I studied in the 2nd year, on weekends and holidays, as usual, in church, at services. Here you go professional growth and a pretty penny. Well, it’s not a pretty penny, but it was a very decent salary (she shed a tear). Plus the funeral and wedding, in a word, is not life, but raspberries. And in the midst of this raspberry tree, the brightest and most money-bearing fruit were, albeit rare, but very profitable invitations to read the psalter over the dead.
I read Church Slavonic very dashingly, thanks to Aunt Lyusya, the legendary Barnaul psalmist, who patiently taught us, the always neighing fools from Sunday school. I read beautifully then, like a monastery, dispassionately and prayerfully. The auntie from the candle box where they receive the bills found out about this and began tossing kalyms to me.
And then she catches me by the sleeve after the all-night vigil and informs me that there is an urgent, urgent call to read the psalter. And I have a movie, a date and in general it’s spring and I’m 20 years old, what kind of dead people are they, Mary Ivanna? But when they whispered the size of the fee in my ear, I immediately forgot about all the love and before my eyes appeared chic German boots from TsUM, which I was licking my lips at, but could not afford.
We had to leave in a couple of hours. But the indispensable condition put forward by the relatives was that the psalter be read by a “nun.” Here I was puzzled. Mary Ivanna without words understood my question that was bursting from my chest, where am I and where are the nuns. But Mary Ivanna was not that person, it was not for nothing that she headed the accounting department in the regional executive committee for about 20 years, so that something could puzzle her:
“A black skirt, a black jacket and a scarf. You’ll pass for a novice, they won’t understand. Where can I find a nun for them now, if our only nun, Mother Efalia, is already 94 and she can only read with a magnifying glass from a KVN TV?”
And again I’m hit in the head with the amount of the reward.
Oh my God, what do I have? black skirt can't find it? I trotted home, dressed up in black clothes, my grandmother’s black scarf, and tied a woolen one in the Old Believer way. I looked in the mirror, well, neither give nor take - a Chechen widow. It became really scary. But in character. How did you order?
I’m standing at the entrance in this outfit, the neighbors don’t even say hello, they don’t recognize me. And then a car pulls up. It's clear from everything that he's a gangster. Black, shiny and huge like an ocean liner. I climbed into it, tangled in my skirt, and we were going. Out of town. Long and silent. Who of the decent people at that time could dare to talk to a real nun?
We arrived in some small village, an ordinary house, a front garden with lilacs, striped cats wandering around the yard. Peace and quiet. It was getting dark. (I read this somewhere, this is how you need to indicate the time of day)
The son of a granny left the house, over whom it was necessary to read the psalter. James Bond, real, not fake. And he began to tell me what a wonderful mother he had. And how he wants everything to work out the way his mother wanted. So that they would sing the funeral service in the church and read the psalter over it. My youth embarrassed him a little, but there was nowhere to go, you couldn’t send for someone else. I told him about Mother Ephalia with a magnifying glass and he agreed that it was not convenient to pull an old person at such a time, and they didn’t have a magnifying glass.
We went into the house.
There is a coffin, relatives are sitting nearby, everything is according to custom. A lamp is burning near the icon, a candle is in a glass with millet, everything is ours, according to Orthodox tradition. The grandmother lies in the coffin all so bright.
I take the psalter and begin to read.
Time passes, it gets dark. And then all the relatives, as if on command, get up and leave. I didn’t even have time to blink an eye. At first I thought maybe I’d take a smoke break or drink tea. Nevermind. We went to spend the night in a neighboring house. My son told me. And you, he says, read, sister, according to your rank you are not supposed to be afraid of the dead.
I still don’t understand why I agreed to this. I fell into some kind of meditative state.
Night. The village is alien, you can’t escape anywhere, someone else’s dead grandmother and me in a black, stuffy woolen scarf. The lamp is smoking.
Sur.
Gogol.
Viy.
I cursed these boots, Mary Ivanna and the KVN magnifying glass forever and ever.
I can’t say that I felt scared at that moment, but I felt really uneasy. This is not a city, with its eternal sounds, and the silence is also oppressive. I understand that horror is beginning to roll over me. Cinematic. Their lips say a prayer, and Kuravlev and Varlya stand before their eyes. As if they were alive, no matter how bad they are...
And then my gaze falls on my grandmother’s face... And I see that tears are rolling from under her closed eyelids.
What will he do? normal person in such a situation? He will scream, run away, faint, in extreme cases. But Sister Juliana is not cut out for that. In character. With a psalter at the ready and in a monastic long skirt. Mission accomplished. Madness and courage are still my credo. Is someone else's dead woman crying in front of you in the dead of night? Pretend that nothing happened and continue reading, and then start singing loudly. Everything you remember from your spiritual repertoire. With feeling and triplets.
But the morning doesn’t come, no way.
And the grandmother is crying and sweating, her whole face is already covered in sweat.
I have never prayed so fervently again.
It was dawn, and at 6 am James Bond arrived.
No, I didn’t turn gray or go crazy, oddly enough. I just asked him why his mother cried at night. (Who knew what they were waiting for eldest daughter from Blagoveshchensk and grandma was slightly frozen in the morgue, and brought from there in the evening, but grandma only began to “thaw” at midnight, my relatives later told me this.) And then James Bond begins to sob and naturally confess to me. What I heard cannot be compared with any Viy and “Terrible Revenge”. But the secret of confession is a sacred matter and cannot be disclosed. Although I am not in rank, the person who told me about his atrocities did not know about it, so don’t ask me, I won’t tell you what I heard then.
I didn't buy boots. I gave the money to the church watchman, he had some problems at that time, and he forgot to return it. And I never read the psalter over the departed again for any money.
Good night everyone. Sweet dreams.
Instead of an afterword:
After my unexpectedly widely circulated post about the funeral service, people tried to get through in private and in the comments with accusations and advice on how I should believe in our Lord Jesus Christ. WITH detailed instructions. During almost a quarter of a century of my great standing on the choir, no one denounced me and no one gave me advice on how to look, how to live, and how I should be driven out of the church with pissing rags for my cheerful disposition and sharp tongue. And, I note, all of these were people who were completely unsettled and somehow worn out by life. Similar to dust from a distant shelf. And all of them are sad.
For for many years Observing the Orthodox people, I will say one thing - we are clearly divided into only two categories - joyful and joyless.
I’ll tell you a story to illustrate these concepts.
Already, while studying at conservatories, I sang in a huge bishop's choir at the most important cathedral of the city. The choir was large, no match for the current ones; according to the register, there were 40 people. And this choir was controlled by the mother of one of the priests. As usual, without even an initial music education, but very religious and well versed in religious states. She had absolutely no command of musical terminology and communicated with the choir, appealing to only two concepts - “You sing beautiful music“or “you’re not singing beautiful music.” Everything is simple, accessible and without frills.
And so, at one rehearsal before the week of the Triumph of Orthodoxy (this is where anathema is sung once a year to all scoundrels), we rehearsed “We Praise You God” by our Demetrius, Bortnyansky.
The work is pathetic, major and long, large form, shorter. We sang and sang, and it didn’t seem bad. But from the expression on Tatyana’s mother’s face, everyone understood that something was wrong here. We don't sing music beautifully enough, scoundrels. Having chased us ten times from beginning to end, she deigned to tell the choir that we were doing it wrong.
But I must say that my mother’s appearance, character and overall personality were (and still are, God bless her) very colorful. It will take a long time to talk about everything, I will focus on two details. At that time, instead of a scarf, she wore huge chiffon bows on her head on a hairpin, for each holiday of a certain color, and did not pronounce half the alphabet.
And here we are sitting in front of her, all forty of us, and we can’t understand what kind of cholera she needs from us, but we seem to be eating everything correctly. And the mother sits in front of us and is completely afraid along with her chiffon bow. Angry at us.
