The Monastery of the Caves is defined in the novel by the tension between withdrawal and exposure: monks once shut themselves in dark, cramped spaces to approach God, while their preserved bodies are later displayed behind glass. The site also becomes a point of memory, connecting an explanation Viggo Dürer gives a ten-year-old girl to a final reckoning with regret and what she has done.

Caves, Asceticism, and the Cemetery Notice

The caves are described as small, windowless cells in which Orthodox monks voluntarily confined themselves, living on bread and water in the hope of drawing closer to God. In one recollection, the observer dismisses the monks as fools for choosing such a life. That judgment sharpens when she sees a German notice stating that all the Jews in the city must go to the Jewish cemetery. She wonders why the Orthodox are not being sent to their own cemetery instead. The juxtaposition makes the monastery’s chosen seclusion an unsettling counterpoint to the forced movement of the Jews: the same language of a community and its cemetery belongs, in this moment, to radically different circumstances.

Preserved Bodies and Public Display

The novel places the Monastery of the Caves not far from Babi Yar and describes mummified monks whose bodies remain in the holes where they shut themselves away. Their small, shrunken forms are covered in fabric, but their hands protrude behind glass cabinets. A fly has even found its way inside and crawls over their fingers, feeding on what remains. The devotional retreat has become an exhibit: bodies once enclosed in darkness are made visible to visitors, and grief is described alongside the price of a thin wax candle. The scene unsettles any easy distinction between reverence and spectacle, turning the monastery’s sacred remains into objects that can be looked at, mourned, and encountered as part of a public display.

Childhood Memory and Regret

In a later recollection, a girl remembers that when she was ten, Viggo Dürer told her about the place and explained why the monks had locked themselves inside the caves beneath the Pechersk Monastery. He also told her that nothing in life was worse than regret. She understood even then what tormented him: something he had done as a child, when he was neither man nor woman. The memory gives the monastery a second meaning beyond its caves and preserved bodies. It becomes the setting for an inherited explanation of regret, which returns at the close when she has done as Viggo wanted and everything is over.