AN INCREDIBLE STORY: A PRIEST COVERED HIS WORST ENEMY WITH HIS SHEET COAT AND THEREBY SAVED NOT ONLY HIS BODY BUT ALSO HIS SOUL...

AN INCREDIBLE STORY: A PRIEST COVERED HIS WORST ENEMY WITH HIS SHEET COAT AND THEREBY SAVED NOT ONLY HIS BODY BUT ALSO HIS SOUL...

A man was thrown into the icy concrete "glass" of the punishment cell. The one who was already sitting inside, huddled in the corner, only raised his head. For him, it was just another soul on the threshold of death, but for the camp system, it was a cruel irony: a former high-ranking NKVD officer who approved execution lists was thrown to die in the very hell he had helped build. His cellmate was a priest, prisoner Arseny.

The floor of the punishment cell was covered with freezing water. The night promised a frost that does not leave the living. A former security officer, an intelligent and once powerful Avsenev, knew the system from the inside. He knew that in the morning they would carry out two frozen bodies. He was shaking. Not from fear - fear was too small a feeling for the all-consuming cold that gnawed at his bones - but from the animal tremors of death.

The priest in the corner did not move. He simply looked at his new neighbor with a long, calm gaze in which there was neither condemnation, nor hatred, nor even sympathy. There was something different in that gaze, something enormous, which suddenly made Avsenev feel uneasy. He expected curses, malice, anything - just not this deafening silence in the old man's eyes.

"Take off your clothes," the priest suddenly said quietly, almost soundlessly.

Avsenev did not understand. His thoughts were confused, frozen.

“Take off your clothes, I say,” repeated Father Arseny. “Take off your shirt, lie down on the bunk, I’ll cover you.”

"Are you crazy, priest? We'll both freeze!" the Chekist croaked.

Father Arseny slowly rose. He came over. His shabby quilted jacket smelled not of camp rot, but of something forgotten - dry grass or bread. He began to unbutton his quilted jacket.

"Don't be afraid. It has to be this way," his voice was even, like a doctor performing a routine operation. "Lie down. We'll wait for the morning."

Something happened that broke the laws of human logic. Father Arseny took off his only warm clothes and covered Avsenev with them, who was lying on the bare boards.

He himself, in only a thin shirt, went to the iciest corner, where frost was oozing from the walls, and stood there, leaning against the concrete.

Avsenev lay under someone else's quilted jacket, and he was shaken by a chill of shame, more terrible than the cold.

This priest, one of those he despised, whom he sent by the thousands to the same camps, was now giving him his life. Not for God, not for an idea - simply, routinely, like giving away the last piece of bread.

And then the priest began to pray.

It was not a prayer-request. It was not a cry of despair. Avsenev, an atheist to the core, suddenly understood this with his whole being. From the corner where the old man stood came... warmth.

Not physical warmth that could melt the ice. Something else. Avsenev couldn't believe his feelings. Time in the punishment cell stopped.

The sound of water dripping from the ceiling disappeared. The whole world shrank to this concrete bag, in which something impossible was happening.

The cold had not gone away - it was still all around, but it had stopped penetrating. It seemed to envelop Avsenev's body, flowing around him, like water around a stone.

The Chekist saw the priest's back. He did not move. He was not kneeling, not beating in ecstasy. He simply stood, and this unimaginable, protective force emanated from him.

It seemed to Avsenev that the walls of the punishment cell had become transparent, and behind them was not a camp yard, but something huge, starry and alive. He, the one who believed only in matter and directives, lay and looked at the back of the priest, saving him from the hell he had created.

And for the first time in his life he wanted to cry. Without knowing how, he fell asleep.

In the morning the bolt clanged. Two guards and the head of the regime entered. They had come to take away the corpses. Their gazes were empty and familiar. But they stopped at the threshold.

The picture they saw was impossible.

On the bunks, covered with a quilted jacket, slept the former Chekist Avsenev, alive and unharmed.

In the corner, with his back to them, stood Father Arseny. He was completely covered in frost. White as a statue of salt, he shone in the dim light of the bulb. His hair, beard, shirt - everything was one sparkling icy shell.

"This one," the chief nodded at Avsenev, "to the barracks. Alive, damn it... And the priest - to the morgue."

The guards approached the priest, roughly grabbed him by the shoulder to drag him.

And then the old man slowly turned his head. He opened his eyes. And smiled.

The head of the regime recoiled, dropping his cigarette. He looked at the priest's living, clear eyes, breaking through the icy crust, and his face was distorted with superstitious horror.

He turned around silently and walked out, only muttering as he went:

"Take him... to the barracks too..."

Later, when the shocked Avsenev found the strength to ask the chief how this could have happened, he angrily, without looking him in the eye, said: "None of your business. Your priest prayed for you all night. That's why you stayed alive. He prayed for you..."

This story, found in the unique collection of testimonies "Father Arseny", is not about physics and temperature. It is about the fact that there is no such icy hell, neither outside nor in one's own soul, where the heat of quiet prayer could not breathe, saving someone who has long since stopped expecting salvation. And showing mercy where, according to all the laws of the world, only justice should have triumphed.

© Sergiy Vestnik