With this thought in mind, I fell asleep by the stoves near my treasure. But if the Lord had already given me everything for the service, then soon I received a place for it - a small house on the very outskirts of the village, given to me by a believing old woman. He began to serve, to send services. He did not specifically ask anyone to keep the secret, did not limit the number of those who came to the service, but this secret was strictly kept. He baptized and performed the funeral service - at night or early in the morning, as soon as the sun rose. I didn't take money, what did it do for me, I got something for working in the stoker, old people brought clothes, and food - how much does a monk need? He is alive - and thank God.

So the winter passed imperceptibly and with it my work in the stokehouse. In the summer it was worse - they were sent to the rise of agriculture. I was also issued a summons. I grieved a lot - there are so many holidays, and I will not be able to serve. Grandmothers and parishioners helped out. They went to the doctor whose granddaughter I had baptized, and explained that the village would be left without a priest if Anthony was sent to work. And they told me about my illnesses, how they nursed me with the whole world. They gave me a release, again I was assigned to the stoker - I went to the Donbass to knock out coal according to orders, checked the system, etc.

Several years passed in this way. I did not let go of the desire to go to Moscow, to the Trinity. The fact is that as soon as I took monastic vows and ordained, looking at the arrests and exiles, I began to prepare for all this. This preparation consisted in the fact that I began to deliver everything I needed - books, vestments, incense, etc., to the apartments of the faithful I knew with a request to hide it until better times. And now, looking at how my villagers had preserved the service suitcase, I was obsessed with the idea of trying to collect the hidden. First of all, books on spiritual work, because I went to the camps as a young monk, a monk only by tonsure, and not by work. Of course, something remained in my memory from the edification of the Trinity schemamonks, something was suggested by the priests who sat with me, but I keenly felt the need for literature and, above all, for the Philokalia. This thought made me go to Sergiev Posad.

There were no vacations as such then, everything was semi-legal. So I managed to beg from the authorities some kind of filkin letter for a trip to Moscow. I must say that at the first stage my idea seemed hopeless - this one died, that one died, there were strangers in the other's apartment, the owner, apparently, was sitting. So many years have passed, a warrior, a purge...

Having already resigned myself to failure, I bought a pie, stood there, chewed, and suddenly I heard: "From. Anthony, is it you?!" I turn - Lord, isn't it an obsession?! In front of me is a respectable man, in an expensive suit, the suit of the capital's authorities, in a hat, with a leather briefcase in his hands, it seems that absolutely everything alien to me, a former camp inmate. But no, it was him, my former seminary classmate, who helped, in particular, to hide my simple property in the apartments of believers. He was younger, much younger, and did not have time to take monastic vows and be ordained. "Vanya!" - tears sprang up in my eyes. We hugged and stood there, it was impossible to say a word because of a lump in the throat. Probably, the sight of a respectable man hugging an almost beggar seemed strange to the policeman on duty. He came up, asked Ivan if everything was fine, and he demanded my documents and checked them for a long time. However, maybe not for long, but I wanted to be alone with a classmate so much that minutes seemed like hours. Finally, the law enforcement officer was quite reluctant to return them to me and reluctantly trumped, as if he was free. Ivan and I moved towards the northern wall, there are fewer passers-by, and I heard the story of his life.

Ivan witnessed the gradual arrests of seminary and academy students, as well as teachers. Rumors about the horrors of detention in the camps and exile, and, at first, it was more exile, surpassed all permissible and perceived cruelties by reason. It was really hard to believe, but it was impossible not to believe. Bishop Hilarion Troitsky was arrested, the Moscow Theological Schools were closed, Ivan was taken into the ranks of the Red Army. Service in Turkestan, a cleansed biography, fortunately, it did not say that he was a seminarian, but a student. This was a lesser offense before the authorities.

Ivan went to the worker's faculty, to the institute, and, by the beginning of the war, made a good career. It was facilitated by the fact that all outstanding heads, one way or another, quickly moved from offices and workshops to "sharashki" - prison scientific institutions, this is at best. At worst - industrial lag, providing the country with wood, coal, iron...

