Fenek Solère: Rising

‘Here in Tikhvin are graves of many great people.’ Ekaterina’s eyes clouded with admiration. ‘Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov.’ Then, raising her hand, ‘Over there is resting place of Dostoevsky.’ He turned to follow her long finger, an iron gateway guarding the remains of the author of Crime and Punishment. ‘Some charnel house, no?’

They joined the back of a queue shuffling slowly towards the entrance. The old, sick, and lonely hobbled staccato-style up the steps. Ekaterina asked, ‘Are you sure you want to go?’

Tom nodded, the great Cathedral doors opening, swallowing them like Jonah’s whale. Inside, they were lost in deep darkness, broken only occasionally by the shimmer of tallow candles sending a warm ripple across icons. The recitation of liturgy was accompanied by the swish of dark robes brushing stone, solemn priests circling under the dome.

He was conscious of people perpetually crossing themselves and considered following suit, but his instinctive secularism still held strong. Tom estimated there must have been two hundred people there. Old babushkas wrapped in shawls, bowing fervently, prostrated themselves before painted saints, gilded frames, pock-marked prophets, and apostles rising in a pantheon of flickering candlelight.

Then, emerging out of the scented fog, a procession of bearded priests came walking towards the chancel. From the gallery above, a choir filled dead air with a song so heart-rending you could feel the isolation of a Siberian winter. Ekaterina stood still, staring straight ahead. Tom shifted uncomfortably from left to right. His atheist inclinations were completely overwhelmed by this ritual assault on all five senses. It was hard to imagine how the Marxists could have suppressed such outpourings of faith for so many years. Only 10 percent of the Christian churches had survived the famine years of the 1920s, when the Party seized altar gold and silver plates to melt down for bullion. Synagogues were untouched. Then there was the Kamchatka martyrdom of thousands upon thousands of the faithful. In the handful of enclaves that held out, the authorities broke up prayer meetings with squads of secret police wielding steel batons and sledgehammers.

It seemed incredible that Lenin and his disciples could have upstaged Jesus. But, perhaps they had not. Maybe, they had only temporarily substituted for him in a failed attempt to pervert the Russian soul. The congregation responded in unison throughout the service. They queued to buy candles, kneeling and kissing icons. The Professor found the atmosphere positively medieval. Commanding huge respect, crones with wrinkled leather skin and curling yellow fingernails who were bent double moved between the flowing shawls of Byzantine priests. Ancient matriarchs performed some special rite known to them alone, people bowing as they passed and making room for them wherever they decided to rest their legs. At the high point of the service, the triple blessing, they assumed to lead the congregation, stumbling onto their knees, shuffling on their bellies across the stone floor, foreheads lowered to the ground as the liturgy soared to its peak.

‘Where were you baptised?’ she asked as they moved in step.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Heathen!’ she said in so low a register that no one could hear. ‘You call yourself civilised?’ He felt her fingernails dig into his palm.

‘Are you offering me salvation?’

Her voice came back in a whisper. ‘You are beyond redemption, you’d best ask the blessing of the Great Patriarch himself!’

Standing in line, he looked on as Ekaterina kissed the hand of the priest before receiving communion. Then it was his turn, and he hesitantly stepped forward. His partner glanced back with a look of encouragement. ‘Time to make good’, she said. Tom felt frail fingertips brush his forehead as he bowed before the chalice and spoon. Looking up, four-square into the blind gaze of the old man before him, he saw rather than heard the words form on cracked lips. Syllables birthed from asthmatic lungs. Straining to understand, he moved aside, his palate burning with the after-taste of vinegar, the wraith-like sensation of this man’s Hebrew God caressing him with a cadaverous hand. The whole experience left him feeling as if a shard of glass was moving in his conscience.

Walking back through the nave, only the old remained, clattering on sticks, sheltering in echoes. He asked if they had nowhere else to go. ‘After all, it was cold outside and they had heard about the trouble in the streets.’

‘No’, she said. ‘They are the raskol’niki . You say, “Old Believers”, remnants of another time and place.’ His next question was drowned out by the chant rising from a priest standing in a beam of light, black robes and runic markings shining, head thrown back, singing a hymn to an Old Testament God. You could hear the desperation in the intonation. Tom asked himself, where was this God when the serfs starved, when Stalin imprisoned people for the way they looked at him, or when the German panzers swept through the cornfields? His silence was deafening then, but he had found his voice now, now that the Wall was cracked and the whisperers were fewer in number.

As the huge doors swung open, symbolic of the resurrection in Orthodox tradition, grey light burst forth, showering down upon them, casting elongated shadows far back into the church. White doves rose in a flurry of flapping wings and snowy feathers. The cityscape wore a gossamer sheen. At such moments, the Leningrad of the 1930s re-emerged, buildings taking on an ominous aspect, dark and overwhelming like giant stone commissars watching everything you did, listening to every word you said, Comrade Yezhov’s eyes behind every window.

An hour later, they were stopped outside the Moscow station, at the halfway point down Nevsky. A policeman approached as they photographed the obelisk crowned with its golden star.

‘I need to see your papers’, he demanded.

‘Why?’ Ekaterina interceded.

‘Because it is a state of emergency, and foreigners were involved in the assassination of the President!’ said a voice from over their shoulders. Turning, they saw an older man in a green raincoat. ‘We are checking many people!’ The Professor noted the slicked back hair and cigarette dangling from his mouth. The uniformed officer reached for him, trying to get a grip on his collar. Tom stepped back, pushing his hand away. There was a brief struggle.

‘Resisting arrest, this is serious’, laughed the plainclothes man. ‘We have been arresting your type all day!’ He indicated for his younger colleague to stand aside. A small crowd of onlookers formed a horseshoe around them. Taxi drivers were honking horns. ‘Do you have your passport?’

‘No, he leaves it in a safe deposit box at the hotel!’ Ekaterina sounded exasperated.

‘Is this true?’ The older man asked, turning to Tom.

‘Yes’, he said, taking her lead.

‘What is your name? Where are you staying?’ Tom told him and he wrote down the details in a notebook. ‘And why are you here?’

‘I’m attending the conference.’

‘Agitator’, he smirked, then looked at Ekaterina. ‘Don’t you have pretty young women in your own country?’

‘I’m here for the conference!’ There was an undertow of anger in the Englishman’s tone.

‘So you say, and we have all heard about the trouble caused by this conference.’ He stepped up close to Tom and blew smoke directly into his face. There was a ripple of laughter from the gathering crowd. ‘Foreigners with big ideas bringing trouble to our city.’ Columns of people poured out of the station entrance. The interrogator’s younger accomplice tapped the handle of the gun at his hip. Ekaterina typed a number into her cell phone.