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

them in coffins of prematurely dead young girls. They say Persephone was picking violets when Hades took her to the Kingdom of the Dead.”

      Ghost Ship

      Moscow

      “What do you feel now, looking at their faces?” Ray asked as I scanned another photo album.

      “No one is on Earth anymore.”

      “Would you like to see them?”

      “My parents, yes,” I moved on to scanning the books on the shelf, Ray watched me with interest. “I remember these books. I printed out the manuscripts on my printer and gave them to a bookbinding workshop. Then I drew pictures directly on their covers and signed the titles with a marker.”

      “Rarity!”

      “Come on, these are drafts. This shelf contains the collections of Larisa Kuzminskaya, my godmother introduced us, and Larisa was the first to recognize my talent. Dedications to Marina Tsvetaeva should be in the Tsvetaeva Museum library, we performed there. And these are my poems on the topics ‘No Death’, ‘Poet’, ‘In This City’, ‘April the Girl’. It’s terrible! All these raw books are in the Russian Book Chamber!”

      “You left a great opportunity for treasure hunters to dive into the sea of versions of your poems. Have you managed to edit everything planned? You said that you would suffer in the Astral World if you left your raw Self to people. Are you suffering?”

      “No.”

      “Why?” Ray never stopped torturing me. “Well, look further.”

      “Prose about ghosts, early stories, including children’s ones. Reprints of ‘The Book of Secret Knowledge’ in the ‘Playing Another Reality’ series. Next …”

      “Come on, I’m already very interested in what’s next!”

      “It’s ‘Guardian Angel’, the novel you waited for so much. You got offended that in ‘the Book of Knowledge’ I called you a ghost. I promised you wouldn’t be a ghost in my ‘Guardian’. Then you came, and we were reading the third part together in the kitchen, how you had brought me to your Arbat, in the lair of the black magician. There was a chess floor, everything was black and white there. Do you remember the poem ‘Beyond the power of magicians’? You liked it, and this is ‘Nostalgia for Atlantis’, all the poems written to you.”

      “Thank you, I appreciated it, although there are not all the poems dedicated to me! Back to prose, where I am not a ghost. What’s the title of the third part?”

      “‘Seven seconds’? About the accident. I had the stitches just removed, and I was all in green and limping. You cured my ear, fed me strawberries and said that it would heal before the wedding,” I smiled.

      “Would you like to return to Earth in a body, if, for example, the Higher Forces allowed us to be together, or I repented and stopped witchcraft, or to experience love again with someone else, a happy love, a mutual one? To dive headlong into it? The love you’ve written so much about both in prose and in verse, the one you have been looking for on Earth all your life?”

      I thought about it and walked up to Ray. He stood at the window looking at me silently, as if asking me to pull out a card from the Tarot deck, a very important one. I hugged him, as once long before, when he had been standing in the same way at the window with the Tarot deck in his hands, waiting for me to pull out just one card.

      “I don’t want to go back anymore. I don’t want earthly love, because it… doesn’t exist.”

      Ouranoupoli

      “Is it the 1^st of January today?” I asked Dimitra.

      “No, the 1^st of November. The 1^st of January is quieter!” she laughed.

      We used to joke so, Dimitra estimated the time by comparing the current date with the virtual date in season or off-season, depending on sales.

      “Sophia has gone! With Faith, Hope and Love to boot!” she reported not without pride. “The ship with tourists came half empty. A woman burst into my shop and shouted, ‘Sophia!’. I showed her the icon, she grabbed it, without even bargaining, paid and ran away. Such a strange one! She said her goddaughter’s name is Sophia. Tell me about the icon, please!”

      “Sophia was born in the 2^nd century on the territory of present-day Italy under Emperor Hadrian in a wealthy Christian family. She married a pagan, but he loved her so much that never even asked her to renounce the faith. Their daughters – Faith, Hope and Love – were brought up in the spirit of Christianity. Sophia’s husband died, and the pagan Emperor ordered the family to come to the palace. Calling each of the daughters in turn and promising sweet gifts, Hadrian invited them to renounce Christ. After refusing to accept paganism, the Emperor tortured the children and ordered them to be executed. Faith was 12 years old, Hope was 10, Love was 9. Sophia buried the decapitated bodies of her daughters outside the city and didn’t go away from their grave for two days, until her soul was taken to Heaven. They were canonized as Holy Martyrs. In the 8^th century, their relics were transferred from Rome to an abbey in France, but during the French Revolution, the relics disappeared, and the abbey turned into a tavern. Although, they say, some of the relics were found in the 20^th century. The feast day is celebrated on September 17/30. They pray to her for women’s happiness and love, for family reunification and the birth of children, but I think she is about Heavenly Love, Faith in the Higher Forces, Hope in God, about the Divine Wisdom and humility.”

      “And I think, Alice, that… you live in a crazy city, in a frantic rhythm, while we live surrounded by icons in a remote village on the border with the Holy Mountain. It would seem, nowhere else closer to God. Well, aren’t you boring to come to us every year? I would have gone crazy!”

      “This place gives the opportunity to step away from the vanity and talk face-to-face with Heavens. It’s just that you stay here every day and don’t realize grace. Back to Sophia! I like her rare icon in Kiri’s shop, ‘Sophia the Divine Wisdom’. It’s painted in two versions – my favorite is Kiev’s one, ‘7 Pillars of Faith’, celebrated on the day of the Nativity of the Virgin on September 8/21; the 2^nd one is the Novgorod one, celebrated on August 15.”

      “What do they look like? I’ll ask the twin monks to paint it!”

      “Well, ‘7 Pillars of Faith’ is a powerful sevenfold icon, located in St. Sophia Cathedral. It depicts a Ladder of 7 steps: Faith, Hope, Love, Purity, Humility, Nobility, Glory. On the sides, there are 7 Old Testament Prophets and Forefathers: King David, Aaron, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. Each of them holds holy things in their hands. They anticipate the birth of Christ as the Divine Wisdom incarnation on Earth. The Ladder connects Earth with Heaven, leads to the Temple, where the Virgin Mary in the ‘Oranta’ type, similar to the protective icon ‘The Sign’ with both hands raised up, stands in clouds on the crescent sickle-shaped Moon. Christ is depicted as a child on the tunic of the Virgin, blessing with His right hand and holding an orb in His left. The Temple has 7 columns-pillars with the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit in the images from the Apocalypse of John the Theologian: 7 candlesticks is mind, a book with 7 seals is wisdom, a stone with 7 eyes is advice, 7 trumpets of Jericho is strength, an eye with 7 stars is vision, 7 phials with incense is godliness, 7 lightning bolts is the fear of God. Above the Temple, there are 7 Archangels, each holding a sign of his ministry: Michael – a sword, Uriel – lightning, Gabriel – a lily flower, and so on. In the center above the Temple, there is God the Father and the Holy Spirit, as well as the inscription ‘Wisdom has built her house; she has carved out her seven pillars’, the word ‘House’ means the Virgin Mary. The Novgorod icon is completely different, is miraculous too. The Virgin