VII. The Labors of Obedience "in the Name." The Ustav of Elder Nazarius

On a high rock of granite - thirty sazhens - a white building of workshops and a water supply. In the lower tier there is a black mouth of the smithy. Enter. It is the nun boy who throws a drive belt over the wheel, and the huge machine bellows begins to throw whirlwinds of blinding sparks from the furnace. Fur sighs heavily, sniffles and squelches. It is hot for us to stand at the threshold. The blacksmith-monk greets us with a silent bow gloomily. His sinewy hands strike the white-hot strip with a heavy hammer, and behind each dry blow you can hear a wet wheeze. It's in his chest. Above it is the golden glow of sparks. Even on him, even in his gray beard, sparks flash and go out. His graying curls are caught by a strap, his hairy chest is open, black streams of sweat on it. This is the "owner" of the smithy, Fr. Luke. He is, perhaps, sixty years old, and he works from morning to evening with iron, fire and hammer - he works in obedience in the name of God, for the glory of Balaam. And we are afraid to stand at the threshold. Here is the foundry. A sooty monk fiddles with a smoke light bulb, molds a casting in the black earth. "We don't need overseers," says the monk guide, "we work for God, and you can't deceive God." We are zealous for the name of God.Amazed, I think: there is no "struggle", no "labor and capital", no "surplus value", only "value" - in the name of God. In the name of - what a power it is! There - in the name of... what? And these, "dark", all those issues were resolved, one - "in the name".We inspect the sawmill, the bathhouse. On the second tier - locksmith, turning, drilling, grinding, drying... - and everywhere the work is in full swing, everywhere the machines are screeching. And everywhere they are, the "dark ones": novices, monks, laborers.- God help me! - says the monk who sees us off, entering the new department of the workshops. Only the host monk will bow silently. Pilgrims are also standing at the machines: they have come "for God's sake," according to a vow, to work for the monastery. Who are they? St. Petersburg workers, "all excellent masters-specialists". I can't believe my eyes: St. Petersburg workers... Wizard?! Why, everyone was talking t... At meetings at the university, that the Petrograd workers are the most bulwark in the political struggle for...? And here they are - "in the name", in the name of God. I see faces, good, bright, Russian, dear, human faces, kind, thoughtful faces. No anger, no irritation, no "struggle".- And they work for a long time?- Yes, different things happen... It happens that it stays for a month, and then... the soul will embrace him, the blissful will enter him, he will like the holy work, he will remain for half a year. And it happens that there will be completely left, the chosen ones who are called. And this is like the Lord. Man is different from man. One has more souls in the flesh, and he will subdue the flesh. But the monks-owners are all the first masters from the St. Petersburg factories, the brainiest, connoisseurs. And how do they work... to the point of blood sweat. Because - in the name of God." Why should we be lazy? we are for God's sake, we have done it of our own free will!" - I often heard on Valaam. And there... We look at the water supply, descend into the infinite depths of the earth. The water rises by the pump by thirty fathoms. From the Monastyrsky Strait you can see a granite tall rock. The monks broke through it with gunpowder, arranged a water supply in it. Those same Valaam monks, more peasants, who, at the all-night vigil in the dark corners of the cathedral, bowing down to the stone slabs, humbly sort out the rosary, say the Jesus Prayer.- One hundred and forty-two steps...- whispers the nun. The walls are oozing in drops. In the floor there is a "window" covered with a bar.- Would you like to look in, the Ladoga water is splashing... Don't be afraid, it's not deep, it's only four fathoms... This well is dug in granite. A pipe leads water from the lake to two fathoms from the shore... I kneel, bend down, look into the depths of the well: black depth, water.The creator of this "miracle" of Valaam, a sign of the spiritual power of the Valaam monks, was the abbot Damascene. The monks say that one engineer asked for ten thousand rubles for the plan and management of the structure. Hegumen Damascene answered: "Where can we, poor people, throw such millions!" - and rejected the engineer's plan. The wise and active elder decided to do it in an economic way and found an "engineer" at his place - Hieromonk Fr. Jonathan. Once he worked at a St. Petersburg plant, he understood mechanical work. He created the plan and supervised the work. The whole of Valaam worked - "zealous for the Lord". And now, after four years of bloody labors, a miracle appeared - for Valaam, undoubtedly, a miracle! - which shocked the monks so much that even when we visited Valaam - 30 years after the construction - the monks spoke with admiration about this "miracle" and drew the attention of visitors to it. And what happened? Always and in everything severe, strict with themselves, so hard-working, business-like, wise, they still rejoiced at "our water supply", rejoiced not as a sign of their strength, but as children of an intricate toy. They do not consider it a podvig at all, they do not attribute it to their "stupidity", they almost do not talk about how the work went, they have even forgotten the name of the builder and attribute it to the person under whose direction they lived in the monastery: - Under the hegumen Damascene, it was built. In the Valaam books about it, it is written: "In 1860, Fr. Damascene began, and at the age of 4 he completed a very important and remarkable structure for the monastery." That's all. There are 142 steps in the chamber of the water tunnel! - An inscription is carved on the stone: "The water was raised in 1863 summer, December on the 12th day". You find exactly the same "deaf" inscriptions everywhere on the silent Valaam. Here is a wonderful dirt road to the forest thicket, strong - "made of cartilage". How much work was put into leading her through the swamps, through the "luda", in the slums. It is said sparingly about this: "this road of 1845 was built." "This bridge was built in 1848." And not a word about whom. Here the works are nameless, "deaf", not for glory, but "in the name". And if "in the name", what words can there be about difficulties, about faces, about "superstition"! And what meaningfulness in meager speech, what consciousness in actions, what penetration in service in the name! And through this meaningfulness, naivety-childishness and... joy that all this, which only we see here, is theirs, brotherly, given to them by the Lord. For example, he was completely transformed, revived when he brought us to the third floor, where there were large reservoirs, and pointed to a string: "And here is a kind of living eye-watch!" Our water meter is here... As soon as the water reaches the edges, the weight will press the bell, and the alarm will go off. I didn't tell him that it had been in Kraevich's physics for a long time: it was a pity to disappoint the simpleton. It is possible that they invented it themselves, without our Kraevich. Then brother Artemy showed us a clothes dryer - "dry steam", then - a hydraulic press for squeezing clothes, a crane that lifts dirty laundry from the bath to the laundry. And then I remembered the words of the merchant on the steamer: "They have a car for everything"! On the farm, in the barnyard, on the wharf, in the workshops - all the machines and the "adaptation". Drive belts rustled everywhere around us, machines worked, drills squealed. And I thought they were stagnant people, monks. And these monks - all simpletons peasants - knew immeasurably more than I, a student, in "earthly affairs". And in the "unearthly"...- what can I say. They comprehended in their hearts the great poetry of prayer. They knew the canons, akathists, irmoses, stichera, some - I did not understand what they were - "kontakions", "voices", "antiphons", "katavasias"... They somehow reached the mystery of uniting in their souls, merging in themselves inseparably two different worlds - the earthly and the heavenly, and this "heavenly" became as close to them, as almost their own, as appearances. At that time I still vaguely felt that they were immeasurably richer than I was spiritually, in spite of my "pamphlets" and "philosophies." And a playful thought came - to tempt the boy. It was on a deserted staircase of the water supply. I took out my purse and took out a brand new two-hryvnia one. Brother Artemy shook his head in embarrassment: "No, sir... we don't take money.- Well, for bagels for you, drink with tea... - No, I can't accept it. Read our charter.I felt ashamed. But I tried to persuade. I wanted to thank the dear boy for the zeal with which he showed the "glory of the monastery." All the same, if you break the charter, you will succumb to temptation... Anyway, there is nothing to buy with them here. Only you will smear your soul. And the boy said this; told me, a student. And so it was with everyone to whom I offered payment for services: "If such a desire of yours is good, put it in the monastery mug, for the needs of the holy monastery... will go from your mite to the poor, many of them come to us." "Just once," said one brother, who had also refused the "gold," said to me, "If you wish to show me your love, send me a sacred book. Bishop Feofan or Brianchaninov... On the wall of the hotel, at the entrance, hangs behind glass the monastic rule, obligatory for pilgrims and monks. According to this rule, without the blessing of the abbot, neither a pilgrim to a monk, nor a monk to a pilgrim, nor even pilgrims can enter one another. But the man is weak, and therefore supervision has been established over him.Entering the hotel, you will notice the stern face of the monk. This is a watchman. He is either standing on the porch or pacing along the corridor. In his pocket he has a book where he takes his notes. For example: "Brother Tikhon went into cell No28, I stayed there for 10 minutes." This is the "eye" of the monastery, for the suppression of violations. The monks say: "For the weak in spirit, for the beginners and those who are not strong in freedom."Some monk who has not yet strengthened learns, for example, that his relatives have arrived with a steamer that has arrived from St. Petersburg. What a temptation for the "immature"! The nun would go to the abbot for a blessing, and he was away on business. He went to the Father Treasurer," and the Father Treasurer went on business. And I want to see you. So the nuns ran to the hotel and went to the cell. And on the heels of the "eye" is the observer: "why"? - "To see my relatives." - "With a blessing?" and he turned back and even reported to the rector. And the abbot will announce to the disobedient "bowers" or something else, stricter. At that time, forty-two years ago, on old Valaam, the order introduced by the stern "master" of Valaam, Fr. Damascene, was strong, the rule of Elder Nazarius was strictly observed. Sin is strong. The "world" with its "charms" tries to break through or crawl into the quiet Valaam, sheltered from sin, to confuse the already restless monastic soul. This sin penetrates with every steamer in the bags and bundles of pilgrims. As soon as the steamer's whistle is heard in the strait, the "sentinels" descend from the mountain, and a very important obedience rests on them: to make sure that the steamer does not bring ashore a "plagued" drunken Petersburger, as it used to be, and that the pilgrims who arrived earlier do not slip onto the steamer and do not buy something "malicious." Monks and novices, according to the rule of Valaam, do not have access to the pier, except for those appointed for inspection and singers. If any of the monks is free from obedience, which very rarely happens, he only looks from a high cliff, from a cast-iron grate, at the pier busy by a steamer, at the herald of another world. Parcels, letters, and "gifts" are entered in a special book, forwarded to the abbot, and when he announces, an announcement is posted to which of the brethren the parcels or letters have been sent. Under Damascene, this was strict. On our visit, it was easier: only the control of the abbot.