We have all already begged, they say, explain to us in your accessible language what we are doing wrong!
Mother looked around at all of us, non-Christians, with a snake-like gaze and hissed angrily: “Remember once and for all! Prlyavoslaviya is a joyful faith!!! Joyful! And you must sing joyfully, as if you were about to die!!”
After that we had no more questions and sang so “joyfully” that we almost started dancing ourselves)))
Therefore, to everyone who wants to teach me how to believe sadly and even more sadly to write about my church everyday life, I say: Orthodoxy is a joyful faith! Remember this once and for all, and not what you came up with for yourself, wrapped in gray rags and sprinkled ashes all over the area. And it is impossible to convince me otherwise, because I have never met a better theologian than our Mother Regent.
Ulyana Menshikova
This is the best life story telling I have ever read. Everything is amazing, the narration style, the plot and the denouement. Read, take your time.
All unmarried women want to get married. Anyone who thinks this is not true thinks badly of us. Everyone, absolutely everyone without exception, dreams of lassoing some suitable man and ruling him. Or for him to rule. There is no third option. I acquired this great knowledge at the age of nineteen and have not changed my beliefs since then. And I was young, and, as it now became clear, beautiful. But the conversation is not about me, I digress.
I had a very elderly thirty-five year old friend at the time. Almost an ancient old woman. She worked as the head of the canteen of a large research institute; she was a woman of status. And she, in turn, had even more ancient and no less status friends. One, thirty-eight years old, was in charge of a vegetable warehouse, the second, the oldest forty-year-old, was the chief personnel officer of a huge DSK. They lived and lived on cheeses in butter. They had everything and they had nothing for it. Four-room apartments with crystal chandeliers and vases, Uzbek carpets and incredibly comfortable bedroom sets. Great women. To all this splendor, both of them had husbands. The head of the table has a broken fitter Igoryukha, the head of the base has the kindest leader of the factory’s amateur performances, accordion player Kolyasik (that’s what his wife called him).
The chief personnel officer did not have a husband. And it was terrible tragedy. In any case, all our gatherings at a certain degree ended with her bitter sobs and lamentations: how happy everyone is and only she, she alone is lonely, like a lighthouse in the ocean, and there is no light or happiness for her in this life. The pain of loneliness was so terrible and material that the crystals grew dull and stopped ringing, and the carpets lost their silkiness. Not life, but the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
For me, who believed that at forty there were only two roads: to a crematorium or a gerontological sanatorium, these sufferings were hilariously funny. What kind of love can happen to a person with a permanent, ruby rings on three fingers and a mark in his passport - forty years?!! They would be ashamed... But I was silent, of course. But the faithful friends were not silent. They consoled him and made plans to capture some unwary widower and divorcee.
But he still wasn’t there. And if he was, he didn’t fit the parameters: it would turn out that the future happy groom was a quiet drunk, or a walker, or he didn’t get the article. The personnel officer (her name was Maria) was a monumental woman and she was not going to tolerate some kind of “pig sucker” (quote) next to her. But the ladies didn’t look into the purses of the applicants - they didn’t think it was necessary, but they still had it, you remember.
My Elka died on a cold December night. It was hard to leave. She unbearably wanted to live, despite her torment. I struggled.
At home we were alone, and the whole process of leaving, or rather, transition from our world to eternity, took place before my eyes. We were both exhausted, she from her terrible illness, and I from my involvement in it. And when Elka quietly exhaled: “Oh, mom has come...”, I realized that this was all over. She calmed down in one minute, straightened up, started smiling, and at that moment I fell asleep. In one second she fell asleep, and we didn’t sleep for ten days, if not more. Nothing surprising.
I was woken up by a phone call, a la Once Upon a Time in America. Remember? That call that haunted Noodles in his opium-fuelled dreams.
I still couldn’t wake up, the days then mixed with night, I was exhausted to the limit, despite the fact that I was young and still powerful then.
The phone went silent for a short time, and then again began to tediously and persistently wake me up. I woke up and tucked Elka a blanket as usual (she was very cold last days) and picked up the phone with the desire to send the caller to those distances that, as Elka used to say, we had seen in the same place (there is an indescribable pun here).
Hello..
- Ulechka, hello! How is Ella?
- Ella died.
- Tell her that today at 11.30 "Sun Valley Serenade" on the second... How did you die?... How?
- Physiologically. No Elka. All.
After hanging up, I automatically went to prepare the “equipment”. She pulled out a basin, filled three jugs of water, put brushes, napkins, toothpaste(God knows why), and went to clean up my friend. She washed, combed her hair, changed her underwear, changed into a clean shirt and called an ambulance and the police. Ella couldn't even look bad even dead. This was her whole life.
And the phone kept ringing and ringing, and her many friends and acquaintances rushed to remind Elka that her favorite film was about to start. That's how everyone found out that she was no longer there.
Doctors and police officers arrived, confirmed the fact of death, gave me a mountain of papers and sensibly explained what to do with all this. We left. And we were left alone again.
And I went to pick up the coffin. And I bought it. A huge coffin upholstered in blue plush. There were no more Reds at that time. Snatched up. Included with it, I purchased a huge wooden cross, bedspreads, corollas, and wreaths and went back to Elka.
She was still alone, the working day was in full swing, it was clear that everyone had no time and that everyone would catch up in the evening. The driver and I brought all my sorrowful acquisitions into the house. She dressed the heavy and unexpectedly softened Elvira as a “mortal” and herself dragged her from the bed into the coffin. Anyone who has cared for bedridden people for many years will understand that it was not difficult.
She turned on “Serenade” and fell asleep again to the sounds of “Chattanooga Chucha”, already sitting at Elka’s feet.
I woke up from someone's tense whisper. Honest mother full house people, I am sleeping and they, feeling sorry for me and not wanting to wake me up, hissed and hissed at each other, deciding something and agreeing on something.
Elka’s old friend, from her high school days, unique in her unhappy love of love and breathtakingly beautiful squint, Anna Lvovna, without allowing me to really wake up, began to hastily ask me, what’s wrong with the apartment? I, in Elka’s bass voice, boomed at her, Anya, motherfucker, let’s bury her, and then we’ll talk about all this.
⁃ Okay, okay, Ulya, yes, of course, later... Listen, did you find her cemetery documents?
And then I remembered, on Elka’s sixtieth birthday, one of her friends, an American pastor from some incomprehensible sect named Steve, solemnly, at the anniversary feast, handed Elka documents for the place of her future burial at a new, paid cemetery with the romantic name “Quiet” "dol".
The story was stunning. Imagine giving a Russian person, I will even say more, a Russian woman with the last name Ivanova, even if she is disabled, such a wonderful American gift - a place for a grave. Effective, far-sighted.
Elka’s face should have been seen then. The guests froze, expecting Elka’s terrible and uniquely beautiful wrath. She took a Maugham pause, looked expressively at Steve and said,
⁃ Thanks Steve. According to our Russian tradition, I would like to tell you to go to hell... But I can’t. You're waiting for a girl from the army, and you're already traumatized. Thank you friend, you brightened the holiday!
⁃
And Steve was actually waiting for a girl from the army. His bride then served either in Iraq or Afghanistan, in a zone of active combat operations. She lost her leg in that war, came back and Steve married her. But all this happened later.
⁃ Anya, exactly! I completely forgot... Yes, all these papers are in the Bible. The one Steve gave me.
We found the documents, called the cemetery managers and it turned out that the wonderful Steve gave Elka an all-inclusive funeral. A hearse, a bus for mourners, everything will come to us, pick it up, take it and bury it. Nice guy Steve, we shouldn’t have been so angry with him then...
And then Father Oleg arrived in time, with a group of mourners from the seminary. They sang a litiya and asked how they could help.
⁃ Father, remember, Ella asked to be buried in the church, and also really wanted to be left there for the night?
