You Must Go and Win: Essays by Alina Simone

Author:Alina Simone [Simone, Alina]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2011-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

I still remember my first visit to a Russian Orthodox church. It took place during a trip to Chita, a breathtakingly cold, rugged, and isolated swath of eastern Siberia bordering China and Mongolia to the south and permafrost and more ice to the north. In my mid-twenties, I took a job with an obscure nonprofit organization that recruited volunteer English teachers and sent them to work in high schools and universities in the distant Russian province. The organization was not without a sense of humor regarding its mission and even sold stickers that read, “Do you know where Chita is? I do!” When I got the job, I gave one to Papa, and he gleefully stuck it to the back of his Honda, where it stayed for years until Mama finally made him steam it off.

An English teacher at the state university offered to take me to Sunday services. The prospect of waking up in the cold blue morning and trudging over streets of broken asphalt where the manhole covers often liked to go missing did not elicit the same enthusiasm as, say, the offer of a spiked hot cider would have, but it was clearly the polite thing to do. I remember that when we reached the church, a modest wooden building painted a cheery light blue, I did what everyone else did, stopping at the threshold to cross myself vigorously with the wrong hand. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of burning beeswax and incense.

I was surprised to find the church packed and the crowd a decidedly unfrumpy one. There were men in muscle shirts wearing oversized gold crosses on chains thick as lasso rope, and women who had dressed with all the concern for warmth or modesty of a person making a journey from the shower to the bedroom. Stepping forward to shield my gaze from the exposed midriff of the woman in front of me, my guide felt compelled to apologize.

“Some of these people care nothing about God, of course, for them this is all just a”—she motioned at the crowd—“a fashion statement.”

I looked around again and saw that, among the crowd, there were also those easily identified as “true believers,” mostly elderly men and stocky women with their heads covered and a small cache of sober young people who were similarly unadorned. All in all, I felt comfortable enough; the congregation really looked no different from the passengers on a typical Q express train.

Russian Orthodox services often last more than three hours, during which you have to stand. There are no pews. The service is also conducted entirely in Church Slavonic, a language that fell out of literary use in Russia more than two hundred years ago. I couldn’t understand anything, and because I am barely five feet tall, I could hardly see anything either. In the distance, there seemed to be a man with a long beard wearing a boxy golden dress, waving a candle sword—three long tapers stuck into an ornate hilt.

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