You beat me, forcing me to come here, and the demons beat me, too, disallowing me to do it, and I did not know which of you to heed. And after being beaten by one and the other, I screamed a double scream.
And everyone was surprised at what had happened and they praised God in heaven and His earthly oil lamp, Laurus.
In a year of great hunger, the young woman Anastasia came to Laurus after losing her virginity. She prostrated herself before Laurus, weeping, and said:
I feel that I am carrying a baby in my womb but I cannot bear the baby without a husband. For when the child is born, it will be called the fruit of my sin.
What do you want, woman? Laurus asked.
You know yourself, O Laurus, what I want, but I am afraid to say it to you.
I do know, woman. Just as you know how I will answer you. So do tell me, why did you come to me?
Because if I go to the wise woman in Rukina Quarter, everyone will find out about my sin. But you can simply pray and then the fruit of my sin will leave me the same way it entered.
Laurus’s gaze rose along the tops of the pine trees and got lost in the leaden skies. Snowflakes froze on his eyelashes. The first snow had covered the glade.
I cannot pray for that. Prayer should carry the force of conviction, otherwise it is not effective. And you are asking me to pray for murder.
Anastasia slowly rose from her knees. She sat on a fallen tree and held up her cheeks with her fists.
I am an orphan and now is a time of hunger and I cannot feed the child enough. How can you not understand?
Keep the child and everything will turn out fine. Simply believe me, I know this.
You are killing both me and the baby.
Laurus sat on the tree alongside Anastasia. He stroked her head.
I beseech you.
Anastasia turned away. Laurus sank to his knees and pressed his head against Anastasia’s feet.
I will pray for you and the baby every hour. May he become a child born in my old age.
Are you refusing me because you are afraid of destroying your soul? asked Anastasia.
I am afraid I have already destroyed it, Laurus said quietly.
Anastasia looked back at Laurus as she left, and he was weeping. And she felt pity for him.
Winter turned out to be very cold. It was dust that fell from the skies, not snowflakes. A white sparkling dust that settled on trees and bushes. It was actually as if there were no longer any bushes. First they became drifts and then the drifts disappeared in the endless snowy coverlet that had been thrown over the forest. Even at the beginning of winter, Laurus said to Ustina:
It seems, my love, as if this is the coldest winter of all those I have had occasion to experience. Or perhaps the trouble is simply that my body is no longer capable of standing up to hardship. I will try to make fires twice a week so my body and soul do not part ways before their time.
But Laurus did not end up heating the cave twice a week. The supply of branches he had readied quickly dwindled and it was challenging to find branches under the deep snow. Up to his chest in snow, Laurus would get to the closest trees and break off their limbs but that required great effort. After bringing a branch or two into the cave, he could not catch his breath for a long time. Worn out, Laurus would fall on his sleeping ledge; it was difficult to restore his breathing, which was constricted by a chesty cough. To economize on firewood, he began heating often but only a little. The stones did not warm from this sort of heating so it was always cold in the cave.
The food that people had brought from Rukina Quarter from time to time, before the large snowfalls, was also coming to an end. Laurus had previously refused what people brought, saying he had many of his own supplies. In the summer and autumn, he truly did have numerous plants and roots, enough to satiate him, but they were now inaccessible under the piled-up snow. Patients had stopped coming to Laurus because of the deep snow and, consequently, also stopped bringing him food. They forgot about him during this difficult time, not with the harsh oblivion of the ill-intentioned but with the forced oblivion of the afflicted. Snow had joined with hunger, and it was not easy for anyone.
Toward the middle of winter, Laurus was already seldom leaving the cave. He was saving what warmth and strength remained. One day he found, in a far corner of the cave, the remains of the chunk of bread he had brought from the monastery at an earlier time.
This bread may not be in its first freshness, Laurus told Ustina, and there may not be very much left but, you know, it will be enough for a while if I do not give in to gluttony. In situations like mine, my love, the main thing is not to be finicky.
After resolving his difficulties regarding proper nutrition, Laurus found the means to warm up, too. He began thinking about Jerusalem.
Laurus wandered the city’s sun-filled streets from morning till night and sensed the scent of the cooling stones even as he was falling asleep. He stroked their rough surfaces. The stones lent their warmth to Laurus’s freezing hands and he was no longer cold. On the third day of February, he met Elder Innokenty on the Mount of Olives. The elder’s face was tanned so it was obvious he had not just arrived in Jerusalem. Instead of a greeting, the elder pointed to the Temple Mount and quietly began singing:
Now lettest thou thy servant departe in peace, O Lorde, acordinge to thy promesse...
Elder Innokenty sang, his head bared, and a warm February breeze ruffling his gray hair. Insects of the Holy Land and dry blades of grasses plucked from familiar old haunts floated through the air, mixing with Jerusalem’s ancient dust and blowing into their eyes. Tears glistened on Elder Innokenty’s eyelashes. He had already closed his mouth but his song was still spreading over the Kidron Valley. As Laurus looked at him, he thought the righteous Simeon must have looked like that in the 361st year of his life.
And it is today that there is a commemoration of the righteous Simeon, smiled Elder Innokenty, did you forget about that or something? And how could we not sing in praise of the liberation whose daye is approaching for me?
I knew that from how you have been drawing nearer, Laurus told him. You have been doing that with a sense of liberation, like a person who has seen everything he should see. Truth be told, I did not expect to meet you here, though where else would we part, if not here?
Elder Innokenty embraced Laurus.
Grieve not, O Laurus, for you will not remain locked up in time much longer.
They were standing atop a mountain. Laurus watched as a cloud, from which not a single drop of rain would fall, drifted out from behind the elder’s shoulder.
