The two-story house in which I spent my childhood was a tobacco warehouse before the revolution. In the 26th year, the house was rebuilt into residential apartments. Mom was given a three-room apartment on the ground floor from the factory, in which she and dad lived for forty-eight years. But in 1930, the wing of the house facing the street was broken, cutting the house in length just to our apartment. It turned out that instead of one wall, we had only a wooden partition, which constantly froze, although my parents carefully insulated it with carpets. My mother worked hard and managed to get the wall covered with slag and another layer of boards. But the brick walls began to diverge, threatening to collapse. They were reinforced with stone supports and fastened with rails. A huge eight-story building grew perpendicular to our house. From that time on, the sun peeked into our damp apartment only in the summer, for three hours a day. There was no fire-fighting distance between the old house and the new building, so our apartment had to be demolished, and we were given another one in an eight-story building. Mom received a warrant, but our new apartment was occupied by some clever people. Mom filed complaints with the police, the court, everywhere she bothered, but all to no avail. My parents considered this to be the will of God, for in any other apartment they would not have been able to lead such a conspiratorial life, hidden from the world, as I remember in my adolescence.

The NKVD officers watched us as if we were "the unfinished intelligentsia". This was the name given to people of science and culture in the 20s and 30s. In a house that stood parallel to ours and suffered the same fate as ours, there was an apartment whose windows looked into our windows at a distance of only eight meters. Through these windows we were watched by a certain Marusya, hired by the NKVD. She did not work, raised three children, acquired from different husbands, but registered to her first husband, who went missing. Marusya was considered the wife of a deceased front-line soldier and was respected. Her children rested in sanatoriums, camps in the summer, and in winter they sat on their wide windowsills. They climbed out through the window, ran barefoot in the snow, terrifying our mother. Mom felt sorry for Marusya, helped her as much as she could, they had a good relationship. My mother ran out into the street every now and then, knocked on Marusya's window, shouted to her: "Look, your guys are running barefoot and naked, drive them in, because they will catch a cold!" One answer was heard: "May they die!" But Marusya's children grew up, and from the age of fifteen they already lived in "correctional camps", that is, prisons for minors.

To get into our apartment, our friends did not walk, like other people, through a long courtyard. No, they entered the entrance of an eight-story building, and there they went down to a dark passage basement littered with garbage. Through a tiny door, our acquaintances came out into the light about five paces from our windows, and after slipping past them, they hurried to disappear behind the door. It was difficult for Marusya to "spot" (that is, notice) our friends, she was busy with the household, and she needed to sleep after drinking. The courtyard was not lit, our windows were often tightly covered with blankets, so that the apartment from the outside seemed uninhabited. And we had "circles", "Maroseians", nuns who had arrived from exile, secret clergymen. Most people in those years lived in communal apartments, even huddled in barracks. Mom was especially sorry for her friend Lizochka, who had a daughter Ksenia, a year younger than our Seryozha. Lizochka was the widow of the bed-keeper of Emperor Nicholas II. Small, downtrodden, meek Lizochka liked to whisper to my mother about what her husband had seen at the royal court. I only remember that Nicholas II was a great man of prayer. His bed-keeper more than once witnessed the long kneeling prayers of his Sovereign. The emperor shed tears and bowed. Late in the evening, alone with God, Nicholas II spent hours pouring out his soul before God. The Tsar's rug and pillow were wet with tears.

Faithful to his Monarch, Lisa's husband was arrested and exiled during the revolution. Lizochka followed her husband to Siberia, spent the years of her youth there in incredibly difficult conditions. She gave birth four times, but the children were stillborn. Only the fifth child, Ksenia, survived. Widowed, Lizochka returned to Moscow with her two-year-old daughter. They had nothing but a bed in the dormitory, where there were twelve beds in a row. "What we will not hear, what we will not see in our barracks! Lizochka was horrified. - And swearing, and fights, and debauchery - everything is in our sight, there is nowhere for me to hide with the child. We will at least breathe Christian air from you." My brother Seryozha played with Ksenichka, promising to take her as his wife when she grew up, which caused smiles from adults. Despite the difficult situation, Lisa raised Xenia as a deeply religious and chaste girl, although she was sick.

Many faces of other deeply religious people have been preserved in my memory. Their children, our peers, are now old people, and their parents have departed into eternity. However, for the most part, children were brought to us at Christmas not by their parents, but by those who raised them. Two aunts brought to us the three children of the Obolensky princes: Liza, Andrei and Nikolaushka. Their parents were arrested. Four children of Father Sergius Mechev, who was in prison, like his wife, were brought. Father Vladimir Ambartsumov's children, Zhenya and Lida, also visited us often. Their mother died, and their father was arrested. And so up to thirty people crammed into our apartment. The Christmas tree was invariably brought to us on Christmas Eve by Olga Serafimovna, the sister of the Martha and Mary Convent, which was closed in those years. Risking her freedom, she cut down a Christmas tree in the forest with her own hands, put it in our huge suitcase, drove it by train, dragged it through the streets. Until 1936, Christmas trees were banned as a "bourgeois prejudice". However, Olga Serafimovna considered it her duty to give us, children, this Christmas pleasure. We thanked her and with bated breath always listened to her stories about how she, drowning in snowdrifts, got us a Christmas tree: "Night, moon, wolves howl...". Through the prayers of this ascetic, Olga Seraphimovna (the secret nun Seraphima), our family, our disintegrated church community, held together.

