Tamara G. Gabbe

City of masters. Fairy tale plays

CITY OF MASTERS

CHARACTERS

The Duke de Malicorne is the viceroy of a foreign king who has captured the City of Masters.

Guillaume Gottschalk, nicknamed Big Guillaume, is the Duke's adviser.

Nanasse Moucheron the Elder - foreman of the workshop of jewelers and watchmakers, burgomaster of the city.

Nanass Moucheron the Younger, nicknamed "Klik-Klyak", is his son.

Master Firen the Elder is the foreman of the gold embroidery workshop.

Firen the Younger is his son.

Veronica is his daughter.

Master Martin, nicknamed "Little Martin", is the foreman of the armory.

Master Timolle - foreman of the cutting shop.

Timolle the Lesser is his grandson.

Master Ninosh - foreman of the cake shop.

Gilbert, nicknamed Caracol, is a sweeper.

Grandma Tafaro is an old fortune teller.

Traders:

Mother Marley‚

Aunt Mimil

Veronica's friends:

Margarita.

One-eyed man.

Lapiders, gunsmiths, shoemakers and other inhabitants of the City of Masters.

Armored men and bodyguards of the viceroy.

The curtain is down. It depicts the coat of arms of the fabulous city. In the middle of the shield, on a silver field, a maned lion clutches a snake that has entangled him in his claws. In the upper corners of the shield are the heads of a hare and a bear. Below, under the feet of the lion, is a snail that has stuck its horns out of its shell.

A lion and a bear come out from behind a curtain on the right. A hare and a snail appear on the left.

BEAR. Do you know what will be presented today?

ZAYATSZ. Now I'll take a look. I have a flyer with me. Well, what is written there? City of Masters, or the Tale of Two Hunchbacks.

BEAR. About two hunchbacks? So it's about people. Why, then, have we been called here?

A LION. Dear bear, you talk like a three-month-old bear cub! Well, what's so amazing? It's a fairy tale, isn't it? And what kind of fairy tale does without us, animals? Take me: in my lifetime I have been in so many fairy tales that it is difficult to count them - at least in a thousand and one. It's true, and today there is a role for me, even the smallest one, and for you too. No wonder they painted us all on the curtain! Look for yourself: this is me, this is you, and this is a snail and a hare. Maybe we are not too similar here, but even more beautiful than on the grandfather. And it's worth something!

HARE. You're right. Here it is impossible to demand complete similarity. The drawing on the coat of arms is not a portrait, and certainly not a photograph. For example, it doesn't bother me at all that in this image I have one ear in gold and the other in silver. I even like it. I'm proud of it. Agree yourself - not every hare manages to get on the city coat of arms.

BEAR. Far from everyone. In all my life, it seems, I have never seen either hares or snails on coats of arms. Here are eagles, leopards, deer, bears - sometimes such an honor falls out. And there is nothing to say about the lion - for him this is a common thing. That's why he's a lion!

A LION. Well, be that as it may, we all occupy a worthy place on this shield, and I hope that we will find a place in today's presentation.

BEAR. There is only one thing I cannot understand: what will the snail do on the stage? In the theater they sing, play, dance, talk, but, as far as I know, the snail can neither dance, nor sing, nor speak.

snail (pokes its head out of its shell). Everyone speaks in their own way. Don't just listen.

BEAR. Tell me, I've spoken! Why were you silent for so long?

SNAIL. Waiting for the right opportunity. In today's performance, I have the biggest role.

HARE. More of my role?

SNAIL. More.

BEAR. And longer than mine?

SNAIL. Much longer.

A LION. And more important than mine?

SNAIL. Perhaps. I can say without false modesty - in this view I have the main role, although I will not participate in it at all and will never even appear on stage.

BEAR. Is that how it is?

Snail (slowly and calmly). Very simple. I will explain to you now, the fact is that in our area the snail is called "Karakol". And from us this nickname passed to those people who, like us, have been carrying a heavy burden on their shoulders for a century. Just count how many times this word "Karakol" will be repeated today, then you will see who got the most honorable place in today's performance.

A LION. Why are you so honored?

SNAIL. And for the fact that I, so small, can lift more weight than myself. Here, you big beasts, try to carry on your back a house that is bigger than you, and at the same time do your job, and not complain to anyone, and maintain peace of mind.

A LION. Yes, it hasn't crossed my mind until now.

SNAIL. So it always happens. You live, you live and suddenly you learn something new.

BEAR. Well, now it’s completely impossible to understand what kind of performance it will be, what this fairy tale is about! That is, I understand, I am an old theatrical bear, but the public probably does not understand anything.

SNAIL. Well, we'll tell her, and then we'll show her. Listen, dear guests!

We got off today
From the city coat of arms
To tell you about
Like in our city
The fight was raging
Like two hunchbacks
Fate judged
But the first hunchback
There was a hunchback without a hump,
And the second was a hunchback
With a hump.

When it was?
Which side?

It's wise to say this:
Both numbers and letters
On our wall
Long gone from time.

But if from time to time
The carving has worn off
The years couldn't erase
A story where there is both love and struggle,
Where people and animals from the coat of arms met -
And a hare, and a lion, and a bear.

STEP ONE

Picture one

Early morning. Square of the old town. All windows and doors are still closed. You can’t see the inhabitants, but you can guess who lives here by the guild coats of arms and signs: there is a pretzel flaunting over the shoemaker’s window in a huge shoe; a skein of golden yarn and a huge needle indicate the home of a gold seamstress. In the depths of the square - the gates of the castle. An armored man with a halberd stands motionless in front of them. Against the castle rises an old statue depicting the founder of the city and the first foreman of the weapons workshop - Big Martin. On Martin's belt is a sword, in his hands is a blacksmith's hammer. On the square, except for the sentry, only one person. This is the hunchback Gilbert, nicknamed "Caracol", - a sweeper. He is young, moves easily and swiftly, despite his hump. His face is cheerful and beautiful. He handles the hump as if it were a familiar burden that does little to hinder him. Several colorful feathers are stuck into his hat. The jacket is decorated with a branch of a blossoming apple tree. Caracol sweeps the square and sings.

Caracol.

My broom grew in the forest
Grew up in a green forest.
Yesterday she was
Aspen or maple.

There was dew on it yesterday
Birds sat on it
She heard voices
Cuckoos and tits.

My broom grew in the forest
Above the talking river.
Yesterday she was
Birch or willow...

As if picking up his song, a bird chirps in the tree. Caracol raises his head and listens.

Here's how? You say you know this willow? Did it have the nest you grew up in? There is a nest there now, and in the nest there are chicks, they must be your younger brothers and sisters ... Well, yes, I saw them myself - they are alive and well! ... What? OK! Tomorrow I'll be in the woods again and I'll tell them everything. So I will say. (Whistling loudly)

The sentry angrily strikes the ground with his halberd.

Angry ... It can be seen that now we are not only with people - and it is impossible to talk heart to heart with a bird. There's nothing you can do, sister! You and I were free birds, and now we are caught in the net. (He takes up the broom again. Sweeping, he reaches the foot of the statue) Hello, Big Martin! How are you? Oh, how much rubbish has accumulated at your feet! You won’t even recognize the square since these strangers came here! ... Well, nothing! We'll sweep it all away, sweep it away... And it'll be clean and good again... In the meantime, here's a greeting to you from the forest, from the mountains. (Strengthens the flowering branch above Martin's shield)

The sentry strikes the ground even more menacingly with his halberd.

And this is not possible? (He jumps off the pedestal to the ground and again begins sweeping the square. Step by step he gets to the sentry and sweeps at his very feet) Would you like to step aside a little, respected stranger?

The sentry swings his halberd at him.

Yesterday, March 2, was the day of memory of Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe - 48 years from the date of death. L.K. wrote wonderfully about her. Chukovskaya, S.Ya. Marshak and many others.

At first I thought to give a few short quotes and poems, but it did not work out briefly.

Recently in site updates S.Ya. Marshak flashed two passages about Tamara Gabba, which I read and then re-read several times.

So, from a letter from S.Ya. Marshak G.I. Zinchenko dated March 29, 1960:

“Dear Galina Ilyinichna!
Sorry for answering you so late. I had very difficult weeks - my best friend was dying before my eyes - a wonderful person. Thirty years of common work, a commonality of thoughts and feelings connected me with this man. I don't know if you ever had a chance to read plays, critical articles or fairy tales by Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe? All this was very talented, deep and at the same time unusually elegant. But most of all talent, depth, grace was in this man himself, completely devoid of any kind of ambition and self-interest. Perhaps her main talent was kindness, especially precious and effective, combined with a sharp mind and rare powers of observation. She knew the shortcomings of the people she loved, and this did not prevent her from loving them unfailingly and generously.
At the same time, she was proud, independent and courageous.
A light, cheerful person, to whom both nature and the city street spoke so much, she patiently endured the illness that chained her to bed, did not complain, did not show fear and despair.
A few days before her death, she said that one must live right and die right.
After several months of the most intense struggle for the life of Tamara Grigorievna and after the loss of her, I hardly come to my senses ... "

“What kind of person the writer Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe was can be judged by at least a small excerpt from her brief autobiography.
“The first years of the war,” she writes, “I spent in Leningrad. I did what other Leningraders did, I worked in the fire brigade, was on duty in the attics, cleared the streets. The Union of Writers invited me to edit a collection about the Kirov Plant. as for the radio ... "
So - simply and restrainedly - says T.G. Gabbe about what she experienced along with all the Leningraders long months hunger, cold, artillery shelling and air raids.
But we read further:
"My work in the field of children's literature at that time took on a kind of oral form: in a bomb shelter, I gathered children of all ages and told them everything I could remember or think of in order to entertain and encourage them in these difficult times ..."
According to eyewitnesses, the oral stories of Tamara Grigoryevna so captivated the listeners that they were reluctant to leave the bomb shelter after the radio announced the long-awaited all-out.
The children did not even suspect how much courage and stamina the good storyteller needed to entertain them with intricate stories at a time when flocks of enemy bombers were circling over the city, threatening both her home and all her loved ones who were in different parts of the city.
Tamara Grigorievna knew her readers and listeners well and found a way to their hearts, not at all adapting to them.
And there can be no doubt that her tales, invented during the anxious moments of air raids, did not bear the slightest trace of haste and excitement, did not look like a raw, confused draft. For everything that Tamara Grigorievna did, she brought to the utmost harmony and completeness.
Her handwriting was elegant. The style of her letters is elegant. She loved order in her surroundings. Self-esteem so naturally combined with her friendly and respectful attitude towards people, whatever their rank, position, position.
It is difficult to find an editor more subtle and sensitive than Tamara G. Gabbe. Many young writers owed their first successes to her heartfelt care, her clever and kind advice.
After graduating from a higher educational institution (Leningrad Institute of Art History), for some time she hesitated what activity she should choose - literary or pedagogical. She became a writer, but all her life she did not stop thinking about the education of young generations.
And, in essence, her literary and editorial work was the work of a teacher in the best and highest sense of the word.
She could teach young writers a lot, because she herself did not stop learning. Possessing a rare memory, she knew Russian and world literature, classic and new. Long years studied folklore and left behind many fairy tales, collected by her and processed with the skill that returns folk poetry, often losing a lot in the recording, the original liveliness and freshness.
She worked with special love on Russian fairy tales. And along with them, she translated, retold and presented to our children carefully selected fairy tales of different peoples, preserving in the Russian text the poetic originality of each language, each people. If, when publishing them, it was not indicated to which people this or that fairy tale belongs, then even then it would not be difficult to distinguish a French fairy tale from a German fairy tale, a Czech fairy tale from a Bulgarian one, by language and style.
Much more could be said about her brilliant and profound articles on and about children's literature.
But, perhaps, the best work of Tamara Grigorievna was her own life.
She was never satisfied with herself, often complained that she had little time.
Probably, indeed, she would have managed to write even more in her lifetime if she had not given so much energy, time, serious and thoughtful care to others. But that was her calling.
She passed her short life with an easy step.
Her patience and courage were especially evident during a serious and prolonged illness.
Until the last days, she managed to maintain all her friendliness, delicacy, attention to others.
As if preparing herself in advance for future difficult trials, she wrote to her friend L. Chukovskaya in the autumn of 1942:
“In that winter (we are talking about the Leningrad winter of the forty-first - forty-second years), I understood with some extraordinary clarity what inner spiritual resources mean for a person. “Intransigence and patience” can prolong a person’s life, can make him walk when legs can no longer walk, work when hands are no longer taken, smile, speak in a kind, gentle voice even in the last dying moments - cruel in their unseemliness ... "
So, as it is said in this letter, Tamara Grigorievna met her last days.
Re-reading the plays written by her at different times, you catch the features of the author himself in the images of her fairy-tale heroines. Tamara Grigoryevna had something in common with her kind and truthful Aleli, her generous fairy Melyuzina, and, perhaps, most of all, with the adamant and selfless Avdotya Ryazanochka.

