In a book about Father Pavel Gruzdev there is an episode in which, during the hard turns of life, he prayed, "O Solovki wonderworkers, help me."
Knowing almost nothing about these saints, I too would ask them for help from time to time. At some point I began to feel that I would soon go to Solovki. I started asking how one might get to the Solovetsky Islands.
"You must be joking. You have to book the trip half a year in advance. You're already too late," people in the know told me.
My head understood that I could not go, but my heart did not. The feeling that the trip would happen stayed with me.
At an exhibition in Moscow I met a woman, and we got talking. She told me that she had travelled to Solovki with her son without any advance booking, and explained how it could be done.
At the end of May my husband, my son, and I went to Kem. White nights, the train passing forests and lakes - the whole scene seemed unreal. I think there is beauty like that nowhere else.
Northern sea
In Kem we reached the embankment where the monastery's metochion stood. A monk met us and said that the first steamers would leave the next day. He was surprised that we had timed our arrival so well. It turned out that navigation begins at a different time each year. Sometimes people live in the skete for a week and then go home, having got nowhere.
Boat "Saint Philip"
Our son, who had just turned twelve, happily explored the metochion. He especially loved climbing to the top tier of the three-level bunks.
That evening the three of us went for a walk along the shore of the White Sea. What remains with me from it is like frames from a black-and-white film: at low tide, the heaps of stones looked rather bleak. An old joke came to mind: "I'll rent a room with a sea view. The Laptev Sea and the Barents Sea need not apply."
In the morning the pilgrims arrived and boarded the vessel. There was no room for our family, nor for one other man. We were a little upset, because the weather was good and we had already heard about the moods of the White Sea: in a storm it can toss one badly.
The ship left, and we began to read the akathist to the Solovki wonderworkers. Three hours later, under a light drizzle, our vessel also left the bay. The crossing lasted about an hour and a half. The sea was calm, and Vlad, who had wanted to be tossed by the waves, was even a little disappointed. But the first boat, as we later learned, had run into a real storm. The pilgrims said they had suffered badly, and some had scarcely hoped to reach the shore alive.
Solovki pilgrims
So what are the Solovetsky Islands like?
Huge boulders were used in the buildings there, and because of that every structure carries a sense of monumentality, grandeur, and stern northern beauty.
When we arrived, only the men were lodged within the monastery grounds. The women were settled in a small two-storey house not far from the monastery. Everyone was given obediences. My husband was sent to the carpentry workshop, while I was sent to the candle stall of the Annunciation church.
Solovki Monastery
That was when I remembered that after our wedding Pavel had begun to work in the monastery gilding workshop. His task was to apply levkas - a special ground that allows gold to adhere firmly to the board - to future icons. At that time the workshop was preparing an urgent order: a throne for the church of the Reigning Icon of the Mother of God. My husband was given the icon of the Archangel Gabriel. At weekends I would come and help him.
"My dear," I said to him one evening, "I think we are going to have a child. In the monastery we were applying levkas to the image of the Archangel Gabriel, and now my obedience is in the Annunciation church. Do you see the link?"
"You're being superstitious," my husband replied.
But a week later I realised that my guess had been right. On the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord our son Simeon was born.
In thanksgiving for that help, I ordered an icon of the Solovki wonderworkers from the monastery icon workshop. It now hangs in the church of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker. Whenever I pass by it, I kiss it and whisper, "O Solovki wonderworkers, help me."
