Christ

He is the standard the narrator measures himself against as he returns to the Orthodox Church, attending services, keeping the fasts, and repeating the prayers with deliberate attention. The tension is that the words of the liturgy — love one another, resurrection, the sacraments — either dissolve into meaninglessness or demand a belief he cannot honestly give. His presence defines the book's central struggle: whether faith can be lived without self-deception, and what remains when the answer is no.