Diveyevo. Our days. Photo: Diveevo-palomnik.ru
In the summer of 2011 or 2012 I came to Diveyevo Convent for the feast of St. Seraphim to pray and sell my films.
But since the territory of the convent is off-limits to “sellers at pop-up stalls”, like me, we had only two sites available: a round platform at the entrance to the convent from the bus station and a long narrow corridor from Arzamasskaya Street (it has been since swallowed up by the convent).
It was here, under a high fence of planks painted a gloomy dark brown, that I had a place from year to year. However, it was always hard to get it.
At first there was no free spot at all. So, the first thing I did was to run to St. Seraphim’s relics. Then I rushed to the grave of my old friend, Hieromonk Vladimir (Shikin; 1947–2000) just beyond the sanctuary of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, where I would pester him with requests:
“Father Vladimir, you see everything! Please help me! They aren’t giving me a place! You’re kind—we’ll die without this money!”
Next I would return to the alley, and suddenly a place for me would be found…
I would proceed to run to the nearest store, beg for five or six empty cardboard boxes from the saleswomen, set up a complex structure resembling a small table, fix it with sticky tape and lay a red cover on it.
Then, with the help of sticky tape, I would “decorate” the fence behind my back: you cannot do without advertising anywhere! And all this on a patch of one square meter. I went “on duty” at six in the morning and “crawled away” at ten in the evening—and this went on for five or seven days.
Initially, experienced local sellers looked at me from afar. Then they began to come up to my stall, some to change money, others just to chat. One of them was the former director of a culture center, others were former accountants, storekeepers, drivers, machine operators, etc. Everything collapsed in the 1990s, and now they were here, “under the fence”, developing their Orthodox vocabulary amidst a continuous stream of pilgrims.
It was incredibly hard for them; something painfully Soviet and “Party”-like would at times come from their mouths… But it even pleased me, because in this this I could see the mighty parental hand of the Lord.
The street was heaving; crowds of pilgrims, lines of buses, cars—everybody was in a hurry. My “neighbors” had the most popular products: women’s headscarves, plastic containers for holy water and hundred-ruble raincoats. Everything else lay on their counters for weeks. But I only had my own films.
My wife called me periodically, wondering about my progress. I tried to find soothing and optimistic words for her. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I didn’t…
I attributed the success of my trade to the Almighty alone. I never pressured passing pilgrims into stopping, but, with a prayer rope behind my back, I repeated the Jesus Prayer in an undertone. The Lord brought to me those whom I needed.
The pirate Serioga
Sellers come from everywhere for the feast of Batiushka Seraphim. There are very colorful figures among them.
Here is Serioga,1 a former lieutenant colonel. We are opposites: I myself make movies, while he pirates them, copying everything that he finds interesting, including my works. But in Diveyevo, like in Noah’s Ark, predators have no desire to bite.
We’re sort of friends: every now and then Serioga comes up and gives me a dozen of his new pirate CDs as a gift, casting a sharp glance over my counter to see if I have something new.
The pirates even have their “moral code”: not to sell my CDs (which they pirated) in my presence. But Serioga lulls his conscience by saying that he “brings truth to people” and is a “missionary”. Once, many years ago, a priest who was passing by comforted him and blessed him to “spread the Word of God”. Serioga clung to his words and has not wanted to listen to anything else since. Perhaps he feels more comfortable this way!
I only get a little angry when gullible customers, having bought my films from pirates at a give-away price, come to me to replace defective CDs!
I ask them:
“Why have you come to me?”
And I hear in response:
“Well, you’re the author!”
A bawling old man
There was an old man there with a huge magnificent gray beard. He didn’t sell anything—he bawled! He would sit on a stool at the entrance to the alley and rail at all the “creators of cataclysms” loudly and expressively. The customers, cautious and tight-fisted as they are, were frightened away by his yelling and ran past our counters.
“When will he get tired?” I bewailed during those moments. “There’s going to be no trade today!”
Elena the “oligarch”
Elena attracts your attention right away: an open, Slavic face, a direct gaze, an enormous capacity for work, commercial acumen, and a simple manner of communication. A genuine Russian elderly lady! At five in the morning, she’s already there, unloading the stall from the car, assembling it herself, and unpacking the products. I have never heard a complaint or a word of reproach from her. She waits for a sleepy salesgirl, hands her a ready-made stall, and leaves to set up the next point of sale.
