The Charm School

O’Shea had stood in line two hours for the Soviet shoes. The leather was synthetic, the shoes were a size too small, and the cordovan color was a bit on the red side. O’Shea claimed that was the best he could do, but Hollis always suspected he was getting even for the two hours in line.
    Hollis and Lisa walked arm in arm, following a wet cobblestone lane covered with broken branches and dead leaves. Lisa said, “That’s the Lopukhin palace. Boris Gudonov was elected czar there. Also, as Sasha said, Peter the Great put his sister in there. Peter used to hang his sister’s political supporters outside her windows.”
    Hollis regarded the long stucco palace. “If the windows were as dirty then as they are now, she wouldn’t have noticed.”
    Lisa ignored him and continued, “Novodevichy used to be a retreat for high-born ladies as well as a nunnery. It was also a fort, as you can see, the strongpoint on the southern approaches to Moscow. Odd sort of combination, but common in old Russia. It remained a nunnery until after the Revolution when the communists got rid of the nuns—no one seems to know exactly what became of them—and this place became a branch of the State History Museum. But they never really cared for Novodevichy.”
    Hollis could see that the gardens were choked with undergrowth and the trees so badly in need of pruning that the branches touched the ground and blocked the paths.
    Lisa said, “But it’s still lovely and peaceful here. People come here to meditate. It’s sort of the unofficial center of the religious reawakening here in Moscow.”
    “And probably crawling with KGB because of it.”
    “Yes. But so far they seem content to take names and photographs. No incidents yet.” She squeezed his hand. “Thanks for coming with me. You can visit Gogol’s grave while you’re here.”
    “I might just do that.”
    “I thought you might. That’s why you’re wearing that silly outfit.”
    “Yes, it’s business.”
    “Can I come with you?”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    The lane took them into a paved square from which rose a beautiful six-tiered bell tower. On the far side of the square was a white and gold multidomed church. Lisa said, “That’s the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk.”
    “Is she home?”
    Lisa announced, “If I ever get married, I think I’d want an Eastern Orthodox wedding.”
    Hollis wondered if she’d ever informed Seth Alevy of that.
    “Did you get married in church?”
    “No, we were married in a jet fighter, traveling at mach two, by an Air Force chaplain on the radio. When he pronounced us husband and wife, I hit the eject and blew us out into space. It was all downhill after that.”
    “I see I can’t talk to you this morning.”
    Hollis regarded the throngs of people. Most of them were old women, a few old men, but there were also a number of young people—teenage boys and girls and university students. Here and there he saw intact Muscovite families.
    As they passed the Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk, many of the people in the square stopped, bowed, and made the sign of the cross toward the cathedral. A few of the old women prostrated themselves on the wet stone, and people had to step around them. Hollis recalled the first time he’d been inside the Kremlin walls, when an old woman suddenly crossed herself in front of one of the churches, bowed, and repeated the process for several minutes. A militiaman walked over to her and told her to get moving. She paid no attention to him and prostrated herself on the stone. Tourists and Muscovites began watching, and the militiaman looked uncomfortable. Finally the old woman had risen to her feet, crossed herself again, and continued her walk through the Kremlin, oblivious of time and place or soldiers and red stars where crosses had once risen. She’d seen a church—perhaps of her patron saint, if Russians still had such a thing—and she did what she had to do.
    Lisa watched the people performing their ritual outside the cathedral that had been closed for worship for seventy years and was now the central museum of the convent complex. She said, “After seventy years of persecution, their priests shot, churches torn down, Bibles burned, they still worship Him. I’m telling you, these people are the hope of Russia. They’re going to bring about an upheaval here.”
    Hollis looked at what was left of God’s people here in unholy Moscow and didn’t think so. It would have been nice to think