And the last excerpt is from the preface to the publication of L. Chukovskaya's book "In Memory of Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe" in the Znamya magazine:

"Contemporaries highly appreciated the literary and human talents of Tamara Grigoryevna. Shortly after her funeral on May 5, 1960, Korney Chukovsky wrote to S. Marshak:

"Dear Samuil Yakovlevich.

I feel a little better, and I hasten to write at least a few words. Because of my stupid shyness, I could never tell Tamara Grigorievna at the top of my voice how I, an old literary rat who has seen hundreds of talents, semi-talents, celebrities of all kinds, admire the beauty of her personality, her unmistakable taste, her talent, her humor, her erudition and - above all - her heroic nobility, her ingenious ability to love. And how many patented celebrities immediately go out in my memory, retreat to the back rows, as soon as I remember her image - the tragic image of Failure, which, in spite of everything, was happy precisely with her ability to love life, literature, friends ".

S. Marshak replied to this letter:

"My dear Korney Ivanovich. Thank you for kind letter in which I hear the best that is in your voice and heart.

Everything that is written by Tamara Grigorievna (and she wrote wonderful things) should be supplemented by pages dedicated to herself, her personality, so complete and special.

She went through life with an easy step, maintaining grace until the very last minutes of her consciousness. There was not a shadow of hypocrisy in her. She was a secular and free person, condescending to the weaknesses of others, and she herself was subject to some kind of strict and immutable internal charter. And how much patience, steadfastness, courage she had - only those who were with her in her last weeks and days really know this.

And, of course, you are right: her main talent, surpassing all other human talents, was love. Love is kind and strict, without any admixture of self-interest, jealousy, dependence on another person. She was alien to admiration for a big name or a high position in society. And she herself never sought popularity and thought little about her material affairs.

She was to the liking and character of Milton's poems (sonnet "On Blindness"):
But, perhaps, he serves no less
High will, who stands and waits.
She was outwardly motionless and inwardly active. I am talking about immobility only in the sense that it cost her great effort to walk around the editorial offices or theaters where there was talk of staging her plays, but on the other hand she could wander around the city or outside the city all day long, completely alone, or rather, alone with her friends. thoughts. She was sharp-sighted - she saw and knew a lot in nature, she was very fond of architecture. On Aeroportovskaya, her little apartment was furnished with incomparably greater taste than all the other apartments for which so much money had been spent.

If Shakespeare speaks of his poetry

And it seems to call by name
Any word can me in poetry, -

then in her rooms, each shelf, lamp or bookcase could name its mistress by name. In all this was her lightness, her friendliness, her taste and feminine grace.

It is sad to think that now these bright, comfortable, not cluttered with furniture and always open for friends and students rooms will go to someone else. It is bitter to realize that we, who knew her price, cannot convince the housing cooperative and the Writers' Union that these few meters of the square where she lived and died should be preserved intact. wonderful writer, friend and adviser to so many young and old writers.

And I will finish with three poems by S.Ya. Marshak, dedicated to Tamara Grigorievna. The first is a playful inscription on the book "Cat's House", the other two were written after her death.

TAMARA GRIGORIEVNA GABBE

<>The inscription on the book "Cat's House"<>

I'm not writing in an album -
At the "Cat's House" -
And this makes me very embarrassed.
Try it lyric
write a eulogy
Under the booming fire chime!

There is no harder task
(Impromptu all the more so!)
Write a compliment in verse
Under this feline
goat, pig,
Chicken accompaniment.

Neither Shelly could
Neither Keats nor Shengeli
Neither Goethe, nor Heine, nor Fet,
Not even Firdusi
Come up for Tusi
On the "Cat's House" a sonnet.

People write, but time erases
It erases everything that it can erase.
But tell me - if the rumor dies,
Does sound have to die?

It gets quieter and quieter
He is ready to mix with silence.
And not with hearing, but with my heart I hear
This laugh, this chest voice.

THE LAST SONNET

Inspiration has its own courage
Your fearlessness, even daring.
Without it, poetry is paper
And the subtlest mastery is dead.

But if you are at the battle banner
Poetry you will see the creature
Who does not suit a cloak and a sword,
A scarf and a fan most of all.

That being whose courage and strength
So merged with kindness, simple and sweet,
And kindness, like the sun, warms the light, -

You can be proud of such a meeting
And before you say goodbye forever
Dedicate your last sonnet to her.

Chukovskaya Lydia Korneevna

Title: Buy the book "In Memory of Tamara G. Gabbe": feed_id: 5296 pattern_id: 2266 book_

In memory of Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe

Introduction, publication and comments by E.Ts. Chukovskaya

Lidia Chukovskaya dedicated her book "In the Editor's Laboratory" (1960) to "The wonderful editor, editor-artist Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe".

About her fate and her personality - "Excerpts from the diary", offered to the attention of the reader.

They met in their student years at the Leningrad Institute of Art History. In the late 1920s, they worked together as editors in the children's department of the State Publishing House, which was headed by S.Ya. Marshak. In 1937, the editorial office of the Leningrad Detizdat was destroyed and ceased to exist. Some of the employees were fired (including L. Chukovskaya), others were arrested. T.G. was also arrested. Gabbe. In 1938, T.G. Gabby was released. After the war, both Lidia Korneevna and Tamara Grigorievna lived in Moscow. Their friendship lasted from their student years until the last day of Tamara Grigorievna's life.

After her death, Lydia Korneevna almost immediately began to choose from her long-term diaries everything that concerned Tamara Grigorievna, trying to keep her portrait in word. She showed these "Notes" of hers to several mutual friends and, of course, primarily to S.Ya. Marshak, whom she considered her teacher. He said: - This is your genre, - Lidia Korneevna recalled.

His approval encouraged her to continue working in the same genre. So a few years later her "Notes on Anna Akhmatova" appeared, and later "Excerpts from a Diary" about Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, Konstantin Simonov. Now that all this has already been published, "Extracts from the diary" about T.G. Gabbe occupy a special place - these are the first steps of Lidia Chukovskaya in memoirs, the first work in a new genre.

The name of Tamara Grigorievna is constantly found in the later book of Lidia Chukovskaya "Notes on Anna Akhmatova". In the same place, in the "Behind the Scenes" section, Lidia Korneevna gives brief reference about her literary path:

"Tamara Grigoryevna Gabbe (1903-1960), playwright and folklorist. Her children's plays, published as separate books, were most famous; they were staged more than once and with great success in Moscow and other theaters of the country: "The City of Masters, or the Tale of the Two Hunchbacks" , "Crystal Slipper", "Avdotya Ryazanochka".

Of her folklore works, the most significant is the book "Fact and fiction. Russian folk tales, legends, parables". The book was published posthumously in 1966, in Novosibirsk, with two afterwords - by S. Marshak and V. Smirnova; before her, but also posthumously, the collection "On the Roads of a Fairy Tale" was published (co-authored with A. Lyubarskaya, M. , 1962. During the life of Tamara Grigoryevna, French folk tales, the tales of Perrault, the tales of Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and others were published more than once in her translations and retellings.

All her life, even after leaving the State Publishing House, she remained an editor - a mentor to writers.

In literature, unfortunately, her main talent did not manifest itself: she was one of the most subtle connoisseurs of Russian poetry that I happened to meet in my whole life "(Lydia Chukovskaya. Notes on Anna Akhmatova. Vol. 1. - M .: Consent, 1997, p. 315).

Contemporaries highly appreciated the literary and human talents of Tamara Grigoryevna. Shortly after her funeral on May 5, 1960, Korney Chukovsky wrote to S. Marshak:

"Dear Samuil Yakovlevich.

I feel a little better, and I hasten to write at least a few words. Because of my stupid shyness, I could never tell Tamara Grigorievna at the top of my voice how I, an old literary rat who has seen hundreds of talents, semi-talents, celebrities of all kinds, admire the beauty of her personality, her unmistakable taste, her talent, her humor, her erudition and - above all - her heroic nobility, her ingenious ability to love. And how many patented celebrities immediately go out in my memory, retreat to the back rows, as soon as I remember her image - the tragic image of Failure, which, in spite of everything, was happy precisely with her ability to love life, literature, friends.

S. Marshak replied to this letter:

"My dear Korney Ivanovich. Thank you for your kind letter, in which I hear the best that is in your voice and heart.

Everything that is written by Tamara Grigorievna (and she wrote wonderful things) should be supplemented by pages dedicated to herself, her personality, so complete and special.

She went through life with an easy step, maintaining grace until the very last minutes of her consciousness. There was not a shadow of hypocrisy in her. She was a secular and free person, condescending to the weaknesses of others, and she herself was subject to some kind of strict and immutable internal charter. And how much patience, steadfastness, courage she had - only those who were with her in her last weeks and days really know this.

And, of course, you are right: her main talent, surpassing all other human talents, was love. Love is kind and strict, without any admixture of self-interest, jealousy, dependence on another person. She was alien to admiration for a big name or a high position in society. And she herself never sought popularity and thought little about her material affairs.

She was to the liking and character of Milton's poems (sonnet "On Blindness"):

But, perhaps, he serves no less

High will, who stands and waits.

She was outwardly motionless and inwardly active. I am talking about immobility only in the sense that it cost her great effort to walk around the editorial offices or theaters where there was talk of staging her plays, but on the other hand she could wander around the city or outside the city all day long, completely alone, or rather, alone with her friends. thoughts. She was sharp-sighted - she saw and knew a lot in nature, she was very fond of architecture. On Aeroportovskaya, her little apartment was furnished with incomparably greater taste than all the other apartments for which so much money had been spent.

If Shakespeare speaks of his poetry

And it seems to call by name

Any word can me in poetry,

then in her rooms, each shelf, lamp or bookcase could name its mistress by name. In all this was her lightness, her friendliness, her taste and feminine grace.

It is sad to think that now these bright, comfortable, not cluttered with furniture and always open for friends and students rooms will go to someone else. It is bitter to realize that we, who knew her price, cannot convince the housing cooperative and the Writers' Union that these few meters of the square, where a wonderful writer lived and died, a friend and adviser of so many young and old writers, should be preserved intact.

But what Tamara Grigorievna sees literary critic Vera Smirnova:

"She was a gifted person, with great charm, with absolute pitch in art, with various abilities in literature: in addition to plays for the theater, she wrote critical articles and lyrical poems, which, due to the depth of feeling and musicality of the verse, would do honor to a great poet. Courage, steadfastness in beliefs and relationships, an outstanding mind, amazing tact, kindness, sensitivity to people - these are the qualities with which she has always attracted hearts to herself. But her greatest human talent would be the gift of complete and reckless self-giving. "The beauty of giving yourself is clear to all people. The cultivation of this beauty is religion," she once said. The "religion" of her whole life was the complete devotion of herself to people - to everyone who needed her.

She had a hard life: she had to go through a lot in the years 1937-1939; during the Great Patriotic War she lived in besieged Leningrad, lost her house and loved ones there; for seven difficult years she was a nurse at the bedside of her hopelessly ill mother. Last years she herself was sick with an incurable disease - and she knew it. And for all that, she always seemed to carry light and peace with her, loved life and all living things, was full of amazing patience, endurance, firmness - and charming femininity.

For thirty years she was the first editor of S.Ya. Marshak, an unofficial, unofficial editor, a friend whose hearing and eyes the poet needed every day, without whose "sanction" he would not publish a single line. I have witnessed their joint work more than once. First - a student of Samuil Yakovlevich, one of the closest associates in the famous "Leningrad edition" of children's literature, in the 30s Tamara Grigorievna became the most demanding editor of the poet himself "(Vera Smirnova. About this book and its author // In the book: Tamara Gabbe, Reality and fiction, pp. 295-296).

In the notes of Lydia Chukovskaya, relatives of Tamara Grigorievna are often mentioned: her mother is Evgenia Samoilovna; stepfather - Solomon Markovich; brother - Misha; husband - Joseph; stepfather's sister - Rebekah Markovna. Constantly present on these pages are members of the Leningrad "Marshakov" editorial board - Shura (Alexandra Iosifovna Lyubarskaya) and Zoya (Zoya Moiseevna Zadunaiskaya). Both of them studied at the same institute as L.K. and T.G., and all four have been friends since their student days.

Other persons mentioned are briefly explained in the footnotes.

Diary excerpts

Last night I read all 54 of my poems to Tusya. And although I sat with her from 8 to 12.30, until that last second, until which you can sit in order not to end up in jail, the conversation still turned out to be incomplete, crumpled, because Tusenka, with all her speed of speech, always goes so complicated, in generous ways, that her quick talk still does not keep pace with her wealth of thought.

I was very nervous. How strange: when you write, each time it seems as if you are creating something completely new, unprecedented, and you read in succession and see that you are blowing the same tune.

And the feeling did not deceive me.

