The Last Man in Russia

Postscript

It was 28 June, the anniversary of Father Dmitry’s death, and I went looking for his grave in Moscow’s Friday Cemetery.

I cut left and right, trending downhill along paths pushed through the mass of granite. Graves were piled together in vast numbers. It looked impossible that there could be room for as many people below the ground as were commemorated above it. Fifty-year-old graves were wedged up against ones from last week.

Close to the ragged wall that separated the cemetery from, by the sound of it, a major highway, a crowd of fifty or so people were already gathered. A young woman, seeing my camera, showed me through and pointed out Dudko’s grave – 24 February 1922 to 28 June 2004. His life had coincided, more or less, with that of the Soviet Union.

Here was a mixed crowd: women in headscarves, young and old; men in open-necked shirts, some bearded, most not. There was Father Mikhail Dudko, Father Alexander and Father Vladimir, all in the sweeping robes of their office. They donned pectoral crosses. Father Mikhail slipped a golden cloth around his neck, and the service began.

The light-blue fences placed around many of the graves interrupted the unity of the congregation, which was forced to cram itself in where it could. But the Orthodox chant was glorious for all that. Father Mikhail’s cracked voice led the chant in a strained falsetto; then the lovely many-level response mingled itself with the wind in the trees.

The Old Slavonic chanting had its usual lulling effect. The antiquated language made it easy to concentrate on the purity of the sound, not the meaning of the sentences, rather like going to see the opera in a language you do not speak. Father Alexander took over after a while, his nostrils were flared slightly and his bushy beard did not obscure the pure good looks that Russian soldiers have in World War Two newsreels.

‘Dear fathers, brothers and sisters. Today, we honour the memory of Father Dmitry. Today, we have made a pilgrimage to this holy place where Father Dmitry, his body is buried. His soul is always with us, because he did a lot for us, he strengthened us, he united us. Is this not true? In the hardest conditions of persecution, he supported us. And thanks be to God that we are once more together,’ the priest said, warming to his theme. ‘He was a true father, he worried about his children. That’s how he was, and this affected us also. He gathered us in, and treated our spiritual diseases. He had a particular faith, a particular spirit. We honour him with kind memories, bright memories, we pray for him.’

A mutter of prayer passed through the worshippers, whose attention was completely fixed on the priest. He passed the gold cloth to Father Vladimir, and the chant renewed itself. White incense smoke swirled among the gravestones. The crowd begged with their sweet voices for forgiveness from God in the manner that Russians have prayed for centuries, ever since the first king in long-ago Kiev adopted the faith of the Greeks.

The wind sighed in the trees, and the sunlight danced on the gravestones. The horrible heat of the day did not penetrate down here. The chanting lulled me again as it faded in and out. Today’s Moscow might be a bustling city of banks and billboards and Bentley showrooms, but this felt like the Russia that had endured for centuries before banks were even thought of.

When the ceremony was over, a small group of women came over to quiz me gently on who I was and what I was doing. I explained my interest in Father Dmitry, and my concern over the falling population, and they began to tell me about how they had met him and what he meant for them and how much he had cared about the dying Russian nation.

‘When I first went to his house, I was amazed, just by what it looked like at first. There was this terrible mess, but that was just on the surface. His whole family, well, they paid no attention to these domestic things. I completely did not understand. If you had something, you had it; if not, not; for me it was really strange. They lived in a sort of non-material way. That was the first thing,’ one woman called Ksenia told me.

A second woman chipped in: ‘When you entered their family, you entered a different world.’

Ksenia again: ‘That’s where it all started.’

And the second woman interrupted: ‘It was like the earth opened.’

Ksenia confirmed that: ‘Yes, it opened, and I began to, I’m talking about myself, I began to grow. There were all these discussions, that went deeper, deeper, deeper.’

Another woman, with a drawn middle-aged face, a few strands of hair falling out of her headscarf, stepped towards me. It was not easy to approach because of the narrow paths between the graves, but she was determined. She wanted, she said, to tell me her story.

She had been married, she said, only a short time when her husband began to drink. He drank vodka every day, and came home staggering and violent. All her attempts to stop him had come to nothing, and her life was horrible. That was when she met Father Dmitry.

‘I saw him, and, how to say, he was like, he shone, he glowed with light, you could shut your eyes and see him; this was love, he glowed with love. He was white-haired, his hair was all like this,’ she said, waving her hands around above her head with a broad smile. She had met him, she said, in the late 1980s when Father Dmitry was holding prayer meetings at which he made lists of the people present and made them promise not to drink. It was the dam he erected against the vodka engulfing the country and the misery engulfing himself.

‘I want to tell you what happened with me,’ she said. ‘So listen. When I went to him, I wrote down my question, and he used to answer all the questions that we wrote down. I used to go there, and it became winter, and it was dark and my son said he could not let me go alone, and would come with me to escort me. I said to him that he needed to relax, that he was always working, that he came home late, that he could not come, but he said he wanted to come with me. And he started to come too, and I said to the priest: “I don’t drink but my husband drinks and I have come for him. I want you to write him down on your list.”’

Father Dmitry refused, saying that her husband had to come himself to pledge sobriety. She went home and begged and begged her husband, but he refused and refused.

‘Until one beautiful day I asked him and he agreed. This was like a miracle. We get to the train station, he doesn’t turn back. We get to the bus stop, he doesn’t turn back. He gets to the library and he doesn’t turn back,’ she said, her eyes gleaming.

They had sat at the back of the library where Father Dmitry held his meetings, and she had gripped her husband’s hand. He was distrustful of the gathering, as if it was some kind of cult.

‘He swore at everyone, using all these swear words. Do you know these words in Russian? Yes? Well, he was using them all. The believers understood it was not him speaking, that evil was speaking. He swore, he was swearing, and he said he could not stand it. He said that he had had it up to here. And I’m being quiet, and not saying anything – let him swear.’

Father Dmitry came up to her husband and looked at him: ‘I will give you five years. Five years. Five years not to drink.’

Her husband said: ‘I can’t survive.’

‘You will survive.’

‘I won’t survive.’

‘You will survive.’

‘Father,’ he said, ‘I will drink.’

‘No, you won’t.’

‘I have drunk for twenty years. What have I not drunk? Anything that burns I’ve drunk. I will drink.’

‘No, you won’t.’

She laughed a beautiful musical laugh, and her face had dropped a decade or more. She looked young: ‘The priest was like this, and my husband was like that.’

Two times Father Dmitry said with such certainty: ‘No, you won’t.’

They went home, and her husband calmed down and no more was said about it.

‘Then the next day my husband left to go to work, and to think that my husband after twenty years could come home from work sober. What a thought. The time comes. It’s four, five, and I’m waiting, and everything’s shaking inside, could it be possible? I wasn’t worried that he would drink, of course he would drink, he always drank, but that he would go against God. This was very important to me, it was like a sin. I was thinking about how I had forced him to commit a sin. Five o’clock, six o’clock, seven o’clock. And he appears,’ she paused for dramatic effect, loving her story.

‘And I look at him. And he’s sober. Sober!’

Her husband had told her an incredible story: ‘The bus broke down, we stopped on a bridge, the lads ran off and bought some wine, and said, “Seryoga, pour it out,” and I said, “I do not drink.” And they said, “What?” And I said, “I do not drink. I went to a priest, and the priest gave me five years of no drinking.” They gave me a glass, but I said no.’

The woman laughed with joy.

‘He said no. No! And he’s been like this ever since. Ever since. It was a miracle. It is a miracle. A miracle. Father Dmitry saved him. He wanted to save the whole Russian people like that, one at a time. That was what I wanted to say. God bless you.’