- And with the late Father Damascene... oh, you used to cry with a parcel ... - they told me on Valaam. "The abbot will burn you out with his word, that he will burn your heart with a red-hot iron, that's how it was." He himself may have endured so many temptations, so he was zealous for piety. I knew by experience how sin is introduced. Yes, I will tell you one case. A man from St. Petersburg came to us as a novice. Well, I spent the winter - nothing. Only, as I remember now, the first steamer came to us on May 12. It is impossible to reach us earlier, the ice is carrying on the lake. And the sister of that novice, brother Vasily, came with this steamer, she was a merchant's wife. My sister came and brought a basket of gifts: well, caviar, pastilles, fish, jam, raisins - all in a lean, dignified way. Brother Vasily and see her in the church. Well, she whispered to him in passing that she had brought you a gift. After Mass, Brother Vasily turned to the abbot for a blessing: "So and so... A sister has arrived, bless, father, to accept a gift." And Father Damascene was a clairvoyant, he used to do nothing. Now - the treasurer. "Father Treasurer, go," he said, "find out what kind of sister has come to Brother Vasily, what kind of gift she has brought him. Call her here to us with a gift for her." Well, a beautiful sister came, of the merchant class, she brought such a basket with her, she could hardly drag it. The abbot looked into the basket... Yes, he said, sadly and heartfeltly: "And how much money you, my mother, have you wasted... And for what! The generals can only eat such food - to delight mammon... And where are we, sinners... we would like to sip the Lenten sip - and then glory to Thee, O Lord." She was unaccustomed to making excuses: "From our prosperity, father... to please my brother... he is accustomed to such a thing..." - "Brother Vasilichko! - says the abbot, and so pitifully: - Well, why is it bad for you here? Are you hungry, or what, are you with us? eat, or what, you have nothing to eat with us?.." He at his feet, with all diligence. "Forgive me, father... I brought it myself, I didn't ask..." "Brother Vasilichko! The abbot said again, and everything was pitiful, "I, a sinner, eat caviar, or something..." I enjoy the pastille, huh? And you are not ashamed, brother Vasilichko... you have offended our monastery..." Well, my sister kept asking me to accept the gift, for the glory of God. The abbot looked at her affectionately. "We don't need your gift, mother... And why do we need such luxuries... After all, to the temptation! Brother Vasilichko will eat caviar, and when his brothers and fathers see him, they will desire it themselves, and if they did not ask for it before, they will ask for caviar and pastilles to be brought to them too..." So he did not bless me to accept the gift.- Well, and now they are inspecting your parcels?- How can they not inspect it? You never know what they will stuff into the parcel. How does the devil introduce his flattery into the world? Everything strives to make everything sewn and covered... And you unfold it with a blessing, think it over, and his dirty trick will come out. For example, we had such a case... A tabash book comes to us... And this one, a tabashnaya one. They sent a holy book to one brother, the teachings of John Chrysostom... Well, now to the abbot, the abbot was away. He, having been blessed, began to unwrap it. He turned it around, and there... The tobacco is full! Yes, so cunningly, a dozen pages ... and imperceptibly at all, so subtly, scattered, in order to conceal sin. Well... He ordered to burn it in the fiery furnace. And in the sklyanitsy they send obscene things... There are also various pilgrims, unless you know him. Some come not to pray, but to corrupt and seduce..., and then laugh at how he has bypassed the monks... It is not he, of course, but through him the unclean one penetrates, to lead him astray. You also need to know this, these temptations. This is how he takes up arms against a holy cause... monks can only feel this. You, worldly, why should he seduce, you are in his pocket, and here he strives to work, here the fortress stands across his path, so he tries to overcome. You ask experienced elders, and they will tell you how hardened he becomes when he sees that a person has risen above his passions, that the old flesh is overpowered, and that the pure spirit is manifested in him. This is where the most terrible struggle lies, even to the point of appearance. All these great ascetics bear witness, especially the most highly pure. And why did you start smiling like that, you don't believe it..? Ah, these educated unbelievers... Why, it's been so many centuries. Read my father's books, my father's... all the Holy Fathers... Then I was smiling. Then I felt the world, real, this world, and nothing more. And he explained a lot - "physiology". Now... Now science itself has become more modest, more cautious: "other worlds" are opening up to it: the known world is small for it, it is looking for others. Without naming - he is looking for it.

VIII. On a steamer to the sketes. Response from a distance of years. In the Nikon Bay

In the vestibule of the hotel, the monk is selling tickets for the monastery steamer: they are going to go to the chapel of St. Andrew the First-Called, which is on the mountain near the Nikonov Bay, to serve a prayer service. Sometimes, you go into the forests, what a pristine nature! Squirrels here are not afraid of humans, and birds are not afraid. What about squirrels! A large animal is not afraid either. Do you hear - it crackles more often. You stand and wait. And then he came out on the road... deer? Deer. With branchy horns. And he looks, rooted to the ground, with a moist, calm eye - without surprise, without fear. "Ah, it's you, man... I know you..." - as if he speaks in silence, with a look. And - never mind, he will cross the road. Somehow such an unexpected meeting, as if unearthly, is frightening. And they vaguely remember, as if: somewhere... Did this happen..? You pass - and a new meeting, also quite unexpected: a chapel. Wilderness, impassable wilds, and here, in the twilight of the crease, in the chapel, there is the Mother of God, a lamp, wax, a crust of bread left as a gift to some good forest animal: a gift from God. You will be amazed: a lamp glows in the wilds! shines not only to the Face, but to these wilds, to the wilderness of the forest, to the pure nature of God. "Man sanctifies the wilds..." - I remember that thoughts wandered in me, bright thoughts, born of this Valaam light. They drowned, winged - "physiology". The path to the chapel at Nikonov Bay goes through straits, past steep cliffs covered with lichen and moss, thickets of lingonberries and blueberries - whole carpets on the stones, scarlet, burgundy, black, in glossy matte. The straits wind between the rocks, and suddenly Ladoga will open, the free surface of the lake, the sea. On the rocks there are forests, forests. A mossy spruce has fallen, it has been torn up by the winds, hanging high, clinging to its roots, and is about to fall. Or - suddenly the whole fabulous, enchanted island will emerge from behind a rocky cape. On it there is juicy, tender green grass, untrodden by anyone, drowsy. Golden dragonflies on it, asleep in flight. Dream-slumber. And quiet, light green birches, white-white, drowsy. Not ordinary birches, but holy ones - they are so pure, virgin, childlike and tender. And you see - mushrooms under them! And the mushrooms are fabulous, drowsy. And how many times, it happened, a desire arose in my heart: "It would be nice to stay here." Such things happen only in dreams: fabulous, drowsy - unearthly. Or - thickets of reeds, calm, still water, water lilies, yellow, white, - depth. All water has run out, there is no road, there is a high wall of granite ahead. How will our steamer pass? Under the wall, in the sun, there is a red carpet of lingonberries: juicy, large, unearthly. You stretch out your hand - it's so close, now overboard, the steamer scratches the shore...- and suddenly the wall moves away, and again the bay is wide, and in the depths of it, between the rocks, the freedom of Ladoga is blue. Nikolai" is no more than a good boat: how will we sit down? So many people are coming. From the window of our cell I see Fr. Nicholas, who had been sent to correct him, heading towards the pier. His obedience is to travel with pilgrims to the sketes and serve molebens. The chorister nuns follow him in a dignified manner. It's time for us to do the same. Now I understand that the steamer will pull the boats. We are invited to "honor", we will go on the steamer itself, in a cabin: in case of bad weather. "And don't rely on our weather, the lake weather is coming right away," says the novice with a pole to fight in the straits. Low rain clouds advanced, the forests on the rocks darkened, covered up. Should I go? On Valaam, the weather is not taken into account: and bad weather is from the Lord, accept it. The lake will rage - let it rage. A small steamer is wrapped in smoke, hissing. The novice driver, a stocky fellow, sits on the firewood, waiting for the pilgrims to get into the boats. - they ask him. "And your old steamboat, won't it break the boiler?" - the driver answers with amazement, as if he had never heard that the boilers were bursting. cauldron, I asked, that one... "Is it possible?" What are you talking about, brother...? "Why not?" - asks, apparently knowledgeable, perhaps also a "mechanic", from St. Petersburg. How can it be... Tear it apart! And then how many people are ruined.. "That's what I'm talking about..." Is it possible? We have such a thing that they don't even know how to refuel the car, but nothing... They say that with this driver you can even go to the oceans, he knows the matter. There's a steamer over there, a little bigger, the Valaam... so he took "Peter" with him to St. Petersburg all over Ladoga, and then nothing, he brought it. The "Peter" broke the propeller, ran into a stone. Well, "Valaamushka" led him around the lake, it was funny to look at: he was a small man, and what a huge entot! But bad never happens here. The pilgrims are crammed into two large boats. The steamer whistles like a child, we set sail with a prayer: "By the wave of the sea... hidden..." At the stern of the boats, strong novices with poles began to rule. Fr. Nicholas sat in the cabin, sad. Three St. Petersburg girls in headscarves immediately settled down with us. The red-haired novice-chorister, apparently, tried to show his art in front of the girls: he sang with expression and sighs. The girls looked at him and whispered something. They began to be capriciously indignant: and everyone was singing something spiritual... We have romances for you, only spiritual ones! - I hear, not without surprise, the gallant conversation of the novice, who thereby - by talking to the girls - violated all the rules of the Valaam rule. - At large here, - sighs Fr. Nicholas, - they are not ashamed of me. -Nature... young years, you can't hold your spirit.The boys-singers run away to the deck, and from there you can hear their fuss.- A trumpet.. Take the pipe.. - shouts the helmsman. We drive up to the stone arch of the Vladimir Bridge. This bridge passes the road to the Skete of All Saints. The funnel is removed, and the steamer crawls under the bridge, wrapping us in smoke. We sing "It is worthy". Two nuns run into the cabin. One puts on Fr. Nicholas's hat, the other approaches him humbly and says: "Bless, father." A nun in a hat is fervently blessing. Fr. Nicholas smiles meekly at them, patting their flushed faces. "Won't you sing our Valaam rhyme with us, madams?" - gallantly, like a St. Petersburg clerk, the red-haired singer exclaims and thrusts books with a "rhyme" to the girls. The redhead assumes a pose like a tenor in the theater, and, putting his hand picturesquely behind the leather belt of his faded cassock, begins a "rhyme" with a basque. The "Watchman's Eye" is far away, and Fr. Nicholas... who is afraid of him!" Rhyme" is touching and long. It was composed by a young monk, the rassophore monk Fr. Peter, who was saving himself in the skete of Alexander Svirsky, "on the mountain." This skete is distant, deaf, ascetic. Fr. Peter is preparing to receive the full rank of angels there. Maybe he will become a schema-monk. The verse expresses the monk's delight before the worthless beauty of the monastery. Other stanzas have been preserved in my memory. Here, I remember:Oh, the wondrous island of Valaam!The hand of divine fateHas erected here the abode of paradise,The abode of the highest purity.God's chosen abode,The wonderful island of Valaam!Your inhabitant dared to sing you:Accept his insignificant gift!I do not know how to sing how I will be able to singYour valleys and fields,Your forests, your bays,Your sacred places.I do not have enough strength to count,Your holy ascetics,But their overgrown gravesCan easily replenish the verse.Maidens easily master with a simple tune and sing with enthusiasm. The red-haired acolyte apparently forgets where he is. He famously straightens his skufia, ruffles his lush hair so that it falls on his back wavy, and very noticeably preens himself. The maidens shout to him: "Sing more gently, more tenderly!" "With our pleasure!" exclaims the red-haired man.I dare not speak of you:!You are so beautiful, so good!I do not know how to compose a song:In front of you she is pale.Of course, the monk-poet understands by her a monastery, but the red-haired one, it seems to me, means something quite different. He looks at the girls, and his hand is pressed to his heart. Girls also understand this: they suddenly squirt into their palms. Fr. Nicholas sighs: "Ah, youth, youth..."Did I think then, listening to this poem and singing along with my young wife, that by the end of my life, our life, this stormy day would resonate in my soul - what a wonderful day! - and you will remember everything vividly - the deep silence of the forest, sowing rain, the Easter trees on the shallows, Fr. Nicholas, who is no longer in the world, and - this red-haired, playful novice! All my life this was kept in me, firmly forgotten, and now the time has come, and everything has risen untouched, bright, to the point of dazzlingness. And what is connected with it, another, most important.