I will try to accurately write Tusya's words:

These poems have real poetic tension, stubborn and strong. But there is a certain monotony, one string on which everything is played: not that your theme is narrow, but your world is narrow. In order to make a book out of these verses, it lacks as much as 2/3 of something else, something completely different ... (I would call this book "Exile". It contains only memory and foreign land.)

Your poems are very unprotected. We are accustomed to the fact that all our poets always flaunt in uniforms, only a few allow themselves to appear in civilian clothes, and you are already completely debilitated.

Everything is one sound, one string. As if a narrow underground stream was taken into a narrow pipe. And when you try to go somewhere in the open - you stumble, take a false step ... Yes, and there are a lot of negligence. And too much affinity for Akhmatova.

This is where I started to object. Akhmatova's world is concrete, visible - I, unfortunately, do not. Each of her poems is a novella - my poems are not novelistic at all.

But Tusya did not agree.

Rhythm, intonation often coincide. But that's not the point. Akhmatova has a circle of lyrical characters, if you can call them that: Muse, Separation, Conscience, You, Me, Trouble, City, etc. And these characters are related to you.

Of course, Tusya is right about everything. But, I thought, walking back from her at night, what am I to do with the poverty of my world? The world in my verses is poor, p.ch. he is poor in me. I love only those people whom I have loved for a long time, I live with one thought, one longing, one city, and nothing new "from outside" enters into me. The verses will move apart when the world moves apart, and the world, after all, cannot be moved apart by will.

Yesterday I had Shura. We talked about Leningrad, pondered the return. We talked about Tus. Why is it so good to consult with her about everything: about poetry and about furniture? I think because (and Shurinka agreed with me) that she has an amazing combination of a sublime mind and a sound mind.

In the evening, feeling healthy, she suddenly went to Tusya. It dried up, the ice crunches - in the distance the dawn, pink, tender, arrived from the Leningrad avenues.

After drinking tea, Tusya and I, as once in student days, went to her room, which seems so miserable to her, and to me after my kennel so blissfully quiet and comfortable.

Tusya told me in detail about the blockade, about how people stopped being people.

I read to her the 1st and 3rd parts of my poem. It seems she really liked I-I.

It is interesting that Tamara told me about her constant work with Samuil Yakovlevich in the very same words that I always say about myself, about her and Shura. She said: “My opinion about his poems is so important to Samuil Yakovlevich because it is his own opinion, only taken objectively. I always understand his task, the one he set for himself, and I judge what happened from the point of view of his task. His own.

In the morning I went to Tusenka, who is ill. She found Samuil Yakovlevich. He sat on a chair near her couch and suffered from forced non-smoking. He told us about his childhood, about the fat Madame Levantovskaya, the fool who was taking him, at the age of eleven, somewhere on the train.

"She asked the neighbors (and I somehow immediately realized that this question threatened me with shame): - Have you read Pushkin? - Yes. - So he also writes poetry."

Tusya invited him to listen to my poem (it turns out that I also write poetry). S.Ya. he listened, lowering his head to his chest, slightly resembling Krylov, as if dozing. But when I finished, he spoke with great temperament, jumped up and, probably, would have walked around the room if space existed. "Speak? Or is it better not to? After all, you have not finished yet - it can interfere."

No, speak up.

S.Ya. did not like the introduction. "Here the subjective did not become objective." He praised the chapters on children and the Hermitage. "You were in Tashkent, and you can hear it. A person is fluid, like a river, and everything is reflected in him. This repetition of the word at the end - this is from the East and very good."

Explaining to me the shortcomings and good luck, S.Ya. quoted Tvardovsky, Pushkin, Lermontov. He and I read "Frost and Sun" and "The Hall Shined" and "I Go Out on the Road Alone" in unison... We started talking about Bergholz. "Rational," said S.Ya. And he praised Shishova from Leningrad.

Tusenka was silent all the time. And then she said:

Explain to me, Samuil Yakovlevich, this: why does the introduction, where Lida talks about things so dear to us, experienced by us, not touch? After all, it would seem that it should have touched the person of my biography from a half-word. And then - a sofa, children, the Neva, seen again through the window - all this already exists. What's the matter here? For some reason, "so experienced and sincere, did not find expression, but did it find it?

I would be God if I could answer this question, - said S.Ya.

Tusya read Beketov's memories of Blok.

Interesting? - asked S.Ya.

No, the aunt's look at the great poet is not only uninteresting, but simply unbearable, - said Tusya. - "Mom, give me a ashtray" - or something like that - "according to his then expression." Very stupid.

Home S.Ya. took me in the car. Along the way, the conversation continued about poetry.

I don’t like poetry at all, - said S.Ya., - but I love them only as an exception ... Poems must rest on the ground and take off somewhere ... There is a spirit, flesh and soul in the world: psychology. This is the most fruitless, hopeless, irresistible.

I remembered in Blok's article: "do not obscure spirituality with sincerity."

I had a tusenka. She told me about Eisenstein's script for Ivan the Terrible. The style is like this:

"The anger of the boyars echoes to him with the roar of the sea."

It is interesting, - says Tusenka, - that in reality Ivan not only acted evil, but also repented. He was tormented by the spilled blood. Eisenstein does not even think about any repentance. Blood is flowing, and it is necessary, and this is very good.

Tusenka called me and complained about Gakina, the editor, who was bullying her Gulliver. In the heat of indignation, Tusya quite seriously began to prove to me that she, Tusya, was a writer, and Gakina was a pillar. I listened and said:

I visited Suvorina the other day, on the radio. She invites me to write for them about Herzen, but in such a way as not to mention anything about his departure from Russia, about emigration. I am indignant, and she persuades me: "This is our specificity, you will gradually get used to it."

Tusya laughed to tears at this "specificity" and agreed that my Suvorina was even worse than her Gakina. I don't know if that was a consolation to her.

In the morning I received a letter from Shura and immediately went to Tusya.

They started talking about Gakina, about those stupid things that she writes on the margins of Tusin's Gulliver.

And Tusya began to develop her favorite idea that the basis of meanness is ignorance and stupidity.

"Meanness is a protective coloration of stupidity. Gakina, for example, is not a predator at all, she is a dull herbivore by nature. However, she is ready to do any meanness to me for fear that I can prove her mediocrity, expose her ... Such was the basis of those meannesses, what Mishkevich did for us".

Today I have a holiday: I was at Tusin "City of Masters".

There is a hustle at the doors of the theatre. The boys rush inside; controllers look at them as personal enemies.

Lyusha and I, on the occasion of my blindness, are in the front row. In the second - Tusenka, Solomon Markovich, Samuil Yakovlevich, Kassil, Preisy3 and Schwartz.

Schwartz very subtly told me about Leningrad:

Going to Leningrad or living there is the same as sitting down to dinner at the operating table: "Eat, please, everything is washed and disinfected here."

But that's aside.

The performance began, with which Tusya is dissatisfied. And although all her displeasures are justified (the actors are, in essence, playing a summary of the play, coarsened and abbreviated, and not the play itself in all its poetic richness), the play is so rich, the fairy-tale basis blooms so happily in it that the performance is still wonderful, even through directorial prose and poverty. In addition, two actors play excellently: the terrible duke and the stupid braggart Klik-Klyak.

Children writhe with excitement, warn the good ones from the hall, hiss at the evil ones.

This is not an allegory. This is Her Majesty's fairy tale.

And his majesty success. Tusenka was called 7 times. She went on stage with that smile, friendly and slightly secular, with which she smiled at the Institute, going to the table at the exams - smart, fast-talking, too curly and too ruddy (for which she was nicknamed Zhenya Ryss "red young lady"). With her usual good manners, she stubbornly applauded the directors and actors, pulling them to the forefront by the hands.

And I regretted that Shura and Zoya were not with us today. It would be a holiday for them, as it was for me.

It occurred to me yesterday to write a review of Tusin's book. S.Ya. He blessed this intention and advised him to contact Zhdanov, in Komsomolskaya Pravda. And he - although not very enthusiastic - ordered me 4 pages by Friday.

In the evening I went to Tusya for a book. She found Tusya tired, pale, she endlessly fiddled and adjusted her hair, which is always a sign of nervous exhaustion. Evgenia Samoilovna does not want to take on a worker - and therefore Tusya is endlessly standing in lines, and this is beyond the theater, Detgiz, S.Ya. etc. What a disgrace, what barbarism! Isn't it better to spend money than Tusin's precious powers? But Yevgenia Samoilovna is overcome by two terrible demons: the demon of economy and the demon of a serious attitude to nonsense: to the type of bread, the quality of milk. A housekeeper can buy something wrong, but Tusya always buys like that ... And that Tusya should sit at the table and write, E.S. doesn't think. In this house, life is not adapted to literary work, but literary work adapted to everyday life and to the conveniences of Evgenia Samoilovna.

Yesterday Tusya told me a typical anecdote about Leonov. The Literary Fund discussed the candidacy of Bulatov4 - and he failed. I can't stand Bulatov, but, of course, he has every right to be a member of the Literary Fund.

Leonov was especially furious.

If you accept people like Bulatov into the Literary Fund, he said, then where can I go then? We can’t be in the same category with him ... Then me and others like me should be transferred somewhere higher, for example, to the board. After all, Nekrasov was on the board of the old Literary Fund.

He apparently believes, - Tusya explained to me, - that it was beneficial for Nekrasov to be on the board: he received more warrants, or something!

Tusya called me to help her with the proofreading of Gulliver. From the smell of paint, from the green ink of the corrector, and most importantly, from Tusya's microscopic doubts, expressed with the help of barely noticeable dashes in the margins, I smelled of happiness.

You see, Lidochka, - Tusya told me, - after all, in the whole world, except for S.Ya., you, Shura and Zoya, no one would even understand what "confuses me in these phrases ...

I understood right away, and we worked wonderfully for two hours.

In the evening I was at Tusi's. With fairy tales, failure: "they do not fit the profile of the publishing house." They have an ugly profile! The courage, the unusualness of the book frightens them; the book is not only beautiful, but also exemplary; militant, and they would just like to republish Afanasiev: it's calmer that way.

I read two of my poems to Tusya: "Now I have become older and more learned" and "This magnificent gray hair dress." She praised: "lyrical, deep, precise, good prosaic intonation began to appear." I speak:

You always praise my poems in an uncertain voice.

Yes its true. They are good, sincere, skillful, but I am always embarrassed by the incomplete presence of you in them. Here you are gray-haired, with blue eyes, with eyebrows of a house, pronouncing "society" instead of "society" - I don't hear you in poetry. I'm not sure that if they were shown to me without a signature, I would know that it was you. And I would definitely find out in the articles.

Joseph died.

Tusya started crying and went silent on the phone. I went to her. There is some husband of some cousin, who just appeared on his first family visit. It must be accepted, treated, asked about relatives. Tusya fries potatoes, serves them, asks questions - then the guest stays with Evgenia Samoilovna, and we go to Tusya's room, and there she puts her head on the table and cries. In a letter from a woman, Joseph's comrade in misfortune, it is said that he died during a flood. How? From what? Did water flood the barracks or was he at work?

I knew, I knew, - says Tusya, - he must not be left in these hands for a minute.

You didn't leave!

No, I hesitated, I'm slow, I had to save soon ...

Again I was at Tusya's all evening.

Tusenka speaks to E.S. just as affectionately, just as patiently on the phone with S.Ya., but as soon as we were left alone, she began to cry. She complains that Joseph's face is slipping away from her, as if the ribbon is torn.

It seems to her. Even I can see him clearly, I can hear his voice. He said "Lidichka", "I want tea, I want tea, I want tea, I want tea, And when you give tea - I'll ride back." I remember him well that day when he went to defend Tusya and Shura, and the bastards kicked him out and called him a spy, and he came to me from there, sat on the sofa and cried ... And when Tusya returned, in what a happy voice he told me by phone:

Now, Lidichka, you will talk, you know with whom? - laughter: - with Tusya!

We would, after all our losses, at least some mysticism, at least some faith in immortality! No, I do not have. I only believe that if a person in this life, despite everything, managed to express himself, then he will live in his deeds and in the memory of the people he loved. (That is why it is such a sin to kill a child: he has not yet had time to incarnate.) But Tusya goes further. She says that a person gets his soul all his life, and if the soul managed to be born completely - like the soul of Pushkin or Tolstoy - then it will live and after death it will not exist, not only in the memory of people, but also live and feel that it lives.

It's evening now - and I, a truant, just sit down at my desk. I spent the whole day with Tusya.

And yet, we, who have survived so many deaths, already know how fragile people are. How many more times in my life will I see Tusya, Tusya me? God knows!

I overslept my milkmaid in the morning and rushed to Eliseev for milk. And suddenly it dawned on me: to take Tusya to the Bambi. There is no one at the box office. But there is another problem: Tusya has a busy phone for 45 minutes. A curse! I called from a payphone, called from home, running up to the sixth floor in one go (the elevator does not work). Finally got through, agreed.

