He settled into the bedroom, which he chose as his anchor point.
What mesmerized Constantine was the bedroom view.
A stunning panorama of downtown Moscow.
Directly in front of him, staring across the river, was the vivid white building that had been executed by a firing squad of tanks. Now it was reborn from the black ashes of its own burning body… But his father…
Farther out, Moscow spanned beyond infinity, or so it seemed as the city limits bettered the horizon. More than two hundred churches cast a brilliant glow all over it, the sunrays reflecting off their golden domes. Moscow, Europe’s largest and most populous city, a world in itself… And somewhere in that city was his brother, still waiting for him.
Constantine slumped on the bed. Worn out by his journey, his mind had lagged to register that he was finally there. Now the realization was full. No one could take it away from him.
Moscow.
His jaw ached with the tears he was holding back. His breathing came in gasps, forced and ragged, in and out, until his chest tightened spastically and he could no longer contain himself, sobs breaking out, fingers digging into hair, wailing, screaming, screaming…
He got off the floor and dragged himself into the bathroom. Washed his face. Took off the clothes. Showered.
The tears had done to his soul what the shower did to the body — it dulled the pain, but didn’t absolve him from it. A corkscrew still worked inside his heart. A sledgehammer was still pounding his muscles and bones. Back in the room, he wanted to crash down and dive into sleep. But he stopped himself. He looked at the flat black object. The damning suitcase. The only thing now that separated him from his brother.
He still had something important to do. Something that couldn’t wait.
Constantine shoved the Samsonite under the bed, and stormed out, locking the apartment behind him.
3
The Ukraina hotel was located perfectly. The junction of Kutuzovsky and New Arbat was perpendicular to the flow of the Moskva River. A granite staircase running from the hotel led straight to the embankment and the riverbus station. Constantine paid the fare and sat back, watching the scenery pass by.
The river made a gradual slant to the south before snaking back north in an tight hairpin turn. On the tip of this narrow headland formed by the Moskva, a group of baroque churches reared up beyond a medieval stone wall, crosses topping their onion-shaped golden cupolas.
Fortified by a wall joining twelve towers along its perimeter, the Novodevichy Convent served as an outpost that protected Moscow’s south-western borders since its founding in 1524. Ladies from royal and aristocratic families lived here in seclusion. It was the centre of Russia’s spiritual life, for it held the Hodigitria — the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, which dated back to the beginnings of the Christian religion, painted by the Holy Evangelist Luke himself.
The fortress-convent was dominated by the perfect Smolensky Cathedral and its bell tower, surrounded by four other temples and chapels, and monastic chambers. The Convent’s sacred cemetery had long since been converted into a necropolis for Soviet VIPs, and significantly extended. Here, among the 26,000 tombstones was the one that marked the grave of Lazar Kaganovich.
As well as that of Boris Yeltsin, his father’s murderer.
And the Novodevichy Convent was also the residence of Father Ilia, Metropolitan of Kolomna, his mentor. Within sight.
So near, and yet so far.
Constantine could not risk venturing to the Novodevichy directly. After the blood-drenched frenzy in Liechtenstein, those who’d attack him would be alert to his determination to bring Malinin’s documents to the Metropolitan. The Convent would be under surveillance, easily maintained throughout the day. A cozy park in front of it, with numerous benches circling a duck pond, was a natural position for watchers. Yet he had to transfer the documents to Ilia personally!
He hoped his solution would work.
Finally, the riverbus pulled to a stop next Constantine’s destination — the great Cathedral, so contrasting with the red stars of the Kremlin visible ahead.
The Cathedral of Christ the Savior stood in all its majestic splendor on the banks of the Moskva River, its image reflecting in the water, its golden dome rising towards the heavens. Russia’s sufferings transcended through the fate of the most magnificent church of the Orthodox world.
Construction of the Cathedral began after 1814 to commemorate the triumphant victory of the Russian nation over Napoleon Bonaparte. By 1883, works had been completed and the first service was held on May 23rd to worship the Savior. With the 35-metre main cupola, the temple reached 103 meters in height, being the tallest edifice in Moscow of its time.
In 1931, Stalin ordered that the Cathedral be demolished. The man who had personally detonated the explosive charges under the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was Lazar Kaganovich. It took three blasts to bring down the Cathedral completely. The area was cleared for the future Palace of the Soviets — a gargantuan abomination three times larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza, higher than the Empire State Building, with enough space to hold a mass of 21,000 communists. The scale of the project was so staggering that by the time Stalin died, only the 17-meter-tall podium had been completed atop the foundation and the basement. And that was it; the Palace never materialized.
In the nineteenth century, it had taken almost seventy years to build the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and another seven decades in the twentieth to start rebuilding it. Sentenced to death by a crazed mob, it was resurrected after the collapse of the atheistic regime.
Somehow, the new Cathedral had never set off any feeling inside Constantine, and looking at it now, he still felt hollow. Or, rather, the Cathedral felt hollow. It was artificial, not solely because of the coppery tint to the golden dome. The original Cathedral could not and would not be replaced — ever. What defines a church is not the geometry of its walls, but the spirituality of its builders. The real Cathedral had been shaped by the trial and burden of the Napoleonic war — Russia’s Patriotic War, fought in the name, and with the help, of God — and the subsequent elation of victory. A symbol of thanksgiving to the Lord for salvation at the darkest hour.
The fake Cathedral was not a symbol of anything, it was a show. Amid cries for democracy, when all things Soviet were being destroyed with Soviet fervor and insanity, the ideological void left by Communism should have been filled with religion — but instead came a cult. A monetary cult that assumed the appearance of Christianity. Ilia had once told Constantine that faith could not return to Russia, because anyone who could bring it back had become extinct.
The rest were chameleons. Overnight, communists had turned into democrats, atheists pretending as believers.
The Cathedral’s colossal structure, though if not the center of Russian Orthodox faith, had become the center of Russian Orthodox bureaucracy. In its present form, the would-be location of the flopped Palace of the Soviets wasn’t far off its Communist designation — the Cathedral also acted as the quarters of the Holy Synod, which wasn’t too dissimilar to a clerical Politburo.
Under the celestial dome, theatrical, televised services were staged on Christmas and Easter. Uncharacteristically for a place so seemingly divine, most of the everyday work was buzzing underground, in the realm of darkness.
After all, it was Stalin’s basement.
It would take decades to wipe out Stalin’s curse from everything he had touched.