⁃ I remember, of course. Let's make an agreement: tomorrow at lunchtime I will send the guys and they will take Ella to the temple.
And Elka lived, right behind the fence of the former convict prison, where there was a temple of Alexander Nevsky, with the advice of several organizations, and in the early 90s, partially transferred to the church.
It was an interesting place. The first floor was occupied by a bookstore and warehouse; on the second floor there was the temple itself, seminary classes and cells (for boys and girls, they were prudently left at the Peter and Paul Cathedral). And on the right side of the long-suffering prison, the most expensive and prestigious Tomsk tavern at that time, “Eternal Call,” was rampant. Such is the symbiosis. It was especially fun on Saturday evenings, when the all-night vigil was served in the church, and those who didn’t really like all-night vigils were having fun in the restaurant. Here you have “Blessed be the Lord,” and here is “Zhigan-lemon.” Everything is nearby, everything is within walking distance.
“Tomorrow at lunchtime,” came from the lips of Oleg’s father. And then I lost my vigilance. Seminarians and punctuality (unless it concerns service) are absolutely incompatible concepts. At lunchtime, according to my understanding, this is broad daylight, and not the Siberian December 6 pm. But the students thought differently and appeared when lunch arrived, according to their Aramaic time.
Six o'clock in the evening. City center. The intersection of Sovetskaya and Hertsena streets. Tram stop. Crowds of young people from the university, employees going home from work. Visitors are pouring into the tavern, and some are rushing to the bookstore.
A girl comes out from around the corner. She has a huge one in her hands grave cross, behind her, six students in flowing cassocks with a hefty coffin at the ready taxi out of a dark Tomsk gateway. Tram and car traffic stops at this moment. People coming towards us jump onto the tracks, life comes to a standstill. The crowd at the bus stop, as if in slow motion, turns synchronously after our quiet procession. The doorman at the Eternal Call is choking on his cigarette butt.
I think Elka liked the impression it made on people;)
We begin to enter the temple, which is located on the second floor. The stairs are steep, almost vertical. And the porter boys are all different heights. And then one, entangled in the flaps of a long cassock, stumbles and falls. There is confusion in the ranks, the coffin also falls and slides down the steps with a terrible roar. Silence.
⁃ Lord Jesus! It didn’t fall out, thank you, Lord! Brothers, rise up!
The brothers, to be on the safe side, tucked their cassocks into their trousers, and this time carried Elka into the temple without incident. Phew... Let's start reading the Psalter. I read a few kathismas and left to prepare for tomorrow’s commemoration.
In our tradition, it is supposed to bury the dead in broad daylight, before sunset. And everyone adheres to this tradition. Believers and non-believers. Orthodox and not so much. But not the workers of paid graveyards, as it turned out. We held Ella's funeral service at noon, and the hearse arrived at 5 p.m.
⁃ Full house,” the driver briefly explained to me.
In general, take two. The cemetery, as usual, is outside the city. Blizzard. Darkness. Let's go. We arrived at the resting place an hour and a half later, when by Tomsk December standards it was already deep night. The snowstorm suddenly stopped, it got colder and the cemetery greeted us with beautiful, calm weather, clear starry sky and full moon.
And in this December night, beautiful in its picturesqueness, under the light of the Gogol moon, to the ringing of the censer and our modest duet with the priest, quietly singing “Holy God, mighty saint, immortal saint, have mercy on us,” the thinned procession of mourning friends makes three circles around throughout the cemetery.
As we later found out, they were no longer waiting for us. And we carried Elka up and down between the trees and graves. We introduced each other, so to speak...
Well, then the managers came to their senses, jumped out of their hut and directed us to the burial site (thanks, at least they dug a hole, and we didn’t have to dig it for half the night, which wouldn’t surprise me at all).
I stood at her grave and didn’t cry. I sang, looking at this surreal sight and smiled. Starry night, full moon hanging over the cross. And as soon as everything that had to be done was done, the sky darkened and fluffy Christmas snow began to fall. He immediately covered the clods of frozen earth on the grave and lay down on the cross with his magnificent epaulettes. Beautiful...
The funeral began at 10 p.m. All the stereotypes had already been destroyed, so no one bothered with time anymore.
They remembered Elkin’s life, who, when and how they met her, they remembered her novels, parties and her sharp tongue and the dignity with which she bore her cross.
Then they started the gramophone and listened to her favorite songs. As they were leaving, everyone came up to me and said:
⁃ Ul, Elka told me that after her death you can take it as a souvenir...
Gramophone
Icon
Books
Picture
Etc..
By morning there was almost nothing left in the house. At 8.00 the seminarians came with huge bags and took away the entire library. It turns out that Elka wrote it off to her father Oleg.
And at 10 in the morning, when I was packing my things, housing office workers came with an ax and neighbors. They showed me a government document that stated that Elkin’s apartment was being transferred to her neighbors in order to expand the living space. The paper was signed three days before Elka’s death.
I inherited “equipment”. Large enamel basin and three nylon jugs.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Shake the shells out of your swimsuit bottoms
and cry over the failed
love.
May Maria Degtyareva ban me...But I’ll write anyway. Or rather, I’ll try to write about the moons, sunsets, and the rustling of waves.
And why all? Who is to blame that I, a sensible (but this is only in my biased opinion) aunt, am going to tune in to the rhythmic mood and join the ranks of the crunchy sea sand nymphs? Facebook is to blame, that's who. He threw out to me, you know, today the events of a year ago. Here, Ulyana, admire what a fool you were a year ago. Shake the shells out of your swimsuit briefs and cry over your failed love.
Having wiped away a stingy Orthodox tear, I will begin by praying.
I am very good at choosing the time and place for a vacation, if anything happens, don’t hesitate to consult, I will help as best I can, with all my diligence. Last year, out of habit and the call of my heart, I rushed to God-saved and beloved Israel. Exactly during military operations. Operation "Unbreakable Rock" (I couldn't miss this, naturally). And, of course, with the baby. Where can he get away from his mad mother? Help him in the future, Lord, of course. Save and protect from all circumstances.
The first “Tseva Adom” found us right in the arrival hall (and thank God, I tell you). We were hardly inspected, and five minutes after the “Iron Dome” scattered the rocket flying in our direction into dust, we were already sat in a taxi. When the sirens howled for the second time, in honor of our arrival in the Holy Land, the second bottle of delicious Moscow vodka was already running out and it wasn’t scary at all. Friends explained the principle of operation of the “iron dome” and the sea was no longer knee-deep, but somewhere around the ankle. The child only drank Sprite, but he also did not know the feeling of fear. A good drink, Sprite, heroic.
All decent parents know what holidays with children are. No quiet reclining by the sea with pina and colada. No dancing until the morning and all that other partying. Only water parks, playgrounds and Safari Park. Only hardcore. I like to relax like this, yes... But where can I go? I gave birth, be patient. Entertain. Eat and drink at the McDuck and don’t deny yourself anything.
On the second day of our stay, the question of entertainment came to a head. Where? Well, where am I good after Stolichnaya? IN shopping mall"Azrieli", of course, where else. There's a small water park up there on one of the towers. The child has been eager to go there for a whole year, and a girl named Helen is waiting for him there. And I’m not some kind of viper, you understand. I am Mother! (rewind). I am for the happiness of the children. I got up and went. She fell, got up, and walked again. She carried her head like that misfortune on the ice in the spring. But we got there, yes... We got there. We got home. They flew up like a bird to the very top and there they were, the slides and pools. Happiness. Coca-Cola heaven. Helen in a swimsuit with rhinestones. Hugs, squeals, splashes.
What's a long-suffering mother to do? She asked Grandma Helen to look after the couple screaming in three languages and trudged off in search of a coffee shop. And soooo...Don't think anything bad. This is a shopping center. Sales! Dresses, shoes, hairpins, scarves, perfume!!! What kind of coffee and beer are there? I was sucked in by bourgeois happiness.