In Diveyevo she is a local “oligarch”, as she has five or six stalls. They are scattered at all the key points around the convent, as well as at all the springs. Everyone respects her.
At around six in the evening Elena is back in her place, and everything is repeated in reverse order: paying the salesgirl, collecting the products, dragging them into the car, packing up and putting the stall into the car, and so on at all the points of sale, day after day, year after year.
Elena isn’t a native of Diveyevo. I know that she came here driven by faith soon after the convent had been reopened. That’s why she has the fear of God and is a truly religious person. You can recognize such people right away. Besides, she has a large family: children, grandchildren, and a house to run. I don’t know if she ever rests.
Elena doesn’t have a driver or a loader—she does everything herself, with her rusty, battered old pink car. One day, after setting up all the points in the morning, she rushed to the Moscow region for goods, bought everything she needed and managed to get back to Diveyevo by six in the evening, even though it is almost 310 miles each way!
A musician
And here’s a musician! None of our “standings-under-the-fence” is complete without him. I still don’t know his name, but he plays brilliantly! The flute in his hands both cries and sings. He comes from Moscow for one or two days for the major feasts. Wearing a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, with a mustache and a neat little beard, he took a position in the narrow corridor in front of the convent, and pilgrims walking by listened with tender emotion to melodies from songs by Orthodox singers Zhanna Bichevskaya, Hieromonk Roman (Matyushin), and others. I don’t know if his journeys to Diveyevo and back have paid off, but he brought us all great pleasure.
Beggars
The picture of everyday life in our alley would be incomplete without the description of two or three respectable-looking old gentlemen. They would come to us every day as if they were going to work.
Actually, that was their job: they begged for themselves. They were old and received miserable pensions. So, I had nothing against that. I even liked their honesty; they didn’t promise to pray for anyone. Since I would stand for hours there, I had plenty of time to watch them.
They were pros! How talented and unmistakably subtly they felt the situation! They instantly changed their location if something indicated that the core of the crowd had begun or was about to shift to the side. They were always “in the main stream”!
Our main enemy
It was not the convent guards or the local administration, but the rain, showers! In July and August it went berserk. At first it started drizzling, then the rain got stronger, and suddenly the sky seemed to be bursting with water!
My local “neighbors”, who were selling in cozy stalls, began feverishly unwrapping plastic sheeting over them. Then, when dozens of kilograms of water on the roof bent the canvas almost to the ground, they took sticks and mops and tried to lift the pools of water from the inside. But the water often did not go where the sellers wanted, but onto the heads of passing pilgrims. At best, onto the roofs of the stalls…
Sometimes we couldn’t even hear each other for the roar of water falling out of the sky! Dirty streams were flowing on the ground, and our goods were damp and soaked.
For us such showers were a disaster! There was absolutely nowhere to hide. Under the roaring flows of water, we were standing forlornly with our fragile umbrellas, and my cardboard “counter” turned into a shapeless lump of dirty paper. I covered my movies with transparent film, but for whom? A handful of pilgrims ran past me in horror into buildings.
In the evenings I carried out an inventory: poured water out of the boxes with CDs, took out and dried the covers and calculated the losses…
However, the common misfortune brought us closer, and we all helped one another as best we could.
“Dialogues under the fence”
Everything is free
There was a small group of pilgrims led by a young, intelligent priest with gold-rimmed glasses, an attentive gaze and unhurried, noble movements. He examined my films for a long time, asked me something, and then said:
“You should not sell these movies. They must be posted online for public access.”
“Okay,” I replied after a pause, barely suppressing my indignation. “I agree. But in this case, you, father, or YouTube, will personally support my family of six! Do you agree?! If so, I don’t mind.”
The space in front of my table instantly became empty…
Zealots
There is a group of “Orthodox Romantics” among my regular “customers”. They have many names: “zealots of faith”, “fighters for the purity of Orthodoxy”, etc. I used to be one of them, though after a trip to Mt. Athos I shifted from the edge closer to the center. After five or six “turns” beside me, one of them would always start talking about the end times.
Over the years spent at Orthodox exhibitions I have learned to distinguish them almost unmistakably in a crowd of visitors. Do you know what gives them away? A restless soul, restlessness of the spirit. There is always a certain overstrain in their eyes, sometimes even a tear. They are in the position of “defenders of the besieged fortress” around the clock! Whenever I come to a new city for an exhibition, I expect an inevitable meeting with them and identify them in the stream of people by these signs.
