Death Of A Russian Priest

EIGHT

Aleksandr was frightened when the policeman with the bad leg asked him to sit down. “I must get to the church for my grandfather’s funeral,” the boy said. “I have to help the new priest.”

“Have you had any of these cookies?”

The boy shook his head no.

“Would you like one?”

The boy shook his head yes. Rostnikov handed him a cookie, which the boy took warily.

“You can go now,” Rostnikov said.

The boy stood up and started toward the kitchen door. Then he stopped and turned toward the policeman.

“Yes?” asked Rostnikov, who had stood and was now putting on his coat, which Aleksandr had brought him.

“Have you ever eaten a hamburger at the McDonald’s?”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “I waited in line with my wife for four hours when it first opened. Now the lines are shorter because no one but Americans and Japanese can afford it. We had cheeseburgers called Big Macs and trench fries.”

“Were they good?”

“Very good,” said Rostnikov.

“Did they cost a lot of money?”

“Nine rubles,” said Rostnikov, limping toward the door. “I just thought of two questions for you.”

“Yes?” asked the boy.

“Did you love your grandfather?”

To his surprise Aleksandr found himself about to say no. No one had ever asked him this question and he had never directly thought of it. His grandfather was his grandfather, Father Merhum. His father had not encouraged him to love the priest, but people he met every day respected him as the grandson of Father Merhum.

“Yes,” Aleksandr said, and he was surprised to discover that he meant it.

“One other question. Did your grandfather ever talk about someone named Oleg?”

“You mean Oleg the baker who lives-”

“A special Oleg,” said Rostnikov.

“No,” said the boy. “I’m late.”

“Do you ever think of what you want to be, Aleksandr, when you grow up?”

“No.”

“No? My son was a soldier and now he writes plays about soldiers. He wants to be a policeman like me.”

“I want …” the boy began, “I want to be a pilot.”

“Perhaps when you are old enough to be a pilot, there will be fuel for airplanes,” said Rostnikov. “I must go to my train. You must go to your grandfather’s funeral. We’ll talk again, Aleksandr. I’ll tell you what the McDonald’s looks like. Maybe I can bring a picture of it for you.”

“You won’t tell anyone I want to be a pilot,” the boy said.

“Policemen and priests must keep secrets,” said Rostnikov, buttoning his coat. “Do you have another secret you would like me to keep?”

“There is another Oleg.”

“Another Oleg,” repeated Rostnikov.

“I heard my grandfather talk about Oleg to Sister Nina,” said the boy.

“And you are sure it was not one of the Olegs of Arkush?”

“I am sure. They … it was like he was talking about someone … I don’t know, someone dead.”

“Thank you Aleksandr,” said the policeman.

Aleksandr nodded and dashed through the door into the kitchen. As he hurried past the old woman he was suddenly afraid again, afraid that the policeman would discover that it was not from the mouth of his father or Sister Nina that he had learned of Oleg.

“Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return, until the day of the Resurrection.”

The words were sung by a choir of six in the crowded church of Arkush, where the funeral of Father Merhum was under way.

The decision had been made for Emil Karpo to attend the funeral alone. “Watch, listen, report,” Rostnikov had said. “I’ll be going back to Moscow after I talk to the boy.”

“The boy?”

“His eyes, Emil Karpo. Look at the boy’s eyes. He holds a secret and it troubles him. I’ll return in the morning.”

Karpo understood why Rostnikov could not attend the funeral. The congregation would stand during the entire two-hour service, and Rostnikov’s leg could not bear weight that long. As an outsider, he could have asked for, and would have been given, a chair. But the congregation, the people with whom he and Karpo would have to deal, would see this Moscow policeman sitting apart from them, an outsider.

It would be better for Karpo to serve as Rostnikov’s eyes and ears.

“Look for those who weep too much,” he said to Karpo, who had moved to the door of the meeting hall. “And look for those who do not weep, or pretend to weep.”

Karpo had nodded and left the hall.

Now he stood in the church among the weeping and the silent. Those in the crowd did their best to ignore the specter, which all but those closest could do. Among the mourners were several children. One of them, a girl of about four with corn-gold hair, kept turning from the coffin to look at the policeman.