I came to my senses to the sound of a siren. God! I’m rummaging through rag rings here, and the baby is on the roof! Under fire! That's it, now a fragment from a rocket will kill him right in the pool with blue water! With bloody water.! Who the mother will understand what pictures my imagination painted. I watched NTV, I know what’s what. I threw everything away, the junk that suddenly became unnecessary, and, without understanding the way, I rushed along the escalator going down and up. I held my heart between my teeth so it wouldn’t jump out. How I cursed myself. You don't know such words.
On the second stretch (and the siren still doesn’t stop), someone’s hands grab me and tell me in a human voice in the purest Hebrew: “Stop! Get down!” And I start fighting with these hands. To wriggle out of them, hissing in every possible way: “Child, I have a child up there! Let go, snake!” But the hands turned out to be no mistake. You can't get out. And then I start sobbing and wailing, howling. This has been my signature number since childhood. The fiercest hearts at this moment thaw and agree to everything. So it is here. My hands loosened their grip and I slipped out. Later it turned out that these hands also had legs, which very quickly rushed after me. I guessed it from the clatter of hooves.
I took off like a wounded bird onto the area with the swimming pools. There's no one there. Only bags and flip flops are lying around. The siren howls at some sepulchral frequencies. From above - bang, bang! And here again it’s up to me once again their hands reached out and without ceremony they twisted me and forced me to sit down.
Five minutes later, all the children, grandmothers and mothers were taken out of the shelter with dinosaurs (that’s right, with dinosaurs - my son explained it to me). And as if nothing had happened, this whole cute zoo again began to jump around, throw water at each other, yell in wild voices and eat at the top of their lungs.
And I sat down on a bench and started crying. I was scared. I was really scared. I realized what a lousy mother I am. This made me cry especially bitterly and with feelings. Hands stood next to each other. Then they started stroking my head. Silently. Do you often get stroked on the head? I am not. And this finally brought me into that tearful delight when you cry just to cry. Like in childhood. Until the hiccups. Then the hands went somewhere and returned with a bottle of water and napkins. And they started washing me.
The first thing I saw through the veil of tears (hello, Maria!) were the shoes. Not on your arms, of course, but on your legs. Such good, expensive and well-polished shoes. And in shoes, feet in silk socks! (this was already a fatal shot!) And I realized that no matter who walks in such shoes, he has experience, and he won’t drink away. And I understand that I’m sitting with a red, thick nose from sobbing, tear-stained pig eyes, with smudged mascara, looking like God knows who, and I’m hysterical. And here, apparently, is the whole Alain Delon, and maybe even better. Rothschild with the face of Alain Delon. And I’m not on parade! A woman turned on, in a word. Let go.
With a well-honed commissar's movement, I raise my head and understand that - yes, there are still beautiful men in the world. Not transferred. There are not eyes there, there are eyes! Oceans, not eyes. Emerald, in the eyelash forests! (Maria, are you there?). Eyebrows - two falcons, they fly, do not intersect! The mane is tarry to the shoulders... Honest mother, Holy Mother of God, wow! It's very difficult to hit me. But then I just opened my mouth and looked in amazement at all this masculine splendor. Without stopping to hiccup, of course. In general, not a man, but some kind of midsummer night's dream.
I'll be gone for a couple of hours. And, of course, to be continued :)
Well, about the boots.
I sat after a heatstroke, completely drenched in water, silently staring at these boots and realizing that my evil life did not love me in this day.not particularly active. My baby, sobbing and choking on her eighth ice cream, looked compassionately into my little eyes and asked the same question for the hundredth time: “Mom, won’t you die again today?” I assured him that today it was definitely not, but we’ll see later.
The shoes were trampling right there. They shook hands and said that today they would definitely take me home. By and large, there was nothing to lose. The dress is wet and dirty, red streams flowed beautifully from my head (Wellaton mousse dye took good care of my hair, reliably), crazy eyes with dripping mascara, in general, not a woman, but God forgive me, a guide on how not to be a woman need to. Swaying and moaning, supported on one side by the sticky hands of my son, and on the other by the handsome man with shoes, I crawled to the car. As they say - without looking up.
Don't think about it, I actually felt really bad, very bad. But out of habit, I swaggered around and tried to pretend that everything was ok. We arrived and drove away silently and very quickly. I tried to shower myself with gratitude, but, to be honest, I didn’t have the strength. I just shook my head like a horse as a sign of gratitude and slowly crawled out of the car. And then there’s the siren, damn it. Or okay, I don’t know. We jumped into the entrance and waited for it to subside.
I was shocked again, as if to say thank you, and was about to take my leave when the shoes asked me a question about coffee. A common question is whether I would invite him to have a cup of coffee in honor of all previous events. Well, why not? Of course, let's go have some coffee, it's time!
He made the coffee himself and finally introduced himself. Simon. A wonderful human name.
As usual, I immediately christened him Siphon to myself and somehow calmed down. By and large, there was nothing left to lose, he saw all kinds of me and there was no need to pretend to be anything and roll my eyes at his beauty. We chatted for three hours. We talked about everything. And about milk yield and about the winter crops and about Handel, whose love he completely overwhelmed me with. And then he left. But he promised to return, and he did.
I will remember this three-week affair for a long time. Incredible Mediterranean sunsets, going out to sea on a yacht, under rocket fire, perfume in suitcases and pomegranate wine. A week later they made me an offer. Very formal, in the presence of my mother and sister. Everyone was crying. Loud. Whether from horror or from happiness, I still don’t understand, but it was very touching.
And then I flew to Moscow. We called each other every day, and in October we were supposed to get married in Prague. There were no signs of trouble.
I arrived in Tel Aviv on October 13th. But no one met me. And no one answered my phone call. And I, without even crying on the embankment, returned home. And after 2 months, there were already wedding photos with another woman on his Facebook page. He is a former KVN student, he was joking, apparently. And I believed it;) the ring remained as a keepsake and the suitcase of perfume was not finished yet. Well, something like this ;)
“Wherever I go, I end up with a church choir.”
– Tell us how you sang at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
“We are all, due to these various political circumstances, sometimes not brothers, sometimes not sisters, then suddenly, on the contrary, brothers and sisters, we are being played in all directions. And we... When people are tied in blood - rivers, tons of it, the people washed themselves with this blood during the Great Patriotic War, and again they are pitted against each other, not against an external enemy. What the hell is this, guys? What are you all about? What, Moscow was defended by professional marksmen and artillerymen? No. A man who yesterday worked as an accountant, who was a subway driver, who picked cotton in Uzbekistan. It is necessary - that means it is necessary, the Motherland sent it. And they went and defended as best they could, and died there.
That’s why we came and sang not for the sake of vocal beauty, but for the sake of what has always united people, all for the sake of this. I wanted to gather people in a group and sing so that we wouldn’t fight, so that we wouldn’t kill each other because you have a blue passport and I have a red passport.
They hit you in the face, not your passport. Be a human being, really.
I gathered everyone in literally ten days. This generally applies to my whole life in general. If I sit and think for a long time about how something might not work out, nothing will happen at all, obstacles await us at every step, so go do it, I think so.
– How did the idea of such flash mobs come about?
“I have a wonderful grandfather, an incredible hero, he spent almost four years in captivity, led the party organization there, prepared escapes, and so on. 20 years after his death, an article was published in Altaiskaya Pravda; the man with whom they were in captivity was looking for him. He said: “I need to find this man, Ivan from Altai, because he saved hundreds of people and did not let us give up.” There was a big commotion in the village when this article came out, and they learned that Ivan Nesterovich (by that time he had already died) was such an incredible person.
