“No.” Lisa took his arm, and they joined the people going through the arched gates. Lisa asked, “What were you talking to Seth about until four A.M.?”
“Sex, sports, and religion.”
“He doesn’t know beans about any of those things, and neither do you.”
“We figured that out about four, and I left.”
“You know, every human life needs a spiritual dimension, or it isn’t a complete life. Do you feel there’s something missing from your life?”
“Yes. Sex, sports, and religion.”
“I thought I was part of the team. You two are not being fair. You can’t use me and keep me in the dark.”
“Take it up with Seth.”
“I don’t think you want me talking to him.”
“You can talk to whomever you please.”
“Remember you said that.”
They passed through the tunnellike entrance of the gate church and came out into the convent grounds. The people around them glanced curiously at Lisa’s well-cut trench coat and examined her footwear. Hollis wore his baggy blue overcoat, narrow-brimmed hat, and shoes that squeaked. Hollis recalled that Captain O’Shea had stood in line two hours for the Soviet shoes. The leather was synthetic, the shoes were a size too small, and the cordovan color was a bit on the red side. O’Shea claimed that was the best he could do, but Hollis always suspected he was getting even for the two hours in line.
Hollis and Lisa walked arm in arm, following a wet cobblestone lane covered with broken branches and dead leaves. Lisa said, “That’s the Lopukhin palace. Boris Gudonov was elected czar there. Also, as Sasha said, Peter the Great put his sister in there. Peter used to hang his sister’s political supporters outside her windows.”
Hollis regarded the long stucco palace. “If the windows were as dirty then as they are now, she wouldn’t have noticed.”
Lisa ignored him and continued, “Novodevichy used to be a retreat for high-born ladies as well as a nunnery. It was also a fort, as you can see, the strongpoint on the southern approaches to Moscow. Odd sort of combination, but common in old Russia. It remained a nunnery until after the Revolution when the communists got rid of the nuns — no one seems to know exactly what became of them — and this place became a branch of the State History Museum. But they never really cared for Novodevichy.”
Hollis could see that the gardens were choked with undergrowth and the trees so badly in need of pruning that the branches touched the ground and blocked the paths.
Lisa said, “But it’s still lovely and peaceful here. People come here to meditate. It’s sort of the unofficial center of the religious reawakening here in Moscow.”
“And probably crawling with KGB because of it.”
“Yes. But so far they seem content to take names and photographs. No incidents yet.” She squeezed his hand. “Thanks for coming with me. You can visit Gogol’s grave while you’re here.”
“I might just do that.”
“I thought you might. That’s why you’re wearing that silly outfit.”
“Yes, it’s business.”
“Can I come with you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
The lane took them into a paved square from which rose a beautiful six-tiered bell tower. On the far side of the square was a white and gold multidomed church. Lisa said, “That’s the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk.”
“Is she home?”
Lisa announced, “If I ever get married, I think I’d want an Eastern Orthodox wedding.”
Hollis wondered if she’d ever informed Seth Alevy of that.
“Did you get married in church?”
“No, we were married in a jet fighter, traveling at mach two, by an Air Force chaplain on the radio. When he pronounced us husband and wife, I hit the eject and blew us out into space. It was all downhill after that.”
“I see I can’t talk to you this morning.”
Hollis regarded the throngs of people. Most of them were old women, a few old men, but there were also a number of young people — teenage boys and girls and university students. Here and there he saw intact Muscovite families.
As they passed the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk, many of the people in the square stopped, bowed, and made the sign of the cross toward the cathedral. A few of the old women prostrated themselves on the wet stone, and people had to step around them. Hollis recalled the first time he’d been inside the Kremlin walls, when an old woman suddenly crossed herself in front of one of the churches, bowed, and repeated the process for several minutes. A militiaman walked over to her and told her to get moving. She paid no attention to him and prostrated herself on the stone. Tourists and Muscovites began watching, and the militiaman looked uncomfortable. Finally the old woman had risen to her feet, crossed herself again, and continued her walk through the Kremlin, oblivious of time and place or soldiers and red stars where crosses had once risen. She’d seen a church — perhaps of her patron saint, if Russians still had such a thing — and she did what she had to do.
Lisa watched the people performing their ritual outside the cathedral that had been closed for worship for seventy years and was now the central museum of the convent complex. She said, “After seventy years of persecution, their priests shot, churches torn down, Bibles burned, they still worship Him. I’m telling you, these people are the hope of Russia. They’re going to bring about an upheaval here.”
Hollis looked at what was left of God’s people here in unholy Moscow and didn’t think so. It would have been nice to think so, but there were neither the numbers nor the strength. “Maybe… someday.”
They crossed the square, and Lisa steered him toward another church, a smaller single-domed building of white stucco. She said, “That’s where we’re going to mass. The Church of the Assumption.”
“It needs some care.”
“I know. I was told that the churches of Moscow and this place in particular — because it’s so close to Lenin Stadium — got some quick cosmetics for the 1980 Olympics. But you can see how rundown everything is.”
Hollis nodded. He surveyed the ancient trees and buildings of the fortress-convent. It was well within the city limits now, not two kilometers from Red Square, but from inside the walls there was no sign of any century but the sixteenth. He could easily imagine a grey, misty October day in the early 1500s, soldiers on the battlements watching the woods and fields, ready to ring the alarm bells of the huge tower, to signal the Kremlin of any approaching danger. And on the paths the nuns would stroll, and the priests would be sequestered in prayer. The world may have been simpler then, but no less terrifying.
Lisa stopped about ten yards from the church. Hollis saw six men outside the doors stopping some of the younger people and the families, asking for identification. The men jotted information from the ID cards into notebooks. Hollis spotted another man, posing as a tourist, taking pictures of the people going inside. One of the six men at the door got involved in an argument with a young woman who apparently refused to show her identification. Hollis said, “I assume those men are not church ushers.”
“No, they’re swine.”
Hollis watched a moment. The young woman finally managed to get away from the KGB without showing her identification, but she didn’t try to enter the church and hurried away.
The old babushkas moved ponderously past the KGB men, ignoring them and being ignored by them. These black-dressed women, Hollis had learned, were invisible. They were also free, like the animals and proles in George Orwell’s nightmare world. Free because no one cared enough about them to enslave them.
Lisa said, “They don’t usually stop anyone who looks Western.”