- Where do you want to...? - a thin-cheeked monk asks me, with such a pleasant face, humble. He sat on the deck in the rain and looked at the forests and waters sadly and attentively. I told you where it came from. He continued humbly: "And I will soon have to see Moscow. The day after tomorrow I'm going there, and from there to Eastern Siberia.- Why so far... Will you go to another monastery?- Such obedience is given to us. My brother and I," he called the other novice, who was sitting there in silence, "have been appointed, and we accept this obedience in our souls..." to Vladivostok. A monastery is opening there.- And how long have you been on Valaam?- About fifteen years. It's hard to part, everything is native here. So now I go to the sketes, saying goodbye. Oh, it's good with us, the century would not have gone... He looked sadly at the walls of gray rocks, at the rare fir trees in the cracks of the cliffs. Siberia... Everything there is someone else's. And here we have brotherhood. I'm a peasant, it's hard for peasants... And here we have brotherhood... A meeting, of which there are many on the way. Did I think that this meeting would resonate in me, almost half a century later, at the end of my life, so that I would understand something, the most important...? Did he, who was departing into an unknown distance, think that he was destined to fulfill great things, as well as to his silent companion, to fill his whole life with light, and, perhaps, and so it happened, to fill and sanctify many lives? that our paths will one day cross again, spiritually meet? And then it happened... Autumn, 1935. Forty years had passed since that steamboat trip. I received a letter. The letter was not addressed to me, but to my brother, with a request to give me some information, perhaps not without interest to me. And it is true: the information turned out to be not only interesting, but - for me - great and invigorating significance.After a trip to Valaam, I wrote my first book, a young, naïve, a little, perhaps, and fervent - after all, he was a student! - detained by censorship - I had to remove more than 30 pages from the already printed book and replace them, with corrections - I wrote a book - "On the Rocks of Valaam". A long time ago, it spread all over Russia. Even before the war, I could not find a single copy even at second-hand booksellers. I sent one book to Valaam to Hegumen Gabriel, who once received us in his chambers. The book also described a trip to the chapel of St. Andrew the First-Called, the liveliness of the red-haired singer and a meeting with monks who had accepted obedience in distant Siberia. Someone who knew Valaam well, who had read my book, sent me a letter, thinking that it would be of interest to me to know the fate of the persons I have described. And so! Long forgotten - forty years have passed since then! - turned out to be alive to this day. Their life is truly amazing. This is what my well-wisher writes." As I have already informed you earlier about the red-haired novice George, whom I.S. Shmelev so inimitably presented in his work, and who later settled down to such an extent that he accepted monasticism, priesthood and even the great schema, and now in great humility performs his great schematic feat; so I would like to inform you about the two monks mentioned by I.S., who, at the same time as the red-haired novice, made their last trip to the sketes of their native monastery, since the next day these two monks were to part forever with their native Valaam. On this memorable trip, I.S. talked with them and kindly mentioned them in his book. These two monks - Sergius and Herman - the very next day after their meeting with I.S. set off for the Far East for holy obedience. There they founded the New Valaam, a holy monastery, under the name of the "Ussuri Holy Trinity Nicholas Monastery". These two Valaam monks, Sergius and German, so ideally arranged the organization of the new monastery that, after its creation, this monastery was famous not only in Siberia, but even in Russia for its exemplary monastic discipline, the strictness of its rule and its beneficial influence on everything around. In some respects, this monastery even surpassed its spiritual mother - Old Valaam. Namely, the equipment of its own printing house, which supplied not only the entire Ussuri region and Siberia with printed works, but even shared it with Old Valaam.The above-mentioned monks Sergius and German are still alive, they are in Russia, in the Rostov region.The eldest of them, Fr. Hegumen Sergius, won such respect for himself by the holiness of his ascetic life that he was honored by Met. Sergius offered the rank of bishop, but Fr. Sergius begged Vladyka, in his deepest humility, to leave him in his present rank.The Ussuri monastery did not escape the common suffering fate: the Bolsheviks dispersed its entire brotherhood, burned down the monastery's large book and icon warehouse, burned down the wooden churches, and set up their notorious "state farm" in the brethren buildings. The most reverend Fr. Hegumen Sergius, who in the course of a quarter of a century created an ideal monastic monastery with tireless, superhuman labors, saw for himself all its destruction and all the satanic mockery of its shrines... Now, weeping with bitter tears over the general collapse and ruin of his offspring, he awaits death from the Lord, as a longed-for consolation from all his life's struggle. In the monastery library there is a portrait of these two monks - Sergius and Herman."These lines revealed a lot to me. What am I saying - a lot! A great deal was revealed to me, which the author of that letter could not have imagined. They discovered the mystery of human fate, the unfathomable spiritual depth and power of the human personality. The veil of the past, almost half a century, was opened, and what did I see! He saw life in creation and life in creation. During these forty years, by unknown miraculous ways, a "spiritual man" was created, grew from an ordinary young man in a novice cassock into a great schema-ascetic and a humble servant of the Lord. His feats are unknown, and if we cannot yet take into account what he gave to these little ones who came to Valaam for spiritual bread, his personal feat is clear to us: spiritual perfection - in the name of the Lord. Over these decades, day after day, they carried out great obedience, performed a lofty feat of spiritual enlightenment, fulfilled the commandment of Christ: "Go ye therefore and teach all nations..." - "Take My yoke upon you..." Russian peasant boys, they went from Valaam to a distant and wild land and carried there the Light of Christ. How many hardships and deprivations they endured, how much they gave their lives to the Light, they became historical Russian ascetics, successors of the work of the Russian hierarchs. And in these feats and sufferings they preserved the sacred, and this sacred in them, visible to the people, amidst the abomination of spiritual desolation, what an example and restraint for those around them, encouragement and hope for those who hunger and thirst for Truth. This is how Russia is and will be alive. Old Valaam raised and sent such people into the world.A lot of things were revealed to me, great things. And one more important thing. Human destinies are closed; In the phenomena of life, accidental and insignificant, there are sometimes great contents: be careful in your assessments; in difficult times of trials, do not lose heart, believe in the soul of man: it is the Lord's vessel. Four decades! How much you have seen, received joy - and suffering too - and lived for the most part for yourself. And these, the three "accidental strangers"... Their life is all in podvigs: in podvigs of spiritual growth, service to "these little ones"... to the point of complete rejection of oneself. And also, joyful, invigorating: this is dear, from your people.We are in the deep Nikon Bay; its depth, they say, is up to forty fathoms. On the corner cliff there is a white lighthouse. When there is a storm on the lake, the lantern calls the sailors to a calm bay. A wooden pier, a house for fishermen. Silence and wilderness. Saying: "Where has the skete of Alexander Svirsky taken refuge, that's where the wilderness is! and the height... truly a conversation with the Lord." The deaf silence of the bay, forests and stone affects the soul. The singers fall silent. The lines of the "Valaam song" are still kept in memory: Andrew the Apostle - there is a legend - With the Cross he dispelled the darkness of sin,Foretelling the prosperity of faith,Fasting, prayer and work. We run up the hill, to the chapel. Fr. Nicholas sings a moleben. Pilgrims hide from the rain under the paws of old fir trees. From a height you can see the lake, muddy with the rain, gloomy forests, cliffs, the cross of the hermitage abandoned in the forests. Near the chapel there is a wooden cross, signifying the ancient Cross, erected, according to legend, by the Apostle Andrew. Rain turns into downpour. We run down the mountain along the path, rolling on slippery needles. People are cramming into the cabin, stampede. Fr. Nicholas was pressed, but he was meek, he would not say a word. The apprehensive say: "How many are crammed in... Well, the steamer will sink!" This cannot be: it is impossible to sink on Valaam, the saints will not allow it, this has never happened. They all pick up joyfully, hoping: "Go-o-nitelya, mu-u-chi-chitela... under the ground hidden-y-i-i-sha-a"... We step into a narrow ditch. Carved into the stone: "This ditch was built in 1865..." Is it a good thing.. - they shout merrily from the boats. The bottom of the steamer scrapes, the steamer trembles and snorts. A nun boy hangs his head overboard.- What, my brother... ran aground! - he says to me cheerfully and pats me on the shoulder: satisfied. They shouted: "Give me a pair, driver!" - "Why a pair, we'll spend the winter.. Oh, good, brothers... "Brothers, get down to the ladle, lighten the steamer!" The pilgrims jump onto the islands and begin to collect lingonberries. The monks-feeders stand motionless on the boats. The driver and the fireman push back with poles, hanging in the air above the water. The nuns sniff from the stern to the bow.- Brother Peter, nalega-ay! - they shout from the boats. "Pleasers, help me out.. They advise you to sing "Dubinushka", but older ones are warned: it does not approach holy places, here prayer takes over. At last, after the joint efforts of the pilgrims, the monks and the machine, after the troparion and the "Club", which was not very loudly dragged on the boats, the steamer was released - and again a string of quiet bays, granite masses, straits, islets, an old pine forest, mysterious, silent. There's a monastery. Deanery reigns. The nuns are humble again. The singers conceive the troparion to the Transfiguration. On boats they cross themselves - golden crosses are visible! - and they pick up in a splendid and cheerful way: "Thou hast been transfigured on the mountain..."