Barely rushed.

The little girl behind us is sure that Bambi is the father of the rabbits. Adults vied with each other to explain her mistake to her. She listens, then:

Does he love his kids?

Are the kids waiting for him?

Tusya agreed with me that "Bambi" is a living refutation of all prejudices about the need for a sharp plot, speed, etc. in cinema. Hundreds of people sit and hold their breath watching the leaves fall, how the leaves are reflected in the water ... After all, the strongest thing in " Bambi" is, not witticisms and caricatures, this is - and everyone understands this. The hall was full, and from the remarks it was heard that people came for the second and third time. For a plotless picture.

I went to see Tusya off. I read to her that, Blok's, which I repeat all the last days:

On the stage

Gritting her teeth and swaying, she sang

An old gypsy about the past.

God, how powerful it is - there is rocking, and a song, and pain, and memory, and sobbing.

I said: “Well, Tusenka, can there be a translation? Is it possible to translate sobbing and pain?

Or what about your favorite, magical:

Looking into your eyes for a long time,

Mysteriously, I'm busy talking.

What to do with these mysterious and?"

There can be no translation of poetry, of course, - said Tusya. - You need to take a bulb of the same variety and grow, bring out of it a new, just as beautiful, tulip. Output - not translate.

I went to the station to see Tusya off.

She and mother. She travels only for 10 days, but they could not, saying goodbye, tear themselves away from each other and both cried. I accompanied Yevgenia Samoilovna all the way to the house - no, farther, to the door of the apartment, trying to see her with Tiny's eyes, the eyes of Tiny's love.

And Tusya will be in Leningrad tomorrow, Shura will meet her, and together they will walk along the Nevsky, past our life, that is, all deaths.

Faithful to the oath given by me to Tusya, I call Evgenia Samoilovna every day. Sometimes I get her books - she's a zealous reader, like Tusya. Without Tusenka, she is very bored, and I try to entertain her, but, I confess, I do not always know how to sympathize with her. Today she complained to me that she had not slept all night.

Why? Did something happen?

Tusya told me on the phone: "Almost everything is intact in the red closet." So, in other cabinets - not all ...

In the evening, after a hard, exhausting day, I dragged myself to Tusya - for a letter from Shura, for the things that Tusya brought me and, most importantly, to see her at last.

In two tiny little rooms and in the hall, Tusya's things are piled up, shifted, tucked up, plugged up. Among them, as in a labyrinth, Evgenia Samoilovna and Solomon Markovich wander. I joyfully met the smart, noble Tusin bureau and stroked it: how many of our nightly conversations this shiny surface absorbed!

Tusya said about the city:

He is like a person. And if Shura had not nursed me, I would not have endured the meeting with this man.

They have in their Leningrad apartment, of course, some strange family. In the former Tusin room - a barrel of cucumbers and potatoes: "this is my husband's office," says the general's wife.

And Shurinka sent me my electric fireplace.

Do they, Shura and Tusya, know that they returned this fireplace to me along with it?

Just got back from Tusi. The hour of the night. The hike was a bit of a disaster. I firmly left at 11 o’clock, minute by minute, but got caught in the rain, put both feet into a puddle and, having reached Kalyaevskaya, found that there was no beret on my head. I'm back to Tusya, for a flashlight, to look for a beret. There was no lantern, but Tusya, no matter how tired, went with me and soon found my vile headdress: it lay in a puddle in the gateway. Tusya wrapped me in a scarf, and took my beret to her to dry and repair.

She told me on the way that S.Ya. everyone asks how to replace the words "steam the pumpkin" in one poem by Keats.

Nothing is needed, S.Ya. So good. Leave it like that.

Are you talking about getting rid of it and not thinking anymore, or because it's actually good? - asks S.Ya. in anger.

Because really.

But after 10 minutes again a call and new doubts.

I returned yesterday from Tusi at half past one in the night. At 11 I was already dressed, but until one o'clock I stood in front of her in a coat and hat. From my youth I didn’t know how to leave her, and now that she and Shura are all my property, and even more so.

Tusenka went to Leningrad not without reason. The old Buddha is again standing on the bureau, in the same place, on the same napkin; and photographs under glass... There Joseph with tall young hair. Everything in her room is again Leningrad, everything is ours, from our life, memorable - of the last years of the editorial office.

We talked about everything in the world and in the end about ourselves. And everything that is vague, latent in me - everything becomes distinct here, in the presence of the Buddha, in the light of this voice.

I briefly said about Green that he is very bad, that his formalists invented it. A bad writer has no language, no thoughts, no people.

And the formalists had no direct ear for literature at all, said Tusya. - Even Tynyanov. That's how people are deaf to music. That is why it was so easy for them to invent one thing or another: they had no direct relationship with poetry.

After talking about Maupassant (I scolded, Tusya defended), they started talking about Zoya and Tanechka, that Zoya did not know how to take care of her at all, that in the children's camp, according to Marina's stories, Zoya selflessly nursed all the children except Tanya.

This is understandable, - said Tusenka. - Because Tanya is herself, and Zoya herself is something worthless. She wants to help others, she wants to serve, but for herself she wants one thing: a cigarette and not to interfere with lying down on the bed in galoshes.

Then Tusya repeated to me once again that Shura had simply saved her during her Leningrad trip.

Alone, I would not have survived the meeting with the city. There I felt so clearly those who are no longer there. I could even talk to them. They were near.

And recently she had a dream about Joseph. He is in pajamas - only for some reason the pajamas are someone else's, not his. But he is cheerful, cheerful, returned. And she tells him about everything and everyone: about the blockade, about Shura - how Shurinka helped her - about the city, about the flight to Moscow. He listens, and then:

But do you know that I died?

Well, it's all the same... It's nothing...

And he continues to tell, and only gradually in a dream he understands what it means, and wakes up in tears ...

Under wet snow, after the end of the demonstration, she came to Tusya. She read me her ballet application and three fairy tales. Her tales, for several months now, have been handed over by Chagin to Tikhonov6. They lie there and no one reads them. Here they are, the true zealots of the Russian national culture! They don't want to lift a finger. Meanwhile, this book, like a predicted star, would illuminate the dark corners of our literature, with its light would kill Leonov with his slander against the Russian language. Fairy tales are wise, crafty, poetic - fairy tales, finally read by the artist. How many years, moldy in the hands of ethnographers, they waited for Tusin's hands.

We waited - and no one is happy.

We looked at old photographs - mine with pompous adolescent inscriptions and Tusina. I asked Tusya for a card for her and Zoikin - their young faces - their hats and bags, memorable, touching for me.

Tusya has just called: she asks me to come and listen to "Avdotya Ryazanochka", which she is supposed to read at the Committee tomorrow. Of course, I can't take a minute away from Miklukha now, but I think I'll go anyway.

Has returned. Slowly the cold comes out of me. It's cold outside, windy and an icy moon.

I positively cannot go to Tusya: for this joy I always cry with something, crazy: now I have forgotten my glasses! How am I going to work tomorrow? I can write, but can I read?

The play is good, with temperament, very adolescent, in places - really touching the soul. Where Tusin's personal experience is felt under a bushel - the experience of losses and troubles - it is very good there. But woe to me with the great Russian language! God knows, I love him. Tusi has a good one - citations - from fairy tales. And yet its excess, its perceptibility, always somehow confuses me. Where he is heartened by today's personal experience, he is alive and appropriate there. When it is taken only as a quotation, I do not like it.

In the morning, I agreed with Tusya on the phone that she would bring the glasses to the Committee for Arts, exactly by 13.15, when she went there to read.

I went to the typist, then to the store, then to Detgiz and, already rather chilly, on a date with Tusya.

I waited for her exactly an hour - in the wind, in the cold. Frozen to tears. Crowds of people clung to the cards of actors displayed at the entrance, and I examined the faces of the audience, not the actors. And on these faces lies someone's love, but if you look at them without love, then ...

I was freezing cold. She got angry and offended at Tusya terribly. For a whole hour she stood and recalled all her unbearable delays, still in Leningrad: no matter how you beg her, it happened not to be late - she would be late anyway. I mentally listed all her faults. After all, I have a summer coat, and I wait for her an hour in the cold - after all, she knows that I don’t have a winter one, and makes me wait!

Confident that I would get sick, angry, unhappy, I rushed home.

As soon as we had dinner, Tusya appeared with my glasses.

I was waiting for her outside the Arts Department, but I should have been near the Committee - that is, through the house.

But who would have thought that the Administration and the Committee are not the same thing?

Tusino's reading was canceled, she was warned about it, and she came specially to give me glasses. And she waited for me for an hour. And it's all my fault.

Tusya read to me on the phone a fairy tale about the sailor Pronka - a miracle, how good, you can say "work under the dome."

Tusenka visited me, and today for the first time she told me in detail about the blockade, about herself, about Shura.

She said, in particular, that several times during the bombings she found herself in a shelter with Shura. Tusenka read aloud to her friends Dickens or Chekhov. This annoyed Shura: there is no point in talking teeth to yourself and others, this is hypocrisy and weakness; you need to concentrate and wait for death - your own or someone else's. She sat with her head bowed and her eyes closed.

I thought: how would I behave? Tusin or Shurin?

If Lyushenka were nearby - in Tusinoy's way, perhaps. I would read to her to distract her, to show her that nothing special was going on. (In the gap in Peredelkino, at night, when the Germans bombed Vnukovo, Lyusha and I learned English words.) But if I were alone, then I would probably behave like Shura.

Tusenka is a maternal person, she and Lusha do not need to feel like a mother to everyone.

From Zilberstein, tempted by proximity, she went to Tusya.

Tusya told me in detail and portrayed in her faces the ugly scene in Goslit between Myasnikov8, the editor, and Samuil Yakovlevich. The editor made S.Ya. comments. Such, for example:

Boots with rebounds? What are the picks? There is no such word.

S.Ya. Dahl demanded. Choices have been found.

Anyway, somehow I don’t like it,” the editor said.

S.Ya. at first something was inferior, then it exploded:

This is disrespectful to work! I'd rather take my book from you!

And take it! Myasnikov shouted.

Here Tusya intervened and began to calm and settle. It is a pity, in this case, the scandal could be victorious.

This afternoon, Tusya came to me, brought a Vyatka doll as a gift. She did not sit long; we just had time to argue about poetry. I read to her "Attempt at Jealousy" and "Longing for the Homeland" by Tsvetaeva, which I liked. I don't like everything at Tsvetaeva's; but this is very. However, Tusya did not like these verses. I'm upset, I Lately I often disagree with her in my love for poetry. It seems to me that she even fell out of love with Pasternak, and once in my youth it was she who taught me to love him. I still remember how she read to me in the street:

It might turn out like this

Maybe "Otherwise,

But in a stormy hour

The clergy are stuffy,

Blacker than otherness

Madness overtakes us...

When "1905" came out, Tusya admired him and said that Pasternak was endowed with a rare feeling - a sense of history. And now she is somehow dissatisfied with Pasternak, and Tsvetaeva - his undoubted relative - does not love at all *.

She read Bunin's "Apple Tree" to me, really amazing:

Are you getting old, dear friend?

Do not be sad! Will there be such

Young old age in others.

I told Tusya that these verses were indeed very touching, but my love for them and for the classical form of verse did not prevent me from loving the Pasternak-Tsvetaeva storms and the complex, but psychologically and poetically reliable syntax.

Tusya replied:

You see, you may be right, but for me it's not so much the syntax of the verse as it is the syntax of the soul. That syntax, that structure of the soul, which manifests itself in Bunin's poems, is much closer and dearer to me. Calm; important; strict.

Today's news is disgusting. Tvardovsky gave the publishing house a very laudatory review of Tusina's book, but the director of the publishing house told him:

We won't publish this book anyway. It’s inconvenient, you know, to have a non-Russian surname on Russian fairy tales.

Tusya is depressed, upset, philosophizing. And I'm just furious, without any philosophy.

The other day, I once told Tusya that I had been to the Ilyins9 (I went to consult whom to give Miklukha to read), I listened to Elena Alexandrovna’s poems and read my own, which, to my surprise, they really liked. I didn’t hide from her that I felt a little nauseous there: “But my friends don’t like my poems. They say this is a diary - not poetry.”

Tusya confirmed: "I hear you much more clearly in articles, prefaces, letters than in poetry, although you are more frank in poetry." "I like your poems no less than the Ilyins, but the Ilyins demand less from you."

Well, that was about three days ago, and tonight she called with this message:

I spoke with S.Ya. about your poetry. I want to understand what they lack in order to fully express you, so that they become completely yours? S.Ya. explained as follows: in these verses, the two main elements are good

musicality

psychology, i.e. mind and feeling, but there is no third

acting principle, necessary in art.

Where does he get in poetry if he is not in me?

