There was a taxi driver. And not bad, I must say, lived: he did not particularly strain, fed his family, did not cheat on his wife, raised his son, took care of the old mother. And when his wife and his mother had something wrong there and the angry wife posed the question with a rib, the taxi driver, perhaps, for the first time seriously fished:
Today my mother interferes, and tomorrow, you see, I will not please.
A taxi driver tried this and divorced his wife. He left her furniture, a garage, a car (she had already sued her son), but a one-room apartment was divided into two small cells in different parts of Moscow with neighbors in adjacent rooms. The taxi driver and his mother settled near the metro “Lublino”, and the former better half with their five-year-old son settled near the Three stations.
Years passed. Along with them — stagnation and restructuring, shock therapy and acceleration; the taxi driver regularly twisted the lamb and twisted the former a decent amount to raise their common beloved boy. He helped to exchange her communal apartment for a separate two-bedroom apartment in the Medvedkovo metro area. Over time, he and his almost blind mother improved conditions — bought «odnushka» in the area where they lived before.
When his mother died, and his son, having grown up, married, the taxi driver decided to leave the profession. And from the dashing tough guy, who was able to get the due payment even from the “new Russians”, he became an ordinary Orthodox neophyte, and found the use of his spiritual and physical forces in the performance of duties as a watchman of one of the Moscow churches. Returning to the religion of the ancestors, the taxi driver, now already former, changed his jeans to trousers, it seems, pre-revolutionary cut, besides never knowing the iron, and a bright checkered shirt — for a gray worn sweater. As expected, he grew a beard, and when he was grateful, he used only “Save the Lord” and “For the glory of God.”
The former friend of life, with whom he did not interrupt communication, was, I recall, a woman extremely freedom-loving and from a beautiful Komsomol athlete turned now into a sheared, brightly painted old woman, professing a very fashionable faith now – in herself and her unlimited possibilities. She took a cold shower, ate exclusively “literate” and vegetarian, stood on her head for hours – in a word, dressed up as best she could. The unexpected metamorphosis of the former was treated with disdainful bewilderment, but in principle calmly, as befits an advanced selfish suffragette. And he, unknowingly, really became an orthodox-traditionalist, close in spirit and letter to those who are called “Khorugven-bearers”.
One day, late drenched autumn, the former taxi driver, forgetting to pray properly before leaving the house, went to the temple early in the morning to take communion. And in the predawn mist at the very entrance to the subway on the undersea ice, it was as if someone had slightly lifted the steps, held the canopy for a moment and, with a sweep, poked his ass on the asphalt. Yeah!
The diagnosis in the hospital was made quickly and accurately: a hip fracture. Just as quickly and accurately called the cost of the operation and everything associated with it. Thank God my son paid. When the gypsumed helpless parent was discharged from the clinic, the question arose: where to drive? The wife of her son had just given birth and simply did not have the strength to raise a recovering father-in-law. In your own house, who will take care of you? And the son took the waist-bound parent to his ex-wife and his elderly mother. What was left of it?
— Stay with your mom. As long as you’re old and reconcile. And I’m here, call me, I’ll come in and help you my way.
The former taxi driver did not object, although he did not experience joy from the upcoming meeting either. But again, what do we do?
The meeting of the former, against expectation, was quite welcoming. Milk soup with dumplings, lean pilaf — prepared! The church watchman before the meal, as usual, prayed, which caused a chuckle from the ex, and during the lunch she released a couple of barbs, clearly causing an argument:
Our Mother will be more human than your Christ.
But the former taxi driver did not succumb to the provocation: in vain, is it, in paradise, the snake started to the woman? In short, eat peacefully.
After the exchange of housing with her son, she got a spacious one-room apartment. The patient had to be placed on a single sofa-tacht. In the headboard shone a plastic window, and at the foot stood a small sideboard, stuffed with all sorts of ladies’ crap. In the center of the room, right in front of the taxi driver, reigned a TV with a LCD screen, which almost never turned off. In the “red corner”, where the icons are usually located, a small poster hung with the image of a multi-armed, blood-drenched dancing goddess Kali. And next to it is a natural American dollar glued on plywood. Before him, the landlady prayed in the morning.
In short, for a church person, the situation in the room was still the same. Neither pray nor focus on your own. Half-naked “stars” of show business were replaced on the TV screen by a detective from the life of a beaumonde and the “new Russians”, a tiny pause was the news, but they did not console.
