
Were they Russia, though?
He did not think so. Even now, he could not say, he did not know, what Russia was. That did not surprise him. She had always, down the centuries, defied definition. Was she part of Europe or part of Asia – what did those terms mean anyway? There wasn’t a commentator he had read who could tell him what this vast land was or what it might become. To be sure, no one in the Kremlin knew.
But whatever it was, he thought he had caught a glimpse of it that day, at Russka.
The city was quiet that night; Bobrov, at his window, continued to watch and ponder till long after dark.
High in the starlit summer sky, pale clouds passed from time to time, drifting in a leisurely procession, glowing in the reflection of the crescent moon that was now arising in the south.
And softly the wind moved over the land.
Edward Rutherfurd, Russka: The Novel of Russia
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