I went with Tusya to the store to help her drag heavy baskets. Tusya talked about Messing10: she was at a session in the clinic. About quackery, according to her, there can be no question, but the impression is heavy, p.ch. he resembles a dog, intensely searching, sniffing. Tusya says that his amazing activity seems to be the lower activity of the organism, and not the higher.

The baskets were heavy, I could hardly walk, but Tusin's voice helped me. We came up with a script about a school that we would like to write together. Tusya figured out how to walk - easily.

I had Tusya. She came suddenly: she took standard certificates to the Literary Fund and went along the road.

In the last year she is in anguish, in dreary thoughts about herself. We all are. And this, of course, is not news to any of us, but when it is too much for the throat, we run to each other.

Here she came. She stood straight, leaning her back against the bookcase - she always stands and presses against the wall during our long conversations.

I was wandering the streets the other day, - Tusya said, - and it was very easy for me, I breathed freely and it was easy to walk. But I thought: if I were asked what is happening to me now, I would answer with perfect accuracy: "I'm dying." This is not a pathetic exclamation, not a groan, not a complaint, this is a simple statement of fact. Dying is that I have almost no desires and all ties with the world have been lost. There are two or three people left for whom it hurts if they are hurt. The memory remains. This is not enough for life.

I asked her if she thinks that this is what happened to us or is it just age, i.e. age. common destiny.

No. With us.

I reminded her of Herzen's fate: he wrote "The Past and Thoughts" and created "The Bell" at a time when he thought that everything was behind him, all that was left was to remember the past. And everything was in full swing and everything is ahead ... I asked Tusi: if it were not necessary to work for money, for membership in the Union, would she work, would her hands itch for work, or would she just lie with a book?

I would study, - Tusya answered, thinking, - languages, philology, history ... I would like to organize a school, raise children ... In addition, I would write a historical tragedy about Kotoshikhin11.

Well, you see! You still want to work! So far from death.

But Tusya did not accept this consolation.

No, Linda. We dare say this: love and intelligence live in a person. The love in me has died, but the mind is still alive. He is not busy, he is, in essence, free, p.ch. those things that he is forced to do do not concern him. And he still wants activity, he is in full force, he is only 40 years old. That's all.

Is it in Tus that love died? And only the mind remained? What nonsense.

But I didn't tell her. Somehow I did not dare to say.

Lyushenka went to the dacha, I don't have to manage. I called Tusya and asked if she needed me. She asked to arrive at 5 o'clock: she is tormented by the next calendar.

We reviewed two months: March and April. The choice of material is stupid and vile. Tusya says: Lenin as a child is portrayed as if he were to become a caretaker of charitable institutions, and not a revolutionary. He washed his hands very cleanly, obeyed his father and mother, ate everything that was put on his plate, etc.

We rejected 3/4 of the proposed material.

When I had already dressed and stood in a coat in a narrow space between Tusya's bed and a closet, we, as always, got into a passionate conversation. We began to remember the Institute, students. We did not remember lyrically, for both of us this is not a favorite time. We went through every boy and girl we could think of. We know absolutely nothing about many, and many died.

We had strange teachers, - said Tusya. - All outstanding, even brilliant people: Tynyanov, Eikhenbaum, Tomashevsky, but they understood the students poorly. Most of all they loved Kovarsky, Stepanov, Ginzburg, Ostrovsky. Kovarsky - zero; Stepanov - junk; Ginzburg is smart, but not on paper; Ostrovsky is a bibliographer - and all of them together, first of all, are not writers. There is nothing directly talented, literary, in them, but there is a lot of pseudo-scientific.

Yes, I agree with Tusya - our universities were: behind - poetry and ahead - the editors. The institute did not give almost anything. (Unless Engelhardt revealed something to us.) No, the Institute gave us the most important thing: each other.

Today a misfortune happened to me, which, I don’t know how it would have ended if not for Tusya. Sergeev12 summoned me to see his notes on Miklukha's proofs. The critical side rose to the occasion; in his displeasure he was often right; but I could not accept any of his amendments, literally not one. No rumor. However, I objected calmly, and he accepted my proposals. And suddenly, when I decided that everything was over, he took out three pages of his own text from his briefcase, which, according to him, must be inserted into the book! Some empty newspaper chatter about Miklukhin's anti-militarism. As if the whole book isn't about that! As if the picture I created still needs a signature! All the words that I avoided, all the commonplaces, all the clichés are collected on these pages. I could not stand it, I said harsh things to him. He demanded that I immediately sign the proofs. I said that not earlier than tomorrow morning I grabbed the proofs and went to Tusya.

I came to her in a state of complete disrepair. She could barely tell what was going on. But Tusenka read Sergeyev's cooking and understood everything. In just two hours, questioning me, figuring it out this way and that, she redicted the unfortunate Sergeyev pages to me in such a way that they acquired both content, and meaning, and harmony. And all this is fun, with jokes, portraying Sergeyev's ex-wife Adalis and himself, reproducing his fat, juicy, self-satisfied voice.

I left her restored. No, not only the pages were restored, but myself.

During the day she studied very diligently, and in the evening, as a reward for herself, she went to Tusya.

Tusya is getting fatter, broader - this, apparently, is her way of growing old - but the goodness and intelligence contained in her are somehow even more pronounced in old age. After a conversation with her, any conversation - as after a conversation, say, with Boris Leonidovich - seems miserable and flat. Her ability to understand people is amazing. I have not seen a person who, in his judgments about people, would take into account the difference between them to such an extent, and would understand with such clarity the right of each to be arranged differently from the other, and would show interest and respect for this "not so." She looks at each person with condescension and vigilance, trying to find a definition for this very special, one-of-a-kind spiritual construction.

In the evening I went to the Union for Bulatov's report on the fairy tale. The report is pale, but harmless. And suddenly Shatilov13 took the floor. I saw him for the first time. He delivered the most stupid and most harmful speech: against "amateurism" (i.e., in fact, against a creative attitude to the fairy tale), for "science" - i.e. for mediocre pedants. Made several attacks against Shura. He praised Platonov, who allegedly only touched the fairy tale - and she began to live a new life.

Tamara took the floor. In all the years I have known her, I have never heard a more brilliant performance from her. She exploded like a bomb, without losing any resourcefulness, consistency or persuasiveness in the heat and heat. She quickly waved - as always during a speech - with a brush right hand, and examples, ridicule, zoiliades, generalizations rained down from there. She grabbed Platonov's book from the table, instantly found the right page and showed exactly how he "touched" - to the loud laughter of the audience.

It is a pity, of course, for all three: Yevgenia Samoilovna, Tusya, Solomon Markovich ... But I feel sorry for all Tusya. Illness Evg. Myself. covered her with her head, swallowed; she had never been further from work than now; where to work here - she has no time to sleep, no time to eat - although her sister is on duty, Solomon Markovich does not leave the patient, and we all help as best we can. Susanna14 - she just moved to their black communal kitchen, goes to the market, cooks, trying to feed Tusya and Solomon Markovich.

In truth, Evgenia Samoilovna is a rather capricious patient. She is conscious, she recognizes everyone, there are no big pains, but she demands that both of them, except for her sister, be at her bedside - both Tusya and Solomon Markovich. Therefore, Susanna's attempts to feed Tusya almost never succeed. "Tu-sya!" instantly reprimands E.S., as soon as Tusenka goes out the door; "Tusya is having lunch, Zhenichka! - Solomon Markovich tells her. - Wait a little, dear, she will come right away." "Tu-sya!" - E.S. firmly repeats, and Tusya comes, and leans over her, and kisses, and persuades, and remains near. Her love for her mother - like, probably, any great love - is blind. She is in tenderness before the courage of E.S., which is not noticeable to us.

I always knew, - Tusya told me with tears, - that my mother is a person of amazing selflessness and courage. But now I understand it again.

Love is blind. And omnipotent. Take care of E.S. in this tiny room, more similar in size to a carriage compartment, it is unbearably hard. After all, every minute something needs to be brought in or taken out, but there is nowhere to move. To open the cabinet door, you need to move the table. And Tusya has been doing all this for days now, not only without irritation, but with a bright face, with a joke, with a smile.

When E.S. fell asleep - my sister, Solomon Markovich and Tusya went to Tusya's room to have dinner, and I remained to sit near and change the ice. There is trouble with ice: there is no refrigerator, and no matter how much we bring, everything is for an hour. The patient slept deeply. Phone calls do not wake her up, but the rumble of trams outside the window makes her shudder every second. Like a ripple runs across her face. The tram rumbles so close that, it seems, another second - and it bursts through the window with a ringing sound. And the noise for her now, probably, is very painful. And there's no way to fix the ventilation. You open the window - a draft, p.ch. opposite door. Close - stuffiness.

Were with Vanya Tusya. Vanya15 jokingly asked her:

What do you think, Tamara Grigorievna, is Lida having an affair with NN?

Tusenka waved her hand.

No. Blockade bath. You can be calm.

And she explained that during the blockade, at first, the baths did not work at all, and then they were opened, but the week was divided into men's and women's days. Sometimes soldiers will come from the front, they want to wash themselves, but they can’t: it’s a women’s day in the bathhouse. And the women let them in: "Okay, wash with us ... It's nothing for us ... We don't care ...".

I was in Losinka with Vanya and Tusya. We dined at Tusi's, Vanya was pouring tea. (Tusya calls this: "The eldest daughter is a helper in the house.") Then they sat on Vanya's porch heated by the sun, then the three of them wandered around the cemetery. There is a wonderful sound of wind in the peaks. Tusya read poems, her favorites: Tyutchev's "Spring", Lermontov's "When sometimes I look at you." Then we talked about S.G., about the fact that her husband still cannot completely break with his former family, and S.G. suffers. Tusya again and again explained to me, as she explains to me soon 30 years old, the diversity of love, the complexity of human feelings: one kind of relationship supposedly does not interfere with the other.

It seems to me that this is a male theory, alien to women.

Vanya was silent. I argued. Tusya was angry.

I went with Rakhtanov16 to Losinka to see Vanya. They also dragged Tusya to Vanya. He spread two blankets on the meadow in front of the porch, and all four of us sat there for a long time. Rakhtanov said that in editorial times he was in love with Tusya and even declared his love to her on Kirochnaya Street when they were returning from me together. Tusenka laughed and did not deny it.

We began to count how many years we had known each other: myself, Tusya and Rakhtanov - since the winter of 1925; me and Vanya - from the 20th or 21st - thirty years! How old are we!

Is it true, - said Rakhtanov, - in your youth do you imagine old age completely wrong? Now we can check this and make sure that our then ideas were wrong.

Can you point out what is wrong? Tusya asked.

Can. We thought old people were old people.

Well done, - said Tusya. - Very accurate. But I must confess that I never thought so. I always knew that a person from the first day to the last one and the same. And if we talk about changes, then old age is not a loss of something, but an acquisition.

Amazing Tusino property to soothe pain, relieve heaviness from the shoulders. And not by reassurance - but by the fact that prospects suddenly open before you, in front of which your sorrows are crayons.

Today I came to her in Losinka, exhausted by my troubles. And then there's the rain. A wet highway, a drunken one sliding on wet leaves, a wet darkness in Vanya's garden, through which I walked to Tusin's gate. At first, Tusya was busy with Susanna, then Evg. Samoilovna, and I waited, irritated. But as soon as Susanna left, E.S. fell asleep and Tusya started talking about my manuscript - I immediately felt not only her rightness, but also the healing light emanating from her voice. Everything that crushes me seemed small in front of the essentiality, the truth of her words. My efforts have acquired perspective and meaning.

In the evening I went to Tusya for a bag, which this fairy Melusina had long ago prepared for me on the occasion of my birth. Shura was there. The fairy is upset: she was forced to work on "Tin Rings" for almost a year, she reworked them at the request of the editors (?) 5 times - and then the boss, a certain Gusev, read it and said that the idea was unclear: is there a sermon in the play? nonsense? Meanwhile, the idea is quite clear, even ten-year-old Fridina Sasha understood it17: vulgar people see in kindness and nobility - one stupidity ... Sasha understood, but how can Gusev understand?

They sat down and burned.

Then Tusenka, despite her chagrin, amazingly showed B-ich. She took the lid from the sugar bowl, fixed it somehow on the side of her head, puffed out her cheeks, showed her chins to her stomach with her hand ... Shura was crying with laughter, and I fell from Tusa's bed, really fell to the floor and could hardly get up.

Tusya showed it, not laughing at all.

And this fool, - said Tusya, - constantly walks in pink or red dresses that fit her hips. It makes you want to take a crooked knife and cut off a piece of ham.

Tusya called from Losinka yesterday. Crying: Yevgenia Samoilovna is worse, the doctor suspects a second stroke.

I went; in the train crowded and swearing; along the way - darkness and swearing. Feet get stuck in the mud.

Tusya is worried and exhausted. Often, leaving me, he goes to Yevgenia Samoilovna, reassuring her in an affectionate voice:

Wait, my dear. Like this. Now you won't get hurt.