The coffin contained Father Merhum in full white vestments. A cotton burial shroud was laid over the body as the choir sang of resurrection. Karpo’s eyes moved to the third level of icons on the iconostasis behind the priest. Each icon was a painting that depicted an event in the life of Christ. Karpo found the icon depicting the Resurrection.

Peotor and Aleksandr Merhum stood to the right of me coffin along with a plump woman with a pretty round face and an ancient nun whose eyes never left the coffin. In the crowd, close to the front of the congregation, stood two more of the men who had met Karpo and Rostnikov at the train station. Vadim Petrov, the burly farmer, stood on the right of me mayor, who tried not to fidget. A woman, who seemed to be the mayor’s twin and was probably his wife, kept nudging him to stand erect.

The thin, bearded priest who conducted the ritual appeared to be no more than forty. He incensed the body, sang prayers, and placed a paper and candle in the dead hands. Then, amid a great deal of weeping, Father Merhum’s family, even the boy, and the ancient nun kissed the hands and forehead of the dead man.

Peotor Merhum, however, did not weep, nor did he smile or pretend. His face was solemn, but he seemed to be thinking of a chore that had to be done somewhere far away.

When the family was finished, the congregants and visitors lined up to kiss the corpse. The little girl with corn-gold hair was held up by a woman who could have been her mother or grandmother. The girl looked at the dead priest and then at Emil Karpo as if there must be some connection between these two frightening pale figures.

When the line of mourners ended, two men stepped forward. The candle was removed from the hands of the corpse and the two men laid the coffin lid over the body and hammered in the nails. The echo of their hammers brought a new round of wailing.

When the priest who had conducted the ceremony disappeared, the old nun moved through the crowd, touching hands, kissing, and consoling. When she reached Emil Karpo, who had not moved during the entire ceremony, she said, “Policeman?” Though she was old, her skin was barely wrinkled. Her back was straight and her voice steady. Her black habit made her face look round.

“Yes,” he said.

“I am Sister Nina. Come with me.”

She turned and walked to the entrance of the church. Karpo caught up to her and walked at her side. Behind them the mourners continued to hover around the coffin.

“I watched you,” she said.

Karpo had not seen her lift her eyes from the coffin, but he did not doubt her, especially when she added, “Something touched you.”

He did not answer as they moved down the steps, through the people gathered outside the church, waiting to see the coffin. Something had happened to Karpo during the funeral. Perhaps it was the heat of the small church, but in the midst of a prayer sung by the congregation he had felt an impulse either to weep or to join the song. It had passed quickly, but it had been there and it had been like nothing he could remember.

No, wait. He had felt like this before. When?

“You are trying to remember something,” the nun said as they reached the street and headed toward the woods.

Karpo said nothing as they passed small houses and a few shops that were closed in mourning.

“You wonder how I know,” she said. “You are not used to people understanding you. It makes you uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable? No. Curious perhaps.”

“Come this way.” She stepped onto a paved pathway between two houses spaced further apart than the others they had passed. “The house is this way, just beyond those trees.”

As they moved along the path an animal scuttled through the bushes.

“I have spent a lifetime watching people during services. Almost all nuns have an intuition. You are a particularly difficult person to feel.”

Karpo followed the woman silently. They walked for about ten minutes through the woods until they came to an old house.

“Here,” she said.

He followed her through the gate.

“It was there he died in my arms,” she said, pointing to the path just inside the gate.

Karpo looked at the path and saw nothing. He followed her through the unlocked door into the house.

“I’ll make us tea. Wait here, please,” she said, and moved into the next room.

The walls of the room in which he stood were covered with icons. One depicted a man in a striped prison uniform. The man was gaunt and pale, more pale than Karpo, but similar enough to be his brother.

“You are looking at the icon of Saint Maximilian Kolbe,” the nun called from the other room. “Everyone who comes here is drawn to it. The Catholic pope canonized him four years ago.”

Her voice was closer. Karpo turned to watch her enter the room and gesture at one of the five chairs that circled the room. The chairs, all wooden, straight-backed, and armless, faced a plain wooden table in the center of the room. On it stood a brass candle holder.

The austerity of the room suited Karpo and he felt comfortable as he sat facing the nun.

“The tea will be ready soon,” she said.

“Maximilian Kolbe,” Karpo said.