And then May 9th. My thoughts come abruptly, I do everything quickly. I write on social networks: “Guys, shouldn’t we sing songs at Bolshoi Theater? And this human funnel begins, people gather one after another. 3-4 rehearsals and we are ready. You can’t make a choir out of a simple crowd, that’s for sure, there must be a core that clearly knows what they are singing.
“People stopped, sang with us, took pictures of us. A veteran from Odessa stood next to me from beginning to end, and then hugged and kissed me. And, most importantly, even if people were in a hurry, as soon as they caught up with us, they began to sing.
And then I went to my mother to do repairs, to the mountains in Altai. I’m very busy, I’m like anyone who comes to Moscow in large numbers... actually, why am I here? Do I not like Barnaul, or the Altai Territory? I love it very much, I feel good there. But my salary there is 5,000 rubles from three jobs - naturally, I cannot afford to help my parents. And you know, including anything else in my responsibilities was not at all part of my plans. I go to a rural church, sing an akathist to myself with the children, I feel great, I don’t think about any Moscow.
– How did the choir turn out?
– We continued to correspond: “Ulyan, hello. And I liked it so much, and everyone had a good time.” I think: “Well, people themselves want it!” She returned to Moscow: “It’s wrong to abandon people. We can continue to sing together.” And we got together. Our first rehearsal was in some anti-cafe, where everyone really liked us. People, when they sing, are transformed. In one second. Amazement, people’s attitude towards themselves in general begins to change. Thanks to Mother Irina Milkina for the premises at the Church of Euphrosyne of Moscow, in which we regularly gather. Now we are about 50 people.
It is interesting that at first 90% of the choir came in trousers, no one took a scarf with them. And mother made an absolutely correct remark to us: “Girls, please come in a skirt.” We go through the temple to the rehearsal. And only two people were indignant: “Why? How is this? I say: “Well, that’s it. Look at me. I'm always in a skirt. I'm calm about this. If you don’t feel comfortable, you can take it with you.”
And just these two people fell off. Everyone else remained. They came in skirts. And you see, in addition to the music, I tell them what Christmas is and how to sing this carol so that it doesn’t look like “A deadly fire awaits us.” And at the same time I explain where, how I was born, who was nearby, who was the first to come, who was the first to sing “Glory to God in the highest.”
These are also all images, you understand? You can't sing without understanding what you're singing about. And we imagine this den, this night, these lambs, and who else was there. And the person is already beginning to restructure vocally. He no longer sings it like a song at the table, such a church choir is already beginning to emerge in him.
– How do you calm people down when they say: oh, I can’t sing?
– I explain that it is not the gods who burn the pots. Any craft can be learned. I have a phrase: “I can teach even a windowsill to sing.” I have come across absolute pathology only a couple of times in my entire life.
And so there is usually no coordination between hearing and voice. A person hears perfectly, but he himself cannot sing clearly. My task is to take this ear and tie it to this throat.
The Patriarch made a speech: “Let all the people sing!” Organize and attract people. Here I am attracting. Towards Orthodoxy and fragrance. They go to my akathist. The troparia “Lord, have mercy” are sung. Wherever I go, I always have a church choir, no matter what we sing.
- Great.
- Yes. For some reason, people think that I do everything for something, that is, for myself. Although my popularity is not a special blessing, I have encountered moments that I would rather not have had in my life. And financially it’s all wrong. I just want people to sing around and understand that we, Orthodox people, just like everyone else. That only a few go to exhibitions with crowbars. And we are capable of creation, of normal human manifestations.
“Grandmother begins to change clothes, which means there has been a dead person in the village.”
– There is absolutely nothing to envy in my life, except for the fact that this Siberian hardening, these grandmothers, who went through three wars, passed on this genotype.
On my paternal side, my great-grandmother came from Romania on foot to Altai. They walked as a family, and everyone died along the way except her. She was 26 years old. She married my great-grandfather, an Austrian loyalist who became an Old Believer. He was 86, and she was 26. She gave birth to my grandmother Anna Makarovna.
We lived in a communal apartment, and we all had a common toilet. In order to get to it, you had to overcome a very long dark corridor, where all sorts of basins hung, some boards for washing clothes, and something else. So that I wouldn’t be scared, I started singing. All these basins with buckets and everything else resonated, and here I was, singing to the toilet and back, also singing.
– Childhood is a time when you run out of the toilet at night and are glad that you didn’t eat it, yes. And you sang at the same time.
– I’ve been singing since I was seven. My parents worked a lot, I was with my grandmothers. And the village of Novichikha Altai Territory: half are Western Ukrainians, the other half are Volga Germans. There was no temple. The repressed priest lived alone, he died, and the grandmothers remained, who walked around, read the Psalter over the dead, and sang the canon. Where should I go? They’ll sit me down next to this stranger’s coffin, lay me down, and I’ll sit and listen. Already at the age of six I knew the canon by heart. I had a thin, pitiful voice, and I sang along with the grandmothers.
And nothing shocked me, it was so natural. I see that grandma is starting to change clothes, which means that there has been a death in the village, that is, we will go somewhere. I wasn't scared. It was a natural moment in life, a person died, which means we need to read over him, sing, go to the cemetery, and then there will be lunch, which will contain a lot of tasty things. This is a child's perception.
In general, everyone was singing there, because Ukraine is about voices. Absolutely illiterate women laid it all out into fives, sixs, dispersed, then in unison. German grandfathers played violins. In general, there were parties...
– German grandfathers playing violins – sounds like something out of a movie.
– Yes, but the German grandmothers named Malvina, for example, did not speak Russian at all. People worked hard. Imagine, 30 acres of vegetable garden, 15 gardens. At the same time, they work somewhere else.
And here is the holiday. A table is set up in the yard. People are singing. They sang a lot. I remember grandfather Konstantin with a violin. Imagine how eclectic it is - here you have Ukrainian songs, and here you have this “Dear Augustine”.
– I lived with my parents in the city of Barnaul on Nikitin Street, where the Intercession Cathedral stands. It was the only one operating in the whole city at that time. I remember the first time I got there. It was lunch time, my friend and I walked to the temple. I was shocked, of course. Light through these stained glass windows. A light in which not even a speck of dust flies. The smell of old incense, which I can’t confuse with anything since then. Then we started running there with her during the service.
- Why, what attracted you?
– It’s beautiful, it smells delicious, they sing things that are familiar to me. Although the singing was just off-putting, it was good, but the manner was Komsomol. But one day I heard heavenly female voice when I got there on Saturday evening. There was an all-night vigil, and the choir, with soloist Smirnov, sang “Praise the Name of the Lord.”
Of course, this feeling is difficult to forget. By the way, I didn’t consider singing at the coffins to be singing with my grandmothers. This did not apply to music at that time.
- Well, yes.
– And then it turned out that I could sing along in the choir. I walked with them and sang along to something. And in the eighth grade I came to Sunday school, my mother pushed me there. And my girlfriend and I began an active church life. Nobody raped us, but we somehow quickly learned to defend all the services and slowly participate in the service, “Lord have mercy,” and sing something else.
We were very taken care of and loved very much. They truly loved, the way they love children. Of course, we were already teenagers, boys walked with us, we laughed, but no one ever shut our mouths. They explained to us how to behave in the temple. There was no force in this: “Why are you without a scarf? Why aren’t you wearing a long skirt?”
In general, when it comes to clothing, we took our example from the mothers of our priests. Amazingly elegant women came to all the holidays! With a hairstyle, over which there is a very light scarf. In very beautiful costumes, beads are a must. And all the children came very dressed up.
Photo by Rodion Solovyov
“Under the lantern we open the kitchen and get to the bishop’s refrigerator”
– Was this road to professional singing direct, or did you still try to leave it?
