Lenin Lurking

The figure drags deep on a Marlboro Red and sends a cloud of smoke out into the light from within the shadow where he stands.  A bright dusk illuminates the outskirts of Moscow as evening approaches.  It is another listless night for the man whose time has come and gone, left to wander the city, ignoring those around him and being ignored in return.  A cold breeze finds its way down the neck of his tattered London Fog overcoat triggering a shiver and a curse.  He flips his cigarette disdainfully, watching it bounce on the cracked pavement with a shower of sparks before crushing it under the heel of his Doc Martens.

Shadows suit him as does the cover of night, but in Moscow this time of year the light seems interminable and depresses him.  With no one around to observe his movements he leaves the shadow, like Cain cursed to roam the earth, and ventures northeastward closer to the heart of the city.  Thoughts of his former resting place come unbidden and unwelcome.  He no longer sleeps on Red Square upborne by veneration in a God-free dream state.  It is only an artificial semblance of the man he used to be.  Instead he has become a shade, a feeling of unease in those who pass too closely. 

A Chef Boyardee can rolls into his path and he kicks it with disgust, "Capitalist trash!"  The can bounces off a large wooden gate with a clang scaring off some loitering cats.  The balding scowl-faced man looks left, then right, high stone walls running off in either direction.  His curiosity piqued, he is surprised to find the gate moving inward to his touch.  A surge of disappointment and then a good deal of anger wells up as he realizes he has entered a walled monastery in the midst of the city.  Quickly turning to leave, the gate no longer responds to a push or a pull.  Howling does him no good.  He is trapped in this Soviet-forsaken place. 

How had things come to this?  Churches reopening everywhere!  Monasteries flourishing!  Lost in grief, he is startled to feel the weight of a hand on his back.  "Vladimir, why do you kick against the goads?"  A thickly bearded man with gentle eyes stands at his side. 

Conflicting emotions rack him as he recognizes his old nemesis, expecting gloating but feeling a warm flow instead.  His shoulders sag, head down as he rubs his hairless crown in despair.  "You have won, Vasily Ivanovich."

The Patriarch pulls the weeping man to his chest.  "We have all won, Vladimir Ilyich.  Christ is risen!"

***

The next morning church bells peal calling people to prayer at the main cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery.  A little girl with her parents pass the sleeping form of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on a bench, laid out as if in state.  The father senses the uncanny resemblance and blanches a bit.  "Can I give him a flower, Papa?" the little girl asks, already picking a wild one by the path.

"Yes, but let him sleep, Little One.  Let him sleep."

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* Information regarding St. Tikhon of Moscow

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