The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

The sexton looked at me from beneath his shaggy brows and snapped angrily, “You’re the one person they should have asked! It’s supposed to be that way.”

After the liturgy was over, Vit’ka cajoled me into going to the grove. “There’s snowdrops there, millions of them,” he said in a high voice.

The grove was outside of town, near the river. We went through the perfumed early spring air, through glistening puddles and sun-gilded mud and sang off key but at full blast the prayer which had just echoed in church: “Let my prayer arise . . .” and almost had a fight over whose voice was better.

But then in the grove, which hummed in a special spring-like manner, we discovered the quiet, pale blue baubles of snowdrops, and for some unknown reason embraced each other, and then the whole grove resounded with our shouting and laughter. What it was we shouted and why we shouted we didn’t know.

After that we walked home with little bouquets of snowdrops dreaming how good it would be to join the church choir, to don a sky-blue robe and sing, “Let my prayer arise.”

A RADIANT EASTER SERVICE

The song from the day’s liturgy was ebbing: “All human flesh is silenced as it awaits with fear and trembling.”

The evening land was growing quiet. At home the glass doors of the icon cases were being opened. I asked father: “What is that for?”

“It is a sign. It signifies that at Easter the gates of heaven are opened.”

Father and I wanted to get some sleep before the midnight service but couldn’t. We lay side by side on the bed as he told me how once as a boy he happened to celebrate Easter in Moscow.

“A Moscow Easter, my boy, is a mighty event. Who has seen it once shall remember it to his grave. The huge bell from Ivan the Great [the name of a belfry] gives its first thunderclap at midnight and it seems that heaven with all its stars falls to the earth. And the bell, my boy, was six thousand poods [216,000 lbs.], and it took twelve men to get it swinging. The first clap would be timed to the striking of the clock in the Spasskii Tower.”

Father rose up in bed and talked of Moscow in a trembling voice: “Yes . . . the Spasskii Tower clock . . . It would strike twelve and immediately a rocket

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would soar toward the heavens . . . and then the firing of the old cannons on Tainitskii Tower would commence: a hundred and one rounds.

“The ringing from Ivan the Great would spread like a sea over Moscow and the other forty-forties2 would do second part harmony, like so many rivers in spring flood. Such a powerful force would flow over the ancient city that you weren’t walking but bobbing on the waves like a small chip of wood. A mighty night it was, resembling God’s thunder. Oh, my son, words can’t describe Moscow at Easter.”

Father grew quiet and closed his eyes.

“Are you asleep?”

“No. I’m looking at Moscow.”

“Where is it?”

“Right here before my eyes. As if alive.”

“Tell me something else about Easter.”

“I also had the chance to celebrate Easter in a monastery. In its simplicity and sacred beauty it was even better than Moscow. The monastery itself was extraordinary, surrounded by a virgin forest with only the paths of various beasts, and by the monastery gates, the splashing of a small river. The trees of the taiga forest peered into it. The church was built of stout logs redolent of pitch. A great multitude of the faithful from surrounding villages would gather there for the radiant celebration. A most rare tradition was practiced there. After the service, maidens carrying candles would stream toward the river singing, “Christ has risen from the dead . . .” They would bow to the river waters, then affix the candles to wooden roundlets of wood and float them down the river one after another. A portent was anticipated: if the candle remained alight, the maiden would marry; if it went out, she’d spend her years in bitter loneliness.

“Just imagine what a wonder that was: a hundred flames floating on the water in the middle of the night, the bells joyously ringing, and the forest sighing.”

“Enough reminiscing, you two,” mother broke in, “you’d better get some rest or you’ll be standing in church like sleepyheads.”

But I couldn’t sleep. My soul was gripped by a presentiment of something inexpressibly grand resembling either Moscow or the hundred candles floating along a forest river. I got out of bed and began pacing the floor, disturbing my mother’s work in the kitchen, constantly asking whether it was time for church.

“Will you quit buzzing around like an out-of-joint spinning wheel,” she gently chastised me. “If you can’t wait, then go, but behave yourself over there.”

It was two hours till the service but the courtyard around the church was full of kids. There wasn’t a single cloud, no wind, and the night was frightening in

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Chapter Eight