The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (24 page)

they were new additions to the

family.

‘I helped him in his services.

Before me there was another young

man, but he had married so there

was a free place. Father Dmitry was

so open that I lived with him there

and in his flat in Moscow. He slept

on the bed, and I slept on a quilt on

the

floor,’

Father

Vladimir

remembered.

He glanced back at the satellite

image on the screen, fiddling around

with the mouse to zoom in a little bit

more on the church itself. At

maximum magnification, the quality

of the picture was not very good.

You could see a dome, with a long

shadow stretching north, and woods

around the church, but very few

details.

‘I can remember it so clearly. It’s

a shame you can’t see much in that

picture.’

I asked when he last went back.

‘Oh, I haven’t been since those

days,’ he said.

Well then, I asked, would he be

prepared to show me the church?

We could go together. He paused,

looking at the screen again, thought

for a while, then nodded. On

Thursday, he said. He would drive

me out there to save us the train

journey in the heat. We would visit

the scene of his conversion. It was

also the scene of Father Dmitry’s

final confrontation with the security

services, and Father Vladimir would

talk me through how it had

happened.

That Thursday, therefore, I was sat

in the front seat of Father Vladimir’s

little white Toyota. It had right-hand

drive, like a British car, because it

had been imported from Japan. Such

second-hand cars have taken over

most of the far east of Russia and are

increasingly available in Moscow

too. Since they are cheaper and more

reliable than many of the other cars

in Russia, it is not surprising that

drivers like them. For passengers,

however, they are disconcerting. I

was sitting in what should have been

the driver’s seat. Oncoming traffic

whizzed by inches from my left

knee, and I felt vulnerable without a

wheel to hold on to.

The Moscow ring road was, as

usual,

heavily

congested.

We

crawled

forward,

and

Father

Vladimir and I discussed the

Olympics, and whether the Summer

Games – next hosted by Britain – or

the Winter Games – next to be

hosted by Russia – was more

prestigious. Retail mansions and

supermarkets passed by on both

sides. When we finally turned off to

the right, they gave way to botched-

together

markets

for

building

products. When we turned off to the

left, even those vanished, giving way

to the glories of the Russian

countryside.

With

the

air-

conditioning on, I could appreciate

its beauty without having to gasp in

the heat.

‘There were fewer cars back

then. We used the suburban trains,

or the bus,’ said Father Vladimir

after a while of silence. He had

clearly been reminiscing to himself

about his first journeys to see Father

Dmitry in Grebnevo. ‘There were

fewer stray dogs too,’ he added, as

we drove past two puppies and their

mother, her teats swinging in time

with her legs as they walked along

the verge. ‘I haven’t come back

here, because he was not here.

Without him, there was no reason. I

followed him here.’

The broad horizons of Russia

opened around us: birch trees,

scrubby fields, little houses with lace

carvings around their windows, all

painted in fine blues or greens. I left

him to talk as I looked at the view.

‘The Soviet government was like

a great wall, you know. It did not let

good or bad develop. But since those

days the weeds have grown fast, the

wild capitalism has spread.’

We

entered

the

town

of

Shchelkovo – five-storey apartment

blocks,

trade

centres,

generic

restaurants, scattered trash – and

Father Vladimir decided we should

stop and see the church. Most

Russian churches have onion-shaped

domes made of silver metal or

wooden shingles. In the grandest

churches, the domes are golden or

painted in bright colours, and cluster

in clumps like tulips.

This church was, however, built

of red brick and spired like a

Protestant chapel. Father Vladimir

told me that he had once known the

priest

here.

There

was

some

connection to Father Dmitry too that

I did not catch as we passed inside.

More than a hundred women were

following the service, which was an

impressive turnout for a Thursday,

and the sweet harmonies of the choir

were unusually well sung.

A young priest held out a gold

cross for the worshippers to kiss. A

grand screen was half obscured by

scaffolding, but its ranks of gold

icons – all the bearded faces looking

to the middle, where two icons of

Jesus and Mary gazed out at us –

were arresting nonetheless. Several

of the women noticed Father

Vladimir and pushed over to him for

a blessing, cupping their hands at

waist height, casting their eyes

down.

While they gathered, I watched

the heat haze from the candles dance

before the icons. It was mesmerizing

to see the ancient faces of the saints

come alive in the shimmering air. An

elderly woman standing next to me

asked me who I was. Raisa

Ivanovna, she was called, and it

turned out she had worshipped at

Father Dmitry’s church in the 1970s.

‘It was amazing how young

people came to his church. Normally

it was just us old women. I was

already old then, like I am now.’ She

laughed. ‘I had always believed, but

I believed more after I heard him, if

you know what I mean. He was so

kind.

