Confession of a Ghost. F.M. Dostoevsky award. Playing Another Reality. Alexandra Kryuchkova

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to return home and work on my manuscripts until 18:00. That time I had with me some miraculously surviving stories from the book “Do You Believe in Ghosts?”

      At 18:00 the heat usually began to die down, and I went for a promenade to watch the sunset on the border with Mount Athos at the dilapidated Zygou monastery, where one could swim in a bay hidden from prying eyes, and then to return to the Tower, the symbol of Ouranoupoli (a former hotel for monks, and later – museum), drink coffee with friends, exchanging stories, including those about Saints and icons. I loved Athos icons, I liked to look at them for a long time – to feel them, there were many alive and unique ones there! At midnight, I used to return home.

      Ouranoupoli, Athos, Greece

      “Welcome back!” exclaimed Nicolette. “Alice’s flat is waiting for its mistress! Coffee?”

      I opened the door to the balcony and smiled, “Hello, City of Heaven! Hello, the Sun and the Sea! Hello, Athos and the Holy Mountain!”

      Suddenly the phone rang, but the number wasn’t identified.

      “Hello, Alice,” a familiar male voice said. “Welcome back!”

      “Ray?!” I couldn’t believe my ears.

      “Where are you now?” he asked.

      “On Athos… Listen…”

      “Athos?” he seemed surprised.

      “I’m always on Athos in August… Ray, listen…”

      “In August?!” he was even more surprised.

      “Yes, listen to me! How can you call me? You are a ghost!”

      “A ghost, so what? You have communicated with ghosts, haven’t you?”

      “As with you now, not yet!”

      “So it’s time to start it that way as well!”

      “What do you want to tell me?” I asked, almost relaxed and resigned to the opportunity to communicate on the phone with ghosts calling live to Athos from unidentified numbers.

      “Well, nothing special… Okay, I get it. See you.”

      “Where? Here, on Athos?” I got surprised.

      “Who will let me, a magician, go to Athos? In a dream!” Ray laughed, and the connection was cut off.

      ***

      There were only two crowded streets in Ouranoupoli – the sea one, with cafes and shops, and the central or main one, two houses from the sea one, mostly with icon shops. The streets met at the Tower.

      Dimitra’s icon shop was located on the main street directly opposite the Tower, and St. Marina, wielding an ax at the devil, the icon, purchased from Dimitra, was my first Athos icon. Dimitra and her family were Greek. We communicated in English.

      “Hello, Alice! I hope Kostas rushed you here at lightning speed! How is the sea?”

      “I’m in Paradise, thank you!” I smiled and glanced at the wall with hand-painted icons.

      “You have Marina already, and the Holy Family, too,” Dimitra remembered all the icons that I had already got. “By the way, how is Marina doing? Has she already chopped up the devil with the axe?”

      “Still in process,” I sighed. “I need the icon of St. Peter.”

      “I’ve got Peter and Paul!”

      “I have Peter and Paul. By the way, I go to the church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the Metochion of the Optina Pustyn Monastery. Do you know what they symbolize?”

      “I’m not so pious, that’s why I’m asking you about icons, taking advantage of the fact that you like coffee,” Dimitra smiled.

      “Peter and Paul are a symbol of the duality of the world, black and white, merged into one, left and right paths. Peter was considered the main Apostle in Catholicism, while Paul – in Orthodoxy. The Athos image presents them embracing in the shape of a heart.”

      “White and Black Magic?”

      “You can say that also, but I need Peter with the keys,” I clarified, continuing to inspect the hand-painted icons, but many of them I had already seen there a year before.

      “With the keys to Paradise?” Dimitra asked.

      “He has two keys,” I laughed, “it’s not a fact that both are to Paradise!”

      “Here on Athos, you are already in Paradise!” said Dimitra, taking out the notebook, in which she kept a record of all the icons ordered on Athos, their receipt and sale. “No, I’ve never ordered Peter with keys. I’ll call the twin monks at St. Anna’s hermitage tomorrow, perhaps they’ll have time to paint the icon before you leave.”

      I entered the icon shop of Janis’ family. His parents spoke Greek, but Janis studied Russian. He always congratulated me on Orthodox holidays by sending a photo of a hand-painted holiday icon from their shop. Janis had got a daughter recently.

      “Alice! Welcome, dear! How are you? How is your cat?”

      The cat wasn’t mine, but periodically he visited me and, walking around the flat, including open shelves with Athos icons, he put his forehead to the icons, just like a person. I photographed the cat to show to the Athos’ locals.

      Janis’ father greeted me in Greek and immediately asked the girls who worked in their shop to make coffee. Janis showed me the new icons and shared the latest news, while I slowly walked around the space greeting the Saints, and they greeted me in return. Janis used to say that I felt alive icons. There were also watching ones, the Saints on them looked directly at you, following your movement in space.

      “You have already Nicholas, and Alexandra too,” Janis remembered all the icons that I had already got. “What don’t you have?”

      “The Stairs,” I admitted.

      “Rare icon! Tomorrow I’ll call the cell of St. Nicholas to find out if they have a painted one, if not, I’ll order it to get the icon before your departure! You just need to choose an image. I’ll show you how we paint it, and the size. That icon helps souls to go through the Postmortem Ordeals. I hope nobody of yours died,” Janis opened an Internet page and showed me the options.

      Having chosen the image of the Stairs, I looked around to find the desired size, and my gaze stopped on the bottom shelf in the corner rack, from where the Virgin Mary, clearly alive, was staring at me, and I involuntarily shuddered,

      “That size.”

      We used to drink coffee outside, at the entrance to Janis’ shop. It was customary there, shopkeepers drank coffee, chatting with passers-by, then crossed the street to have coffee with those opposite, exchanging news or silently examining tourists’ packages – the ones flashing more often indicated the most prosperous shop in Ouranoupoli. Janis usually told me about Athos, since he visited the cells, talked with the СКАЧАТЬ