- No, God forbid. At the music school, I closed the lid of the coffin, as I call it, the piano, and said: “Goodbye, my love, goodbye.” I was already planning to enter Altai University to study journalism, I passed with an A creative competition. And my mother’s confessor, Father Mikhail, began to say: “Zoya, they will teach her to drink, smoke and swear. Where do you send your child? She sings great. In general, a regent is an excellent profession, in demand and well paid. To the music! Mom says: “It’s true. Come on, my friend, you will go to the seminary, Father Mikhail gave his blessing.”
- And you?
– I went to the Tomsk Theological Seminary, which had just been organized for the first year. What is a seminary in this unfortunate year of 1991-1992? They gave us some unrepaired building, put us in a house, which we washed, whitewashed, removed fleas, our legs were eaten down to the very bones by these fleas.
Theological disciplines were taught by priests from the Moscow Theological Seminary and Academy. Musical conducting was taught by Tomsk University professor Vitaly Sotnikov, and the soloist of his choir Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Zinchenko taught vocals. These people were of a musical and human level inaccessible to us at that time. Huge gratitude to them for giving it all.
At first, we were assigned Father Seraphim as our spiritual leader, who starved us almost to death; we fasted and prayed endlessly. There was no Radio Radonezh then, there was nothing to listen to. And by the second month we had already put together a team that robbed a warehouse of food.
-Are you that hungry?
“We were hungry and brutal, we couldn’t even go outside the fence, although the gates were open, but the priest didn’t bless us.” We also had a battle over the memorial service. Food was constantly brought to the funeral table, but it was taken away by the ladies who worked in the refectory; everything was saved for the arrival of the bishop. We sing this dirge, stand, look at this package of gingerbread cookies, and the workers take the table into a ring, sweep everything into a basket and run away to hide it. We're totally on the ball.
We have porridge without butter, without anything, just some kind of bread. “I ate dry crust.” The headman, Artyom Nikiforovich, had the keys to the warehouse. He was a sinner, he drank a little. Dimka Naumenko and I, I had such an accomplice there, stole the keys. I still can’t understand who steals like that. The church yard is round, next to it is the house where the entire priesthood lives, and there is always someone at the window. And a lantern.
And under this lantern we quite calmly open the kitchen and get to the bishop’s refrigerator. They stole sterlet, sturgeon and everything super tasty.
The next morning everything was revealed. Since we were the two most cheerful geese in the entire seminary, we didn’t even have to calculate. When I was called to the priest, it was Vesuvius, the whole sky was in smoke. Do you know how a linguist swears? Biblical and philological, with examples from Holy Scripture, very cool and scary. But I knew from childhood that if a man starts shouting at a woman, you should never shout back or make excuses - you should cry.
– And you cried, naturally?
“I started crying, and at first beautifully, I really loved old Soviet cinema, you know, with long close-ups and pauses. It seems like you are sitting, looking at the floor, and a large beautiful tear is rolling down your cheek. But I suddenly felt so sorry for myself, I thought: “We are hungry, but they are insulting us here.” And immediately everything turned into emotion, you know, when children’s sobs, when everything is over, when all this is already ugly, and you already start to hiccup. Father, of course, was stunned. A child was sitting in front of him - he was over 50, and I was 17 or 18 years old. And he rushed to console me, began to feed me something and give me something to drink.
I told how they tortured us, how we starved, how we couldn’t even receive a package in the mail from our parents, because Father Seraphim did not bless. Father didn’t know, they immediately called everyone - the entire refectory, Father Seraphim, and the anger that fell on me was nothing compared to what was happening. From that day our lives changed. They began to feed us normally, instead of the Athonite rule we began to have the usual worldly rule, and somehow everything got better.
We were there in a very correct musical space. And we loved this music with all our hearts. We were told that with the help of your singing you can lead a person to God, and you can turn him away forever. Both a parishioner, if you are a director, and a singer who will come to your choir.
“The cuckoo crows twelve times, everyone gets up and leaves.”
– You have become a popular blogger, how does this affect your life?
- For example, they can write to me in a personal message: “They turned on a recording of your choir, and a satanic howl was heard from the speakers, this is a sign!” And everything like that. Or “Give me money” endlessly. What kind of money do I have? I live with friends. That's why I turned off the personal message strangers, and all this disgrace stopped pouring in on me.
– How did the popularity come?
– I registered on Facebook, I have a singer Roma, I subscribed to him. And there was some kind of parent’s day, and he wrote something there about the refectory, about the memorial service. In response, I told in the comments a story from the 90s about the funeral of an authority figure, when it all ended in a restaurant and a prison. And somehow, apparently, I wrote cheerfully about this, that Roma said: “Yes, put it in a separate post.” And this story gets two thousand likes. Well, that's quite a lot, right?
- Well, yes.
– And then this story was posted on some Orthodox resources, and what started there! People, say, born in 1995, wrote “this is a complete lie.” Someone called me “Judas Menshikova.” But it was just a very serious time. Yesterday a man brought you and installed golden domes, and tomorrow they brought him in a coffin, dead. This is part of our history, and why hide and lie about something.
– And now all these stories have turned into a book, and you can already be called a writer.
– The fact that I have some kind of book coming out now is also amateurism, not literature at all. These are the kind of tales that turned out to be of interest specifically to the Orthodox publishing house, which completely shocked me. I never intended to publish, because a book should be a book - Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy and all that. And I turn out to be such an Orthodox Daria Dontsova. Newspaper "Life" - life Orthodox man, so ambiguous, a little funny, like me.
If a secular publication had come, I would have said definitely and unequivocally “no.” And here people from the sphere in which they called me a non-Orthodox Judas, a heretic and all that, it was the church people who came to me, I say: “Oh, let’s.”
Photo by Efim Erichman
– Your stories are incredible, of course.
– You know, I only now realized why and why I was given such a cruel life. Absolutely incredible things happen to me. Again, this is not my dignity - this is how good voice, this is a given - strong nerves, the ability to pull yourself together very quickly in a very difficult moment, and I found myself in very difficult circumstances, not only in life, but even in terms of disasters. Do you remember that terrible accident, a gas explosion on the Novosibirsk-Adler train? I was riding in it.
I was still a girl then and, thank God, I remained alive. I saw these people torn to shreds and helped pull them out. And after that I had no depression, no stress, nothing at all. This is some kind of peasant hardening, grandmother’s, mother’s, great-grandmother’s.
- The most amazing story how you were called to read the Psalter over a deceased woman at night in an unfamiliar village, and she began to cry. You could actually go crazy.
– I was very scared! But for some reason she didn’t run anywhere shouting “Guard!” I was a religious girl, I understood that all sorts of incidents and miracles could happen, something might seem to me, something might be a temptation. My grandmothers loved me very much scary stories tell in the style of Gogol and Viy.
– This is absolute Gogol, of course.
- Yes, exactly. Believe it or not, I spent days and nights with Gogol at a certain age. I had no doubt that the dead man could cry. I was like that Khoma Brut, but I didn’t draw a circle around me, it was some kind of movie around me, and I was in it.
In the Barnaul church we often read the Psalter over the dead, I, like such a young, heavenly nun, read: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy,” dispassionately, on one note. And then one day I was offered about $500 for reading. I say: “I need to go to the cinema.” Bodyguard just came out with Kevin Costner. But the boots are asking for porridge, I think: “What kind of love? What "Bodyguard"? Of course, I’ll go read over the deceased.”
The customers specifically asked for a nun, but there was no one except me, I dressed up and went, the outfit of an Orthodox warrior is always there: a long black skirt, a turtleneck, a scarf. They brought me to the village. The house is an ordinary rural one, there are kittens walking around there, some kind of lilac is blooming. A dead grandmother, her son - a new Russian in an expensive coat and village relatives. I started reading, and then the cuckoo clock crowed 12 times, everyone got up and left at once.
- Creepy.
- Me: “Huh?” - “Calm down, calm down, you’ve been paid, it’s your job.” I’m standing, reading, there’s no light, the candles are burning. And then I see my grandmother’s tears. Here I have Gogol, and grandmothers’ stories about resurrections and exits from graves. I can honestly say that I stopped reading the Psalter and started singing everything I remembered from the spiritual repertoire.
