4 ideas
In fifteenth-century Rus', the young herbalist Arseny secretly shelters Ustina, a plague orphan, and gets her pregnant. Ashamed to expose their unmarried union, he calls no priest or midwife, and she dies in labor, unconfessed, with their stillborn son. He spends the rest of his life healing plague victims, wandering, walking to Jerusalem, living as a holy fool, and finally living as the hermit-monk Laurus, all to secure the salvation of her soul.
Arseny does not simply mourn Ustina. He tries to live the life she was denied on her behalf, talking to her inwardly throughout his life and offering each act of healing and self-denial as credit toward her soul. He even takes her name, calling himself Ustin. On this view, love can outlast death by making one person's life a substitute for, and a continuation of, the other's lost life.
Events recur at a higher turn of the spiral, and past and future can touch. The novel enacts this through anachronisms, such as plastic bottles lying in a medieval forest, and through its ending: the aged Laurus takes the blame for the pregnant girl Anastasia's child and cares for her through the birth. He relives the scene he failed at with Ustina, and this time redeems it.
The protagonist is successively Arseny, Ustin, Amvrosy, and Laurus. Each name marks the death of a former self and the surrender of a portion of ego, reputation, and personal will. The book presents holiness as a series of self-erasures rather than self-improvement.