This circumstance was widely used by young employees - anonymous, and the boss is no longer there! I don't know if the former seminarian John wrote such opuses, but he made a serious career out of armored steels. He would also be in prison, but - the war, and she, as you know, wrote off everything. The design bureau in the Urals, the sleepless nights of the 41st, the awards of the 43rd, in a word - success. In 1944, he was invited to head an institute in Moscow, an order bearer, an academician, an apartment in the center, inside the ring. For the apartment, and the owner was found - the connection with a former subordinate, a machine operator of the design bureau in the Urals, is legalized. True, a subordinate becomes a boss in an instant, even the service car is mostly in her charge. The young wife does not know about her husband's religious past, for her he is of worker and peasant origin, an atheist. Ivan joined the party in Turkestan. Everything is fine, but I dream of the Trinity! And it is frightening to answer to God for the children, and there are two of them, a boy and a girl. From time to time, Ivan Mikhailovich runs away from his wife and children, dressed in his most modest outfit and travels to holy places, and just visits rural churches. "At least to cleanse the soul," as he put it.

He did not invite me home - it was impossible, his institute was closed, the house was under supervision, but what he told me was just oil to the soul. It turned out that Ivan, my friend Vanya, had retained most of the property hidden during the revolution.

And it was like this: as soon as Vanya was demobilized from Turkestan and received a referral to the workers' faculty in Moscow, he immediately found and collected all my property. Actually, this was not all, many people were arrested by that time, and property was confiscated, but most of everything survived. It is clear that Ivan could not keep it in his dormitory - it was dangerous. But his aunt, a nun from a monastery dispersed by the Bolsheviks, settled in the Moscow region, and it was to her that he took my treasure. No one knew about the aunt - she was related to her mother, i.e. of a different surname, and both Vanya and the aunt absolutely kept the secret of kinship. We directed our steps to it.

A couple of hours by train: Ivan had his own safe travel plan with transfers, and we reached the goal. At the knock on the gate, an old woman in black comes out to us, lean, small with such a blissful expression on her face that you can even paint an icon! On the street, she did not show any signs of joy at meeting her nephew, but in the house she burst into tears. "Vanechka, why haven't you come for so long?!" - she kept wailing. "Aunt Vera, well, you know what it costs me to get out of the house, and not that from Moscow! Although Lyudmila knows that divorce is the end of my career for me, she is jealous of every post! I change the third secretary because of her, even if I howl like a wolf. I sent it to the sea, to Sochi, restored a couple of sanatoriums there, well, and came" - Ivan looks at me with justification. Aunt Vera lowered her eyes, quietly wiping them with the edge of her handkerchief, and fell silent, fussing around the table.

I began to examine the hostess's house. Amazing simplicity and dignity, nothing superfluous, but what is there is really necessary. A small house, a hall and a kitchenette with a Russian stove, which served as a bed for the nun. Near the stove there are a couple of small, sooty ancient icons, even the faces on them are difficult to make out. A lamp glows near the icons. The grips hang on hooks driven into the wall. On the police there are several cast irons and a couple of plates. In the hall there is a large holy corner with a beautiful, huge lampada, probably a temple lamp - it is so large. On several shelves there is a stack of linen linen. There are no chairs, the table and two benches near it are simple, chopped, scraped to white. "Aunt Vera," Ivan began, "don't make a fuss, we are with ot. Anthony not for long, you know what you came for. By the way, meet Hieromonk Anthony, well, this is my aunt Vera, nun Senkletikia!" "Vanya told me a lot about you, father, thank God - you are alive. I did not believe that I would wait for the owner of the things, I was afraid of what would happen to them after my death. but no, the Lord has arranged it! Well, then let's get it."

My treasure was hidden under the stove, several large wooden suitcases with iron-clad corners. In one there were vestments and monastic vestments, several sets of airs and covers. When this suitcase was opened, the acrid smell of mothballs spread throughout the room. The hostess was embarrassed: "Don't be disgraceful, father, it's me from the moth of the report, and it stinks so much!" My monastic vestments! How happy it was when I took it from the Lavra tailors, and wore it a couple of times!

Vanya was clearly nervous because of the delay. Realizing this, I moved on to the next treasure. Oh my God, where is this from?! There were about a dozen Antimensions in the suitcase, but I had only one! "I collected this," Vanya said quietly, "what I brought from the market during the war, what I brought from Turkestan. the soldiers rubbed their boots with antimensions, for shine. He could not look at blasphemy. I did not become a priest myself, I think at least I will serve like this."