IX. Holiness. In a large skete. Admonition

Under the arches of the gate, in the crease, there is a monastery shop of "saints". A strict monk-owner does not offer his goods to the pilgrims: he does not know how to do something, or considers it a sin. He will only answer how much it costs. He will say - and stand in thought. Everything is only for the pilgrim from the people. Valaam does not please a casual tourist, he does not care about tourists: it would be better if they did not exist, there is less temptation. Old Valaam is harsh. His pilgrim is after him, simple, laboring, spiritually fasting: he demands crosses and icons, "from his life", pictures-parables. You only hear: - For a holy corner... for fifty.- From the divine... instructive something. Or, rarely: "I would like a Bible, a real big one, the most... so that the grandchildren would be imbued with how many years everything was gathered, from a holy place..." We want something local.- Do you have anything Valaam, artistic? The monk does not understand. He looks incredulously, as if: "These St. Petersburgers, from the pure... entertainers, they should have everything for fun..." - he thinks so, perhaps:- What's that, thin... How to understand? I try to explain, in a simpler way: well, handicrafts from Valaam granite... well, paperweights, some figurines... on the desk... He doesn't understand what kind of paperweight! Standing - silent.- Maybe a box for rings... so elegant? in the Urals they do, such... No, he is silent.- Here for pilgrims, "holiness"... There are no handicrafts. Fi-gurki..? From Valaam granite? a game..?! - In St. Petersburg... There are all sorts of trinkets. Here - "holiness". On Valaam, they do not waste time on trinkets. You don't catch fish with a fishing rod: it's pampering. You don't bathe in the strait: it's a sin, the water is holy. There are only wooden products - shrines: crosses made of juniper, cypress-wood, Holy Athos, and spoons with a view of Valaam and a "blessing" on the handle: if you begin to eat - you will remember Valaam. We choose spoons.An ancient old man, completely blind, is picking at something behind the counter - stringing olive seeds, Holy Athos, for rosaries with a large needle. With each new buyer, he barely rises with a stool varnished over the years, and not with his voice, but with an exhalation - he is so weak - he humbly offers his product: "To the holy monastery, donate... thirty kopecks, your generosity..." We buy prayer beads. The old man beams with a smile, confides in the gloomy monk like a child: "The Lord gave it... So they also took the beads ... Glory to Thee, the Creator..." He is childishly happy that he can still serve the monastery to the glory of the Lord. I remember and reproach myself: why didn't I take from him more, more, all the rosaries that I had. If only he would bring joy! After all, work for him is sacred, podvig, like prayer. On Valaam, everyone is in labor: from the abbot himself, from the hundred-year-old schema-monk to the boy-nun brought by his father "for bearing" - according to the promise, "for God". Everything is at work here - both soul and body. And all in the name. From dawn to dawn. And what about the night? Is there a night on Valaam! We forgot a little, and at half past 2 in the morning another "alarm clock" calls: "Time... singing... mho... li-tve cha... And here are the schema-monks, in the photo. It is necessary to buy it: it is "Valaam", native. Ten of them, in schema-caps, with crosses, bones, skulls. They stand side by side, downcast, humble. It must have been unusual. But - it was necessary. At the head is the abbot. It was necessary: the people, "out of holiness", under the icon, demanded to decorate the "holy corner". This is the light of Balaam, his glory. What faces! The holy elders, from antiquity, are fathers. The tallest is Schema-monk John, a silent man, who was silent for fourteen years. And here, on the edge, is Schema-monk Sergius, the humblest one. For many years he suffered excruciatingly from illnesses and, despite the pain, did not miss a single service. I was told about him on Valaam.Humble Sergius was strong in spirit. The disease "ate him alive." Which one is unknown. He was ill for a long time, melting. Maybe cancer. Once, during a long service, he could not overcome the terrible pain. He approached and crawled up to his elder-confessor, in tears, perhaps in tears of shame for his infirmity, and began to beg: "Let me go, father, to my cell... I'm dying... bless me to depart..." But the elder was strict. He shook his head, said: "And who will stand for you! rule, who will listen?" - "I can't, father, I have no strength to stand..." - "If you can't stand, sit down." - "Oh, I can't sit anymore, father..." - "If you can't sit, lie down. It is better to depart in the temple of God, standing in prayer." And he did not let go. And humble Sergius endured. Monk Seraphim told me about his death: "At the church I carried out obedience. I remember that the mass was over. Schema-monk Sergius came up to me and whispered a little, like a breath from the breeze: "Farewell, Father Seraphim... goodbye..." And he himself is crying so brightly, with copious tears. And I had noticed before how he wept throughout the Holy Liturgy... so he cried! And I asked him: "Why are you, Father Sergius, crying like this?" And he seemed to hear me, as if by a breath, in a dream: "Ah, Father Seraphim... if they always sang like nonche... The century would not have gone... like angelic voices... and I feel so good, so sweet, that's why I cry... as if I were in heaven..." And his whole mantle is covered with tears... All wet, wet, from tears. - "And I communed of the Holy Mysteries. of the Mysteries of Christ... and so now it is easy for me... and my pains do not torment me, they fell asleep..." We kissed on the shoulders. And as soon as they began to ring the bell for vespers, he reposed. And it was his spirit that trampled on the perishable, the pain and fell asleep... was spiritualized in advance. He was humble..! We liked the image of the saint: a bright heartfelt face. I ask the gloomy monk: whose work is it.- Father Alypy. He is in charge of iconography. Alypia... I remembered. They told me about him.- Once I studied at a high academy, I received gold medals for my pictures... Now he does not paint "peace": only icons. Once he could not cope with the struggle, left Valaam.- I could not humble the spirit... He stopped sleeping, he was muddy. And when he returned, he submitted to Balaam. He did not go to the forests, to the islands, to paint in silence the nature of God. He took monastic vows. He only paints holy faces. I was indignant at such enslavement: Balaam had eradicated a living soul from him! I was told:- No, it's not like that. Our Balaam freed his living soul, and did not enslave him. Are the holy faces inferior, in your opinion, to earthly beauty, which disintegrates into dust? The holy face is a reflection of the Lord's Light. Well, write the Light with the brush of the Lord...? This is no longer a pictorial art, but the grace of the Lord. Our Fr. Alypy is now seeing in spirit, seeking the Light in the faces of the Lord... He accepted the lofty feat. Not enslavement, but inspiration. He writes the imperishable, the heavenly eternal beauty.Now I know: high art in the eternal.The sixth hour of the evening. The sun is completely over the forest, soon it will hide behind Valaam. I should go to the Big Skete, not far away; tomorrow we are going to Konevsky, and then we are leaving. Isn't it too late? O. Antipas advises, even forces gently: "Your legs are young, why is it too late for you! look at our Great Skete, strict ascetics there, and a rich building, what a church. Only the spouse will not be allowed, the female sex is only allowed on the Altar, on All Saints' Day. Well, see your husband off, wait outside the gate. Look, how friendly you are, all together. Or even on a horse you will be taken away... We don't need horses, we'll run - it's wonderful in the forest.We walk quickly, run: we need to return to the meal, not to upset Fr. Antipa; He is strict, he loves order.Past the deserted pier, through the strait. The sun had set behind Valaam. It faded, it was fresh. On the shore, an old nun is stacking wood chips - for the steamer. Fishermen-monks stretch their nets on holders; Just tarred: a strong smell, penetrates to the heart. It smells of spruce chips, resin, water and... incense? It smells like Valaam. Is it the smell of evening freshness, tarred nets and holiness? - the smell of Valaam, the monastery "beyond the world", - I called it so, - was absorbed into my memory, and I still hear it. The workers are still digging, chopping granite, chasing, sawing... with a wire saw! "How strange. I want to watch, but I need to return to the meal. Run. The hammers of the lapidaries knock less often, the workers are tired, they sit on granite blocks. Slumber and silence creep out of the thicket. Soon they would crawl to the cathedral, the altar boy would ring the bell, and the day would be over. The day will end on Valaam, and there, on Ladoga, there is still dawn: there is still a fiery sun. It is still light on the road. You can see how something has reddened... squirrel! We look at how it winds in the spruces. Below them, the twilight is already thicker. It smells of spruce, spicy warmth. The road uphill. You can see from the hill how the road winds, pines dozing at the turns. That's where the wilderness is! Something rustles above them, softly, loosely...- a large bird drowned in the thicket. In the greenish sky, the dotted stars are already white. Looking at the sky. White muslin-clouds, motionless. Listening...- not a sound. Here it is, a deaf silence. And for some reason, it's sad. We run.Across the stone bridge, over the water. Black water, deaf. We look into the horrors: the tops of spruces, the sky - darkness and light. How terribly overturned into the bottomless! Run... Chapel! No, we are not alone here. The face of the Mother of God, looking. A ribbon, a whisk, a candlestick is glowing. Look... It seems to smell like incense. Log in? We don't enter, it's too late. And it is good to pray in the wilds. Well, we'll have time... The lawn, the ringing of the bell, the crackle of dried wood... What is this... horse! He goes out onto the road, stretches out his lips, asks for bread. It's a pity we don't have bread with us. The monks taught and carried bread. Caress, pat on the lips. What meek, what gentle lips... velvet. We run, look around: everything is standing, waiting for a loaf of bread, looking. Strange - a cross in the forest! He stands and looks. We look around - he is looking. No, not creepy, but easy now: he stands, blesses.Something has turned white, the walls of the tower, the hermitage of All Saints. Somewhere the water glitters in the trees. Pond? Grove, there... hillock? Someone's grave, a cross. We are sad. We pass by the garden. The gate is locked. And here is the gate. Here is the limit: women are not allowed. Through the gate you can see: the yard, the grass, thick, dark. The tower on the corner is like a fortress. We must part. The wife is timid, begging - hurry, not for long... He sits down on the grass at the gate. It's strange - women are not allowed! Only for some reason - on a holiday. I regret why you came here. A deaf kingdom, darkness.I walk on the grass - and no footsteps are heard. Silence, deaf as... in the grave. A temple, quiet, in emptiness. Over there the barracks are like... low - cells? A cold gleam in the windows, uncomfortable.I am annoyed why they came here, "to the grave". I thought about going back, and I heard a cough, dull, viscous. Look. A dark one, slightly approaching, from the temple. Schema-monk? Right towards me, crawling. I'm scared.- Who's there..? I don't see... ha-a-ah... Creeps. I remember "Viy" - "raise my eyelids". It's creepy. I speak, timidly, and hear how clearly he speaks from the cells: - I, a pilgrim... to see the skete... And I feel that I am not telling the truth: now I have nothing to see here, I would rather be free. But it's too late: he's coming." It's late, we're already eating, it's night. Well, who is he?.. - he looks at me from under the doll, with crosses, - a scientist, or what? Ah, student... That's who... These are the smartest of all... Heard. Will you give it up? The voice of the schema-monk is deaf, "grave".- From Moscow.- From Moscow... far away. Everything is far from us. From the earth farther - closer to the sky...- points to the sky with his finger. "Well, let's go... I will show you our church. Here, I only read the Psalter. Do you understand the Psalter? Ok. Day and night we read for the departed fathers and brethren. We will all depart in due time... We will be commemorated. A man is like grass in his days... do you understand? Well, let's go.I walk limply into the gloom of the church. A lonely lamp flickers. Incense, stuffy air. On the vaults - monks, with shadows. The dark iconostasis is slightly golden, vaguely. An old psalter on an analogion. The schema-monk lights a candle. Under the doll with crosses I can distinguish a dead nose, shaggy gray eyebrows, a stern face, a wedge-shaped beard like a tow. I remember the same beards of our carpenters and plasterers, I saw them as a child. I think: everyone here, on Valaam, is from the people. The black cover on the analogion, in silver glaze, is commemorative. The ascetic pokes at the analogion with a candle, feels for the insert. He says "beyond the grave":- Day and night we read for two hours, the next one. Do you understand it in the Church's way? Well, honor... I will hear how you understand... we are not sufficiently learned... I'm embarrassed: he's examining, that's not enough. Does he know that I am weak in the Church? And why should I read to him? What am I to him, boy? That's it. And you can't see anything: a yellow sheet, covered with wax, stained, these titles... Who can figure it out!- Well, honor... Here, I've finished... Honor...- in a sheet, with a skinny finger.I am cramped. And I can't disobey, it's somehow embarrassing. And I'm ashamed that I'll be ashamed. Thoughts flash: "Maybe he is a seer... knows that they came "out of curiosity"... and on purpose, in order to shame, he examines?.. This does not suit a saint, this is already a mockery..." And I can't disobey: I got caught. And he kept pulling:- Well, honor... What do you mean...? Close the book, turn around, and...? No, it's obscene. In excitement, I peer into the lines - to understand the titles... And - joy! Familiar... I remember from childhood, from the "Six Psalms"! We read with Gorkin, and there was a lot left of the vigils. I read it firmly, without looking at the title, -..."Tell me, Lord, the way, in which I will go, for I will take my soul to Thee...""What, do you hear? "I think, what, dashing?" "Teach me to do Thy will, as Thou art my God: Thy good Spirit shall guide me to the land of righteousness." Whoa-ka-ak...