The front of Leonid’s thighs throbbed with dull fatigue. The sidewalk they followed sloped up, not much, just enough to make the change in elevation known. They stepped from the narrow lane into a paved expanse on the other side of which soared an ornate, domed church, far larger than any place they had visited so far.
The tour guide led them alongside the church, explaining in English what it was and its history. Leonid listened just closely enough to pick up the name of the place, St. Paul’s, and that a cathedral was a special sort of church, he assumed like a sobor, though it looked nothing like St. Basil’s. They passed into the church through an entrance on the side of the building, through a narrow hallway that forced them to progress in single file, and then an open space burst before them. The ceilings vaulted high above, domes and panels painted with massive renderings of biblical scenes, columns and arches gilded. There was no flat space to be found, no inch free from image, but instead of feeling crowded, the ceiling soared higher and higher, the figures painted there as far away as the faintest pinprick of a star. Leonid wished he had visited this place before he had to describe outer space in interviews. This sensation, he was sure, was as close as he would ever come to understanding what his brother had experienced in orbit.
He sat down on a bare wooden seat near the altar while the rest of the tour group moved toward the nave. The photographers snapped a few photos of Leonid from a distance, and then hurried on. Nadya was still their favorite subject, even though she never smiled for the camera.
A man emerged from one of the cathedral’s many corners and stopped to stare at Leonid. The man wore a black jacket over a dark red shirt with a Roman collar. This was a priest, Leonid realized, even though the vestments were different from the only other priest Leonid had ever known, back in the village, before the priest was taken away.
Leonid looked up at the ceiling again, scanning his eyes slowly across every surface as if reading sentences in a book. When he looked back down, the priest was still staring. Leonid made direct eye contact and felt the heat of a blush on his neck and cheeks, and then the weight of the cap still on his head. He had forgotten to remove it when they entered. He snatched it off, fumbling the brim in his fingers. The cap slipped free and fell to the checkerboard floor, landing on the gold button on its side, pinging out a sound that resonated through the whole cathedral. The priest grinned, an expression that squeezed his ample cheeks into a series of folds.
Tugging down the bottom of his jacket, the priest slid sideways into the narrow space between the chair rows and shuffled toward Leonid, taking a seat right next to him.
“I am sorry for my hat,” said Leonid.
“Oh, you speak English?” said the priest.
“Some.”
“Don’t worry about the hat. We have so many tourists come through here, we would exhaust ourselves trying to remind everyone who forgot to remove their hats before entering. Anyway, I should apologize to you for staring. I’m particularly fascinated by space exploration. The Americans, I was fortunate to meet them when they came to London. It was arranged in advance, but I never expected to see a Soviet in a church.” The priest slapped his thigh. “I can’t believe it! Stumbling across a cosmonaut just sitting by my altar.”
“Not only me,” said Leonid. He flicked his thumb toward the nave, where the rest of the tour group stood in a semicircle around the guide. Nadya lingered several steps away, staring off in a direction opposite from everyone else. “The first human in space admires your church also.”
The priest’s face went agape, but he quickly composed it. The man was older than Leonid had first thought, fine lines like shatter marks at every place where his face creased. These were smoothed somewhat by the ampleness of the priest’s flesh, rounding the hard edges of age. His eyes were like those of a child, still able to find wonder, still seeking it.
“Can… can I meet her?” asked the priest.
“I will introduce you,” said Leonid.
The priest turned from Nadya and gazed up at a mosaic above the altar, depicting a man even Leonid knew enough to recognize as Jesus.
“Before that, can I ask you a question?” asked the priest. “I’ve been curious about it. It’s said that everyone in Russia is atheist. Can there really be a whole nation without God?”
“You are priest, yes? I know of confession. I tell you this, you must keep it secret, yes?”
“I’m the Bishop of London, so yes, a priest.”
Leonid started to jump to his feet, to follow the protocol for meeting a foreign dignitary, protocol that had been drilled into him for years. He jammed his shin hard against the chair in front him and fell back into his seat, wincing. The Bishop gripped the sleeve of Leonid’s uniform.
“No need for formalities, son,” said the Bishop.
Leonid rubbed his shin, sure that he could feel the lump of a bruise already forming.
“And we have no formal confession in our church,” continued the Bishop, “but I can promise, man-to-man, that I won’t share what you speak.”
Leonid made himself sit upright, ignoring the pain that still shot through his leg.
“Church is dangerous,” he said.
The Bishop laughed, a hearty guffaw that seemed out of place in the sanctuary. Several nearby tourists looked over, and kept looking, talking too loudly among themselves about the strange pair in the seats, the priest and the soldier. They did not seem to recognize either of them. The farther west Leonid traveled, the fewer people knew of him, and he found this was not something he minded.
“All the churches closed,” said Leonid to the Bishop. “The buildings were destroyed or used for other things. In my city, the old church was used to store food. Very cool inside, yes? Good for…”
“Preserving?” offered the Bishop.
“Yes! People do not worship with no churches, but some still believe. It was not just buildings. Fewer young people. But old people still believe. They believed for too long just to stop.”
“And you?”
“I think it would feel nice to believe.”
“But you don’t?”
“It would also feel terrible.”
“Why is that?”
Leonid patted his shin where he had banged it. “I hit my leg on many things already.”
Leonid smiled, and not the practiced smile he used for photographs, but a natural one, like sometimes happened when he took Kasha out into the grassy quad to play when the weather was actually warm. This priest, no, this bishop, was full of warmth, like a father, or how Leonid imagined a father should be. How, in his earliest memories, Leonid remembered the man who was his father, a large figure with the face of his brother, but an older version of that face. And when Tsiolkovski used to visit, more like a grandfather than a father, but still. Leonid always felt that without a figure with the rank of father, he was missing something, missing this warm sensation he felt now, a rush that spread from his chest to his face and upturned the corners of his mouth.
The Bishop smiled back, but stared into Leonid’s eyes as if waiting for more, as if the joke were not a real answer. And Leonid knew that it was not. Ignatius had trained him to dodge real questions with humor. When the truth could not be revealed, the only option was charm. Leonid stopped smiling.
“If I feel I want to believe,” said Leonid, “then to believe would make me feel right. God is not important then, just the sensation I get from choosing to believe. Is this not bad…”
“Logic?”
“Yes, logic. This is bad logic, yes?”
“Faith is based on feelings for so many people, and so many people trust feelings. As if feelings were a thing, something you could pick up, like a smooth, white stone in the black dirt by a roadway. But science has shown us what feelings are. Chemicals in the brain. It feels good to believe, so people believe. It feels good to pray, so people pray. When someone says they feel God in their hearts, what they actually feel is a chemical in their brain.”