Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [264]
The end was near. The question was: when exactly would it come? By the time of Daniel’s arrival in Moscow, it was widely believed that it already had.
Endless calculations of the date were made, especially by the Raskolniki. About a thousand tracts on the subject have survived. All took as their premise that the number of the Antichrist was 666, and while some made their calculations from the split between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and others argued that the Antichrist lay bound for a thousand years and then waited for his number, nearly all the calculations pointed to a year between 1666 and 1691.
In Russka, Daniel had been torn. While he feared that the end was near, the new joy he had found in his little family had made him hope that it might not be so. But in Moscow that hope had evaporated.
Strangely enough, it was a former monk, who had just joined the Raskolniki, who convinced Daniel. He was a small, intense fellow, and they had met at one of the secret prayer meetings at a private house. The monk had been an icon painter, which had drawn them together in the first place, and he had a formidable collection of pamphlets. He also had numerous prints which depicted Tsar Alexis and Nikon as the horns of Antichrist, or Nikon as the Beast of the Apocalypse.
He knew the Book of Revelation thoroughly, and quoted passage after passage explaining how each referred to a current event.
As Daniel became daily more appalled by what he saw in Moscow, his head also became more full of the monk’s formulae and quotations. The fellow is certainly learned, he concluded. And it seems to me that what he says must be true.
But if indeed the end had come, then that must mean that the Antichrist himself had arrived upon earth. Many thought so. And in that case – who was he?
Some said Tsar Alexis. Others believed that it was Nikon, who, many of them added, must also have been Jewish!
But here again, the little monk had better information.
‘Tell me this, who was Peter’s real father?’
‘Tsar Alexis.’
‘Perhaps. But why then is he such a dark giant? Can you think of another?’
Daniel gazed uncomprehendingly.
‘Ah, my friend, you are a good man: you do not see evil. I tell you, the father of this Peter was none other than the wicked Nikon himself. And this foul, illegitimate offspring is not a true Tsar at all. Does he behave like a true Tsar?’
Daniel could only agree that he did not.
‘It is Peter himself who is the Antichrist,’ the little monk concluded in triumph. ‘It is he who is here to begin the Apocalypse. Be warned.’
God knew, with each passing month, Peter was giving his subjects good cause for thinking that this must be the case. And no wonder, too, that if any final proof was needed, it came with this new and infamous act of changing the counting of the years.
‘For is it not said,’ the monk reminded Daniel, ‘that the Antichrist shall change the time? Is it not said that the years of God shall be abolished when the years of Satan are proclaimed?’
‘All this is true,’ Daniel agreed.
‘Bear witness, then,’ his friend admonished him, ‘that this is indeed the Antichrist.’
The festival of Epiphany, which falls on January 6, was always celebrated in Russia in a very beautiful way.
Deriving from the ancient Jewish Feast of Lights, the festival of Epiphany – or Theophany as the Orthodox usually call it – means ‘The Shining Forth’. At this festival are especially remembered Christ’s appearance to the Wise Men, and his baptism by John in the River Jordan.
It is a lovely and a delicate festival, calling to mind images of light, water and a dove descending.
At Epiphany, in Russia, it was the custom to bless the waters; and in Moscow this ceremony