Chapter IV
A Message from "The Other World"

After a week in the hospital, Arthur's father died of a heart attack. Arthur had already gone to see him as soon as he heard of his admittance to the hospital. His father had suffered from asthma all through his life and this last winter's bouts with pneumonia had greatly exacerbated the situation.

The doctors said he needed certain expensive medicine, for which Arthur paid immediately. Nevertheless, the doctors' prognosis was that, even if he lived, he would be an invalid. During that time Arthur and his father spoke more – and more from the heart – than they ever had.

After his father got out of intensive care and Arthur visited him, his father told him that he had been clinically dead for a short period. He had had an out-of-body experience during which he went through a tunnel and then saw himself and the operating table. It seemed as if he had met with deceased relatives who told him, "Give your son some advice and return to us." His father also told him that he had seen a light, full of love, which is virtually impossible to feel while on Earth. Even barely touching it gave you a feeling of peace and joy. But Arthur didn't lay much value on what his father said because he felt he was still delirious.

After Arthur left the hospital, he saw a stand with books and magazines and he decided to buy something to kill the time at the hotel. The first thing he saw was a book by Moody, 'Life After Life'. By morning, he had finished reading it and was going to visit his father, imbued with a good feeling he had gotten from the book.

In the book, a doctor and a scientist took a reasoned approach to what was reported by a great number of people who had come back after being clinically dead. They proceeded on the assumption that those people couldn't all have simply made up their stories. Basically, people were saying the same thing that Arthur's father had told him. What amazed and gladdened him was that the soul does not end when the physical body does.

When Arthur visited his father the second time, his father told him his life story and asked for his forgiveness. It was important for Arthur to hear this; ever since childhood he had always felt that his father didn't love him. But his father told him that he had worked hard to make him better, to get him a better education, and to give him a moral upbringing. Yes, he had been strict with his son because he knew how swiftly bad influences can change a young adult.

His father asked forgiveness for having hit him a few times in his childhood. Arthur knew that his father's strictness had pushed him to be better, had helped him to become a person at all. Raising his son had been his father's purpose in life. "A worthy goal, all things said and done," Arthur thought to himself. "If I have kids, I'll try to give them a better life, too." They held each other in their arms and asked for one another's absolution.

The third visit with his father shook him to his core, and that's why he wrote down in his diary what he could remember after he got back to his hotel room.

* * *

… When I arrived at his room, doctors were running around with grave concern on their faces. His father had apparently begun gasping for air that night and they had barely saved him. His situation had been almost hopeless, the supervising doctor told him.

Arthur's father was pale yet peaceful. He saw me enter and started talking to me:

"I was… there… again. It is hard there for those who have lived an unworthy life, which is the majority. But what's most amazing is that there they have a whole other understanding of good and evil. Many people considered to be good here are severely punished there, and vice versa. People's main concern about going there should be that we will be judged – Did you act from the heart, from the soul, or merely from your ego?

The main sin is egotism. We live in such ignorance; such a shame for people that we don't have the right values. So few people follow the path meant for them. You see, it turns out that following someone else's path is a grievous sin."

"Dad, how do you feel? Can I bring you something?" "Nothing, I'm all right. I don't have much time left anyway."

"Come on, Dad, stop it. Everything's going to be all right."

"But why do you think that death at its rightful time is bad? After all, death is just a passage to another state of being, another form of life. Imagine traveling to another country and everything there is new, but lots of souls there are familiar to you.

"What!?" Arthur asked, incredulous.

"My life flashed in front of me for a few seconds. Amazing! It's too bad that I worked so much and spent so little time with you or with friends; too bad that I took so little time off and practically never worked on developing my inner soul. In the end, you see, that is the reason we have come to this world."

"But, Dad, we went to the theater, to exhibitions. Remember how you sometimes forced me to go to some cultural events?"

"Those don't develop your soul; a lot of those artists will suffer for having led people astray, and they will suffer more than others. True culture should draw people to God, my son.

"So, Dad, you mean it's better just to go out on the town and get drunk in a bar?"