For some reason, we started talking about Vanya, about his ability, when he loves us, to leave us, leave us for centuries ... M.b., he doesn’t love us?

What are you, Lidochka! Of course he loves. Vania a true friend. When my mother fell ill, Vanya carried ice with you three times a day. (And I immediately remembered that fierce heat and Vanya and I running around pharmacies and ice cream shops, and then how we drag these dirty lumps, panting.) But Vanya is one of those people who get tired of the intensity of relationships. This is a very common vice. You, me, Shura are rare; the norm would be that the joint service ended - and the need for intensive communication would also end ... Well, Vanya is normal: he gets tired of the exchange of thoughts and feelings.

The light went out. Solomon Markovich was already asleep - Tusya put him to bed early, because. his heart hurts. Nastya has already left. Tusya and I lit the kerosene lamp with difficulty; then I held the lamp, and Tusenka lubricated Yevgenia Samoilovna's bedsores, saying, persuading, consoling. She is a motherly person, although she never had children.

I had to inform Tusya about the death of Sofia Mikhailovna18.

It was in Losinka, where I brought Litfond's doctors by taxi for Yevgenia Samoilovna.

While Nastya took the doctors to wash their hands, Tusya and I were left alone for a minute.

I told her.

She immediately fell silent and thought hard.

Maybe you want to go to Samuil Yakovlevich? - I said. Go, and I'll stay here.

No, Tusya said. - How can I enter this house now, where she did not want to see me so much? She was very unhappy. And why? After all, Samuil Yakovlevich always loved her. Now you can see how much he loved her!

She sat down and wrote to S.Ya. the letter I took to him.

Tusya visited Losinka once during this time. It's all the same horror. Evg. Myself. delirious. to about 39. New bedsores. She did not recognize me, Tusya does not always recognize me. Every minute moan:

She calls to him as protection and help.

I asked Tusi:

How is Samuil Yakovlevich? How do you handle grief?

He is busy with repentance and myth-making.

Finally got out to Tusya in Losinka. Her service continues. Bandages, shifts Evgenia Samoilovna.

Over tea when E.S. fell asleep, Tusya told me Panferov's new novel:

You see, Lidochka, he takes everything quite seriously. When he describes that his hero was sweating by the phone while talking to the authorities, it is clear that Panferov fully sympathizes with him: how, after all, the person is talking with the secretary of the regional committee himself! The author himself sweats in such cases. And he also raises the problem of mating a vigorous collective farmer with an academician to the proper height.

Recently, I somehow briefly told Tusya that I couldn’t get suitable night shoes anywhere, and my feet swell painfully. Today she suddenly called me: the shoes are waiting for me. I was very touched. I ask:

How much do I owe you?

They don't owe anything... Fairy Melusina always gave Cinderella shoes for free.

Well, Tusya, what kind of Cinderella am I?

Why aren't you Cinderella, by the way? Think carefully and you will see a great resemblance.

But character, Tusya, character!

Here, the wise Tamara could not find an answer.

When I returned to the city from Maleevka on the 13th, Lyushin's note lay on my table: "Mom, a terrible misfortune happened, Solomon Markovich died at night."

Without undressing and without unpacking my suitcases, I went to Tusya.

She hides from Yevgenia Samoilovna, hides, says that Solomon Markovich is in the hospital - and he lies - dead - in her room - under the sheet.

E.S. often calls Solomon Markovich. Tusino listens to a detailed and even funny story about the hospital and again: "Lenya!".

I was afraid that she would hear the funeral. But no - although a lot of people crowded in the kitchen, in the corridor, at Tusya, at the neighbors. There was a terrible moment when the coffin was carried out: they could not turn it in the corridor and carried it up the stairs upright.

There was a bus and several cars at the gate. Tusya surprised me. Leaving the house, she wept, no longer hiding, but through tears and terrible fatigue she vigilantly watched that all the sick and old were comfortably seated in cars. She herself seated Asya Isaevna and other old women.

And how good she was at the last farewell, already in the crematorium! Pretty good, I can't find another word for it. There was such beauty of parting and sorrow in her that I didn’t even feel sorry for her: you don’t regret beauty. How she knelt down in front of the coffin, energetically throwing back the flaps of her coat, and knelt, small, strong, beautiful, and to the music of the organ kissed and stroked his hands, saying goodbye to him, not seeing anything around, not tearing herself away from his face and hands until the last second.

Evgenia Samoilovna died at night.

Yesterday I was there all day - until 11 pm. I ran to the pharmacy for oxygen, sat next to E.S., when Tusya, for minutes, went to her place. Tusya, realizing that this was the end, became stronger than she had been in recent days, began to cry less often, that strength began to emerge in her, which was so visible at the death of Solomon Markovich. Evg. Myself. no longer responded - not to words, not to injections. His lips turned blue, his nose became pointed, his breathing became more and more like a wheeze. But at 11 o'clock she began to breathe more evenly, as if she had fallen asleep, and Tusya and I went to drink tea in her room. I thought - stay me for the night? and decided - no, because Rebekah Markovna is here, and if I stay, she will have nowhere to lie down.

Tusenka saw me off as always - affectionately and cheerfully. She stood at the door while I went downstairs.

In the morning I did not dare to call for a long time, afraid to wake up Tusya if she had a difficult night. Finally called.

Mom died, Lidochka... At 2 o'clock...

Then - a long silence on the phone.

In the afternoon I, together with Vanya and Vera Vasilievna19, with flowers, went there. The same room, the same view from the window, familiar to me: the school yard behind a peeling wall and a tree, the same rumble of trams - only the bed where she always lay was made up, and she was on the table, next to him, so small among a pile of flowers. Tusya takes out and smoothes her ossified hand from under the flowers, puts it to her cheek and kisses - "My child, my Murushka" - as she said so many times in her life. Again - what beauty and strength in her expression of grief, in every word, gesture - like a great actress who has found a complete form for expressing human grief.

Tusenka lives with Samuil Yakovlevich, p.ch. her new apartment is still empty and unorganized. "The floors are cycling." There are still many worries: some furniture to sell, some to buy. And books! books! Tusya says that it is especially disgusting for her to do all this, p.ch. the entire Airport House is buzzing with acquisitive hype.

Yesterday I visited Tusya, i.e. at S.Ya. She's somehow agitated and tired all at once. House at S.Ya. difficult, hustle, but it is evident that it is still easier for her to endure this hustle than the desert of her belated apartment. I strongly advised her to go somewhere in the open air, relax, and only then settle down, but she repeats: “I can’t do this. I have to arrange everything first, otherwise what kind of rest.” She also thinks a lot about how to improve the life of S.Ya., but it seems that this life is such that even her wisdom is powerless.

The little one is sick. She is already at home new apartment. Some sort of exacerbation of diabetes. A lot lies; rises with difficulty and goes to S.Ya. read proofreading. She fixes furniture. It is bad for her, but she does not want to hear about leaving for a sanatorium. "We must stop proofreading, we must stop arranging our house."

Tous is a little better. She already gets up and does all sorts of crazy things: puts books in a closet and reads proofs.

In the evening, exhausted by the heat, I went to Tusya's to sit on the balcony. Still, she has the outskirts, more air.

Tusenka was sitting in a folding chair, and I was on a bench at her feet. The deep well of the yard - and such a consolation even from afar, even for the roofs of houses to see green trees. Tusya was cheerful at first, she told me what the neighbors were doing.

Here Sharov came into the kitchen... He is in his pajamas... Here he opens the cupboard... he took out a decanter... here he dilutes it with water... And more often he drinks without diluting it... The third glass... Now he is leaving holding on to the wall...

But the evening ended in tears.

Here on that balcony, - Tusya told me, - they take out an armchair in the morning, and then I see a little old woman wrapped up ... I would also arrange my mother on the balcony ...

If you only knew, Lidochka, how clearly I see both of them - my mother and Solomon Markovich. Sometimes it is a memory: I remember a smile, a movement of a hand, hair. And sometimes it is no longer just a memory, but a vision: I really see them. And then I talk to them, I tell them everything.

Today, finally, I got out to Botkinskaya to Tusa.

In the hospital (and in prison), time flows quite differently than in the wild. And this is strangely felt not only inside the buildings, but even while walking around the yard. "Here every minute passes a heavy full sixty seconds."

I found Tusya in a bad mood, somehow disturbing, irritated, unlike herself. Once, her voice broke into tears.

She took me away from the waiting room to a large empty passage room where a Christmas tree was burning, and we were left alone. Tusya told me that not only was she not treated, but they were hardly even examined. That doctor's wife, for whose sake she agreed to go here, works in other wards and on this occasion does not pay any attention to Tusya, although she promised Samuil Yakovlevich to take care of her. Tusya assures that she has become much worse here than at home.

Food worse and do not sleep? I asked. - From this?

No, from hospital outrages. I can't bear the sight of hospital outrages. Not about me, but about others.

All for money. If you give three rubles, they will bring a heating pad, if you give three rubles, they will change a shirt or a towel.

Tusya has a seriously ill, dying woman in her room. There is no real care for her, the patients themselves give her water, change her heating pad, Tusya constantly runs at night to the duty room, for the doctor or for the sister, insisting that they do this or that.

Three young women in white coats walked past us into one of the wards.

Look, Tusya, all three are pretty, I said.

Yes, it’s true, they are selected on this basis, ”Tusya answered angrily. And no one teaches them how to treat sick people.

She told about her only joy here, a sick girl, nineteen years old, Nina, who with amazing delicacy, responsiveness, and tenderness takes care of the seriously ill.

Without her, I would just burst with anger here, - said Tusya.

Then she cheered up for a moment and depicted in her faces a scene between doctors and one patient - a village old woman who had a stomach ulcer. They explain to her that it is necessary to operate. But she doesn't want to. The attending physician and so and so - in any. Then she was visited by a tall, stately, handsome - and although young, but already very important - head of the department. Explains to her the need for surgery. Scattered with scientific terms. And she repeats her own: “I don’t eat meat here in the hospital, and I feel better. Now I won’t eat meat at home, and everything will pass.”

That's not the point, mother, - says the doctor, - I'll tell you simply, in Russian: an ulcer is a springboard! Got it?

It was time for me to leave - office hours were over - but Tusya would not let me go. "Well, just a minute, well, a little more." I kept trying to find out from her: why, after all, she was not being investigated, if she was put on research, and what should be done, but I did not understand anything. S.Ya. I have called many times and tried to get things done, but nothing is going on.

And we all endlessly persuaded Tusya to go to the study! And Lyubov Emmanuilovna20, and Revekka Markovna, and Samuil Yakovlevich, and I... Now we have to want one thing: that she return home as soon as possible, where there are no these painful impressions... But at home the same unresolved questions will arise again: the dosage of food and insulin. ..

It’s as if we are here not for treatment, - Tusya told me, - but we are arrested for two weeks for hooliganism. No, be polite to me. I'm here, as the patients say, "respect". But with others...

Tusi has cancer. Stomach cancer.

She called me at 12 o'clock in the morning, sobbing into the phone. No, she doesn't know what cancer is. She was told it was an ulcer.

Today, on the occasion of my birthday, the doctors gave me an ulcer,” she began cheerfully and mockingly. - I'm in a hurry to tell you about this, I'm still in a fur coat.

But you see, Lidochka, - a sob, - I'm afraid they don't tell the whole truth. After all, they won’t tell me: it’s not supposed to, - a sob. - What do you think, if Samuil Yakovlevich calls the radiologist, everyone will tell him as it is?

Well, of course! I screamed. Of course they will tell the truth!

(And Samuil Yakovlevich had already called the radiologist, and he had already told him: cancer, and I already knew that.)

In the evening we all gathered at Tusi's with gifts. Tusya was lively, well-dressed, and the table was set not in the kitchen, but in the big room. From Tusa's laughter and animation it was somehow even more bitter. Once, when she left the room, Samuil Yakovlevich said:

Just like the sun is setting.

At the end of the dinner they started talking about the ulcer, the hospital, Kassirsky21.

Tusya immediately became angry and, standing near the bookcase, began to simply shout at us:

I'm not a child! If this is an ulcer, then I know very well that the ulcer is not removed, but treated! I will convene a council and let them teach me how I should be treated! I will not go to any hospital: they poisoned me in Botkinskaya. I listened to you all, lay down there, and I felt worse.

Tusya called. The persuasions of the doctors, who explained to her that the ulcer must be operated on until it bleeds, had their effect.

I see that they won’t let me stay at home anyway, ”Tusenka said in a calm voice. - One of these days I will go to bed.

Today I went to the railway hospital to see Tusya. She is in a separate room. It seems that the whole spring has gathered in this small room: in a clean window - a bright sky, on the windowsill, in vases, fresh flowers, on the floor - the sun, and Tusya is so cheerful, pink, strong, young that I am sure the doctor's mistake. She lies not in the hospital, but in all her own. She feels great, reads a lot, eats well, her diabetes has improved so much that her sweet doctor, who looks a little like Zoya, Deborah Abramovna, jokingly calls her a "simulant".

