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

a small miracle. Fly to him, ask. You visited him once. There are two options now – an easy one and a hard one, the second is more useful.”

      “The simple one is to move to his relics. Is the hard one to go back to him the very same day in the Past?”

      Bari, Italy

      I opened my eyes, kneeling on the stone floor in front of the grate, behind which there was a marble tombstone, hung with lamps, with the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, stolen in 1087 by smart citizens of Bari from the Turkish Lycia. At that time, the Venetians went for the relics too, but the Bari people were ahead of them, having carried out 4/5 of the relics, the Venetians took the rest and placed it on the island of Lido, appointing St. Nicholas as the patron of Venice along with Mark the Evangelist.

      The liturgy began in Russian, priests from the Metochion in Bari often served there. Having placed on the lower ledge of the shrine the oil and the silver ring with St. Nicholas bought in the local icon shop, I opened the Akathist. The space near the relics in the small crypt in the basement left part of the Catholic basilica was as if electrified – facing the shrine, you found yourself in a stream that passed you through, from the relics to the niche with the image of the Saint, behind your back, where people left notes with wishes. St. Nicholas used to help travelers and orphans, people who had been slandered and innocently convicted, students with studies, girls with marriage, and two years before, he had saved me in an accident, but not only he.

      Having read the Akathist, I reached the shrine with my hand to take back my ring and oil, went to the niche and left my wish note written on a piece of paper. After the liturgy, I left the basilica and safely took a step away from Me in the Past on the square, but followed her until the moment she disappeared in the Patriarchal Metochion of St. Nicholas on Corso Benedetto Croce, 130. How could I end up there?

      “What did you feel and think about when you merged with yourself at the relics?” Ray asked, appearing nearby suddenly. “Did you write a note about love? Do you remember what way the Wonderworker brought you to him?”

      “In my mind, in the Past, there was a thought he had saved me in some kind of accident.”

      “Well, now it’s not about the accident, although it was somehow related. You were supposed to fly to Venice, by the way, to his relics. What a struggle between Venice and Bari! Instead of Venice, you were suddenly sent to Bari. The chain of events you saw in the Tablets once again and wrote down in the form of a novel broke apart.”

      “Really? And why?”

      “It was one of the Future scenarios leading you to an early return to Heaven. Your prayers were heard. The Space started changes, each link in the chain collapsed, one after another. It would seem a small detail to begin with – the Prime Minister didn’t come to the opening of something. As a result, the person who was going to fly with you to Venice… Well, don’t you remember? So you stayed with your delegation in the Patriarchal Metochion. By the way, your photo, by the curator of the trip from Bari, would seem to be an ordinary photo of a girl at the autumn sea against the Monopoli Tower, but in the end… A new chain of events formed instead of the broken previous one could have led you to a completely different scenario.”

      “Could? You’re talking in riddles, Ray. What happened next?”

      “What you wrote in your note to St. Nicholas. People formulate desires at random, and those tend to come true exactly as they were worded.”

      “I haven’t seen my desire, Ray. She, I mean me, threw a note, written in advance, already crumpled.”

      Ouranoupoli

      “Alice, are you not tired of resting yet?” Kiri’s father exclaimed, hugging me at his counter as I returned from my Akathist reading at the border. “Why don’t you help me sell ice cream? Maybe you’ll meet your prince this way!”

      “Princes are good until they marry you!” Kiri laughed. “Pray to St. Nicholas, he made girls married even without money!”

      “Yes,” I nodded, “they depict him with bags of gold coins in Bari. He threw them through the window to a poor woman whose daughters were not married because of the lack of dowry.”

      “It’s important to be soul mates,” Kiri’s father winked at me. “Real happiness is not in gold. Here are icons, for example. Do you like icons in gold? Neither do I. It’s not jewelry! If you want gold, go to the jewelry store, buy rings or chains, or order gold sticks in the bank. An icon is the soul of a Saint, looking at you. The soul doesn’t need a frame of earthly gold.”

      “And who else of the Saints helps with the marriage?” Kiri asked. “I’ve heard about St. Catherine for the Catholics.”

      “In Russia, they venerate St. Xenia of Petersburg. Holy fool, born at the beginning of the 18^th century and canonized only in 1988. After the death of her husband, she began to say that she was he, as if she were dead, dressed in his clothes and responded only to his name. She donated her house and wandered the streets. At night she was building a temple, bringing bricks into it. Having received the gift of prophecy and healing, she helped women with grooms and children. A chapel was built over her grave. Pilgrims try to take a piece of land with them. Xenia helps my godmother all her life. My godmother’s birthday is on the 7^th of June, and Xenia’s memorial day is on the 6^th. The godmother turned to Xenia with housing, job and other issues. The people who came to help her were called Xenia.”

      “Wow! I wish Xenia helped us with sales! Icons were not sold within Mount Athos in the Past, and now there are shops in every monastery. Pilgrims buy icons there, although we sell the same icons cheaper. Could you, like Xenia, give away all your earthly possessions?”

      I took a step away from Me in the Past and sighed, “All our earthly possessions are our Memories.”

      Courtroom in the Universe

      The Mist was enveloping my Consciousness. The Moonlight Sonata was pouring without interruption. There or inside me? It ended and started again, ended and started again, it was endless… The left bowl of Scales outweighed the right one again. The devils made a joyful noise. An old woman came up to the Scales through the crowd. She said to have shared her grief with me once when I returned from Athos. Her daughter, called Alice as me, gave birth to a dead child. Frames were projected onto the screen. The woman came to me, and I gave her the icon of the Belt of the Virgin, a piece of the blessed Belt, the only one I had then, the icons of Alexandra and Catherine for her second daughter. The woman put her “Thank you”, a heart-shaped solar ball of energy, on the right bowl, and the Scales became swaying in search of balance.

      The Mist, everything was in the Mist, even Joice’s voice reading to me in the Tower about the Apostle Peter. A boy appeared at the Scales. Strange, I didn’t want to see him, who was he? I couldn’t hear his words. There were dark frames on the screen, and I fell into them, into the night full of the Moonlight Sonata. We were driving in a car in complete and oppressive silence, and I broke the silence with a cry, “Talk to me!”

      And Time stopped, we drove for a long, long time, looping through the labyrinth of the streets in the subconscious. I was talking to him, but not that and not worthy to talk about. We had to pass just a couple of houses, but we drove, turning left and right, as if diligently trying hard to avoid the same sore spot. He felt everything inside. He was not like… who? I didn’t want to remember anything! The Athos rosary appeared on the screen. The boy at the Scales kept talking. I didn’t hear his words, but I had given him a book he would hardly read, although he was in it. Who was he? The Moonlight Sonata was getting louder. Some letter, a cafe and coffee, he talked to me fiddling with the rosary, about … who? I was silent, and he said, “Talk to me!”

      Joice’s voice in the Tower, reading to me about St. Peter, came from the Mist. The boy at the Scales