"That's even worse."

"Dad, this all sounds so gloomy."

"Have you been in a theater or a bar recently? See? You can do without it."

"I just don't seem to have the time, but if there's a good play or film then I would definitely go to see it. Is that really bad?"

"A good one, hmmm? There are less and less 'good' films or plays."

"But Dad, why can't we believe that you'll get well and you'll live right and you can help people live that way?"

"No, I have just been holding on to say goodbye and to ask you to forgive me one more time for everything, and to ask you to deal with unresolved obligations I'm leaving behind. You see, you're not supposed to die with indebtedness. If I had only known this all before, I would have undertaken to teach it to others."

"What would you have taught? Like going to the theater is bad?"

"No, that we have all come here to develop our souls. Egotism is the cause of our ills and the reason we don't focus our lives around love. My son, this is the work you must do."

"Maybe that is not my special purpose in life. You said everyone had his own path to take."

"This activity, developing your inner soul, is higher than any purpose an individual may have. It's the main purpose of every living being. Though our lives are short, we can achieve very much."

I didn't know what to say, much less to do.

My father was so concerned about his debts: return a book to someone, 2,000 rubles to a neighbor… He asked a priest to come and read him his last rites and for Arthur to give as an offering whatever remuneration he would name (very unusual for those times).

At three in the afternoon, his father began to look attentively at an icon which hung above the entrance to his room (Some elderly women had recently hung them in rooms of the critically ill.). He repeated something to himself a few times and in about a quarter hour he took a deep breath and left us. 'Left' was the right word, Arthur knew, not died; he could feel it. A sense of peace accompanied his father's passing; a pleasant smile was left on his face.

In a kind of daze, Arthur reminded himself of his duties: funeral, priest, reparation of debts, returning to Moscow.

* * *

Arthur's mother had been visiting her parents in the Far East. They had not been able to get through to her until a raging thunderstorm there had finally settled down and so she hadn't been able to return until a few days after the funeral.

She had a lot of friends and relatives in the city who gave her their support. A year and a half later she married a great guy and, with every passing year, Arthur talked with her less and less. Somewhere he remembered reading that the greater the love was between spouses, the sooner they were able to find new partners. Ties to his relatives now held him less than ever from the life which he wanted to lead.

This event with his father forced Arthur to reflect. His father had been relatively young (under 50) yet nevertheless, suddenly – he had gone. The question of the meaning of life arose again. "After all, everything is temporal," he thought. "You can't make sense out of the continuing fuss and bustle of life." What's more, he started to be afraid of death. He understood that he would die one day, too, and maybe he only had one, two, or three years. Nobody knows.

A few months before, a young man, his neighbor, was hit by a car, and he died on the spot. And now, Arthur's father, who had been so young. He used to think he would die when he was from 80 to 100, but now he realized that it could be considerably earlier. He felt acutely aware of his questions about the meaning of life.

After his father's funeral, he read books for a few weeks, walked around alone in natural areas. He didn't know at the time that each day was bringing him closer to a meeting which would categorically change his life. His father's words before his death, the book about some supposed life after death – these had a strong influence on him. But he just wasn't getting a unified, complete picture of what the world was and he had now lost all interest in it.

One day a friend from his student days called and invited him to live at their weekend home. His parents were travelling abroad and they needed someone to house-sit – water the plants and so on. Arthur agreed. He wanted to be alone. It had been a month since his father's death. He drove over to his friend's place to get the keys and the next morning he was ready to go.

Chapter V
An Encounter with Zheka, the 'Holy Father'

The next day, Arthur left his apartment early to buy groceries and deal with some things. Hardly had he gotten out the door when he heard the church bells ringing. At the beginning of the 90s, this was a new, unusual occurrence in Moscow, one to which Muscovites hadn't quite adjusted. He remembered that not far from him was a church that was opened a few years ago, and which now had a large, active membership.

Apparently there was some kind of festival – the closer Arthur got, the larger the crowd of people. Someone was coming out of the church towards him. Several women wore long dresses and scarves which surprised him a bit.