- the schema-monk praises, and I think: "No, you won't, you're not a seer..." - Do you understand what is said... you? You've hit it all at once... What a word! Oh, you know, eat?.. "I understand," I answered, not understanding. He passed the exam. Leave. It's easy for me. And a pleasant schema-monk. It smells of the forest, of will. I look at the towers.- Do you live in the fortress? - I say, jokingly: it is easy for me.- With whom we fight, a bulwark against sin. We live in the forest, crawling along the chapyg, inconspicuously, quietly... Oh, I crawled up to the grave, and buried it... all life and perishable, earthly life. Don't understand. Someone in Shakespeare... about the frailty of life... yes, in Hamlet, "poor Yorick", they laughed at the skull, and this one was so calm, terrible... Valaam suddenly seems to be a grave... everyone crawls, covered with mantles, with crosses, skulls... "indecently, quietly" crawl up and... - The day has outlived - I have moved to the grave...- sighs the schema-monk, calmly. - What do you eat? - I ask for some reason.- And cabbage, water, bread... Everything is one to the worm of the grave to devour with corruptible flesh. And the soul... there! - he points to the sky.In the greenish sky - stars. Night. Say goodbye. The elder trudges to the cells - "to get ready". I run to the gate.- How are you doing...- I hear a sweet voice - a sigh of relief.We join hands, run in the darkness. From the thicket there is a horror. Wilderness, darkness. And now, joy, a bell in the distance. This is in the monastery, the "summons": for a meal. There was a smell of warmth. Shore, nets. The old man is trudging up the hill, towards the monastery.- It's time to eat, father... the day is over, glory to the Almighty... have mercy on us, Jesus the Saviour..." - he says to us affectionately. So glorious - "Jesus-Saviour", - with caresses.From the mountain you can see the whole kingdom of Valaam. The light is behind us: in the illuminated sky there are clear tops of fir trees. The moon is rising, golden in the fir trees. The light is ahead: the white cathedral, the crosses are shining, they see the moon. Antipas asks if you liked the skete. I say - yes... It's only sad there... and scary. He doesn't understand:- Ka-ak... it is frightful? What's so scary about it... a holy place, our most important skete, ascetics are being prepared... What did you think was scary there?.. He speaks reproachfully. I'm sorry that I've embarrassed him. I try to explain so that he understands our mood: - I don't know, father... mood...- What... non-structure? No, he doesn't.- I don't know how to explain it to you... This is our mood... everything is only about death and death, everyone is being prepared, all life! And all the crosses are there, and the graves... And it's still night... So it seemed scary. He looked at me with contrition. pu-gan! Why are you afraid of crosses? It is the demons who are only afraid of the cross. And we, Orthodox Christians, are alive by the cross. And why be afraid of graves! Behind the grave it will open... eternal life, in Christ... a spiritual person. And to an insensible person, who has a lack of structure - what can be revealed...! Oh, how senseless, ah... Well, the Lord will guide you. Are you tired? Well, I'll tell you, they'll bring it to your cell. The Lord is with you. Non-structure..! It is easy from Fr. Antipas's admonition, from his gentle rebuke. I am hungry. We grab fresh prosphora bread, hard, fragrant, Valaam. The window is open. It breathes coolness. Ladoga. Chew and watch. A moon over the forests. Life is wonderful! And everything is wonderful. And so it will be - all days and days, all tomorrow, tomorrow... infinitely. We don't count the days, we don't think. Chew and watch.

Kh. "The Builder of Valaam". Nikolay Smirenny. Wanderer

Everything majestic and strong that you see on Valaam is associated with the name of Damascene. He was a wonderful owner, builder, strict ascetic, iron character. Chapels, crosses, roads, canals, hermitages, granite staircases, water supply, buildings, wells, gardens, a magnificent church, workshops, farms... - all this was created by his will, his mind. He gathered together the solitary hermits who lived in the forests and wilds and settled them in the hermitages. He supplemented the rule of the wise elder Nazarius of Sarov, introduced severe discipline. It was an abbot with an iron staff. And this iron man writes in his will: "I have loved Valaam all my life, I have loved each of you. My heart has always been open to your needs... But I was a coarse, simple, uneducated man - it is natural that my sincere, deep love for you sometimes did not find decent external expressions." From his youth, Damian - his secular name - felt an attraction "to other worlds": he went to wander around the monasteries, looking for a place of "spiritual perfection", until he settled on Valaam. It is remarkable that there are a few strange phenomena - "signs"? When he was going to Valaam for the first time, he met elders from the White Sea, who were going from Valaam to the monastery of Alexander Svirsky. When he came to Valaam and was walking along the forest road to the Skete of All Saints, the monk Theodorite met him and said: "Stay with us. Labor in obediences, in the skete, and in the wilderness. When he came to the Skete of All Saints, Elder Euthymius, nicknamed by the monks "spiritual street" for his ability to catch souls, bowed down to the ground to the newcomer. And the young man remained in the forests and deserts of Balaam. Elder Euthymius saw in the youth Damian a readiness to follow the paths that would be shown to him. And he began to forge a great character - the future abbot-owner, builder and ascetic. For example, he arranges a long retractable stick and every night, at 12 o'clock, he comes to wake up his disciple for midnight prayer and knocks with a stick on the window in the second tier, where Brother Damian's cell was. And on a stormy winter night, waist-deep in snow, the young man walked from the workhouse to the midnight office in the monastery. This Elder Euthymius was - or only seemed to be, taking it for a feat - a fool-for-Christ, bowed down to everyone on earth and incessantly wept "burning tears". In the monastery archives there is a letter from the monk Hilarion, in which he testifies that at his fervent request the deceased Elder Euthymius appeared to him with his own eyes, promising him this during his lifetime. He forbade him to wash his mortal body and even change his underwear. At last Damian was vouchsafed to accept monasticism, and the elder left him and withdrew to live in the wilderness.With the blessing of the hegumen, the monk Damascene settled six versts from the monastery, in the impassable wilderness of the forest, on the shore of two lakes. He was then 32 years old. He began to avoid meetings and conversations, ate rotten food, exhausted his flesh and wore chains. On stormy autumn nights, the rain knocked on the glass of the window, the wind howled in the chimney, the pine forest hummed with terrible voices, and Damascene stood at prayer. And so it was for seven long years. Sometimes in the night, says his life, someone terrible with disheveled hair rose from the lake, knocked on the window of the cell, broke down the door. Sometimes a multitude of demons danced around the cell, and the cell shook like a mill. Then came the difficult life in the Skete of All Saints, then the long-term hegumenship, full of ebullient activity, all kinds of construction - farming.- Would you like to take a look at the last act of our father, Fr. Damascene, the new cemetery? - the monk-leader who accompanied us everywhere suggested to us. - You will also see a forest nursery.A long alley of firs and larches leads to this cemetery from the monastery. All around is the kingdom of forest species: cedars, oaks, maples, lindens, firs, silver poplars, birches, larches, hazels...- all through the efforts of Damascene.- Here is our nursery, amateurs are sent to St. Petersburg, and we send them as a gift to benefactors. Near the beautiful church, with a Byzantine vault, there are bushes of jasmine, rosehips, honeysuckle, lilacs, roses and some kind of "fragrant fir tree".- And here is the grave of Fr. Damascene.A high granite cross over the tomb made of dark granite, flowers all around, a lot of sweet peas - Fr. Damascene the harsh loved it. Not far from the church is the cell of Elder Nazarius of Sarov, in front of it is again a granite cross. Fr. Damascene loved to build, and he built it of granite, for all eternity. Even on the farm, the two-tiered "Vienna" cellars are made of eternal granite. And the stairs, and bridges, and the sheathing of the ditches of the canals are made of granite. The monks said, with affection: "And our father himself seems to be made of granite too: he worked so hard, and there was enough strength for everything... Wherever you go on Valaam, you will find, quite unexpectedly, a granite cross or a granite chapel. You will go far into the forest. The road goes to no one knows where. Ahead of us is a forest like a wall, stone-blocks. You forget where you are..." - and suddenly, at the turn, under a wide spruce, as if under a tent, there is a chapel. The door is open; on the analogion there is a cross and the Gospel; the censer, the psalter, is ancient, and the Mother of God, or the meek Saviour, looks upon Himself with grace, calling to Himself those who work and are heavy laden. Sometimes a bird will fly out, spin over you and fly into the chapel. And there is a primeval forest all around. A breeze suddenly breaks through from somewhere, stirring the blue faded ribbon on the icon. It's good to sit here and think. Truly, the silence is holy. A squirrel flutters overhead, dropping cones. Otherwise, if it happens, a horned deer or a broad-sided moose will come out on your road, stand very close, look in both directions, hear the wheels on the rattlesnake "luda" or the prayer of a monk and slowly turn into the thicket, crunching windbreaks. You will experience an extraordinary feeling when you see a forest chapel like this: it seems to illuminate, and the wilds do not frown and do not frighten with the wilderness, but look sacredly, penetrate into the very soul. And you believe, you know that all this is the Lord's: a fallen mossy spruce, and a squirrel, and lingonberries, and a butterfly fluttering in the thicket. And you comprehend the wonderful meaning: "For seven are meek and humble in heart." And a joyful thought-hope is born: "If only everything were like this, everywhere, everywhere... There would be no "questions"... but the holy brotherhood." And then, in the youthful, reckless days, in this forest solitude, vague thoughts floated in that everything you know, school, selected from books, accidental... - all this is so insignificant before the mystery of life, which is about to be revealed miraculously, which, perhaps, these meek animals, the squirrel, the bird and the butterfly know... the subsoil somehow knows... From the cell of Elder Nazarius we go down the hill, go through a birch grove, very bright and gentle, and approach a hut under a canopy. The corners of the hut are rotten, the logs are overgrown with mold and moss.- This hut was built by Schema-monk Nicholas the Humble, the cell-attendant of Elder Nazarius. One, they say, worked with a hatchet. It is a hundred years old, and everything stands. He, father, was sleeping on the floor. In winter, it used to be filled with snow, in the autumn the roof of the rain would wash over the holey roof, and he would asceticize on the floor. And we, sinners, sleep on beds and even complain that it is harsh...", says the monk, as if this is a hint to us that we complained about the hard Valaam beds. The cell is small, two or three arshins. An old pine tree above it.- Here, it is cramped, and dirty, and low... in St. Petersburg, they probably set up better houses, but the Tsar himself deigned to come here, bowing down, deigned to talk with the elder, did not disdain ... That's it. Alexander the First... Have you heard of him? That's it. And what a Tsar he was, he conquered the very first warrior in the world, the formidable Napoleon of France, Bonaparte, according to a book! But he did not disdain, he bowed down... The door was low, and it was said to be tall, solid. and he bowed down, so it meant that he had to bow down before the Humble Father Nicholas... and even ate turnips at his place. Our Father Nicholas was simple, and he was not afraid. Well, I took a turnip from him... "There is nothing," he said, "to treat you, Father Sire, to me, such a guest... here is a sweet turnip I have..." And he took it as a good gift... he crunched, the turnip gave him. Yes, how do you look at everything... and-and-i-e.! where is the greatness, where is the glory, into what will He turn when the Lord calls from his earthly corruption? Where is the greatness, eh? - the monk asks us. We are silent. - In humility is greatness, because we are before the greatness of the wisdom of the Lord! And here is his grave, his bones took his peace.The wooden tomb covered the grave of the schemamonk Nicholas, the Humble. Gigantic tombstone candles stand over the grave of a pine tree.- Forgive me...- said the guide-monk suddenly. I was surprised: why should I forgive him!- Yes, I have told you a lot. It is not my business to think such a thing, but I have thought about greatness... I'm sorry. I have forgotten how Father Damascene wrote in verse.- In verse? - I was surprised, - how, did he compose poems?- He knew how to preach well... As a holy verse expressed. He will begin to sing so melodiously, you will listen.- So you found Fr. Damascene?- Why, he was vouchsafed. I keep in my mind his verse words, sweet ones. He spoke very clearly about us, idle talkers, so I remembered, in order to correct my superstition. Father himself repented before us, gave an example. And here, if you please, I remember his verse every day:Much today, brethren, I am a sinner, I have spoken,But I myself have done nothing good before the Lord.Woe to me, a sinner, and dry land, I have no good deeds,I speak, and do not do.Teach others - do not teach yourself.Alas, alas! O my soul, woe to thee! And he tried to bring others, the weak, to holiness.- In what did his holiness manifest itself?- How did it manifest itself? The monk pondered. - He was zealous for piety, he tore apart the shackles of demons. How did he tear it apart? Yes, here's how. A monk wants to leave the monastery - the demon pesters him - and our father will not allow it. Such was our case. Two monks were about to leave us. The abbot admonished them, no, he did not take their word, their hearts were petrified, numb. "Go then," he said, "to the shrine of St. Sergius and Herman, and there throw off your monastic garments. There you made a vow - there you will terminate it. And I have no blessing for you." That's how he turned the responsibility on them. Well, they were afraid and stayed. And he was a clairvoyant. He spoke well about the delights of this world, in verse, too:Whoever is addicted to the world,He will say goodbye to the desert.Here again I will be superstitious, forgive me. I struggle, but there is little, little humility in me.

