The Russia we've been waiting for

On Wednesday, we set off for Optina from Tepliy Stan, one of the last stops on the orange line. As always reluctant, we gave the cashier our blue passports and bought tickets for Moskva – Kozelsk (the nearest town to Optina). With our crazy schedule, Nikhon, Johnny (our two friends from the US that joined our adventures a few days ago) Katya, and Masha hadn’t yet registered, so the presence of the whiskerless 17 year old policemen swarming around made everyone a bit antsy.
As the ticket monitor checked my passport and ticket, our to-be driver, a buzz cut in a turquoise shirt, loomed over us. He was actively muttering something in our direction. He looked at me, expecting a reaction, so I asked him to repeat what he had said. With an almost tangible desire to slap me, he said “for some reason, you’ll understand just about everything they’ll tell you in Optina Pustin.” Katya joined me in the bus also shocked; he had told her that “they’re all like that in Optina.” I guess our long dresses, the knotted scarves on our necks, and ridiculous camping backpacks had betrayed our destination. He didn’t like it, and, with Russian stubbornness, he wanted to show it.

We had six hours on the bus, but there is something mesmerizing about the tiny dilapidated towns of Russian countryside, about the simple, magnificent nature we all strangely recognized, though some of us were seeing it for the first time: from the paintings that hung on our walls, from the movies we watched, from the lullabies our parents had sung to us. Besides, we played the game “who sees the cupola first?” in which one received a point for noticing a church. Katya won. By a lot.

            We planned to get off on the last stop, but when we had seen domes that looked like Optina, and kept driving for over 30 minutes, I ventured to ask the bus driver. He just laughed.“Shoulda asked earlier. Guess you should get off at the last station, maybe you’ll find a taxi.”

We were dropped off next to a Perekrestok (grocery store) with not a soul in sight. It was 6:30 pm, and according to Google Maps (which BTW work very shyly in Russian villages), we had to walk about 2 hours to get to Optina. Hiking backpacks on our backs, we set off, our feet slinking through puddles, enthusiastic, but acutely aware that our enthusiasm could/would quickly spiral down into exhaustion. We had only gone a few steps when we came upon some sketchy Lada taxi on the side of the road. “How much to Optina?” I asked, trying to wipe off  the desperate, obviously lost look on my sweaty face. “150 rubles,” he said, as he opened the doors for us. He wouldn’t let all five of us get in (“The Moscow ones (police) are on my back, sorry”), so we left Nikhon and Katya waiting in the rain. 

“Don't worry,” Anatoly, our driver, told us "I'll take care of this." Sure enough, 7 minutes later, we came across a row of chilling taxis. "EY! TEMA! Go pick up the kiddos up next to Perekrestok!" In the blink of an eye, one of the Jigulis started up like a tractor and whizzed off. 

Meanwhile, Anatoly continued giving us a quick tour of Kozelsk. We drove by a huge square of fountains; everything was so perfect, so symmetrical there, that it seemed untouched, as though the town grew old and wise around it. In the  middle, there was a tall column that petered off with a double headed eagle. Noticing that the emblem didn't raise the Soviet five edged star, I asked Anatoly: "When was it built?" "Oh, recently! 2007! Medvedev gifted this to us. A great thanks to him. We got asphalt---there used to be no road. They painted the houses. They need to be painted again: guess it's time to invite Putin!"

           And then, right against the sunset, like in movies, we saw it: Optina Pustin'. Joy and awe, like beads, scattered and bounced though my body. I wondered whether this was the direction from which Dostoevsky and Gogol and Tolstoy, on that last visit a few days before his death, had seen this monastery; whether they all had felt the same.
        Later that evening, Johnny said it best: "This is the Russia I've been waiting for."