* * *
It happened all at once ordinary and wonderful.
In the nearby variety store buckwheat was sold, and Joanna, outfitted in a car to take a couple of bags. The guy who helped her load the bags, the reward has refused, and said that he specifically went to the store to catch a ride to take them home Father, that his ailing grandmother, extreme unction.
After three kilometers to the temple and the rain drips.
Father Tikhon of the local church, where the inhabitants went Luzhino's inhabitants went to Sunday communions. Of whom they told me that he had 'great fasting', ate only vegetables, fruit, porridge, sometimes even without oil.
He was gray-haired, blue-eyed, childlike old man with a toothless smile.
'It is Joanna whom God sent... Come on, come on, take me...
It was amazing that my father knew her name; in the church, they never spoke. However, someone Luzhino's inhabitants could call her by the name, a rare name.
'Why do not you take communion, Joanna? Your all partake, and you never do? Have you committed too many sins? Maybe you are unbaptized?
He asked with such a sincere participation and even excitement, that she became agitated and hurried to assure that there is nothing like that, just have not decided whether to change lives.
Yes, she believes in God, yes, she is aware that the patient and that in a sinful state of soul dies, but we must prepare to decide...
'Who said that you have the time? Do you know your time?
On her back coolness ran. She saw in the mirror faded blue eyes compassionate father.
She never had communion... And you, my dear, come over forty? It is well, the Queen of Heaven?
The Lord received a martyr's death, so we are healed. He loves you, waiting, and you deny him...
'I do not deny...'
Father was almost crying. And Joanna shut up in the nose.
'Here the list of sins before confession. Read it, then come back. Check your conscience... Remember them since childhood...
Think and write in a notebook. All write, do not worry, we will burn everything then. Write it for God...
On Sunday, a holiday in your Lavra, saying, go, and you come to me. Early to catch a confession.
Do you observe fasting?
'When both, father.'
'Observe it. Not eat or drink after midnight. Read the canon of repentance, prayers for communion. And to me...
I suppose, and killing babies in the womb?'
Joanna nodded in confusion.
'So you're a murderer, my dear. The murderer and the harlot, because marriage is not a church. With such a sin to walk the earth! You're out driving, anything can happen...
'I will come, father.'
Joanna bowed his head. Father Tikhon blessed her and trotted to the church gate. In his hand he left feeling good quick shake.
How many times afterwards, going for a blessing sometimes quite unfamiliar to the priests, she will feel a squeeze - a secret sign. Noncanonical, relief for the infirm.
Believe, hope, hold on; we are together. And God is with us.
Probably not fear, but it is encouraging noncanonical grip, from which suddenly caught in his throat, settled everything. Do not convincing preaching father Cyprian, not shiny building Soloviev and Florensky, no exhortations Wari, and this is the secret sign. It was a password of his senile dry fingers.
Of course, she did not tell anyone where going into Sunday. The same miracle will be in her desk drawer in the attic school notebook ticker, almost untouched, only the first page of the old schedule of trains, which Joanna tore.
And she began to book as good as new, with a pink blotter, and again about something mysteriously resembled.
About his childhood, when the faithful pioneer Joanna Sinegina vowed to Xenia's God, who miraculously saved her from a terrible storm, a good in his best country in the world.
Which has just won the Nazis and was going to continue to build a bright future. Sworn great to learn, to fulfill this request work, respect elders, help the weak, do not lie, do not steal, do not be proud of in front of his friends, helping out a friend in trouble.
Share the latest work and not for profit but for the sake of people and this very bright future. Do not hoard money and things... And, if necessary, give their lives for the future, with the lofty ideals, their country and for the people.
Both God and the country and demanded of her, basically the same things; there was in her children's consciousness is no contradiction, but absurd, sometimes reaching up to her claims that there is no God.
But the adults all the time God is remembered, there were churches in general and in the postwar years began to emerge movies like 'Cinderella' where Cinderella was her godmother. And where in the final sound,
'When one asks: what you actually can produce?'
And then no relationship will help make the leg a little, soul, big heart and just.
And it is clear that there had been in mind.
Yana-little knew that she will live wonderful lives for the people's happiness and bright future, which seemed to her vaguely as a shining snowy peaks, when it becomes old and dies (previously, this idea seemed monstrous and incredible and unfair); Yana-believer knew that when her as a woman Xenia, buried in the ground and leave one at all, and nobody, neither my mother nor friends, nor Stalin could not help her; then he will fly.
God.
An omnipotent magician with a clear and kind eyes.
Give, as in the fairy tale Thumbelina, wings, will give a hand, and they'll fly into a wonderful fairy land.
Where is always summer, where only good and kind, where all is well.
And it will always will be so.
The country is somewhere high in the sky, perhaps, these very 'shiny peaks'.
Communism, and the Kingdom of Heaven Yana imagined about the same. An eternal Garden and happy people with wings.
And all feel good because all are good.
Just could not understand how the bright future of all may be good if they will continue to be ill and die?
No, that cannot, must not be so!
Must always be God-loving, mighty and fair, who will take all from the pit and save when no one, no one can help.
