The Gift

A Holiday Memory

It was Christmas, and the semester had ended. I was in a small town nobody has ever heard of, trying to find a half-destroyed old church from some tattered old photograph. Better than anything else to do. I’d be saying goodbye to my Host Mother in three days, and I wanted to think about anything else.

I’d popped into the town’s “new” church and asked an old woman where to find the old one. She’d told me, then proceeded to stare at me. The eyes narrowed. My Russian, at the time, was still not very good. Having thanked her, hurriedly, I dashed through the rain across the railroad tracks and stood panting in the shadow of what I’d been looking for.

The old church was sad, droopy. It had certainly seen much better days. It was not white and sparkling anymore, as in the old photograph, but brick, half-ruined, pockmarks from fightning during the wars scarring its face, the happy façade of saints dancing across the top no longer visible, long ripped away by revolutionaries, whose ‘great experiment’ had long since vanished. But it still stood there: brick, naked, crying silently in the rain.

I took a picture.

The mind is blank in a moment like that. You know that you have both captured this moment forever, and also that you will never be here, again. You know that you must preserve this place in time and memory, like walking through the ruins of a Greek theatre. You feel you are bringing life to something.

Empty pickup trucks sat in the shade of willow trees, which amazingly still had a few leaves in late December. I turned around and trudged back across the railroad tracks, leaving it there.

The road took me past the church where the old woman had been. No need to stop, I told myself. I’ve got what I came here to do. The last thing I need is to be sad, or introduce myself to people I’ll never meet again. I would soon say goodbye to My Host Mother. No more pictures. The church sat like a plump, yellow squash in the square, rain dripping down its sides like tears down a face.

I found myself paused before it. I don’t know what it is about these places, but I walked back up to the great door, took my hat off, walked back inside. I was going to find the old woman and thank her.

Inside it smelled of juniper, candle wax, oxidizing brass. She recognized me.

“Well?” she asked. “Did you find it?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, very interesting. What were you doing in Gatchina?”

“Photographing. I thought it would be interesting to get historical photos of the hamlet.”

“…Your accent is very interesting. Where are you from?”

“America.”

Her eyes widened. “America. Wow, I have never seen someone from America come though here. An American? In Gatchina. My goodness.”

She had a delicate way of carrying her voice – her habit caged her verbiage, but I understood something, between us.

“I am Alla,” she said, extending a hand. “Do you have a minute?”

I nodded. She took me by the crook of the arm and led me down a short, spiral staircase to the basement.

There, caked in dust, sat an entire history of a single town. Icons, faded and broken, some with holes in them. Rusting brass instruments. Candle-holders falling apart from years of neglect.

“We hid down here, during the War. I was very young, but I remember Grandma and Grandpa took us down here when the Germans came. Terrible. Scary. Very bad. We lived here for a number of weeks. One time Germans threw a grenade – you see these holes?”

Her ancient hands traced their way to the pock marks on one of the icons. The room suddenly felt small. I looked around and saw the pale light seeping through the windows above us. I imagined the noise. The noise of people breathing and distant artillery, tank treads, someone walking by, outside—

I am back in the basement with Alla, looking at these things.

“Come with me, back upstairs.”

We crossed into the apse, into a thin hallway ending in an ancient pair of wooden doors. Beyond them, in a small, dusty, cramped room sit several young nuns with teacups. The walls are crumbling, half-exposed brick showing through. A grimy window pours in a lonely stream of pale, grey, December light. I shake hands and introduce myself. Alla pours me a cup of tea and offers me a bowl of cabbage. The chair squeaks under me.

One of the other nuns leans towards me. “What do they call you?”

I give her my name. “And you?”

“I am Andzhelina.”

“Very nice to meet you.” I turn back to Alla. “Such dobrozhelatel’nost. Thank you very much.” I can’t hide my awkwardness, but I dare not stop whatever’s happening.

“Sit. Eat.”

