“Then His Grace was freed, before the war; but he never made it home before they captured him again. During the war he managed to escape, and ran away and hid for many years in the Murom Forest. He lived as a hermit. That was when Mama took me to him for the first time, and after that I served him until the end of his life. Just as my mother had served him, she ordered me to serve him, too. He allowed us to visit him twice a year. People came to see him from all over Russia, religious and worldly people alike.
“One time the enemy came upon him—he kept a cat, and the cat led them right to his door. They destroyed the hut, but he wasn’t there. There was another starets who lived there, too, about six miles’ distance, and His Grace had gone to give him communion, since he was in very poor health. Someone warned His Grace, and he didn’t come back. He went still farther into the forest to live. Good people helped me to find him there. That was when my mother died. Sometimes I would stay there by his side and live with him for a time.”
“What year was this?” Kostya asked. Suddenly, it seemed to him that the story was set in some centuries-old ancient past.
“I don’t rightly remember. He lived there after the war, many years. But in ’56—this I remember very well, I was there myself—he became very ill. He had a strangulated hernia that gave him great pain, and he started to die. And we all prayed for him—Mama was still alive then, but she couldn’t make it to where he lived. Sister Alevtina was there, and Sister Evdokia, Anna Leonidovna from Nizhny Novgorod, his goddaughter, and me.
“His Grace said farewell to us and prepared to die, but Anna Leonidovna was very commanding, and she said, ‘I’m going for the doctor. There’s one in Murom.’ And she brought a surgeon to him, a believer. He was a good doctor, may he rest in peace. He died young. He was called Ivan, though he was an Armenian. He cried first, and swore that he couldn’t do anything unless we got him to a hospital.
“But this was happening in winter, and His Grace’s hut was a dugout in the side of a hill. The way in was just a burrow. There were no windows, it was dark night and day. That’s how he lived, for years. If it was cold outside, it was cold inside. There was a stove, but it had no pipe to the outside; he was afraid it would be seen.
“How could we get him out of there? No documents, nothing. And it was about twelve miles on foot to the nearest road. Besides, His Grace himself didn’t want an operation. He was worn out from pain, and waited for death. The doctor was about to give up and go, when the hernia burst—it poured out blood and pus. The doctor started to clean the wound, and he worked on it for three hours. At the end, we all thought His Grace would give up the ghost at any moment. He was white as a sheet, white as snow, and the doctor kept feeling his pulse, afraid he would die under his hand.
“‘Lead me out of here now,’ the doctor says, ‘and have someone come home with me. I’ll give you medicine for him, but you’ll have to give it to him with a needle, in the muscle.’
“Sister Alevtina went all the way to Murom with him, and in a day and a half she came back. She brought everything with her: the syringe, needles, penicillin. Ivan had sent her back with a chicken and some flour. He sent bread for us, but told us not to give it to Vladyka. He also said that we should return the syringe and needles to him. Maybe, the doctor said, the cold will save him. It was a wonder! God saved him, not the cold. So Sister Alevtina and I stayed with him, and we sent the others away. Then a funny thing happened: a laugh came out of him. We boiled him half a chicken, but a fox stole the other half right out of the burrow—we looked around, and it was gone! You don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“For three days and nights His Grace’s body was barely warm. And then he opened his eyes, and he said, ‘I was ready to go, but look! Here I am again with you.’ And he got better and better, and finally he got well.
“In April we took him home with us. He settled in, and he brought the Heavenly Kingdom with him, too. He held services every day. The first year, he left the house a few times—in summer, at night, to look at the sky. After that he locked himself in the side room and came out only to hold services. He used a teeny tiny table for it. And he said, ‘We don’t need an altar cloth with relics of the saints, our entire land is steeped in the blood of the righteous and penitent. Wherever one chooses to pray, it is always on top of the bones of martyrs.’
“He lived and prayed according to the monastic rules and regulations. He often prayed all night, without going to sleep. In the end his legs began to swell. He couldn’t stand up, and he had to be led by the arm. But how many people came to see him! And we shook with fear, we thought: now they’ll catch him! But he comforted us: ‘Pasha, they won’t catch me. I’m staying with you here for all eternity.’
“He lived with us for eight years. In ’64, His Grace passed on.”
Pasha crossed herself. Her face was aglow, as though she were rejoicing.
“How old was he?” Kostya asked.
“Ninety. Maybe ninety-one.”
* * *
I was already born then. Grandmother was still alive. He could have lived with us, with our family. Kostya imagined a bishop in a dark cassock, with a cross—and next to him his late grandmother Antonina Naumovna. Fathers and Children. Fathers and Sons … no, it would have been impossible.
Her story had ended. It was after one in the morning; but it was still unclear why Mother Pasha had come.
“Kostya, I wouldn’t have come if everyone weren’t saying that they’re going to demolish our street, tear down our houses. They will give everyone apartments. But what about the grave? It’s in our very home! We have to rebury him. And I tell our sisters and brothers—we’ll dig up the remains and take them to the Murom Forest, where he hid. And my sisters and brothers say: he has to be buried according to church law, like a bishop, because the times are such that you can get a piece of paper to allow it. So it doesn’t say he was in prison anymore. Wait, I wrote down the word here…” She dug in the folds of her scarves and took out a fat roll of newsprint, with a piece of paper inside. In an old person’s spidery hand, the word rehabilitation was written.
* * *
Finally, Kostya understood what she expected him to do: request the file of his great-grandfather (evidently from the KGB, he thought) and get a certificate about his rehabilitation. He promised that he would try without fail. He would try to find out and would put in a request for rehabilitation.
Pasha dug around in the newspaper roll again.
“Here is the only document that he left behind. Our people decided it should go to you. Perhaps they’ll ask you for it.” She pulled out a yellowed, tattered piece of paper: a certificate of graduation from the eparchial college in 1892 for “Derzhavin, Naum Ignatievich.”
“Mother, who are these ‘sisters and brothers’ of yours? Did he have any other relatives?” Kostya thought to ask at the end of the conversation.
“What relatives could there be? One son, a priest, was shot. The others, who renounced him, also died. The little ones died as babies. And his daughters—well, you know yourself …
“Our religious community was a special one. We didn’t acknowledge the patriarch; but after the war, His Grace told us to go pray at the common church, because there wouldn’t be any other. But he continued to be our spiritual guide, he didn’t refuse. And he served until his death. Whoever couldn’t live without him, came to him. And there are still several of those people left alive, people who revere him. These are the ones I call sisters and brothers, our people.”
The old woman slept on a folding cot, and left early in the morning, leaving behind the smell of sheepskin that Kostya found so surprisingly pleasant.