God is something that was required to be final. That is the final justice, without which the entire universe in her children's eyes fell apart and did not make sense.
Comrade Stalin is here, God is there.
And when they say adults, there is no God, I mean 'here'.
Everything in her world view then harmoniously took place.
And now, leaving behind most of his life is 'returning from the fair', she again sat on a school notebook with a pink blotter.
To turn over the memory, to overestimate again and ruthlessly cut off anything that will "turn black inside" and not give the soul soar when it's her time.
And look like a monk from Varya's parable, what is left after this shake-up? When all worm-eaten otseetsya, melts all false and illusory, burn all dark and evil ...
What is left now?
What is it to be, Joanna, when the time comes to take off?
She finally realized the meaning of confession and communion, and was horrified at myself.
Yana-little, a faithful pioneer, knew not naughty, hooligan, lazy, betray, steal, lie, insult, conceited, greedy.
That we must love friends, their country, and be prepared for them in any deed.
She grew up in Soviet films, books and songs, which taught that 'there is always a reliable friend in trouble helping hand', 'I dug in the cold warmth of my unquenchable love', 'you wait for me at the crib and cannot sleep and so I know to me nothing will happen'...
She sang about 'the holy war', about 'the time of the Homeland' and 'had more debt than do Thy will'.
And 'Where to find the country in the world, my beautiful country?' and 'the country gets the glory for the meeting of the day', and 'In the name of happiness and freedom of flying, pigeons, forward' and "I marvel at the sky' ...
And now, remembering her childhood and adolescence, she came to the conclusion that it was a Christian upbringing. Anyway, apparently it does not conflict with Christian ethics.
Joanna was shocked that she remembers so well, all the sins of his childhood, teenage, youth and everything! To the smallest detail. Unlike other events, the order has already been erased in the memory.
All that was doing wrong by the faithful pioneer Yana was condemned at the same time in both instances.
In any case, there were two defining all the foundation: the prayer 'Our Father', which she learned in that terrible storm in the evacuation, and the curse on the Red Square:
'I promise to live and study so as to become a worthy citizen of my socialist country'...
She wrote, she wrote in an attic Luzhino's cottage.
All are smaller, fearing that not enough exercise books and sought out the memory and more black nuggets of the past, like mouse droppings in a handful of beans.
She selected and screened all her life.
Running around the school exercise, without having to 'sin', presented by Denis pen 'Parker'.
As it turned out that she could accurately separate the wheat from the chaff memory! What separated her from God, from life.
All had fewer seeds; solid black pile of toxic debris, and she remembered...
If Heaven indeed has given to us such a miracle, all this evil that was sown you in the world, burn, erase, if not of life (though for God everything is possible), at least, of their own fate, how you can continue to carry with you these past crimes evidence?
'Not seem but to be a'.
Yes, something was broken it after meeting with Denis, the story of Leonid, he moved to Moscow, something had collapsed.
People around her became her like property. They play until they get bored.
Or her business acquaintances. Just get and get...
Struggled in vain to find Joanna at least some of his good works; they just were not! Comes to mind just something ridiculous like trivia beggar or someone in the top ten debt to pay.
Yes, she remembered everything.
But whether she believed the former children's faith in Him who in her last dreadful hour, as if in a storm, hold out an all-powerful helping hand, throwing up from the grave of darkness and save?
Usually, under faith they understand 'confidence'.
And it's more likely the spiritual and moral choice, hope, longing for God's existence. Because of the fear of its own nothingness.
Or it is the choice of the mind, calculating the divine world order.
Or it is the choice of the soul: a spiritual and moral one.
And finally, the choice of the heart, i.e. longing for love of the Creator, the longing for Him.
Sometimes these moments are the same.
Faith is not confidence in the existence of God, otherwise we would have moved mountains! This is a desire, a thirst to believe, slip forward.
Be, O Lord! Be so it is written in the Gospel.
Lord of the World, fused with Light and Love. Forever and ever.
Choice of Christ is the choice of his teaching. His conception of the world.
One who is greater he serves but not him.
That is, I came into the world to serve the plan, rather than to serve my passions; in this sense the earth the Christian life.
'I desire mercy, not sacrifice'. Soviet devotees went His way, not knowing it.
While those 'who know' were waiting for awards, 'comrades' gave their lives 'for their friends', for the happiness of future generations simply by the dictates of the heart, totally disinterested.
Joanna took the stage of children's fear, spiritual, moral choice and the choice of a reasonable and rational.
Now she came to church to church sacraments.
Question was not for a believer Soviet citizen Sinegina Joanna, if she believed in God, they talked about the credibility of the Church, namely trust.
That's where needed big feat, slip on her part, above all to understand, to understand the meaning of church services, sacraments, feasts, fasts.
She realized that there is still God and the Church was not associated in her mind in spite of all efforts of Luzhino's inhabitants.
She believed father Tikhon for some reason and all at once.
'I am evil and darkness,' confessed Joanna to her notebook. 'But somehow I do not fear. I am sick and mad, I understand the mind.
I'm dying and I do not feel pain. I do not love anybody, even myself.'
About Ignatius was nothing she wrote. About Ignatius, belonging to Him.