It was the same in Diveyevo. But there are far more of them here. The main reason is the special sacred nature of this place. According to St. Seraphim’s prophecies, the space inside the Holy Canal will be the only place on Earth that the antichrist will not be able to enter. This is all described in detail in Orthodox literature. So, many believers are gathering in this spiritual island in advance.
It was unpleasant for the radicals surrounding my counter to hear my stories about the stance of the Athonite elders, about the examples of moderation and wisdom they show in relation to globalization, and about the spirit of economy. It wasn’t something they had expected to hear from me.
A grateful viewer
And this episode is inspiring and joyful! It still enlivens me.
I was standing under the fence as usual. It was noon, it was hot, the customers were all gone, and I was bored. Suddenly, I saw a young guy riding a bicycle. He was in his work clothes, and it was clear that he worked at the convent as an employee. He saw my CDs, slowed down and, putting one foot on the ground, started scrutinizing the covers…
All of a sudden he almost jumped:
“Oh, are you the author?”
He left his bike and rushed to hug me. I wondered why he was so happy.
He is originally from Irkutsk. He graduated from the local polytechnic institute—a very complicated department related to all types of welding, even in outer space and underwater. And in Diveyevo he was building a welded fence around the perimeter of the convent.
He happened to watch one of my films in Irkutsk, and it impressed him so much—Orthodoxy, the Church, the purity of soul—that he began to attend church. The reaction of the world was not long in coming: He immediately lost half of his friends. But he continued to go to Church, began participating in the sacraments, heeding the words of sermons, and as a result he gave up drinking, smoking, and hanging out with his fellows. The world answered him again: the other half of his friends turned away from him.
His parents were seriously worried: “What’s wrong with the guy? He no longer hangs out with his buddies and goes to church instead. Maybe he needs treatment?”
He ran away from home just when his parents called an ambulance. He hastily took what he had and went on a pilgrimage to various monasteries. He traveled around Russia, from St. Petersburg to the south, and finally he came to St. Seraphim.
They assigned him an obedience, gave him accommodations and paid him. His parents were angry with him for a long time. But recently his father came to visit him. They seem to have resigned themselves to this.
May God bless him!
Fr. Nikolai
Diveyevo, 2012. With Fr. Nikolai from Kiev
A priest appeared at the beginning of the alley. Of medium height, he walked slowly, carefully examining the contents of the stalls, now talking with people at pop-up stalls, now blessing someone. At last, he approached me.
Participation in crowded exhibitions had weaned me off rushing to unknown priests for a blessing. And I didn’t do it this time. The priest began to look at my films silently, but suddenly he raised his head, looked closely and said joyfully:
“Oh, are you the author?”
It turned out that he had watched almost all of my films at home.
I found him to be an extremely open and friendly man. His name was Fr. Nikolai. At the time he served in a small village on the edge of the Kiev region. His church was large and ancient, but the parish consisted of only two or three local old ladies.
The priest loved St. Seraphim of Sarov so much that he travelled to Diveyevo for his feast every year. So it was now.
The sun was beating down mercilessly, the pilgrims had hidden somewhere, so no one interrupted us…
“Do you want me to tell you, Sergei, how my wife and I first met?”
He was a locomotive engineer by profession and had studied at the Odessa College of Railway Transport. It was there that he met his future wife, also a student. Their favorite place for walking was the spacious Alexeyevsky Public Garden, situated very close to the college. There was a small square with cozy benches in the middle of this shady garden. One of them was their favorite—they sat on it most often.
After graduating from the college, the young couple was sent on assignment to that very railway station in the Kiev region. As the years flew by, the Lord brought them both to His Church, and one day they returned to Odessa. They wanted to see their favorite places, and their feet themselves brought them to the Alexeyevsky Public Garden. But what did they see there?
They had not known that until the 1930s a beautiful ancient church of St. Alexis, the Man of God, used to tower over the site of an empty lot in the center of the public garden. The Bolsheviks demolished it and leveled the place, turning it into an ordinary public garden. And now Fr. Nikolai and his wife saw that through the efforts of the faithful, the church had been restored to its former glory, on its old foundation.
But the most exciting and joyful thing for their hearts was that the place where their favorite bench used to stand was now... inside the church’s altar!
It was as if the Lord was telling them:
“Children, I blessed your wonderful marriage from the very first day.”