The cabbage and tea are delicious. Naturally I eat a few of the sweets propped up near the rusty heating unit, so as to not offend them. Then…

“I’ve got a question. Why did you invite me back here?”

She smiled. “You’re a student. Students like to eat.”

“You’ve got me.” I smiled. “But listen…”

“Sit. Eat, davai. We’ll be back in a few.”

And with that, they left me alone. The walls in the small room were wooden and falling apart, slowly. Above the doorknob hung a small wooden icon, about two by six inches, of some kind of angel I did not recognize. I felt, at once, incredibly heavy—laden by generosity. I felt bad for not talking. And eating, sitting there alone, in that little room, which was poor in every way—something powerful and unbreakable slipped into my heart.

Alla was back. She threw a chair aside as she sat down.

“Tasty?”

“Very. Thank you so much.”

She turned to me with a small something in a picture frame. I took it.

“Here. This is an icon. Derzhī. Take it.”

I stopped mid-chew.

“Take it,” she repeated.

“What for?”

“As a sentinel. Everybody, everywhere has an angel. It doesn’t depend on religion or who you are, we’ve all got a dark, bad side and a side of good, generosity, beauty. He’s to protect the good in all of us. Please, take it.”

My hands were trembling. “Thank you.”

“God be with you, sonny.”

There was an awkward silence as I sat the icon on my lap, right next to the cabbage bowl. I felt nothing then. Said nothing. Only was.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to write.”

She ignored my answer, motioning around the room. “It is so hard to find work, let alone good work. Look around here. This is our lives. This is life. It’s nothing, nothing at all.”

There was no bitterness or resentment in her voice.

“Nothing!” she repeated. “And just here, we are, to live—we are old people, and we work until we die.”

“Old age is not for that. Not in my opinion. You’re right, even—old age: for reading, writing, rest, being—not to work.”

“Yes. But we have nothing, still. Chto dyelat’? What is to be done?”

“We Americans are so lucky. Too lucky. We are far too lucky.” I was stacking phrases like bricks with the simple language that I felt I had mastered in the hopes I could secure a point. “It’s a tragedy.”

Alla smiled and nodded. “You are very lucky.” She took a sip of tea. One of the other women, who had just returned, smiled and looked down. Alla continued in a different vein.

“What do you study?’

“Anthropology, Russian language…”

“History… peoples, humanity.”

“Very interesting,” said the other woman. “Alla, ain’t this young man a hoot? Listen to him – you’re a very interesting lad, I’ll say.”

“Agreed. Fascinating. Well done, young man, God bless. Take a sweet roll, you haven’t had a single one.” (I’d eaten three, by this point.). “Are you coming back to Gatchina?”

I smiled.

“Perhaps. I have free time this week, I will, so I may come back and visit.”

She saw through my halfhearted lie like sun through a river.

“Come back. Please, come back sometime.”

“I will. I’ll come back.”

“With your friends, should you so desire. You’re here today alone?”

“Yep. Just me.”

“Bring yourself back with your friends, next time. Please!”

“Well, okay. I will.”

“Excellent.”

I would never come back here again. I had crossed the threshold. I had become someone with indefatigable momentum—or so I imagined. This was not something that would merely be brushed off by boredom or by some tangent interest. This was something that would inhabit the pores of my skin, something I would smell in the night forever. This little room, with its pale windows and its dreary atmosphere, in this little town just south of Saint Petersburg, would stay with me forever. The filth, the dirt, the awkward conversation. But moreover, the eyes. The smiles. The things that came out of my mouth I did not expect, don’t really even remember. The things that bring me back to that room every Christmas.

The icon Alla gave me still sits amongst my other acquired treasures. It’s banged up and the dented frame betrays its age. I have had people come over and I never explain to them exactly what it means. Maybe I still don’t know what it means. I’m not religious, but it’s become like the knife my father gave me as a boy. I can rid myself of all things, in good conscience, before I rid myself of it.

I was to go back to the United States, in three days. That night, my friends and I went out to celebrate Christmas.