She finally realized that she had come 'in the infirmary', this child a notebook with black from the sins of the pages.
In the infirmary, which was ordered to go pioneers, Komsomol and general 'cultural' people.
To whom God and if there was, something philosophically lofty, inaccessible, and not an 'enemy of the sick and the lepers, including stuffy, boring and incomprehensible'.
She became convinced that we must do everything exactly as it is accepted; to put on a dark dress, shawl and worn-out shoes to withstand long service.
And that's the way it should be almost sleepless night on a notebook, in autumn drizzling rain, the road to the temple on a wet road almost running, so do not be late. Because it was impossible to miss.
Another empty dim temple, only here and there lighted candles, and the women did not pay her any attention.
The notebook soaked because water dripped from the canopy. And inappropriately bright umbrella, which she does not know where to stick.
And the heartbeat it seems the whole church, and the humble incense...
Yes, that's how it should be, no matter how mind protests, calling for 'the shining heights' to Ignatius's 'Light of Tabor'.
She realized suddenly the meaning of those fallen in the dust of human figures at the feet of Christ.
Fear Light. What kind of 'Shining Peaks!'
Horrified by their own darkness, fallen soul, Hiding from the Light.
That's how it should be.
And the humble confession of expectation in the far corner of the temple, and the fear that Father Tikhon forgot about her.
Again, fear, when he came, and disappeared again at the altar.
Then came, but it does not look as if I've forgotten everything. And about their arrangement, and about the secret handshake, an encouraging...
He reads many prayers, calls up the boy, then a grandmother, another.
If she, Joanna, did not exist at all.
Temple, meanwhile filled with people, it's time to start the service. Give way in Joanna feet. Maybe he did not recognize her? This stupid cloak, scarf...
And the overwhelming desire to flee.
'Come up, Joanna.'
I turned the heart. Get yourself together does not work. What is it?
'Do not go and die!' it is as if someone whispers, 'sorry, bad feeling, and run. All floats and you fall...'
It really floats, but the Father Tikhon had already picked up a notebook, put on his glasses.
'What, do you feel bad? Now take place, it is spiritual. It is the enemy, he now knows where to go. Hold the candle, Joanna. Closer.
He reads her life, moving his lips as a child.
They are only two in the confessional corner. Full of people waiting for the church, monotonous voice of the cantor reads 'clock.
Then he begins service. Father Tikhon in the right places deacon responds, reading.
She thinks everyone is looking at her. Lord, here is a sheet! He will read the evening...
Father Tikhon, one pulls out sheets, throws in a dish on the table and lights the candle. Writhing, burn sheets, black pages of Joanna of life.
Leaflets blaze brighter, the entire church. The fire or it is just her imagination?
'It should be. What's left of you, Joanna?'
O Lord, if he has read it all? So quickly? It is impossible ...
But she knows that maybe there just a countdown.
Father Tikhon takes off his glasses. Writhing on a platter, burn down, the last leaf.
Father Tikhon gives her skin a blotter, which automatically pops into Joanna's pocket coat.
'Before mothers-murderers were not allowed into the church at the door of prayer.' Father Tikhon shook his head.
And Joanna is ready for anything, let the drive out and disgrace to the whole church, but would rather it was all over...
But there is something quite unexpected.
'How can you hate yourself? We must fight against sin, and you with yourself.
Poor you, poor you...'
It stuned her, accustomed to consider themselves selfish narcissistic.
How right he was! After all, she hates herself for a long time... With what bitterness she dragged herself, rests in a pit at the mercy of those whom love did not work.
And they willingly ate, raped her, as a fee for the redemption of this dislike.
But are they to blame for having the right to the script, rather than ersatz? She hated this ersatz. Joanna who was at the same time subtly sensitive and icy.
Rational, self-healing every time like a phantom, for a new devouring.
Not their fault. Do not blame that Ignatius and "Joanna", eternally youthful beautiful face, sad and joyful at the same time, doomed to separation from the real world, flying away on the other side of life.
Tearing into it and rejecting.
Only she and Joanna Fallen, is worthy of death... Now Father Tikhon condemned it, chase, will appoint a long penance.
He should not feel sorry for her. Should not look so...
Drawing on her hand, Father Tikhon slowly and with difficulty down on stiff knees.
The whole church is waiting. Psalm begins to read again until my father with pity fervently praying for 'the lost God's servant Joanna'."
Out of nowhere who had taken the tears poured over her face.
'Poor you, poor you!' For years, killing themselves and do not knowing what you were doing... Or knowing?
She knelt next.
'Not on the mat! It is for the priest!' Hisses in somebody's ear.
She obediently pushed back, dying of self-pity, hatred and love for the poor Joanna Fallen...
'Has he allowed to recieve communion at once?' astonished, returning at night from the monastery Varya, which Joanna did not keep patience, all will tell. 'He is responsible for you to God, if you pick.
It's like a criminal on parole.
He is too soft, Father Tikhon... Forgive me, Lord, my father, of course, know better...
But you will now be tempted to fire, wait for it. This happens when no penance for communion...
The explosion happens: the world and the anti-world.