There is such animal fear when you cannot control it. I started singing, and I was released. My grandmother was covered in sweat, but only later did they tell me that she was simply frozen in the morgue.
In the morning my son came: “How are you?” I say: “You know, things are fine, but your mother cried so much in her coffin at night.”
And how it burst there near my mother’s coffin, no “Gangster Petersburg”, of course, can compare with this. He confessed not to me, but to his mother; he never told anyone what I heard then.
Photo by Efim Erichman
“This is not so much a profession as a service, whether we like it or not”
– In your opinion, what should an ideal regent be able to do?
– Music school, music school, regency class. If there’s also a conservatory, then that’s great, because only then you won’t be afraid of being in either the village or the big city. You know, the “Joy of All Who Sorrow” Church on Ordynka and the famous regent Nikolai Matveev, whom we went to listen to. But someone came to listen and stayed.
I studied at the seminary and the conservatory - I’m not afraid to come to a remote village, where half a piece of paper from the Typikon lies, and there is no Book of Hours, no notes, nothing at all. By evening I will definitely find a person who will sing the liturgy and half of it with me. I’ll learn “Lord, have mercy” and a couple of troparia with him and organize some kind of feasible children's choir if there is one there music school. I'm not afraid to find myself in some big church with a large choir of 40-50 people.
Guys, we don’t know where life will take us. And everywhere we should not interfere with the priest’s service; he has time to pray and perform the proskomedia. He stands there and doesn’t worry about you, he knows that everything will be right.
– Do they often tell you that singers don’t pray?
“I heard this: “I sang in the choir for five years, and I didn’t have a second to pray there.” And I know why you didn't have a second. You came to the church, saw these unfamiliar notes, and you tumbled throughout the service, but you weren’t smart enough to take this piece of paper home with you and memorize it. In a year you will begin to pray in the choir, because everything is familiar to you. You sing, this euphony is next to you, you already reach the moment when you not only move the notes with your mouth, but when you comprehend the word that is here.
And the parishioners love us very much. The abbots don’t like us, and rightly so. Because we are not in spiritual, so to speak, closeness with them, but in commodity-money relations. And of course, we make good money, especially on holidays. But, again, what’s not bad? I am 43 years old. I don’t have my own apartment, I don’t have a car, I don’t have anything. And I still work in three places.
Singers, I also already read here, are required to have a spiritual education. Yes, okay, we will get it; those who didn’t have time - I, thank God, got it in due time. But where is it said about rights? Why do I have work book two entries: one is fictitious, as it later turned out, the second seems to be correct. I still haven’t been registered in our church. These are taxes and something else. And none of my singers, practically none, are formalized.
- So you are a nobody?
– We are nobody, we are volunteers with a piece of paper. When I come to the gates of heaven, and I will definitely go there, I will bring this piece of paper to the Apostle Peter. He will say: “No, you did this, that, fifth and tenth, you are unworthy. You took money from the Church, after all.” And I wrote a piece of paper: “And I’m a volunteer. And I signed up." And then he: “Well, where to go? A document is a document. Come on in."
Here. And with this hope, I don’t demand anything from anyone, you understand.
I can't live without it. I love you very much, you know? I love churches, I... well, it goes without saying that I love God, I love this music, being in this space.
I love service, you can’t imagine how much. Another person would have already burned out during this time, but I love her, at least for five hours, at least for how long.
I love Holy Week to the point of oblivion. This is “Your Supper”, Lvov, this is “Let all human flesh be silent on Holy Saturday”, the words there are so extraordinary, and they are also set to simple, but completely soulful music. On this day I always take the viola, because I know for sure: I will not sing, I will cry, I will feel sorry for the Lord.
– Do you often cry in the choir?
– I’ve been singing for many years, and I’ve been a regent with completely different groups. Having sung for so many years, I cry when Masha Kozyreva, the soloist of the church, the singer of the Church of St. Tatiana at Moscow State University, comes and sings “Praise the name of the Lord” with me. This is exactly what I heard back then as a child. Tears are always... (Ulyana looks up, trying to hold back her tears).
These are not tears of operatic tenderness when I hit a note, but these are prayerful: “Lord, how is this?” This supermundane world is opening, the angels sing like that.
People have a gift. And everything is in your hands. I get rid of people quite quickly, sometimes even very harshly, who do not understand that this is not so much a profession as a service, whether you like it or not.
And if you stand throughout the service and think about: “How can I hit this note? And the stichera the new abbot assigned me to sing, it would be nice if there were 3 of them, not 12. I’d rather go home and eat a cutlet,” I part with such people very quickly, I can’t be with them. Usually there are people left who understand what they are doing. I love them very much.
I don't have much of a vocal gift. I can sing, I have an ordinary choral voice - I can sing some kind of song. But if I sing solo, no one will ever listen to me. It will be smooth and calm. And a person comes to you... The vocal teacher will just process it a little, teach you how to send it to the resonators. And he opens his mouth, something comes from there, not of this world, something divine and beautiful - and you think what to do with this voice, what to sing with it that works on its own - and you find it. He sings Chesnokov’s “Eternal Council” for the Annunciation.
– Yes, Chesnokov is an incredible composer.
– What did Chesnokov do? He took the usual chant “Sofronievskaya Cherubimskaya” and made it simply something that made everyone’s hair stand on end. He has a spiritual concert “Oh, Sweet, All-Generous Jesus” - there is our Russian field, there is all of our Mother Rus' in these harmonies.
I am going by the material that I heard from our old regents, and I want the only one who may become a regent to know who the priests Metallov, Turchaninov, Chesnokov, Bortnyansky are. I want young people, and not only them, to know real music, so that students don’t ask me “What is romance?”
One day I was asked to go to the Moscow region to conduct a bishop’s service. It was Christmas, and Bishop Savva was serving. I love him so much! After the service, when he presented the cross, he said: “Sing at least some carol.” And everyone stands and is silent - the whole temple is silent, and the whole choir is silent, I’ll tell you more.
Photo by Efim Erichman
- How is this?
- The Lord begins to sing: “The night is silent over Palestine.” He doesn’t remember this incident, but I remember, there were either 9 or 12 verses, but he remembers all the words, intonates perfectly, very pleasant voice, sings cleanly and beautifully. And the two of us finished singing in this church, someone sang the first two verses with us, and that was it.
There was another moment. God be with her, with the carol. Prayer service Mother of God, a temple in the center of Moscow. I’m at the end, there you have to go to the cross to be anointed, I chant “My Queen, Preferring,” and there is silence in the church. The parishioners in hats, about 50 years old, are very sweet, and I am in such proud isolation of this “Queen”... She is loved very much everywhere, in many churches the whole parish sings, but here there is silence. I say: “Don’t you know the Queen?” “We don’t sing it here.” I understand that something wrong is happening.
I always say, now is the time, I took my smartphone, went to YouTube, went to Contact - tons of beautiful, wonderful, perfectly performed music. Take Vladimir Gorbik’s choir from us - this is aerobatics. Take a lot from the Sretensky people, from the Danilovites. Take the recordings of the Synodal Choir, there are a lot of old recordings of all sorts of different ones, including groups where grandmothers sing. Absorb, absorb, if you were not taken to the Philharmonic or the Conservatory as a child. Now listen, get around. Moscow is a city where thousands of events take place.
“It’s easy to say: we strive for folk singing”
– How did you react to the Patriarch’s proposal to develop folk singing in churches?
– About folk singing, which needs to replace everything, having a colossal musical baggage of thousands of years, I can give the following example. For example, I want to make a movie. I’ve wanted to be a director since childhood, you won’t believe it, I still want to. I take my iPhone, film, rivet something in some cheap editor, take amateur actors and everywhere at the state level I try to convey that this has the right to be on par with professional cinema. I am against amateurism in general in everything. In general, in everything - in cinema, in dance.