I don't believe in cancer anymore. Nonsense. Tusya is even gaining weight.

This morning I am in the hospital. They operated on Tusya.

For two hours I sat downstairs with Rebekah Markovna. Then she somehow broke through into Kassirsky's office, where Samuil Yakovlevich was also. Kassirsky says that Tusya behaved courageously, cheerfully, and her body also turned out to be on top:

"Heart worked as if nothing had been done to her."

S.Ya. and I endlessly walked along the corridors and doctor's offices, S.Ya. he could hardly drag his legs, leaning on me, but with doctors and nurses he spoke demandingly, persistently, energetically.

They didn't let us into Tusa's room. But while S.Ya. I talked with the doctor on duty, I made my way to the doors of the ward and saw Tusya through the glass. She hasn't woken up yet. The face is white. There is a wooden structure at the feet, a needle is stuck in the foot. Near, on a chair, sister.

It would be better if they let me sit, at least for the first few hours.

We went downstairs to Rebekah Markovna. The three of us were waiting for Androsov. The door slammed terribly. Androsov looks like a kind cannibal: a wide smile and solid strong teeth. To the question of S.Ya. about the tumor, he answered, flashing his teeth:

Mother brat!

But he swears that there are no metastases ...

Tusi was in the hospital. She was asleep when she entered the room (after the morphine). I sat down on a chair and looked at her for a long time. As if something new has settled in her since she was in a hospital gown, on a flat pillow - or is it because it seems to me that I know what illness she has? The face is distorted by a tumor behind the ear gland, the face is gray, I would not even recognize Tusya right away if I had not seen her before on this bed. And only when she opened her eyes - intelligent, penetrating - and her lively, abundant, self-interrupting, mocking speech flowed - I fully recognized her.

Zoya has a heart attack, Shura has a crisis and may have a heart attack, Tusia has this sudden death that crept up from which she was saved for a while. Suddenly? No, because a person cannot endure what falls to his lot. It just seems like he's suffered. If he suffered mentally, then physically - no. And this materialized impossibility is given a name: heart attack, cancer.

Can even the most healthy man to endure what Tusya endured?

Misha's death in the war

The death of Yuri Nikolayevich22 in the war

Death of Joseph in the camp

14 years of life in a closet, of which 8 in the same closet she cared for a paralyzed patient day and night

The death of Evgenia Samoilovna and Solomon Markovich.

All these deaths together are called: "Tusya has cancer."

Tusya told me about the nurse, a young girl who, wanting to please an elderly patient and talk to her about church matters, congratulated her on Easter like this:

Christ is Jesus!

and reported:

I saw a long, long Crusade on my way to the hospital today!

Visited Tusya. She has jaundice. She lies, getting up only to the table. On the blanket, on the windowsill, on the bureau, there are little green volumes everywhere: Tusya is re-reading Bunin, whom she loves, and I only "recognize". She placed the book in front of her on the pillow and read it aloud to me. little story"Rusak" - and in her voice, when she read, it was audible how much she liked every word.

Okay, I said. For some reason I just don't need it.

And to me - that "to it is necessary, that" to it is necessary! Tusya screamed. - What an amazing feeling of life in this story, the mystery of life, the secrets of space, the distance, the open field, darkness ... To burning, to happiness.

Tusya has jaundice, she has metastasis, liver cancer.

And my dear hands will burn

Under the false cry of the organ,

And this garden will be stupid,

Like a paved hell

And in vain I will hide my eyes

From the smoke above the meadow.

When I am alone or talking with friends or with doctors, I understand that the execution will be carried out, and the verdict is not subject to appeal. Approaching Tusinoy porch, I see a bus, a funeral bus, which will soon be standing here. But as soon as I hear Tusin's voice on the phone or see her, I stop believing in the verdict. Her flexible, full-sounding voice and laughter, smart, keen eyes, her questions about loved ones, retellings of books read - a living refutation of impending death.

Beside her, I calm down.

But as soon as I leave, I again know that my hands will burn.

Now I believe and sitting near. Other face: small eyes, large mouth. Other arms: large and thin. Everything is difficult for her: to speak, to listen, although she is still affectionate and asks me about me and my affairs. All she wants is to turn her back to the wall and sleep. I see from time to time how she goes further and further away from us. I stick around in the kitchen or in the big room under various pretexts and return to her only when she rings the bell.

Sometimes she complains:

Oh, Lidochka, I'm not good for anything. Tie me in a knot and throw me out the window.

Ah, dear friend, every day less and less strength. Doctors are confused.

Recently said:

Fate always cuts off me and Shura from the same edge. To me - to her, to me to her ... I need to get out so that she can be saved.

He speaks on the phone with difficulty. She explained to me that the voice rests on the place of the abdomen where she has pain.

("Still, it turned out that the main thing in life is the stomach.")

But it is clear that she does not lose hope. Today I got up and looked out the window for a long time.

I really want to be in the air. As soon as I feel better, we'll go out of town, to the trees.

I said that I would take her to Peredelkino.

And there, of course, I have long wanted to visit the Library. But what I dream about is Kolomenskoye. I have never been there. On the first good day, we will definitely go.

Much smaller eyes than a mouth

Already in the face left.

And that generous smile

Already brings pity

And those hands are no longer the same

that gave us life,

And righteousness and beauty

They were helpers.

Orphaned, alone

Lying on a blanket

As if to herself they

They have become strangers.

Much has happened today, probably for the last time, and that is why the "memory of the heart" worked with such sharpness all day near and far from her.

She is still alive, she is with us, today she spoke to me, and to Nastya, and to Samuil Yakovlevich, and I already remember the past, as if she were not there!

I was going to see her at 12. But at 10 Nastya called: can I come earlier, Tusenka asks. I went. Tusya is somehow excited and exhausted today. She then called me to ask me to go to the savings bank on Novoslobodskaya and find out how to transfer money to another savings bank, closer to the Airport. “I gave Lelya a power of attorney to receive a certain amount of money, and I want to ask you to get a transfer: let part of the money lie closer. Otherwise, it’s embarrassing for me every day to send Nastya or friends with powers of attorney to such a distance.”

Tusya spoke very sensibly and confidently, and my heart sank at this request: it means that she, poor thing, hopes to live! Otherwise, she would either not care about the money at all, or simply instruct one of us to take all the money home ...

I did not argue, but went to the savings bank on Novoslobodskaya.

In the trolleybus, I cried all the time. It was embarrassing in front of people. The entire area of ​​Sushchevskaya Street is more connected with Tusya for me than the Airport. Here is the entrance courtyard of their house, through which I went to the pharmacy for oxygen for Evgenia Samoilovna, and Tusenka looked out the window: am I going. Yes, and together we went here many times to the pharmacy. Here is the trolley bus stop, where one night, when I was returning from Tusi, a cyclist ran over me. And we went to this savings bank together not so long ago. Here is her subway stop. And all this will always be hers for me until my death, but she will not be.

I took the forms and went back. Before entering her, I washed my face in the bathroom. (Tusenka didn't cry when she went in to Yevgenia Samoilovna after the death of Solomon Markovich.) During the hour that I was gone, she changed. Somehow she was tired, drooped, did not half-sit, but lies deep in the pillows, and speaks with difficulty. She looked at me somehow from a distance, and at first she didn’t even ask anything, and only then remembered her assignment. She got up and tried to read the forms. I did not understand anything and immediately got tired. She told me to fill it out myself and let her sign it.

I filled out while sitting at the bureau. And here my today's torment began again: for the last time, for the last time, I write something for her, next to her, and I wipe my pen with a rag, which is kept under the clay skirt of her Vyatka doll. How many times she laughed and showed me where her rag lay when we worked together. And we will never work together again! This sparkling, dust-free bureau, with all the drawers, dolls, boxes - typewriter paper in the upper left, postal paper in the lower right - everything is like her home, thought out, lived in, labor and smart. And in this house, where so many thoughts have been given to me, so many of my pages have been corrected, I wipe my pen for the last time.

For the last time today, Tusenka sat at her bureau. I was about to give her the forms to sign in bed, but I realized that lying down, she would sign differently than usual. I helped her to her feet, put her little slippers on her bare feet, and almost carried her into an armchair in front of the bureau. "Where to write? Here? I can't make out something," Tusya said, barely holding her head.

I put her back down and she immediately closed her eyes.

She sits, I sing her tea from a spoon. Weak, barely holding her head. I sing with one hand and support my back with the other.

She swallowed two spoons, looked at me:

So, Lidochka, it happens. That's how it happens...

And she waved her hand.

Slept for a very long time; woke up better. Lies and smiles.

What are you, Tusya?

Lidochka, I keep thinking, where do so many faces, images, incidents, interesting pictures come from... Where are they produced, where do they come to me from?

No, all the time.

Consciousness is no more. Will he return?

The last time she recognized me was yesterday - or is it today? - hours at 6 am. Again there were convulsions. They always awaken her consciousness - awaken with pain. We have already understood that when the mouth begins to smile, as it were, this is not a smile, these are convulsions close by. You need to wash your hands and face.

I leaned over - my eyes widened and in them the horror of pain and the joy that she was not alone, I was here. She recognized me. I rubbed her face and called Nastya. When the convulsions passed, Tusya took my hand and put it under her cheek.

Hanging in a coffin.

If you look from the door, it seems that the coffin is a boat and Tusya is floating somewhere, submissively and solemnly surrendering to the flow.

The flow of what?

If you look, standing in your head, you can see a beautiful forehead, high, strong. And on the right, above the temple - a gentle speck of gray hair. Round.

Fragments of memories

Tusenka was the first intelligent religious person I met in my life. This surprised me; It seemed to me then, in my youth, that religiosity is inherent only in simple and backward people; Tusya was so smart, so educated, so well-read, her judgments exuded maturity of mind and heart. And suddenly - the Gospel, Easter, a church, a golden cross, a prayer ... I saw that she did not like to talk about her religion, and for a long time did not dare to ask her questions. But curiosity got the better of me, and once, already in the editorial years (probably in the early thirties), I asked her to tell me and Shura about her religion, to explain to us what kind of God she believes in.

All right, - said Tusya, - but only with one condition. I will explain to you once, and whether you understand or not, I will never explain again, and you will never ask me again.

I promised. She appointed the evening and came. The three of us were sitting in my room - Tusya and Shura on the couch, and I on the carpet - and Tusya outlined her creed to us. Now, a quarter of a century later, I cannot reproduce her speech in detail, I will write down a little.

What does my faith in God mean, you ask? Tusya said. - I believe that there is an account, and I always mentally refer to this account. God is a constant court, it is a book of conscience. Epochs, times and people change, but people always understand the beauty of goodness and selflessness, at all times. The beauty of self-giving is understandable to all people. The cultivation of this beauty is religion.

We met in the winter of 1924-1925 at the Institute; first talked, walking in the evening along the embankment of the Neva from Bronze Horseman to Liteiny.

Tusya told me about Christmas in Vyborg, about small houses and Christmas trees burning inside, outside the windows; about sleds carrying children and purchases; about snowy silence.

It was spring, we walked around the puddles. I looked at her with surprise: I never expected that this young lady, in some kind of tricky hat, with smeared lips and small curls on her forehead, could talk so wonderfully ...

In general, at the first time of our acquaintance, it seemed to me that Tusin's appearance and manner of dressing did not express her nature, but contradicted it. Over the years, this has changed: either I got used to it, or Tusina's appearance became more in line with her soul.

Even in her student days, Tusya told me that the feeling of happiness was associated with her all her life with a thought, with a new thought presented to her that dawned on her.

Religious thought first visited her in childhood. As a little girl, in Vyborg, she stood at the window in the evening, slightly parting the curtains. Outside the window, in a beam of light, snow was falling, and for the first time she felt the vastness of the universe, the unity of life, her involvement in the world and the inevitability of death.

During my Leningrad student days, Tusya called me "Lydia the Catastrophe" - because something always happened to me, and "Chukovskaya-Nemesis" - because I always came at the appointed time, minute by minute. This interfered with her, since she herself was usually not ready for the time appointed by her. I’ll come to her by 9 am, as agreed, but it’s still dark in the hall, and the curtains are down in Tusya’s room, and Tusya is fast asleep, with her hand under her cheek. Wakes up, sees me:

Ah, Chukovskaya-Nemesis, are you already here? Well, why would you be a little late?

At that time she called me jokingly - for my tall stature and thick short hair - "A mixture of a lion and a palm tree"; about one of my then photographs, where my mouth is open, she said: “the pike opens its mouth, but you can’t hear that it sings.” Later, one of my Moscow photographs, where I am sitting some important, fat, next to the disheveled Vanya, she called this: "Miklukha-Maclay with his Papuan."

I have always been - and, unfortunately, remained - impatient, intolerant, irritable. Tusya was the first person I met in my life who, without irritation, related to the difficult, unpleasant sides of human characters.

