Alik was put to bed, and Father Victor went into his room. Nina hovered around for a while, then slipped out and sat on the floor with her back to the door and a watchful, remote expression on her face; she was half-drunk, but composed.
This is totally stupid and pointless, Alik thought. He seems like a nice man, I should never have agreed to do it.
Father Victor sat on the stool, and leaned closer to Alik. “I am facing a number of professional difficulties here,” he began unexpectedly. “You see, most people I meet, my parishioners, are convinced that I can solve their problems, and that if I don’t it’s purely for their own good, as a sort of lesson. They are entirely mistaken.” He smiled a gap-toothed smile and Alik realized the priest understood the whole ridiculousness of the situation, and relaxed.
Alik’s illness caused him no physical pain. He suffered from increasing breathlessness and an unendurable sense of dissolving self. Along with the weight of his body and the living flesh of his muscles, the reality of life was slipping away, which was why he took such pleasure in the half-naked women clinging to him from morning to night. It was a long time since he had seen any new people around him, and this unfamiliar face, with its flecked, greenish-brown eyes, carelessly shaved right cheek and small, western-style beard, impressed itself on his memory in photographic detail.
“Nina wanted me to talk to you,” the priest went on. “She thinks I can baptize you, or, rather, persuade you to be baptized. I could not refuse her request.”
The Paraguayan music outside the window howled, rattled and gave up the ghost, then came back to life again. Alik frowned. “I’m not a believer, you know, Father Victor,” he said sadly.
“Stop, stop, what are you saying?” the priest waved an arm. “There are practically no non-believers. It’s just a psychological cliché you brought over with you from Russia. I assure you there are no non-believers, particularly among artistic people. The nature of faith varies—the greater the intellect, the more complex the form it takes. There’s also a form of intellectual chastity which won’t allow anything to be discussed or articulated. We’re surrounded by the most vulgar forms of primitive religiosity, and it’s hard to bear …”
“I’m aware of that, I have my wife here,” Alik replied. Father Victor’s seriousness had endeared itself to him. He’s not stupid either, he thought with surprise. Nina’s ecstatic remarks about the wise priest had always grated on him, but now his irritation vanished.
“For Nina, as for other women,” the priest gestured towards the door, “things pass not through the mind but through the heart, through love. They’re marvellous beings, miraculous, astonishing …”
“You love women, don’t you, Father Victor? So do I,” Alik spurred him on.
The priest appeared not to understand him. “Yes, I’m terrible about them, almost all of them,” he confessed. “My wife is always saying if it wasn’t for my vocation I’d be a real womanizer.”
What a simpleton, Alik thought.
But the priest warmed to his theme: “They’re extraordinary, they’re ready to sacrifice everything for love. At the centre of their lives is often love for a man—yes, there’s this substitution. But sometimes, just occasionally, I meet one of those rare women in whom possessive, insatiable human love is transformed, and through the everyday, the ordinary, they come to the love of God Himself. It never ceases to amaze me. Your Nina is one of those people, I think. I saw it as soon as I walked in today. You have so many beautiful women around you, so many good faces. Your friends aren’t leaving you. Beneath the surface they are all like the women at the tomb of our Lord …”
Father Victor wasn’t old, a few years the wrong side of fifty perhaps, yet his speech had an exalted, old-fashioned ring to it; he must be from the first, pre-war wave of emigration, Alik thought.
His movements were distracted and rather awkward. Alik liked that too. “It’s a pity we didn’t meet before,” he said.
“Yes, yes, it’s hot,” the priest responded irrelevantly, not wanting to abandon the female theme which so inspired him. “You know, one could write a dissertation on it—the different forms faith takes among men and women …”
“I’m sure some feminist has already done it,” Alik said. “Father Victor, would you please ask Nina to bring us two Margaritas? You like tequila?”
“I guess so,” the priest replied uncertainly.
He stood up and opened the door a little. Nina was still sitting there, with a burning question mark in her eyes.
“Alik wants a Margarita,” Father Victor told her. She didn’t understand immediately. “Two Margaritas.”
A moment later she was back carrying two large wineglasses. She went out again, shooting a bemused look over her shoulder.
“So, shall we drink to women?” Alik suggested in his usual friendly, sardonic tone. “You’ll have to hold the glass for me.”
“Of course, with pleasure.” Father Victor clumsily pushed the straw into his mouth.
He had seen a lot in his life, but nothing like this. He had heard people’s dying confessions, he had given them communion and even baptized some, but he had never given them tequila.
He put his own glass on the floor and continued: “With men, faith generally takes the form of battle. Remember Jacob’s wrestling in the night with the angel? The struggle for oneself, rising up to a higher level. In that sense I’m an evolutionist. Salvation is too utilitarian an idea, wouldn’t you agree?”
It seemed to Alik that the priest had got slightly drunk. Alik couldn’t see that he hadn’t in fact touched his drink. He himself felt a warmth in his stomach, and it was a pleasant feeling; he had fewer and fewer feelings nowadays.
“I believe the venerable Serafim Sarovsky called this battle for faith the seizing of the Holy Spirit. Yes …” Father Victor fell into a sad and thoughtful silence; at moments like these he realized clearly that he hadn’t the spiritual vocation his grandfather had had.
The South American music wearied of itself and stopped, and was replaced by a good, human noise outside the window.
How weak I am, Alik thought.
This brave, simple-hearted man had touched him somehow. Why did he give the impression of being brave? He would have to think about it. Was it because he wasn’t afraid of appearing ridiculous?
“Nina keeps begging me to get baptized. She pleads and weeps, it’s terribly important for her. For me it’s just a formality.”
“What are you saying? I find her reasons entirely convincing. But I simply don’t …” Father Victor threw up his arms in confusion, as though embarrassed by his privileges. “You see, I know for sure that between us a Third is present.” He became even more embarrassed and fidgeted on his stool.
A mortal weariness came over Alik. He couldn’t feel any Third present; this Third was something out of a fairy-tale, and it pained him that his foolish Nina felt it, and this simple-hearted priest felt it, and he didn’t feel it, sensing its absence with the same sharpness, perhaps, as they sensed its presence.
“But I’m prepared to do it for her,” he closed his eyes from deathly tiredness.
Father Victor wiped the sweaty base of his glass on his trousers and put it down on the table.
“I don’t know, I really don’t know. I can’t refuse you, you’re so ill, but something’s not right. Let me think. I know, let’s pray together. As best we can.” Opening his attaché case, he pulled out his vestments, slipped his surplice and stole over his clothes, slowly tying the fastenings. Then he kissed the heavy priestly cross, blessed by his late grandfather, and put it around his neck. As he did so he seemed to grow older, statelier. Alik lay with closed eyes and didn’t witness this transformation. The priest turned to a small faded print of the Vladimir virgin tacked to the wall, then bowed his balding head and prayed: “Help me, Lord, oh help me!”