My old bug tick-ticked up the steep driveway of the priest's house, shuddered, coughed, and died ten feet from where I wanted it to stop. I left it in gear, set the parking brake, and waited for it to stop rolling backward another five feet before stepping out.
Father Paul's wife, Erin, answered the door looking a little less harried than usual. She was a first-generation American like me, but from a large Irish family. That she was now the Matushka of a Russian Orthodox Church was a testimony to love and the American melting pot.
"Hello," I said.
"Hello."
We stood at the front door looking stupidly at each other, locked in the kind of mutual unseeing stares that afflict people who are absorbed by their own affairs.
I forced myself to speak. "Papa said that Father Paul wants to see me."
"Oh." Erin gave a rare smile and moved back from the door. "Come in."
Two red-headed bodies, three feet high and moving fast, hurtled past me as I stepped over an assortment of trucks and toy dishes.
Erin did not seem to notice them, nor did she make any attempt to stop them as they dashed screaming down a hallway to the left. She pointed toward the right, "He's in the dining room," she said. "Go on in."
The "dining room" was the window end of a long, narrow kitchen. It doubled as Father Paul's office and was partitioned from the kitchen and the open-plan living room by two patterned curtains. On the near curtain, rectangles in graduated sizes and shades of purple drew the eye toward the floor where an old green carpet in the living room met the yellow tile of the kitchen. The other curtain was either uncertain brown or faded purple, with only a hint of a former pattern. The arrangement did nothing for the room but proclaimed, rather loudly, a lack of taste and money.
The room would look much better without those awful curtains, I thought. I was more convinced of this when I stepped behind them and had to raise my voice over the din of the children to get Father Paul's attention. If this ugly partition was meant to offer privacy, it failed.
The priest looked up from a blank pad of lined paper. Several wadded balls of the same paper were strewn across the table. His expression, in contrast to his wife’s, was more haggard and worried than usual.
"Alex! Thank you for coming so quickly. I need to talk to you."
"Good morning, Father." After kissing his hand, I sat down in an uncomfortable chair next to him. "She's called you then," I said.
"Who?"
"My mother." We exchanged puzzled looks.
"Has she?" The priest started with sudden understanding. "Oh, yes she has. But that's not why I asked to see you."
His expression turned inward again, and I was struck by the toll the struggle was taking. Paul Strukov was only in his thirties, but dark circles under his eyes and a permanently worried expression added ten years to his appearance. His struggle was not only financial, though money problems were real enough. I suspected that if this were the only problem, Father Paul would bear his poverty gladly, rejoicing in his weakness as did his namesake, the Apostle. But the gnawing sorrow came from the sad state of his congregation, not his bank balance. On the previous Sunday I had suddenly realized that I was the only person between the ages of ten and forty who regularly attended the Divine Liturgy. Old women brought their grandchildren to church. No one else had time.
The priest picked his words carefully. "I want to ask your help. It's a little delicate. I mean, I don't want to accuse. It's...."
I said nothing, giving him time to think. With a sigh, he continued.
"The Trinity Icon's been stolen. It's gone, and I think I know who took it. I'm asking you to help me get it back."
"The what? Which one? Do you mean the one with Sarah and the three angels?" I briefly wondered if he were accusing me.
"That's the one," he said. "It's very valuable. Yesterday, someone offered me twenty thousand for it. It was painted for Tsar Michael, you know.”
"No, I didn't know. Did you sell it?"
"Oh no! I could never sell that icon."
"But it would solve a lot of problems. You could get the roof fixed at the church, fix up the house a bit." I stopped for fear of implying that I thought his house needed fixing, though it did.
"Yes, I know, but that's not important now. What's important is that when I walked the man to his car..."
"Which man?"
"The man who offered to buy it." Father Paul paused a moment, as if he were finding his place in a rehearsed narrative. "Yesterday, when I walked him to his car, four or five boys suddenly scattered from the south wall of the church. They had been spray painting it. With obscenities.”
"And when you went back it was gone?"
"No, it disappeared later, sometime last night. But I've thought about it, and those boys must have been near the window when we were discussing it. I had opened it for some air, and well, they could have heard his offer. And when I turned him down, they may have thought..."
I waited, but when he didn't continue, I said, "What did the police say?"
"I haven't called them." He hurried to explain: "I don't want...I recognized one of the boys and I don't want to take a step that may damage him forever."
"Who?"
"Boris Nikitin."
"He's no boy."
"Well, he's young. He can change. He can't be twenty-one yet. A lot can happen to a man...." An inward look suggested the priest was speaking from experience.
"He's older than I am and I'm twenty. What do you want me to do, Father?"
"Talk to him."
"What?"
"Talk to him. Mention that I haven't called the police yet, and that if it's returned, you know. No questions asked. That sort of thing."
"Why are you asking me?"
"You know him. You went to school with him."
"We went to the same high school, but I certainly don't know him."
"You're the only person I know who can approach him without it looking strange."
I did not tell him how mistaken he was. I looked at his anxious face, sighed, and said, "OK, Father, I'll try."
"Great! I knew you would." Relief brightened his features for a moment.
The cloud returned, though, when I said, "So, what did my mother say?"
"When?"
"When she called."
"Oh, the usual. She asked me to tell you to go back home."
"Are you telling me to go home?"
"No. Do what you have to do. But be kind to her, won't you?"
"Of course." My voice rose a bit in bewilderment. "Why do some women get that way, Father? I don't remember my mother being so bitter when I was a child."
The priest shrugged and changed to a more comfortable subject; he had evidently had his fill of difficult subjects that day. "How's school by the way?"
"It's fine." But I was not so easily put off. "I had to move out, Father. Finals are in three weeks and I can't study at home. You do understand, don't you?"
"I do," he said. "But your mother doesn't." He stood up, stretching his arms from the shoulders in the half-hearted manner of a weary man. "Are you sure Sizzle-Burger will hire you again next term?"
"They always do, Father. Two terms on, one term off. It's worked for three years now."
"Yes, but are you sure you can afford an apartment, too?" He pulled back a curtain. "It seems to be taking you long enough to finish school without adding this expense."
"I know what I'm doing." I immediately regretted my unthinking reply to the good man, especially because he was right and I knew it. In three years, I had barely completed two years of college.
We walked to the front door, picking our way around and over trucks, balls, books, and dolls. Erin was playing patta-cake with her youngest. She did not notice that I was leaving.
The beetle started the first time. I let it roll backward down the drive then began the struggle to find first gear. I noticed Father Paul saying something to me from the doorway. I shook my head. He repeated it, but I could not hear him. I cut the engine a
t the same moment that he ran up to the car.
"Just wanted to say thank you again," he said.
"Oh. No problem, Father. I'll do my best."
The priest walked back up to the house, stooping to collect a toddler that had escaped through the open door. I sat, blocking two lanes of traffic, until the bug started again on the fourth try. As it lurched into first gear, the traffic jam resolved itself in front of me, and several cars fell into line behind. Among them, though I didn't pay attention to it at the time, was a light blue Rambler car, slightly dented. I remembered it later when I had reason to. It followed me to my apartment, parked across the street, and did not leave again until the last of my boxes had been unloaded.
CHAPTER FOUR