This is a very personal and painful story for me. I have been working with these choirs, parishioners, and children for twenty years. Why am I against amateur performances in the church and the abolition of paid choirs?
Once upon a time I personally suffered from this folk singing. I came to our temple. Wonderful, kindest soul the abbot brings two women to me and says: “They want to sing so much. They took courses here, at the Church of the Archangel Michael. We will still need a choir someday.” And I’m already an old beaten sparrow. I say: “Father, I will learn them. But in a year you will bring them to me and say: “Now this choir will sing. And please go and look for some other job.”
He laughed some more and said: “Well, what are you doing? Well, how is this possible? Here. As a result, the evening and morning service, akathist, prayer service - they sang terribly, and a difficult age came - over 55. It’s already difficult, you know? But people knew that here we were singing “Cherubic,” and here “Mercy of the World.” That is, this is also a charter, in addition to singing.
– What happened then?
“A year passes, and they tell me: “They sing so beautifully now, let the folk choir sing on weekdays,” and this is minus 80 percent of the salary. I come - Saturday, evening, Sunday, morning, I get a rate for two services. Let's say a thousand rubles each. Or I will have nine exits - and I will receive nine thousand. Right? This is a profession that should feed me.
And I say: “Why? Folk choir must sing on Sunday." Everyone must sing the litany. But they don’t want it on Sunday, they want it on weekdays. And this is a story that goes in circles. Most of these women are either childless or childless, meaning people have nowhere to go. And this enthusiasm.
This year we have learned one “Cherubim”, one “Mercy of the World”, for example, some “Lord, have mercy”. But not only does it not sound very beautiful. It will work for a prayer service, it will work for an akathist, but it will not work for a festive service. And Easter! She actually celebrates the holidays. By its statutory design, it generally stands out from everything. You have to be able to do a lot to sing all this. Will it work with us? Lent. There's actually space there. I am still confused about many things myself. At the liturgy, folk singing is good in three places - “I Believe”, “Our Father”, a petitionary litany, if they want - a special litany, where “Lord, have mercy. Give it, Lord."
– I just wanted to ask, where then do you allow parishioners to participate?
- No, well, if you want, you can give everything away and let them sing. Litany, petitionary litany, special litany, you can give Sunday communions. Well, these are some small things. It’s easy to say here: we strive for folk singing. So, tell me how to strive for it.
For example, this pause, when the priesthood receives communion in the altar, everyone perceives that it’s like the performance is over, you can walk around, the noise begins. So let a man come out of the altar and sing with them “The Most Blessed Queen,” “Rejoice, Virgin Mary.”
Photo by Efim Erichman
“I will always fight for the fact that the Church is the house of God”
– Are you often accused of being insufficiently Orthodox?
– I am an independent person. You know, it’s hard to accuse me of some kind of meanness or something else. I’m like, you know, Lenin on an armored car. How are people in the temple? They see that something is happening, let's say injustice. Everyone is hiding behind a blessing or something else. I come up and say: “You see, this is not possible.” The woman in the temple is silent. And I begin to seek some kind of truth, justice, some money for treatment, something else. But this is not possible, we need to do it differently. I don’t know any other way, but the Lord sends me people who put up with me with everything. No one has ever been kicked out for character.
Painted nails bothered everyone. Well, all some little things, some nonsense. They also said that I was a heretic. And not just once, not twice, because I have such an attitude towards Orthodoxy. I say: “What should it be? Tell me!”
- Yes, which one?
- I don't know. And they don't know. It probably shouldn't be cheerful and joyful. Petty, stupid quibbles from people who probably don’t really know what Orthodoxy is. Or am I too bright, there are many of me. That is, I can’t take a corner and sit in it in a headscarf. I need everyone to sing, dance, and enjoy life.
With all the trials that my family had, in theory, everyone should have laid down in these coffins and waited for the death of their glorious one. And we, with my disabled brother, with my father with three strokes, with my personal life, perhaps not entirely successful, we laugh at home. And I think that’s why I live this way.
You see, for people, when it comes to church life, religious life in general, these external attributes are very important.
That is, if you’re wearing a long dress, tie a scarf on top like this, and you’re a ready-made believer. And if you also exposed some scoundrel, well done.
They tell me: “I should remain silent, no matter what happens.” I answer: “Okay, well, what can happen?” “What if they kick you out of the temple.” I say: “I can be fired as a regent, for example, but no one will ever be able to kick me out of the temple.”
– In response to harsh reactions, you wrote a story about joyful faith.
– Yes, I sang in the large bishop’s choir at the main cathedral. And it was run by the mother of one of the priests. One day we were rehearsing Bortnyansky’s “We Praise You to God.” And mother all: “You’re singing the wrong music, you’re singing the wrong music.” Lord, what's wrong? Fast, slow, quiet - what's wrong with that? Are we not entering the 6th stage? Who's screwing up? She says: “Remember once and for all: glorification is a blatant faith,” - she talked like that. “You have to sing like you’re all going to die!” You can start dancing with joy if you imagine that you are going to die. She is a great preacher, an expert on the Old Testament, the New Testament and patristic traditions, and everything is a separate conversation, this family is very famous and very interesting. Thank her very much. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have any joyful faith in life.
– At what moments do you remember this?
“Without her, I would have thought that I would have to grieve and endlessly repent of my sins.” When someone starts to irritate me very much, and this happens, I remember the words of Luka Voino-Yasenetsky: “Everyone has their own war.” I especially realized this when I went to the children’s hospice “House with a Lighthouse”, they have an event called “Grieving”. They gather parents of children who have recently died.
I went to them as a cook. We raised money for food on Facebook. There was also in my biography restaurant business, I cooked and worked as a chef. Ten families are sitting... Here ordinary people from Moldova, these are very wealthy people from Moscow. This man on the trolleybus offended you, you don’t know anything about him at all, you’re ready to kill him with a word, but he, maybe yesterday buried a five-month-old child or a twenty-year-old. Therefore, every time I want to open my mouth and explain something to someone in a rural way, I shut it, because I don’t know what kind of war he’s fighting. I have mine, he has his. It's very chilling.
– The main thing is to remember.
– What do you see as your purpose?
– Personally, without any pathos?
- Absolutely.
“I am the breadwinner for my family and will remain so until the end of my days.” I have a very seriously ill brother. I have parents. I have a son, whom I cannot raise here myself... I will not forget, I had 10 rubles, and the boy said to me: “Mom, buy me a lollipop.” I answer: “Son, this is for the bus, otherwise we will have to walk.” He asks: “Well, buy it,” - the child is three years old. I buy a lollipop and carry a three-year-old boy in my arms for 12 kilometers.
I don't want to live like this. I want my mom to have the opportunity to go to the dentist, and my dad to have money for a good examination so that I can get them repaired. This is my human destiny.
Photo by Rodion Solovyov
As for my church service, I was and remain in this field as a warrior, as I consider, an educator, due to the advantages and disadvantages given to me. I will always teach, I will always fight and fight for the fact that the Church is the house of God and the prototype of Heaven. And there everything is a little different than on earth.
We see it all, as if through a glass darkly. We read the holy fathers about angels. This angelic singing is such music that does not exist on earth, in in a good way this word. I am always in favor of singing in church in such a way that any of the parishioners feel like that ambassador of Prince Vladimir: “I don’t know where we are, on earth or in heaven.”
There is a lot of music in the world! But the most beautiful thing is sacred music, and I will teach it, I will practice it, I will shake my poor singers like this, there are only four of them, but they will sing with me good music, and they will sing so well that I will cry, that they will cry, and that those people who stand below will rejoice. And so that our worship should be a worship service, and not an amateur song club.