— How are you? Are you resting? the hostess usually asked when she returned from a walk. Without waiting for an answer, she dressed up in some light Adidasian costume right before his eyes and, with her bare heels, leaned into a wall slightly oiled in the place of constant touch, standing on her head, went to nirvana for a good half hour.
Initially, the patient tried to resolve the situation with persuasion. At least slightly turn down the volume of the TV, and before leaving the apartment, if possible, completely turn it off. The hostess promised, but never reduced the volume by a decibel. And when he hinted that the smell of her perfume was unusually harsh, he grinned angrily:
— Wow, he doesn’t like it! What do you have in the temple? We tolerate when we go in to light a candle. You even want to set your own rules in my house. My mother ate me all over: “Patience, patience!” Now you have to.
Patient. Where are you going? But let’s be fair: the former was not wrong about everything. A very grown woman, with a well-established way of life that someone may not like, has the right not to take this into account; besides, everything happens in her personal, as they now say, living space. She might not have done what she did. His ex-husband and former taxi driver and current church watchman understood everything, but he could not humble himself. And who among us, too, understands everything by reason and acts by reason? That. But where are you going? And all her endless changes to panties and back — before leaving the apartment and immediately after returning — he met only with a quiet sigh, low-dull eyes.
Within a week, patience was over.
“Listen, Dad,” the son breathed out into the tube with difficulty. Who will take care of you in your den? I’m on business all the time. You’ll starve to death.
“Nothing,” my father answered meekly and crossed himself. — Somehow, with God’s help. But this is the only place I can’t do. Leave a dozen prosphoruses, a can of holy water. I’ll survive without a nurse.
— Well, you’ll survive on the prosphora. Who’s gonna give you a duck? You’re gonna drown in shit!
— That’s what it says. Only in this hell, son, I can’t do a second more!
Leaving the plastered parent alone with a three-liter jar of baptismal holy water, with a dozen or more moldy prosphoruses, with a battered iron “duck”, surrounded by icons, here and there arranged throughout the room, the son sullenly said goodbye:
— So I don’t get hurt. You wanted it. My mother and I warned you. I’ve been selfish all my life, so you’ll die like a cockroach.
Thank you, my son, my father almost cried. What kind of mother you are, you will be rewarded. Forgive me, you damned man! Like a cockroach, fine. If only Christ was at the oven.
— I’ll come from a business trip.
The front door closed. For the first time in two-and-a-half months, for the first time ever, a former taxi driver was left alone. In the midst of darkness, candles flickered softly, lit by his son before leaving. In their shaky light, the faces of the saints constantly changed slightly, sometimes smiling and quietly rejoicing, then suddenly staring harshly and reproachfully at an old, sick man sitting silently in front of them on the bed. And it was so quiet, so calm, that the former taxi driver instantly remembered his beloved Crucifixion. It had been under the pillow since the day the ambulance took it away. He carefully considered the holy cross, familiar to him to the smallest detail, long and silently peered into his beloved Face. Then he carefully crossed himself three times and put his lips to the foot of the Savior. And then, with a broad and imperious gesture, he crossed all his icons with the Crucifixion, overshadowed the nearest new buildings visible from his order of intricate window, after which, putting the Crucifixion on an old stool by the bed, decided to whip a pillow before going to bed. And what was his embarrassment, and then his joy, when on the back of the pillowcase, in the center of the pillow, he suddenly found a greenish-gray impression of that very cross.
Many Orthodox, not to mention atheists, are distrustful and vexed about such phenomena. Some try to give primitive explanations («It’s so simple!»), others significantly hint at the «game of imagination» («What only does not wander into a befuddled head?!»), others ironically note the role of the «human factor», that is, they suspect in ordinary cheating. And only a very few people – mostly people who are not bookish, dull simpletons – confidently and firmly declare:
— It’s a real miracle of God.
Why and what it manifested, no one until the time is not known — neither the former taxi driver, and now the quiver-legged church watchman, nor a couple of his friends who came to visit the patient and prayed, applied to the impression on the pillow. One thing I can say for sure: all the long months, while the injury was slowly healed, he ate only dry prosphora, washing them down with baptismal holy water. When the thigh died so much that the cast was finally removed and the patient even began to get out of bed, and there and walk, leaning on crutches, around the room, his diet did not change much. So still he eats mainly only soaked in holy water, slightly moldy prosphora. On holidays, however, allows yourself to relax a little: he drinks a sip of kagora and eats a piece of cheese and a couple of slices of sausage. That’s all. I have nothing more to say about him.
Ivan Zhuk
The Holy Land Charitable Foundation
Soul investment!
Orthodox stories from life
