masks. Women may paint their laces.” His words echoed from the ancient stone walls. “Men may perfect their masks. But
The assassin was certain that the burning eyes of the priest met his at that moment. He forced himself to keep from blinking and turning away.
“The struggle is not over, though the statues are down and the empire is dying. We speak openly, but those with clubs and guns, the murderers of the soul, wait in the shadows. New freedom is not only for the just but for the unjust also. Those who stole your bread will be replaced by others who will steal your bread and your water. The struggle is not over.
“Look you,” he bellowed, stepping forward. “New false gods already dwell behind the golden doors of Moscow, Tiblisi, Kiev. Deny them. There is no new kingdom and there was no old kingdom. It was always the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. This very day I will go to Moscow. This very day I will be expected to join in the rejoicing of those who claim a new kingdom called Democracy. This day even those in vestments in our own church will smile and give thanks and be mesmerized by hope. It is not hard for an evil king to clothe the seduced in the vestments of priests, but God, not the kings of the earth, determines the holy. In the name of our Lord I will not be mesmerized by a crucifix of gold while someone reaches into my chest to take my soul, our soul, and claim the kingdom of the Lord.”
At the end Father Merhum blessed the worshipers and patted the heads of those who came forward to kiss the hem of his vestments.
Assassin and priest’s eyes met again for an instant. Had the cleansing weapon not been hidden outside, he would have climbed over the backs of the fools, the stupid animals who knelt in front of this preening pot of filth. The pot had to be broken.
The priest was gone. Through the golden door.
The assassin pushed through the crowd. The priest would change quickly. Feigning humility, he would walk through the woods to the train station, where he would travel to Moscow to do battle with the state in the name of God and the people. But he would do other things in Moscow of which he told no one.
Hypocrisy, he thought, willing himself to move at the pace of those who stepped out into the cold daylight, dazzled, still in a religious swoon, a state of stupid ecstasy. They moved slowly and so did he.
Father Merhum, with the help of his grandson, removed his vestments carefully, with reverence. He was aware of his hands, his thighs, the rippling gray hair between his legs as he slipped off each vestment and handed it to Aleksandr.
“I have a question for you,” said the priest, and the boy’s legs trembled as he placed a cloak neatly on a wooden hanger. Aleksandr was sure that his grandfather had discovered his secret.
“You ate this morning?” Father Merhum asked, pulling his head through the top of his black cloak and smoothing his unruly hair and beard.
“Yes, Father,” said Aleksandr. He placed the sleeves gently in the wooden box on the table.
“You ate all your bread?” asked Father Merhum playfully.
“All of it,” said Aleksandr.
“Good,” said his grandfather. “Are you still going to be a priest?”
As he had said dozens of times before, the twelve-year old answered, “As my grandfather and his father before him.”
They said nothing of Aleksandr’s father, Peotor, who had forsaken his tradition for the life of a shopkeeper. Peotor claimed to be an atheist. In the four years during which Father Merhum had been imprisoned for his articles, for his attacks on the puppet priests who had been appointed by the government as metropolitans and bishops, not once had Peotor written to him.
“Your father has lost his soul,” said Father Merhum, adjusting the heavy cross on his chest. “He inherited the weakness of his mother, whom our Lord has taken to his breast.”
The small, thin boy, who most resembled his sad and pretty Georgian mother, nodded his head. When his grandfather talked of his father, Aleksandr imagined not the sullen man at home but one of the sinners in the icon of the Lord and the gates of hell that hung in his grandfather’s house. The sinner in the icon was a thin, pale creature in rags, his right arm trying to cover his face from the wrath of the Lord.
“It is not that Peotor honestly turned from God,” said Father Merhum, “but that he believed in the Lord yet turned his back upon him and the Holy Mother for a few extra bottles of wine and a shank of meat on earth. I respect an honest atheist, even an honest Communist, but I despise the coward who thinks only of preserving what sheathes his body and fills his belly, the coward who abandons God and his soul.”
Aleksandr nodded dutifully.
“You understand?” asked Father Merhum. “Speak.”
“I understand,” said the boy.
“My words are hard, but it is better to face reality than to waste time constructing lies and excuses. We are what we must be, but the Lord gives us the opportunity to choose. Your father has chosen. You must choose. Today. Tomorrow.”
Aleksandr nodded.
“Do you understand even half of what I say to you?”
“I think so.”
“Good,” said Father Merhum. “Go.”
And the boy turned, grabbed his coat, and ran out the door.
With his grandson gone, Vasili Merhum surveyed himself in the tall mirror and contemplated the approaching struggle. He would fight for political and religious freedom in this new Russia. He would demand that those who tortured and murdered under the old regime, even if they be officials in the new commonwealth, be brought to justice. He would supply the names. He would read them in Red Square atop the empty tomb that had held the profane icon of Lenin, which the foolish had stood in line to worship. And if he were martyred, then so be it.
He would name the ones who had changed their masks, from the highest generals to the party members and even the pathetic mayor of Arkush. And to that list he would add two bishops. It would begin with a public meeting in snow before St. Basil’s this very day. The foreign press had been invited. Yeltsin himself had been invited but would certainly not come. Even Gorbachev had been invited, though it no longer mattered if he came or not. Father Merhum expected only the people and the television cameras. He would speak in Russian, English, French. He anticipated the day not far in the future when he would be offered a position in the Russian government. He pictured himself righteously refusing the offer.
After he put on his coat, Father Merhum checked the floorboard under the leg of the table, found the hidden space below it and its contents as he had left them. Then he rose and stepped out the door onto the stone path behind the church. He crossed the small concrete churchyard, went across the brick-lined street, and entered the woods.
As he walked, watching his cold breath cloud before him, the priest allowed himself a brief thought of the appointment he had made for that evening in the square building just across from the church where Pushkin had been married. The appointment and what it would lead to would be both the earthly reward and punishment for the explosive speech he would make that day. Father Merhum’s challenge to Yeltsin, his demand for immediate punishment for those who now hid behind the shadowed pillars of the Kremlin would be on the lips of every Christian and non-Christian in Russia and beyond. He planned to demand the immediate resignation of many of those in the new Commonwealth governments. He expected no such thing to happen, but the demand would signal that a respected member of the Church had joined in the call to overthrow not only the old reactionaries but the new bigots and self-seekers.
Father Merhum was soon no more than fifty yards from his house. He would not turn toward the house but would continue straight on to the station. Walking on the narrow path of stones, he was aware of the scuffling of animals in the snow-covered grass and the rustling of wings of the gray-black crows in the trees above.
He paused at the birch tree where at the age of sixteen he had cut a cross to impress the young large- breasted daughter of the then mayor of Arkush. There was no longer a trace of that cross. He stopped now because something was in his shoe, a pebble perhaps. As he paused, reached down, and removed the shoe,