He didn't have any particular attitude about church in general. He would sometimes go in, place a candle, and stay for some of the service. As a child, his great-grandmother had him baptized and she would talk a lot about the orthodox faith. Once in the past he had gone there to pay respects to her. He heard an elderly woman loudly complaining and scolding other people, adding to the gloomy atmosphere hanging over everyone's head, spoiling the impression of his visit. He didn't want to go there ever again.

Various articles in newspapers described how there were virtually no priests who hadn't been connected to Soviet power and not worked for the KGB. That, together with The Gulag Archipelag, had put a nail in the coffin for his belief in them and the church.

* * *

He was just walking, enjoying the beautiful sunny day and the birds' singing. To his surprise, he saw a priest coming his way, rather young, bearded, with long hair, looking fixedly at him. He felt ill at ease from the stare. He tried to avert his glance and sped up his step, but all of a sudden he heard the man calling him by name, "Arthur! Arthur!"

He hadn't imagined that the priest would call him by name. But when he heard him say in a singsong way, "Oh, Art," he knew the man was calling him. He had often been called 'Art' in his first years at the institute. Almost everybody had a nickname of sorts. Arthur stopped; without a doubt he was being addressed. The priest, smiling broadly and warmly, asked him, "Art, don't you recognize me?" And then, all at once he remembered, as if someone had thrown him in a cold shower.

"Zheka?" Arthur asked.

That had been our nickname for Eugene. Zheka came from the Vologda region. His father had been a manager of a large firm there and he had done everything he could to get his son into an institute of higher education in the capital. But his son wasn't very studious and was expelled for fighting and drinking in his second semester. He hadn't left a good impression of himself. Even worse, he was suspected of petty theft among his fellow students, and that had been the lowest thing to do. He wasn't caught in the act, but twice while he had been posted for security duty in the dorm some money and valuables disappeared. They weren't able to prove anything but there hadn't been anyone else on that floor.

All in all, Arthur couldn't call to mind any good impressions he had of Zheka. Looking at him now and trying to smile in return, he felt perturbed and thought to himself, "Good God! If these are the kinds of people that have now entered the church…"

For a fraction of a second, images of the past came to mind. He hesitated, not wanting to have anything to do with this 'holy father', as he was mentally calling Zheka.

They exchanged pleasantries and Arthur asked, "So, how can I call you? Father Eugene, most likely?"

"Oh, come on, stop it," Eugene good-naturedly objected. "Not really, but that doesn't matter right now. I'm just glad to see you. I understand what you are thinking. I'm sure you don't have any good memories of me. I can imagine. Still, I'm glad to see you. If you'd like, we can talk. You know, I'm indebted to you. Once at a lecture you raised a very important question about the meaning of life. Your argument with the teacher deeply influenced me. It had come to my mind again when I was under fire."

Arthur didn't pick up on Zheka's 'under fire' comment. But he did remember bringing up important questions about life and arguing at lectures on philosophical points until the group's party youth leader hinted to him that if he wanted to graduate, he had better stop doing it.

It was uncomfortable to refuse a bit of conversation, but he really didn't want any. Yet something inside of him told him to agree. So, mostly out of politeness, he said, "Sure." They went into a cafe that had recently just opened and sat at a table outside. Arthur gave a quick synopsis of himself – "Ahh, you know, nothing interesting," – and then asked Zheka to tell him about his 'religious transformation. He began talking and Arthur pretended that he was listening, but all the time he was thinking about the end of this chit-chat with the 'holy father'. They ordered some deserts and Zheka, in his quaint Vologda accent, told his story.

The more he talked, the more intriguing he sounded. They spent about three hours talking. Arthur, after coming back home, again returned to his diary to write down (as faithfully as he could recall) what he had heard. He wanted to show it to his future children.

* * *

Zheka explained that he was in Moscow only for a few days and was just passing through. He served in a small parish where there were not enough clergy. The parish membership was increasing and many new churches were opening.

He had come here for church celebrations, meetings, and training. He had a fiancée – a god-fearing, honest, and faithful young woman.