Every year, religious poems were heard under the Christmas tree.

And on the altar of Christ and God She is ready to bring Everything that is beautiful to her path, That has shone on her way.

I was in my tenth year when I recited these lines from Nadson's poem "The Christian Woman" at Christmas. The image of a girl burning with sacrificial love for the Savior, forgiving everything to her executioners, already captivated my heart.

By the beginning of the war, all the priests who visited our house were either arrested, exiled, or disappeared from who knows where. But until 1940, we had a table in my father's study that served as an altar, and there was also a bedside table that served as an altar. But not all the guests knew about it, and they did not reveal it to the children at all. We tried to kindle the fire of faith and love in the hearts of the children, but outwardly we should not differ from others. Holy Communion was not to become a habit, it was approached, as it should be, with fear and trembling.

Daddy

I remember my father from the first years of my life, that is, from 1927-28. Dad always breathed affection, silence and peace. He was loved not only by his relatives, but absolutely by everyone: neighbors, colleagues, acquaintances - everyone who knew him. He was equally courteous to the servants, to the old woman, to the simple worker, and to the ladies and his co-workers, and to everyone with whom he had dealings. With the manners of a gentleman, reserved in all circumstances, Dad rarely raised his voice and never lost his temper. If he happened to be irritated (and a child's frolic would not make anyone lose patience), then dad hurried to go to his office. He came out only after calming down, praying, and only then did he begin to carefully analyze our children's quarrels and complaints. Dad talked for a long time with us, three children, but in general he preferred to talk to the interlocutor one-on-one. "Where there are more than two, there is lost time," he liked to repeat the proverb. Father never shied away from our upbringing, never excused himself with studies and work, and devoted a lot of time to the children, fighting for our souls as well as for his own.

The first evil feeling that appeared unconsciously in my childish soul was jealousy and hostility to my younger brother Seryozha, who was two years younger than me. At the age of three, I could not understand why Seryozha was carried in my arms, fed with a spoon, and I had to eat myself, I had to give my brother my toys, I had to endure his crying. I don't remember what I did, but I remember that my mother raised her voice at me, reprimanded me sternly, scolded me for a long time, even spanked me, but I was very pleased with all this, I did not cry, but I was glad that I managed to attract attention to myself and distract my mother from Seryozha. The meaning of my mother's words did not reach me. Only when my mother pushed me aside, not wanting to caress me, did I begin to cry bitterly and inconsolably. Then my father came, took me in his arms and comforted me with infinite patience and love. Usually I could not calm down for a long time, and sometimes my father had to hold me on his lap for more than an hour, and I continued to sob convulsively and snuggle up to my father, as if asking for protection. "Give my father at least lunch," my mother turned to me. "Leave it, Zoechka," the father said, "you can't drive the child away from you if he asks for affection."

I remember how I grabbed my father by the thick whiskers and silently turned his face to me, not allowing my father to look at the interlocutor. People around us laughed and said: "He's jealous!" - "And what a word they have invented," I thought, "after all, this is my father!" I was ready to sit on my father's lap all evening. How good I felt with him! Through my father's caress, I came to know Divine Love - infinite, patient, tender, caring. Over the years, my feelings for my father turned into a feeling for God: a feeling of complete trust, a feeling of happiness to be together with my Beloved, a feeling of hope that everything will be settled, everything will be fine, a feeling of peace and tranquility of the soul that is in the strong and powerful hands of the Beloved.

Often I fell asleep sweetly in my father's arms. If sleep did not overwhelm me, and I did not want to get away with it, then my father resorted to cunning. Dad called his elder brother Kolyusha and asked him to play soldiers at his feet. Kolya arranged his reels and cubes, began to frolic and beckon me into his company. He quickly succeeded, and I voluntarily went down to the floor. I have always been friends with my elder brother, but our dislike for Seryozha grew every year. The enemy was in a hurry to find a loophole in the weak, immature soul of the child, who is not yet guided by the mind, but lives only by feelings. Jealousy, envy, malice quickly seized us and alienated the grace of God from us. Often there were fights between us, children, accompanied by screaming and roaring. Seryozha turned blue and "rolled up", as his mother called his condition, and Kolya and I received slaps and slaps on the head. When dad returned from work, mom often complained to him about Kolya and me. I remember when I was already six years old, my father talked to me for a long time one-on-one in his office. He was sitting in the chair opposite me, I was on the couch. It was so cozy, the green table lamp softly illuminated the office, the door was tightly closed. Dad explained to me for a long time that Seryozha is often sick, that's why he is nervous, capricious, weak. Mom is forced to give Seryozha more delicious food (that is, testicles and caviar), which she is not able to give to Kolya and me - healthy and strong guys. We should not be jealous, because we walk, run, and Seryozha lies in bed so often. We must feel sorry for him, as well as parents, we must give in to him. Dad asked me to pull myself together and not tease my brother. I listened attentively to my father, agreed with him on everything, but frankly admitted to him that I was unable to overcome my feelings.