“Ah,” said the nun with a smile. “One of Father Merhum’s favorites. He was a Polish Catholic priest who exchanged places with a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz during the war. The prisoner escaped, dressed as a priest, and Father Kolbe perished.”

Sister Nina smiled, and Karpo suddenly remembered when he had felt the way he did in the church. When he was a boy of ten, he had gone to his first party meeting in the gymnasium near his house. The massive banners with the red star and hammer and sickle had draped the wall behind the makeshift stage flanked by massive paintings, Lenin on the right and Stalin on the left. The room had been crowded and his father had been excited and had looked down at him with pride. People had smoked and talked until a trio of speakers had stepped forward. There was wild applause.

Then the three had spoken. With conviction and power they had spoken of the revolution, of the new world to come, of sacrifices and discipline. Emil Karpo had not understood it all, but he had been seized by it, by the cheers, the deep voices, the paintings, the banners. It had given his life meaning, a dedication to the party that had been torn from him in the past months.

“You remembered,” she said.

“I remembered,” he admitted.

A hissing came from the kitchen and the nun rose. “A moment,” she said.

Karpo willed the memory to go away, but it would not obey. He remembered vividly the worn pants of his father, and the man who stood to their right at that meeting, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his few teeth showing. The cap upon his head. He even remembered that his own palms had grown moist and that he had known that everyone in the hall felt as he did. He had been certain they were all of a single mind, a family united by communism.

The old nun returned with two cups and handed one to Karpo. The cups were brown, simple and large. The nun settled back in her chair across from the policeman.

“I wish to ask you some questions,” he said.

“What would you like to know?”

“Father Merhum, who might want to kill him? Who is Oleg?”

“Yes,” she said. “His last words to me. It was none of the Olegs who live in Arkush.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes,” she said.

“How can you be sure?”

“The Oleg from whom Father Merhum sought forgiveness is with our Lord. I can say no more.”

Karpo took one sip of the strong, hot tea and put the saucer and cup on the floor. “How long did you work with Father Merhum?”

“I have served him and our Lord for the past fifteen years,” she said. She had not drunk her tea, though she continued to look into it from time to time and to touch the rim of the cup with a tentative fingertip.

“And before you came?”

“Father Merhum’s life was inseparable from the history of our church. Have you time?”

“I have time,” he said.

“In 1917, when I was two years old,” she began as if she were a Gypsy reading the images that appeared in the steaming cup she cradled in her hands, “before your revolution, there were over a thousand monasteries and nunneries in Russia. There were also more than eighty thousand Orthodox churches. Today there are seventy-five hundred.

“By the fall of the following year special commissions began to eliminate the churches. The procedure was simple. The GPU, which was soon replaced by the NVD and later by the KGB, would arrest a priest for being a ‘counterrevolutionary,’ shoot him, or send him to Siberia. His church would be torn down or turned into government offices. Before your revolution half a million people worked in churches the same number of people who were in your Bolshevik party.

“Through the next years nuns smuggled the Eucharist to arrested priests in loaves of bread and apples. When they were caught, they, too, were imprisoned or executed.

“And the people, so many of them believed that the Church was in league with the fascists. Before the end of the war with the Germans the Church was in ruins. There were less than one hundred active churches. The few surviving priests were broken, frightened, hiding. Thousands, thousands of priests were murdered. The truth lies hidden behind the doors of Lubyanka in Moscow. It was just before the war that Father Merhum, the older Father Merhum, came to Arkush from the west with his wife and his son. They came on foot. During the war, in spite of the horrors the government had visited on our holy church, Metropolitan Sergei and the Orthodox Church rallied believers to battle the invading Nazis. And the Church donated millions of rubles to the struggle.”

Sister Nina looked up from her tea as if a trance had been broken. “There is more, much more,” she said, “but all you need to know is that there were those who never lost their faith. They never stopped giving their love to priests like Father Merhum. There are tens of millions of us. Our faith in our priests cannot be shaken. Your tea will get cold.”

Karpo reached down and picked up the cup and saucer. As he drank he watched the old woman over the rim of his cup. She smiled at him warmly. He was not accustomed to people smiling at him.

“Something amuses you?” he asked.