XI. Forest meeting. The Story of a Wanderer. Cranes

We walk along the forest road, not knowing where it will lead. Granite everywhere, overgrown with moss, lingonberries. Eat lingonberries and blueberries that have not yet crumbled. There are a lot of thickets of raspberries, only it has come down. There must be a lot of hazel grouse here - the familiar whistles can be heard. There is no shooting on Valaam. The bird feels this, flies here and holds on. They say there are swans and loons. In the Konevsky skete you can also see loons - quite tame.A monk overtakes us in a single-wheeled car, bows and says: "Good way to you, the Lord is with you!" It fell silent. To the side, there's a fallen tree, a hundred-year-old one, it must be. Moss climbed into the empty hollow. I poke with a stick - only dust. How many years had passed since it fell, fifty or a hundred? A chamomile and dodder stretch from the hollow. Eyes are looking out from behind a mossy stump... How strange! "Look who is there... eyes?" - I say to my wife. Joyful, she whispered to me: "Yes, this... Fox!" Yes, a fox, completely tame. We look at her, do not move. She also looks at us. A strange feeling - closeness and trust, and inexplicable joy... why? The most ordinary fox, only... Cute. A moment - and disappeared somewhere. In a hollow, perhaps. Maybe there are fox cubs there.We go and think: what a wonderful meeting! Well, of course, wonderful. Life here is somehow different from there, in the world. Evil, as it were, retreated, became dulled. Both evil and fear. The beast is not afraid of man, and man also becomes different here. And I remember what I heard at a meal from the "lives", how a lion protected some saint from the desecration of a madman. Is it possible? And why not?Sacred places, sanctified by prayer. People change here, and animals change too. People here are not ordinary, as everywhere else: here they are selected "according to the spirit," someone told us, "as if through a sieve." People can change! There is something in different people... In the village where Damascene, the glorious abbot of Valaam, was born, there were other boys, but they did not go to search, but Damian went, "sifted out through the sieve." It means that there is something in a person that reaches out to the saint, seeks him. Special... soul? - that which does not die, as these hermits believe, that which can appear with one's own eyes, as the monk Hilarion testifies in his posthumous letter about the beloved elder Euthymius, who appeared to him from there, according to a promise. And this, our earthly things, therefore, are somehow connected with what is there?.. The books I have read, which I, as a student, unconsciously believed, which revealed to me "exact knowledge" proven by scientific experience, rejecting the miraculous, calling faith in the miraculous fantasy and "childish", firmly sit in me; But I close myself off from them with a trick: well, yes... knowledge denies, scientifically explains everything supernatural, but... Science is moving forward and, perhaps, somehow, someday, will penetrate into that...? Here is Lobachevsky, he has established a new kind of world, completely unlike ours, earthly - a world of the fourth dimension! And it turned out that what was proved by our Euclidean geometry is an obvious truth! - that parallel lines will never intersect ... - a pure mistake! I don't know yet how Lobachevsky proved it, I don't know any "fourth" dimension, but I'm glad that Lobachevsky really proved it - everyone recognized and glorified the genius of our mathematician! - proved that parallels must necessarily intersect - somewhere out there, in infinity. And it seems that this genius was very religious, like Newton, like all these good Valaam monks, like Elder Barnabas, who recently called us "Petersburgers", who somehow foresaw that tomorrow we were leaving for Petersburg! Monks, of course, are completely uneducated, do not know Sechenov's "Reflexes of the Brain", do not know Darwin's "Origin of Species", where it is said and almost proved that man descended from an ape, have not read Letourneau's "Progress of Morals", nor Ribot's "Psychology", nor Auguste Comte, nor Johann Strauss, where the divinity of Christ is denied... but still they are amazing... solve the most complex social problems over which Proudhon, Fourier, Bebeli have been struggling for a century... and even affect nature, the morals of animals, somehow sanctify them... by example? Immediately I remember that on Valaam... - this must be told to everyone who is interested in the progress of morality, this, of course, is not known in the world! - that here, on Valaam, it is strictly forbidden even to swing a whip at horses! you can't even find a whip here, as Fr. Antipas told me: "Everything is affectionate, and the horse understands the caress and the word of God... stubborn or difficult for her, in St. Petersburg now a crowbar cuts her in the belly with a boot or a whip in her eyes, but we have the word of God: you will say to her - "Well, with the Lord... I've rested, now take it," and she takes it up cheerfully. On Valaam, no one is beaten, no one is touched, the face of God is respected in man... - what a high level of culture and humanity! - but only obedience is proclaimed, worshippers and repentance, before all, at the meal. Of course, monks are uncultured in the sense of scientific knowledge, but... They give amazing examples of will, character, and strength of spirit. Of course, much in them is alien to me - it is impossible to look at life as that schema-monk in the skete does, for whom all life is only crawling to the grave, where the mortal body will be devoured by worms, this is not life, but horror! - Their asceticism is sometimes terrible, but their spiritual strength is very sympathetic to me. Often they are like children, but... It is said: "He hid it from the wise, and revealed it to babes!" I remember that such thoughts were aroused in my wife and me - I told her a lot then, and she listened happily - this amazing meeting with a fox near a rotten spruce - "forest meeting". This walk was wonderful: alone, in the forests, without a guide-monk, one on one with nature. But another meeting awaited us, which revealed a lot to us. Quite in front of us, a large bird that looked like a hen flew low in front of us, even clucked, and behind it a smaller one, about seven of them, like large chickens, perhaps a large partridge or, rather, a black grouse. We stood for a while, listened to the birds clucking behind the bushes, very close. And suddenly a granite chapel, under the fir trees! The spruces put their wide branches on its roof. An old man was sitting on a stone step and tapping the ground with a stick. He was not a monk, as I thought at first, but a pilgrim. He was wearing a worn-out, patched fur coat, already in winter. We sat down with him and talked. He came from afar, from near Voronezh, to bow to the saints.- His wife died a long time ago, the son knows where... I went to look for a job, but there was no news. So I decided to wander. I will live here, and by winter I will go to Solovki to bow to the Monks Zosima and Sabbatius.- Do you like it here, on Valaam?- It is good here, sincerely. Here I sit and see what the squirrels are cutting. With the blessing of the abbot, I went to the Konevsky Skete... This is where paradise is, holy silence... I bowed to Father Sysoy, he was a schema-monk there, in the wilderness itself, near the lakes. Hegumen Damascene worked there, and they showed him his bed - a coffin... I slept in a coffin. Visit Konevskaya, such silence and beauty, the century would not have gone. And I can't stay, it pulls me from place to place, like a migratory bird... For the third year I wandered, looking where it was better. Monasteries? And what is better than a monastery? Everything is true here, they do not offend a person, they are affectionate... And they will feed you, and bless you, and give you bread on the way. And in the city, as if - all I could do was talk: "You're a vagabond, so-and-so, show me the dirt port...", otherwise they will put you in a jail, and you don't know why... And then they threaten - "We will send you to your homeland..." Or what, they feel sorry for the place... Are they afraid of a person? Is it possible! And here they trust, they see that I am an old man, and they do not ask for work, but - go and have a meal... And they will pour and repeat, and let the tea go to brew - it's just paradise. Winter is hard, but summer is a pleasure. And what can I tell you, sir... Their animals are completely accustomed here, they are not afraid of humans. The other day I saw a fox, sitting on a stump, curling its tail, licking its lips. I got up - I was amazed, but she did not need anything, as if she even wanted to talk, only, of course, she did not have our language, the Lord did not give it. I crossed her, "The Lord be with you, you rational creature," I told her, and went. And she looks after me, licks her lips. It's just a wonder. And now I was happy to see a squirrel... She kept sitting here, over the chapel, as if she needed to pray. I looked, and in the chapel there were cones, spruce, they had dragged them for the winter... Otherwise, they are playing some kind of game. And in the skete... In the morning I was there, looking. The monk said to me, he lives with Schema-monk Sysoy: "Touch it with a stick, stroke it, they are given." Fish have gathered, in the sun, itching and burning, only not pike, but these... no, not crucian carp, but... kind of like a chub, so glad... or maybe whitefish... I don't know the nickname. Well, I put this stick into the fish, into their school... Nothing, they are not frightened, they rub against my stick, stroked them, faked them... like a fish soup there, thick and thick. They take you to the monastery when you need it. And they themselves are not supposed to have fish there even at Easter, a strict hermitage. He will start with a mark, because, he says, you can do it with a trough, they are easy. And how many fish... Ginger has already walked, along the hills... And there are milk mushrooms, and some boletus... and pigs, and aspen ... Fun to walk. And they don't bless you to take it... Everything is in turn, for the monastery obedience is given to the fishermen. The other day I went for obedience, I brought them such a basket. And what, they say, is soon, as if our light will be over... Have you not heard? And who says?- And I was walking, now I am going through the Tver province, in one village I went to spend the night with a peasant. Thus the praying mantis said there: "As the Annunciation will be on Easter on Thursday, so wait for the end of the world." Haven't you heard? Maybe so, she did it. And then, they said, a big star broke off, it was rushing straight at us... can hurt us... Haven't you heard? A wanderer told me this, he learned it from the master. It had long since broken, it had been flying for a thousand years, and it could fly by the glass, another thousand years, and then it might hurt, a big fire, he said, it would light it, there was a lot of heat in it, all iron, that star. He says that there may be people living on it too, only the most sinful ones... they sinned a lot, their star could not restrain them, from sins... it means that it is so ordained by God, as a punishment for sinners... well, she broke off the foundation... As you say... are you well literate?- Nothing, I say, someone laughed at you.- No, not trifles. I've seen stars fly. There were so many flights the other day, I saw Prokhor-Nikanor, I went to the midnight office - I saw it. Somehow they break down. I tried to explain to him how the meteors fell, but he must not have been able to understand. And I myself did not know about shooting stars.