The

security

services

questioned me. They asked me who,

what, when, where, but I just told

them I went to him as a kind

shepherd, and that he was like a

father to me. He was a man under

surveillance, you know, and we

were amazed by how many people

came to him anyway. They did not

care. What did they have to be

scared of, what did we have to be

scared of? We were not spies. We

knew we were not spies.’

Father Vladimir had returned,

and was preceded by a middle-aged

woman: plump and handsome, with

laughter around her eyes. She shook

my

hand.

She

was

Zoya

Semyonova, she told me, and had

been another of Father Dmitry’s

spiritual children. We would, she

said, go for lunch.

We turned our backs on the

service. Another few women begged

a blessing from Father Vladimir on

our way out of the door. We walked

over the road, around the back of a

nine-storey block and into the lift.

She rang the bell next to a door –

steel with padding over it – and we

waited. She rang the bell again, until

we finally heard movement. It

swung open, to reveal another Zoya

– Zoya’s daughter – who had clearly

been asleep.

‘We have come for lunch,’ Zoya

senior announced, with the authority

of a mother, so Zoya junior stood

aside and we all trooped into the

kitchen. Zoya senior then summoned

her husband, who was also a priest

who had known Father Dmitry, and

we sat down to drink tea.

Zoya’s

husband,

Father

Alexander, arrived before Zoya

junior had finished her preparations.

He was dressed in black shirt and

trousers, but not in a robe like Father

Vladimir. He had the priest’s full

b e a r d , however, and a wide-

nostrilled nose that made him look

almost ridiculously Russian.

While Zoya junior attempted to

improvise a meal for this unexpected

kitchenful of guests, he launched

into the story of Father Dmitry.

Father Alexander, it transpired,

had been the young man who

preceded Father Vladimir as the altar

boy. In fact, it was his marriage to

Zoya senior that opened up the spot

that Father Vladimir then filled. He

had, like Ogorodnikov, experienced

those first sermons in the cemetery

church in Moscow, when it seemed

the whole city was packed into the

courtyard to be intoxicated by free

speech. He was just twenty-three

then and worked as a conductor on

the railways, a job that gave him a

lot of spare time to dedicate to the

faith.

‘He christened people at home in

those days because the K G B were

following him. He had a domestic

chapel where he held little services.

My brother had been christened as a

child, but I had not. My parents were

scared of the K G B; my mother had

been in a German concentration

camp and was scared of everything.

We were believers, though of course

we did not shout about it. We lit

candles, painted eggs, all of that,’ he

said. His eyes were dark and direct,

and did not flinch while he told his

story. I would look up from my

notebook and he would be sitting in

exactly the same way as he had been

two minutes earlier, his eyes focused

on me whether I was looking at him

or not.

When Father Dmitry was sacked,

his congregation gathered in his flat.

‘It was like the earliest Christian

times. People sat anywhere they

could: on windowsills, on the floor.

They drank tea. It was unique. They

asked questions. It was a festival of

faith. For a year the K G B were

thinking, wondering, how they

could stop this. They gave him a

church to keep him under control;

that was at Kabanovo. But of course

they didn’t control him. Oh, it was

so beautiful there.’

Zoya junior had by now, from

somewhere, produced soup, fish,

salad and bread. She too was

listening to her father as he evoked

the different world they had lived in

just forty years before.

‘People came from Moscow to

him, you could not stop this. The

villagers, these collective farmers,

saw how these beautiful ladies from

Moscow came. It was like a place of

pilgrimage. People would pray, eat,

sleep, then stop for the night. And in

the morning, they would clean, talk,

have these discussions. Then they

would put up the antenna and listen

to the B B C and the radio would

broadcast these same words he had

just spoken in Kabanovo.’

It was like a different country,

the way he described it, as if they

were living outside the Soviet

Union.

‘The local people were kind.

They brought mushrooms, eggs,

even chickens that would run around

everywhere.’ He laughed. Everyone

else chuckled too. ‘And there was a

china factory, I remember, so we

only ever drank tea from new cups.

We had a big kettle, and I was the

main operator of the kettle.’

The K G B were circling outside

the windows, the nation was sinking

into a depression, but in their little

room in Kabanovo – the one I had

seen that is now subdivided by

teddy-bear wallpaper – they had

been free. One evening the stove

was burning, and it was howling

winter outside.

‘It is so good,’ said Father

Dmitry. ‘And it is so scary. It cannot

last long being so good in such

circumstances.’

‘We knew the K GB were all

around,’ said Father Alexander, after