The second hand leapt onward; the room shuddered and froze in expectation.
On the table lay a thick book in a plain binding. Its pages had yellowed at the edges, and the spine was worn with time — it had been opened often, and with care.
The title on the cover was still easy to read — *The Dogma of the Church*.
The door kept opening; people came in and went out — not in a crowd, one at a time. They sat down at the table, took the book in their hands, leafed through it, read aloud or to themselves.
An old man in a threadbare coat held the book a long while without opening it. Then he said:
“I discovered it for myself in two thousand three, at some friends’. For a week I walked around under its spell.”
He opened it at random. Read aloud, quietly:
“'The Law was the shadow of the true Bone that will one day knit us together from within…'”
He looked to where, barely visible, he sat at the table.
“I didn’t understand it all back then; it was hard for me. But not everything has to be understood at once.”
***
A young woman with tired eyes came in and sat down on a chair. She stroked the cover.
“I bought it in two thousand two, in a church shop. I understood nothing then about dogmas or canons, but I caught the main thought.”
She leafed through it. Put her finger on a page.
“Here: 'Sobornost is not an assembly but a way of breathing.' That I remembered.”
She closed the book, looked at him with gratitude, and went out.
***
A middle-aged priest came in.
“I studied by this book,” he said. “In seminary they wouldn’t give it to us — they said it was harmful. And we passed it to one another in secret.”
He opened the last page.
“Here you wrote: 'The Church begins where two people look not at each other but in the same direction.' I have been serving for ten years, and every time I enter the sanctuary, I remember it.”
The chapter goes on in the book.