- Everything is possible, God has a lot of everything... No scientists can find out everything. And what they find out, it's up to the Lord allows. The Lord Jesus Christ has raised so many dead, and the scientists would have resurrected whom! They can starve, but they can straighten out from death - no. I have a hernia, I tighten this place tightly with a bag ... I went, the lady advised, to the doctor... We, he says, can cut you, trust us. I was in a good hospital, and the lady gave me a note. Can I, I ask, die from your knife? Well, he got angry: "I'm not a sorcerer, I can't say... it happens that they die." I was in Optina, and the monk advised me: anoint that place with holy oil. It became very good, the hernia went inside, I walk, nothing. But as if the stars were falling into the sea-ocean, people said... That is why the seas are warm, and it is warm there, there is no winter. There are such lands, warm. A lot of people went there from us, to look for free land, across the sea. The Turks are only unchristian there. And it's good to live there. This is for Siberia, for the mountains. Our Voronezh people called me, but where should I go, I am alone... I think I'm going to holy places, I'll make my soul happy.Some bird was whistling, cones were falling dullly on the road. The squirrel jumped at the tops, its lush tail glowing reddish in the sun, in the sky. I thought... And suddenly - a light ringing, a special ringing - with a crackle, as if someone was sorting out dry wooden strings, often, often. And louder, closer and closer, it rolled in with a knocking ringing.- Eh, cranes, perhaps...- said the wanderer. We looked up at the sky. A dark line stretched there, in sparkling. And from this line, in a triangle, with uneven edges, ringing at a great angle, poured out a knocking roar of anxiety, joy, some kind of exciting haste. To warm places, to afternoon...", the wanderer said thoughtfully. - They know that there will be frosts soon. Do they fly across the sea?- Yes, to warm countries, to warm waters.- They know where to fly. Our Voronezh people also went there, went by car with them, beyond Siberia, they will be cut ... The land is given by the treasury, only more bread is sown, I ordered. And the bread there, they say, will be born by itself, just sow, pick a little. And the tra-you are there... under the very roof... Living there! Here, a crane... A bird, but he understands his own benefits. The Lord makes even the bird wise, and it does not hunger. It does not sow, it does not reap, but it is full. Oh, they fry it... Look, another shoal!A long shining shoal disappeared behind the fir trees. Weaker are the shouts, individual cries of the backwards. And it became quiet, the rustle of squirrels can be heard.- Sabbath, the red summer is over, autumn has come... - said the wanderer.I looked at the bright sky, behind the fir trees. The silenced cries of anxiety and joy remained in my soul. They remained tight. This meeting at the Valaam chapel, in the wilderness of the forest, did not pass without a trace for me. Now I know that. She responded many years later, unexpectedly, in the dreary days of my life, when I was looking for myself - and did not find it - when I was serving in the Vladimir province, and the service was becoming a burden to me. How many times have I asked myself what path I should take, what my soul is seeking. Troubled were these difficult days of wandering, dissatisfaction with oneself, doubts. So I will travel around the towns until the end of my days, check the trade, spend the night at inns, play preference and screw, drink after robber, wait for awards and promotion. Sometimes there was some kind of light, I remembered that I once wrote, was published, began immediately with a respectable, "thick" magazine, as a student, in the first year... he even wrote a book, though immature and daring, "On the Rocks of Valaam", it was delayed by censorship, thirty-six pages were torn out of it, and it had to be redone and pasted... praised me for this book and scolded me..." - and after that he fell silent. I haven't written a single line for ten years. I did not think that I was a writer, I was afraid to think, I did not dare. A writer is a teacher of life. And me? I know so little. Writers are Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy... And I forgot about writing. I remember that at the end of August, in the difficult days of doubts and wanderings, almost despair, I went across the Klyazma River - to get away from myself, to forget myself. Beyond the Klyazma, beyond the meadow floodplain, there were forests, forests. On the hills, along the spruce forest, camelina have already appeared. I went into the wilderness, into the chapyzhnik, and left the world. I remembered Valaam, its holy wilderness. The same mossy spruces, the same deaf silence. Ten years have passed since then, I was a student then—how long ago it was! Then it seemed that everything was ahead, that life was just beginning. And now there is nothing ahead, there is only one bureaucratic strap, on a business trip tomorrow. And so it will be until the end. I remember lying on a hill, thinking in oppressive anguish, looking for a "way". And suddenly: as in the forests on Valaam... a far, far away ringing, a special ringing, with a crackle, as if someone was plucking on wooden strings... closer, louder, more audible. There was a knocking ringing. I remembered - cranes?! From that Valaam "meeting" - just ten years have passed! - I never heard such a ringing again, a sonorous hubbub of anxiety, joyful and exciting haste. Everything in me was shaken and confused by this scream. I looked at the sky behind the Christmas trees, waited anxiously, with excitement and pain. The same jamb, the corner, with uneven edges, the same... as there, on Valaam, when the whole life was still ahead - the most joyful and bright - there were no doubts, no languor, no anxious questions - where to decide, what to look for. A sonorous, sparkling shoal of birds that know their way well, beckoning, joyfully exciting and triumphant. Forgetting everything, my thoughts carried away with them into the blue. The shouts subsided, the last sparkle faded away - drowned behind the fir trees. And I kept seeing him off, watching him all the time: I was looking at something, not seeing, only the blue, which beckoned. Without thinking, without realizing, he found it. These two "meetings" merged into one. That same evening I wrote my first story, after ten years of waiting, a children's story - "To the Sun". I sent it to the "Children's Reading". It was published willingly and asked to send more. Forgetting the service, I wrote joyfully and easily, without seeing - "in blue". He lived and did not live, unconscious. He did not ask the question - where to go? Soon I felt the strength to say to my wife: "It seems that I have found what I need... I must quit the service." She said calmly, firmly: "I am ready for anything, if only you feel good." Not knowing what awaited us, she accepted with faith the unknown path that had opened up, the difficult path. And she encouraged me on it all my life.Did I think then, at the forest chapel, that all this would somehow resonate in life, somehow merge into it and be determined? And so, it was decided. Balaam tied me to himself. I recall a word spoken to us by schemamonk Fr. Sysoy, in the Konevsky skete, unconscious then, now, revealed to me: "May the Lord grant you to receive what you have come for." Then I thought - what did we come for? So they came, for nothing... Ride. And so, it was decided what - for something that was needed, what became the goal and content of all life, what absorbed, closed life - our life. Of what... - we were not aware. We sat for a long time at the chapel, in the silence of the forest. The tops of the spruces were touched a little by crimson, thickening with the gold of the sunset.- It's time to go to the monastery, the seagulls have already been missed... - said the wanderer, - soon there will be a nickname for the meal.And we went, thoughtful, from this forest kingdom, where the wilds are consecrated by chapels and crosses, where the remains of great spirits rest, where the animals look trustingly, without anger or fear.

XII. In the Konevsky Skete. Goodbye. Valaam's gift

We are going to the Konevsky skete, in the name of the Mother of God of Konev, six versts from the monastery. A tarantass pulled by a grey horse is served to the porch of the hotel. For the coachman - a Karelian nun, a "silent". He always drives the abbot and sits on the goats according to the rule: with fear and trembling. He did not utter a sound all the way. The horse is unhurried, lazy, and could walk well, but the whip is unknown to Valaam: "Blessed is he who has mercy on the cattle." We are driving through the forest. There is a strong smell of mushrooms, autumn bitter pine needles. The wet paws of the spruces cling to our hats and shower us with rain. It is uncomfortable in the forests now. And as soon as the real autumn rains and storms come, the forests begin to roar and howl, forest windbreaks fall - then it is terrible in the forests. And hermits in remote hermitages will stand at night in prayer, and during the days chop wood and gather deadwood. And the fishermen-monks on their ancient boats will go out to the stormy Ladoga to cast their nets; at the brick factory, laborers will crush wet clay into bricks, stonemasons will break granite on the mountains; the machinist-monk will go on the rocking "Valaam" for many versts to distant islands. Storms, downpours, blizzards - everything is one: Valaam will not stop his work - service "in the name": ascetic labors, prayers. Towards the Midnight Office - the elders move through snowdrifts, forests, straits. The Light of Christ shines on them. Autumn rust on it. Under the wheels it chews, oozes. What's that blushing there? Ah, rowan. Wet brushes hang down. Boredom and uncomfortable. There's a swamp over there: dull sedges, reeds swaying in the wind. A wet nun met, carrying pink mushrooms - camelina, young, washed. He nods to us cheerfully, as if there is no rain. Again the chapel, the black granite cross is crying with autumn tears. Squirrels are now in hollows, and a fox is taking a nap somewhere. Over there, over the field with a rotten barn, crows are rushing in the wind with rags - they have some business to do. The wheels of the tarantass rattle along the "luda". They rolled it: gently, again on the needles. The needles smell of stuffy turpentine dampness. Well, here we are. Across the road there was a wet wattle of brushwood, and there was no further way: a dead end, a hermitage.The nun silently stopped his horse and remained sitting like a mummy, and did not turn to us. So, to go out. Look for a passage in the wattle. We see lakes, bushes and a church from the hill. The rain is falling, rustling boredly on the leaves. We walked past the black gardens, reached a wooden church, but not a soul. Truly a hermitage, a desert. The church is locked. Behind the garden, on a hill, there are two adjacent huts. These are the cells of the desert dwellers, connected with a porch. They cry in the rain of the window, the smoke is smoking and creeping, the rain is for a long time. A crooked ladder is carved in a rocky hill. We slide up to the huts. But where are the wanderers? We look into the vestibule and see: here they are, the inhabitants of the hermitage. Three people sit on the floor: a gray-haired, skinny old man in a skufeka, with a pleasant face, deathly waxy, bloodless; a blackish monk, about forty years old, heavy-set, with hot eyes, and a young novice, fair-faced, with delicate features, in golden curls, as they paint angels. They sit silently and diligently peel the onions, cut the tops from the heads.- God help them, hello! They were so busy with work - and perhaps with mental prayer - that they did not hear us enter.- Ah, Lord have mercy...- said the old schemamonk, and I realized that this was Fr. Sysoy, about whom the wanderer had told us. "We're cutting onions, God have mercy." Apparently, we hit the wrong time. We were standing, silent. And they continue to slaughter as if we were not here. Finally, the schema-monk said again, as if with himself: "We are cutting the onion, Lord have mercy.I think: they have forgotten how to speak and are silent from embarrassment. I ask you to show us the church and the cell of Fr. Damascene.- Take the keys and show them... Tell me everything about the priest...", the old man says to the boy in curls. "And there is nothing to treat you with... Lord, have mercy... The boy leads us to the church, scraping the stones with his huge boots. The church is not rich, with hewn log walls, a modest iconostasis; boarded, in knots, floor. It smells of pine and incense. I ask the boy how long he has been on Valaam.