THE KEEPER
In the Tver region, there is a village called Karavaytsevo. On the map, it's a dot. In reality, it's a few streets with small houses, home to scarcely fifty people, mostly elderly. Here, time seems to have slowed its pace, and life quietly ebbs away like water into sand. Yet, it is here that a man lives who has not merely stopped time—he has reversed its flow. For Yevgeny Dometov, the words "dying village" are not a sentence but a challenge, one he has answered every day for over forty years.
His day does not start with coffee, but with a journey. He walks to where life still flickers in the neighboring settlement—to the village club. A half-empty building, creaky floors, the scent of old wood. But when Yevgeny gathers his choir, the space transforms. Songs ring out—the very ones sung by grandmothers and grandfathers in these parts. In his hands, the choir is not a hobby group but an instrument for resurrecting memory. This is his first, unassuming and daily feat: to preserve where all else is forgotten.
But the main monument to his will stands in the very heart of the village—the local church. Twenty years ago, it was a ruin, a sad symbol of desolation. Today, the church lives. Yevgeny did not wait for outside help—he took up tools and began restoring it himself, brick by brick, becoming simultaneously its architect, carpenter, deacon, and bell-ringer.
Imagine this: a man single-handedly battles physical and spiritual decay. His "parish" is a dozen elderly women and the wind in the empty windows of neighboring houses. Yet, every morning he dons his vestments to serve. And after the service, he climbs the bell tower, and over the fields, over the leaning houses, over the silence, a chime resounds—persistent, pure, triumphant. This is his second feat: to create where all is crumbling.
How is this possible? In a world where heroes are often those who proclaim themselves loudly, the heroism of Yevgeny Dometov is of a different kind. It is not explosive, but smoldering. It is the heroism of infinitely small, yet unceasing actions: straightening an icon, singing a song, driving a nail, striking a bell. It is the choice to look not at what is absent (youth, money, prospects), but at what can be done here and now. His life is the answer to the question: what remains of a place when almost everything has left it?
The answer: a person remains. One person with an unshakable faith that the soul of a village—in its song and in its church—must live.