living on Athos was summoned and suddenly disappeared from his monastery or cell.
A boat with the shrines from St. Pavlou, the nearest monastery to the Mountain, docked to our ship. The monks placed the casket in the center of the joint tables on the lower deck. A queue lined up. People wondered what it was there.
“The Gifts of the Magi!”
I wrote the names in the memorial note, handed it over with the icons for blessing on the Gifts of the Magi to the monk, touched the shrines and put on them my cross, my ring and the wool rosary, woven by monks from the same monastery and purchased by me right on the ship. People came and went, while I stood next to the relics.
“God loves you,” the monk smiled, gave me his blessing and crossed me goodbye.
The monks returned to the monastery, and I stood on the deck and looked at the Mountain. Repeatedly in the history of the Holy Mountain, the monks faced various problems and wanted to leave the place, but the Virgin Mary appeared to them, providing miraculous help, and they stayed. According to legend, one day She would leave the Mountain forever, Her most famous icon, “Gatekeeper”, would disappear from Athos, the Holy Mountain would go under water, and the Apocalypse would come.
***
“Leah, have you found out the name of that icon?”
“Yes! Janis called to Athos, and the monks said, ‘Seeking for the Perished’.”
I froze for a moment, and then I took out of my bag the Akathist to the same icon. Leah raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“I read it on the border with Athos every evening, Leah! I went to church school and sang in the temple. There was an icon unknown to me, near which I stood during liturgies, when I was not singing on the solea. Many years passed, and a colleague at work said that the icon was called ‘Seeking for the Perished’. A few years later, in a book of an Orthodox priest, I read that it helps in critical situations, on the verge of death, or suicide, at the loss of hope and support, against drug addiction, they pray to Her for the lost people and ones killed and died not by natural death, for children left without parents. Thus, I realized the icon was mine. I’ll take it from you. After all, I felt it at once, not recognizing, since this is not the Greek type, and not the one from my temple, but definitely it is ‘Seeking for the Perished’. There are special features of the image: the fingers of the Virgin are closed in a strange way, as if a wall surrounds you and doesn’t allow you to collapse into the abyss; Her hair is loose, and there is no headscarf on Her head, as if She had been an ordinary woman.”
Janis came up to us. I took out my book “Temple of the Heart” and handed it to him, but had no time to say anything, since his father appeared and, after saying hello, began to talk in Greek quickly.
“Father Gabriel from Athos is here passing through Ouranoupoli, let’s go to him!” Janis summed up to me. “You can take his blessing. We have known him for a long time. He is a very good person.”
In the next door house Janis introduced us to each other and added that Father Gabriel understood English perfectly, knew many foreign languages, including Arabic and Aramaic, and read ancient manuscripts and relicts in the original.
“What kind of book is it?” Father Gabriel asked me.
“I was just about to ask Janis to transfer, I mean to donate it to the Library of the St. Panteleimon Monastery on Athos.”
I handed the book to Father Gabriel, and he began to examine with interest the cover with the image of two elephants, sitting on a bench in the forest with their backs to the reader and admiring the starry sky, one small and one large. Father Gabriel smiled, stroking their tails.
“This is me, and next to me is my mother,” I smiled. “The book is called “Temple of the Heart”, it consists of three parts: 40 verses like a 40-days monks’ pray for my mother, poems of my church school period, and echoes of the church choir. The book is dedicated to my mother, Patriarch Alexey II and the famous Russian poet Alexander Blok, because he once wrote about a girl who sang in the church choir, almost about me.”
“The Patriarch? Why?” Father Gabriel asked with interest, slowly leafing through the book and trying to read the titles of the verses.
“There was no Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow yet then, the Patriarch served in the church where I studied and sang.”
“Sign it to Hegumen Eulogious, the head of Rossikon. In a couple of days, we celebrate the feast of St. Panteleimon, and we’ll give him your gift!”
“Recently, Father Gabriel has been appointed Archimandrite of Vatopedi,” Janis smiled after returning to the shop. “He is young, but God is moving him upward, he has already served at the Exaltation with the Patriarch of Jerusalem, in Jerusalem. He wants to take me with him next year. I’ll send you video of their liturgy.”
“While you were away, the icon with Christ holding the globe, surrounded by the Zodiac Circle with planets, left,” Leah informed us.
“Saturn with rings and the Moon,” I remembered that icon.
“Do you believe that the planets influence our destinies?” Leah asked.
“Destinies are written in Heaven, and the Magi were led to Christ by a star,” I answered. “At the airport of Thessaloniki, they sold expensive hand-painted icons depicting the Signs of the Zodiac, and on the sealed certificate it was written that these were copies of fragments of the ancient wall painting of an Athos monastery. Have you seen them, by chance, Janis?”
“No, but it’s quite possible. Have you visited the Mount today? What Athos’ shrines were brought by monks?”
“The Gifts of the Magi.”
Somewhere in the Mist
“Lon-Don, Lon-Don…”
I am very tired. It’s constantly raining there, and the Mist is spreading, swallowing everything and everyone. And me, it will swallow me too.
“Lon-Don, Lon-Don…”
The bell is ringing inside me, and we are sitting on a bench by the Thames with Sergey Dobronravov in silence. He is just as silent as me. He seems to be a writer. I’m very tired and I don’t even remember how we got there. Gloomy clouds are crawling through the bare and jails bars-like branches of trees.
“Lon-Don, Lon-Don…”
A man appears from the Mist. I’m scared to meet him. Why? I fall into the Mist, where we are standing with Sergey on the zero meridian in Greenwich, and I tell him, “Everything will change! Life starts from scratch here!” And we climb the Royal Observatory Tower, but out of the Mist – damn it! – the man reappears —
“Lon-Don, Lon-Don…”
I don’t see his face, but he laughs, maliciously, caustically, and I’m scared again. Signboards, signboards, lots of tables with books. I want to run away from there, away, into the Mist! My consciousness begins to split into atoms. I don’t want to think or to remember anything anymore – away! all these atoms —
“Lon-Don,