- A year soon. And here, in the hermitage, six months. He is from St. Petersburg, served in the expedition of state papers.- What brought you to Valaam?- I don't know... I read about Valaam, and I liked how they live here. They serve God.- But it's difficult here, in such an uncomfortable environment... especially after St. Petersburg?- The Holy Fathers lived...- he says. I look at his angel locks. Maybe he was "eliminated" too? Young Damian must have been like that. There are such, special ones, who will be born somehow, alien to "this world". They are connected by a wooden bridge, above the channel. The banks are overgrown with sedges.- They say you have a lot of fish?- A live fish soup. We fish only for the monastery, and here the fish is not allowed to eat on great holidays. Our fish is tame, you can scoop it with a basket. Now it's gloomy, and when the sun is shining, the backs turn blue, they play with feathers. In our monastery they breed fish from caviar, there is such a factory. And they breed trout, and whitefish, and moose... The brethren do all sorts of things among us. We have a whole state, only a spiritual one, of course. And the candle factory, and we wet the leather, and we drive turpentine, and we have bookbinding, and we grow medicinal herbs, and felted cloth, and burn dishes, there is a meager factory... And the sawmill, and the stud farm, and granites are polished, and marble is polished. The Lord has made us wiser, and the foremen-workers are pulling us to us, from the St. Petersburg factories and the Soviet Union. After all, there are different people in the world... there are mischievous people, the working people, and there is also a "grain of the Lord" among the working people, who follow the word of God. So we live like a kingdom. The boy surprised me with his sensible speech.- Where did you study?- I graduated from the city school, and then my father arranged for me to join his expedition, to stir and rub paints. I began to draw there... We have thin engravers there, the first engravers in the whole world.- Did you get a salary?- Of course. I received 24 rubles per month, as a teenager, as a student. We have a special salary there, there are selected people, loyal, from father to son, even grandfathers served. After all, money is prepared there, and it is necessary to keep secrets, there are all strong people, faithful. It means that he is also strong, "eliminated". A very young man - and such a salary, theaters, all sorts of temptations, delicacies in the shops, a family, obviously, well-to-do... - and went off into the wilderness, here, to a hermitage, cutting onions, rattling in such boots - legs, I guess rubbed...- "I liked it, the Holy Fathers lived"!- Do you read any books here?- And what about the Fathers of the Church... Isaac the Syrian, Macarius of Egypt... what the "elder" will indicate, Fr. Sysoy. He also knows the Scriptures. He is simple in appearance and very humble in spirit, but firm in temptation. He leads well, he explains to me. Only he, of course, feels sorry for me, he is very kind... It would be more strict, but what about him... Schema-monk Sysoy comes up to us.- And here, - he points to a stone by the water, - loon birds build a nest and hatch chicks... And they are not afraid of us. The loon is an unsociable bird, the strictest, loves the farthest and strongest... Blind places, then. And here, even in the time of Fr. Damascene, when he was young, for more than fifty years everyone was led by auks. And every year only one couple arrives.- And today they arrived?- No, they didn't come back for something, it's the first year like this. They are small-chicked, they do not breed more than two. And the first year they did not arrive, or then always. It was an evil person in the world, maybe frightened them... shot, maybe.- How long have you been here at the skete?- Two years. Otherwise, he was a watchman in the Nikolsky Skete, on an island. Before the schema, his name was Fr. Stefan.- And what is this - "watchman"?.. Did you serve on Nikolsky Island?- The monastery was protected, from those who came. In winter, they wander to us on the ice... Well, he guarded, searched. The work of God, you can't miss it... temptation is brought to us, there are such mischievous people. They want to smuggle in sin, the forbidden. There are weak ones from the brethren. Well, I'm tobacco in the lake, and what's worse... on a pebble. And there were upsets... Dashing people beat me. I worked, and now I'm on vacation - digging beds, planting onions. Pray?! And I pray a little... Lord, have mercy. Well, God grant you to get what you came for. See them off, son, show them the cell of Father Damascene...", said Fr. Sysoy to the novice. - And I'll go, we'll cut the onion. Well, God save you, Queen of Heaven.He hobbled to his cell, and we crossed the bridge and climbed the hill, where under oaks, maples and lindens stood the now empty cell of Hegumen Damascene.On the wall of the log house there was a four-yard cross, the work of Damascene.We entered the cell-cell. This cage, a simple hut, is divided into four cages. In one he worked, and there was nowhere to turn; in another he prayed, in the third he copied the holy books, in the fourth he rested.- Here is his prayer room. Analogion, icon, chair. Through a tiny window you can see the edge of the lake, a hill overgrown with forest. Here the demons tempted him, frightened him, on stormy autumn nights, in this living grave. And he prayed. And this lasted for seven long years, until the main feat - the construction of the kingdom of Valaam.- And here is his bed.In the cage, under the window, there is a wooden coffin on the floor and a matting in it.We went out. The rain stopped. Drops hung everywhere on the leaves, sparkling with living diamonds in the sun. It peeked out of the cloud, shining in the shallow wave of the lake with a cold shine. Drooping mountain ashes burned with corals. Behind the lake, Fr. Sysoy is in the garden, digging onions.- Farewell, Fr. Sysoy! - I approached him. - God will forgive. God will forgive... Forgive us sinners... I shook his wax hand with a sad feeling. For some reason, I felt sorry for him, I thought he was old, he didn't have long to live. And he also thought: "Maybe he's happy... for he believes in the eternal, the heavenly..." we will never see each other again... here..." he said, as if on my thoughts, and looked into my eyes. There was something in his eyes... What did he not say with the words: "There we will meet"? I went into the canopy of the cells. The blackish monk was still cutting off the onion. You will leave, and we will stay. Tell me... I heard that the Germans wanted to fight the war... Can't you hear it? - he asked mysteriously.- I don't hear.- Well, and how are you doing there, in Russia, nothing?- Nothing.- And one pilgrim told me... as if Russia and France had struck up a friendship... Really?- Really.- Well... It's not right. The Frenchman is cunning. In vain, Russia is messing with them. And what... This one was ordinary, greedy for the world, with lively, even hot eyes, "unsifted": he would remain "in a sieve." We live in the forest, the bird will fly by - it will not tell, although it sees a lot. A motionless, soaked Karelian boy sleepily moved the reins. A chilled horse walked briskly, a heavy rain fell from the hazel tree.In the entrance hall of the hotel, Fr. Antipas stands at the door with a dish. We offer our ungenerous sacrifice for generous hospitality. Fr. Antipas bows to his waist.- We haven't stayed enough, not enough... - he says regretfully, - you behaved well, and I'm used to you, dear. Say a good word about us there. We hugged and kissed.- I'll tell you, father... There is something to say. I have seen a lot of good things, which I did not expect to see.- So do not forget us, good ones. Although we have broken away from the world, all people... Do not forget us, visit us. Now you go to the abbot, say goodbye... yes, first go to the saints, to Sergius-German, to our priests. They will keep you on the way. And we will deliver your luggage to the pier. Well, with the Lord.We bowed down to the saints and went up to the abbot's chambers - to receive, according to the Valaam custom, a blessing for the journey.- Well, how did you think we were here? The abbot asked. I said that my heart told me. He was evidently pleased.- We are far from the height of asceticism... as much as we can, to the extent of our spiritual poverty...", he said simply, blessing us. - We will always be glad to see you. If you grieve, come to pray. Prayer is everything and our wealth.We go down the granite steps to the pier. Are we sad to leave - are we used to it? The steamer "Peter" brought new pilgrims, for the feast of the Dormition, the day after tomorrow; they stretch uphill to the hotel. It is said that on June 28, the day of remembrance of St. Sergius and Herman, there are up to five thousand pilgrims. We go on deck. Below, the monks sing "It is worthy". Fr. Nicholas looks sadly at those who are leaving. I feel sorry for him. I shouted "Goodbye, Fr. Nicholas!" he approached the side with nervous quick steps, blinking in confusion, trying not to cry. His head drooped, his hands behind his back, as if condemned. "There, to your homeland, you... to their own... He wipes his face with a red handkerchief and holds the handkerchief to his eyes. And no order! They forgot, they do not give a parish. And how can I do without a visit... on the neck of the family. We are poor, powerless... Who has connections, and we have nothing.I think with sadness that I have no connections, I can't help with anything. It's a pity.- I'm exhausted...- whispers the old man, barely audible, - I feel that soon I will be completely sitting here, I will not be drawn there. Farewell, my dears.Later I learned that Fr. Nicholas's fears were justified, he remained in the monastery forever.A monk walks along the gangway, waving to us something wrapped in white paper.- Blessing the monastery on your path. I take it with a bow, unfold it and see - bread! Wonderful Valaam bread, rye, fragrant, with a thin crust, smells of gingerbread and honey. A piece of long carpet, five pounds. Here we eat it, crossing ourselves on the golden crosses and blue domes of the cathedral. And with this Valaam bread we eat for the last time, absorb into ourselves, put in our hearts the blissful things that we have seen and heard, that have illuminated us, the first steps of our life. We eat Valaam bread, tight in our chests. Eyes look at everything farewell, greedily. Will we never see it again? Never. In dreams we will see, in dreams. Farewell, Valaam, wonderful, bright. We say to each other - we talk with our looks and understand: how well we have done that we have chosen - for some reason - Valaam as the goal of our trip, the first trip in our lives. We say with our eyes:- Isn't it good?- Really, it's good. The sailors closed the board. The singer-nuns with sonorous trebles begin: "Thou hast been transformed on the mountain...!" On the steamer, the troparion is picked up. It rolls along the Monastery Strait, echoes in the stones, in the forests. The steamer rolls away from Valaam. The pilgrims take off their caps and cross themselves for the cathedral. Behind the bars, on the heights near the monastery, lonely black figures are looking, - it is impossible to make out: the monks are seeing off with a farewell look. A foamy tail of water crawls behind him, spreads in long braids, rolls to the rocky shores, slaps with white foam. Past the Skete of St. Nicholas, - Ladoga glitters there.- Farewell, Valaam... until next year! - voices are heard on the deck.On the granite cliffs there is a forest of peaked spruces. Above them is the golden cross of the Skete of All Saints.Here is the free Ladoga playing. The strait is behind us. The whole of Valaam is visible, all in the sun, the teeth of its cliffs. Somewhere at a height, behind the pines, there is a wooden toy church: a distant hermitage, Alexander Svirsky. The luminary of Valaam shines snowily - a magnificent cathedral with a great candle-bell tower. Sleeps. Its azure heads begin to flow into the sky, as well as the azure one. The walls in the green border of the forests are white. The snow bell tower burns for a long time with a candle - the shining gold of the cross. Flickers. Extinguished.