“Something pleases me,” she said. “A priest dies and a convert comes. A death is followed by a birth. It is God’s grace.”

Karpo stood and placed his cup and saucer on the table next to the candlestick. “You have misread me,” he said, looking down at her.

“You are a true believer,” she answered. “A true believer needs a cause or he will wither. It is known in the lives of the saints that a man is twice blessed who embraced the devil before he embraces God. I see it in your eyes. During the service for Father Merhum the Holy Mother found you.”

“Do you have any idea who killed Father Merhum?” Karpo asked evenly.

“You change the subject,” she said.

“I cannot believe in your religion simply because the revolution has failed.”

“I do not expect you to,” she said. “But it will come. It has already begun.”

“Do you have any idea who murdered Father Merhum?” he repeated.

“He was killed on the morning of the day he was to denounce those for whom the day of retribution had come,” she said.

“Party members,” said Karpo.

“Father Merhum’s list was not limited to the secular. He was not beloved by the hierarchy of the Church.” She stood and placed her cup next to Karpo’s on the table. “There are Orthodox leaders who spoke for the government, supported government claims that freedom of worship was welcome. The Church donated millions of rubles to the Soviet Peace Committee. All religious activity was regulated through the Council for Religious Affairs.”

“You believe that the Church ordered Father Merhum murdered because-”

“-he was about to denounce the Church,” she finished. “There are those who believe this. There are a few in the Church who are not true Christians, and it is they who have risen as tyrants rose.”

“You are a revolutionary,” Karpo said.

“And you are in need of a new revolution.”

“I must go,” he said.

“Perhaps we can talk again.” She walked him to the door. On the way they paused to look at the icon of the pale saint in prison clothes.

Karpo said, “When we do talk again, perhaps you can tell me who Oleg is.”

“You did not believe me?” asked Sister Nina.

“No.”

“There are things that are best left buried,” she said.

“Like the records of murdered priests inside Lubyanka?” Karpo asked.

“Father Merhum believed that such records are long dead,” she said.

“But you believe in resurrection.”

“You are clever and I am an old woman,” she said. “But my faith is strong and yours weak. Do you wish to arrest me for refusing to answer your questions?”

Karpo opened the front door. A wind was blowing through the woods and there was suddenly the smell of cold rain in the gray winter air. He stepped out while the nun held the door open. “No.”

“Good,” she said into the wind. “I’m too old for threats. We will talk again. God bless you.”

After she closed the door, Karpo stood for a moment. This had not been the afternoon he expected. He felt as if a migraine was coming, but he had none of the aura that usually accompanied it, no strange odors, no unbidden sexual impulses. He had to admit as he headed for the town that something about the nun and the service for the dead priest had shaken him. It reminded him of that day from his childhood, but it could not be what Sister Nina had said.

The murderer of Father Vasili Merhum stood back in the woods watching the tall pale policeman move slowly along the path to Arkush.

Moments ago the killer had stood next to the window of the dead priest’s house and heard Sister Nina avoid the question about Oleg. Then he had heard the policeman say that he did not believe her.

The murderer was shaken. At the moment he could see no alternatives. He wanted to see an alternative, a way out, but there didn’t appear to be one. She knew and someday she might tell the policeman or another priest or nun. He could not live with such a fear. It was not just he who would suffer, he told himself. Other lives would be ruined.

Besides, she was old. She believed in an afterlife. If there was an afterlife, he accepted his own damnation. If there was no afterlife and no damnation, then the nun had devoted her life to a lie.

The wind stirred as the policeman disappeared into the trees. The murderer let the next gust push him toward the small house.

Tears welled in his eyes as he reached the door of the house. He could take no time to think about it. If he took time, he would change his mind and Sister Nina would have an opportunity to tell the policeman.

No one locked doors in Arkush, especially a nun. He entered the house and found the old woman in the kitchen cleaning teacups. She looked over her shoulder when she heard his footsteps.

He was trembling, his hands at his sides, but he was determined to act. Sister Nina dried her hands on a small clean rag on a rod over the sink. She crossed herself and turned to face him.

“This is not the way,” she said softly.

“I can think of no other,” he cried. “God help me. I can think of no other. I have become a monster.”

“Then,” she said, “we will both suffer. I for a moment and you for eternity.”