Well, how can you stand NN? I once said about one of our mutual friends, a student. - Of course, he is a good person - but how disgustingly he stutters, mumbles, pulls, and when he gets dressed, he wraps his scarf so slowly that I burst with anger.

And I'm not bursting, - answered Tusya. - If a person is basically good, then it is easy for me to bear his shortcomings. Let him wind up, stutter or something. It doesn't annoy me.

Once (already on Sushchevskaya) Tusya complained to me: Samuil Yakovlevich is angry that she spends a lot of time on Gorodetskaya.

Well, what do you want to endlessly mess with this old, boring lady! he shouted to Tus in his hearts.

And I, - Tusya told me angrily, - answered Samuil Yakovlevich: I myself am an old boring lady. And that's probably why I don't get bored messing around with her.

Oh, - I said, - Gorodetskaya really, Tusenka, is an unbearable bore, and I understand S.Ya. that she irritates him ... You are sick, tired, busy - she exhausts your last strength with her requests. One phone is worth something! You yourself complain that telephone conversations your heart hurts.

But don't you know, Lidochka, - said Tusya, slowly and angrily, that it is generally impossible to help a person without hurting yourself? Don't you already know this?

A provincial, very mediocre and very persistent writer got into the habit of Tusya. In the difficult time of Yevgenia Samoilovna's illness, she stubbornly went to Tusya's dacha, forced her to read her manuscript, etc.

So why are you taking it? I said to Tus. - She is much more stubborn than talented.

- "Thirsty for drink," answered Tusya even with some solemnity.

Tusya appreciated kindness in people very much. She often, speaking, for example, about Susanna, admired the "energy of good" inherent in her. "If Susanna pities a man, she can do anything for him." But about Barto, about her assertiveness, she once said: "There is much more energy in her than light. I am afraid of such people."

Tusya loved Lyusha, and when Lyusha was little, she often told me that I was raising her well. “Yes, she is naturally good, I don’t educate her in any way,” I waved her off. “No, you educate,” Tusya argued, “you show her every act, good or bad, with your anger or praise, as if in a mirror. That’s right. It is necessary that a growing person constantly sees his reflection in an ethical mirror ... Herself only weed grows by itself - cultivated plants require care.

She often told me - especially often in Leningrad - that her favorite dream was to be a school principal.

"I think I know that" It is necessary to educate children so that they grow up to be real people. Three qualities: honor, imagination, will. All the rest depend on these three qualities.

People need to love from childhood. Learn intensively and actively. It is necessary to ensure that the child is able to focus attention on something else, not on himself, is able to notice the state of another person, is able to come to the aid of another. It is necessary to teach this, to train in this. This is also science.

- "How nasty people are in fear!" - great idea. A person who does not know how to overcome fear, not to succumb to fear, will inevitably turn out to be fallen.

A person undergoes three tests in life: the test of need, the test of fear, the test of wealth. If he can endure want with dignity; fear - do not succumb; living in abundance, to understand someone else's need - he is a man.

Once I asked Tusi:

How, in your opinion, can we most concisely and accurately formulate the main mistake of our teachers, critics - or, say, the editors of Detgiz - in their approach to literature? What is she in?

Tusya answered instantly, without any difficulty:

They think that art is the right idea in an entertaining way. Meanwhile, this is something completely different; in true art there is no idea in form; the connection is different, much more organic. Yes, this is not at all a connection between two phenomena, but something third.

If you know a person and immediately recognize him in his writings - his mindset, his awareness, his wit - in front of you, apparently, just abilities. Talent is different. You take the manuscript in your hands and you are amazed: did that friend of mine write it? How does he know this? I never would have thought he knew!

Tusya spoke about Shklovsky:

There are interesting ideas in his work. But you know: there are dogs that know how to give birth to puppies, but they don’t know how to feed and educate. So is Shklovsky: he gives birth to a thought, but he is not able to think it out, grow it, put it in connection with others. Someone else has to pick up his thoughts and nurture and nurture them. He himself is not capable of doing anything sensible.

I read Nechkina's book "Griboyedov and the Decembrists," Tusya once told me. - Interesting book. But it still occupies the largest place in it: Griboedov is not there, there are not enough Decembrists either, and here 700 pages stretch.

Sometimes I want to die, - I said to Tusya one day, very tired. (This was still on Sushchevskaya, long before Tusya's illness.)

And me, too, - said Tusya, - very much. But I do not allow myself to dream of death. That would be uncomradely, scum. This is the same as going to a sanatorium herself, and leaving others to unravel as they wish.

* * * I often complained to Tusa about someone else's rudeness - in the house management, in the publishing house, in the Union. And she herself often complained to me about the rudeness of officials. Once, when we were discussing the nature of bureaucratic rudeness, she said:

Soviet employees have the psychology of a kind of pensioners. They consider their salary as a pension given to them by the state on two conditions: they must be in a certain room at a certain time and stay there for 7 hours. All! The fact that at the same time, for the same money they have to do some kind of socially useful work - they do not even suspect. They quarrel, make peace, flirt, talk about the prices of meat and stockings, where they give what, where they threw away what, who lives with whom ... And here we are, tearing them away from interesting conversations, asking uninteresting questions, demanding what something, and we wait, and we insist. Naturally, these strange claims irritate them.

To a half-joking question from one young man, who should and should not marry, Tusya replied:

You can only marry that woman with whom it would be interesting for you, a man, to meet and talk, even if she was not a woman, but, like you, a man.

* * * - I can't stand woman's reproaches: "I gave him my youth, and he...". What does "given away" mean? Well, if so, she would keep her youth to herself until she was fifty ...

* * * Tusi had the gift of a wonderful character actress - also one of her unrealized talents. In Leningrad times, she showed all our students with appetite:

Irina Grushetskaya, who told her in secret that in Moscow she was planning an affair with one of the constructivists: "I always thought that I liked the thin ones, but no!"

Kryukov, a blond, languid sissy, with a ring on his finger (Tusya depicted how he gracefully bends this finger with a ring while recording lectures);

Lyudmila Pomyan, a student who liked to tell that sailors especially liked her: "I have to smoke in the street and a sailor comes right away. I have something fatal in the curve of my upper lip, don't you think?" - and Tusi's upper lip began to bend, straight snake.

Doesn't it seem to you, Lidochka,' asked Tusya, 'that Stepanov23 (and she showed him a grinning, sort of slanting and many-toothed smile) looks surprisingly like a dead horse's head? "Terem-Teremok, who lives in the Terem"...

About Piskunov24 she said that he was the spitting image of Uria Gip, and showed how he rubbed his hands; about Kononov 25 - that, of course, he only pretends to be a man, but in reality he is a dull old horse; comes home from work and demands: "wife, hay!" - his wife ties a bag under his chin, and he chews all night, standing up ... I often complained to Tusya about Yegorova, the editor of Detgiz, who ruined two of my books. Having met her for the first time, Tusya was struck by her angry face, angry voice and immediately began to portray her: “How did you not understand, Lida, what is her main profession? : promise a child candy, lead him into an empty front door and take off his felt boots. And Tusya showed how Egorova, with a false smile, lures the child with candy, then, overweight, straining, pulls off his felt boots: "on one foot - for dad, on the other foot - for mom."

Tusya loved to show the Tikhonov spouses - how the husband speaks, speaks, speaks, without a pause, without a break, and the wife waits, accumulates strength, as if swinging on a swing - and suddenly intervenes in his speech with a flourish and speaks, speaks, speaks, and now he waits, flushed with impatience with red blood, when he can interrupt and shake.

The gift of a characteristic actress - like all her talents - did not leave Tusya until the last days. About 10 days before her death, she showed, having hardly sat up on the bed, how Masha, a very stupid sister, should Tusya wander into the bathroom, begins to persuade her, in a corrosive, stupid, stubborn voice:

Tamara Grigorievna, lie down in bed! You would go to bed!

And how she dejectedly answers her friends on the phone to questions about Tusin's health - "Remember the song?" Tusya told me in a weak voice, and with a perfectly Machine intonation she sang:

The poor man died in a military hospital!

And although I fully understood her own position and the complete inappropriateness of this line - I laughed, laughed with her.

* * * - I'm riding the tram today, - Tusya said, - it's crowded, the tram is full. In front of me stands a young lady, very smart, with a hat on the side in the latest fashion, nylon gloves.

The controller enters.

Your ticket, citizen!

Lady, with majestic carelessness, squinting her eyes somewhere to the back of her head:

Citizen in the ass!

And, turning her head half a turn, Tusya majestically stretched her brush over her shoulder. The intonation and gesture were so precise that it seemed to me that I saw a tight glove on her hand, and a pink elegant hat on her hair.

* * * Tusya had a very unusual attitude towards old age, towards aging. If you say about someone you know: "She is very old. She was so pretty, but now there is nothing left," Tusya began to argue: "No, in my opinion, she is still good. Keep in mind that human beauty is very durable thing."

I said that the old faces, in my opinion, are as if erased with a rag - and you don’t guess what they were before, what their charm was, “what they are about.” "Only when you see a young photograph, you will understand: oh, that's what kind of face it was, that's what its charm is."

No, I do not agree, - said Tusya. - On the contrary: only by the age of fifty his hidden beauty, his essence, appears in his face. And in young faces everything is indefinite, elusive, the foundation has not yet emerged.

* * * - Have you noticed that artistic people stay young longer? Artistry, that is, intense spiritual activity, makes you young. People of art are young.

* * * In the spring, I don't know what year, Tusya and I walk out of the editorial office in the evening. I accompany her; we have just crossed Liteiny and are walking along Basseynaya. Talk about love. I say that the absorption of the personality by this feeling weighs and tires me. As for me, I have this kind of mania, very painful.

No, I'm not like that, - says Tusya. - I can not say that I am completely absorbed in any one feeling. I have this: you know, there are chandeliers - if one big lamp is on, then the small ones light up, and if the big one goes out, then the small ones go along with it ... You can also say this: there is one main big feeling - this is the trunk, the trunk of a tree , and branches go from it, thinner in different directions ...

* * * In Leningrad, in the year 1939 or 1940, in a conversation about Mitya, I said that although I know that he is no more, it seems to me that he is alive and only lives somewhere far away from me.

This is probably because I do not believe in his death, - I said to Tusya, - that I did not see him dead.

No, Tusya replied. - Not because. You simply did not know until now that with the death of a person, relations with him do not end.

* * * Tusya edited my latest book, as she edited everything I've ever written. She suggested many examples to me, in particular examples from Panferov. (One evening, having opened the door for me, she met me in the hall with unexpected words: "Do you know, Lidochka, the wolves ate the secretary of the regional committee." for the seventh chapter, telling me about Zolotovsky, about Teki Odulok and prompting me to write the first, semi-fictional chapter. She rejoiced at my book, which is quite natural: after all, it tells about our common life ... But when I told Tusya (already knowing that everything was too late, that my words were just rhetoric), when I told her that she herself should write about editing, about her vast and varied editorial work over the years, she replied:

Maybe I should have... But I would have written differently...

But as? How else?

I would not write a long book, - Tusya answered. - I would try to briefly and accurately formulate what exactly the task was before me regarding each book and each author. I would not narrate, would not describe, but would look for a definition, an exact mathematical formula for each work.

* * * Tusya told me (already in time last illness but when she was still on her feet):

I think a lot about time. About how the flow of time in childhood and youth differs from its current flow - in old age. It makes everything go faster and faster. Remember your childhood. After all, the gymnasium was an eternity, an endless road, as if you were going uphill: slowly, difficultly, for a long time. And in the second half of life, time does not pass, but flies, as if you are running from a mountain, and everything is faster and faster: the blockade, the war, the years after the war - all this is one moment.

* * * Tusya - already in the last year of her life - once said to me:

Now I understand the proverb in a completely different way: "I will solve someone else's misfortune with my hands, but I won't put my mind to my own." Quite different from what it used to understand and how it is generally accepted to understand it. Now I think that this proverb does not have an ironic meaning at all: here, they say, you climb to another with advice when you cannot advise yourself. This is not irony, but a clearly expressed direct observation: in fact, you can almost always help someone else's misfortune if you really want to and think seriously, but not your own ...

How many other people's troubles Tusya spread her hands in her lifetime! We are all accustomed to her catchphrases: let's figure it out, think about it, try it, understand it. Insight and vivid imagination helped her to easily comprehend any life situation, no matter how difficult it was - psychological, everyday, literary - and kindness and courage encouraged her to interfere actively, strongly. She was not afraid to touch with a question, in a word, something that a person did not even tell her; she boldly asked: "Why don't you marry her?" or: "Do you no longer love him?", and never in her mouth such questions were rude, and people, unexpectedly for themselves, sometimes told her secrets that they hid from themselves. She asked with great courage, and listened with all her mind, with all her heart. A person who at least once, in a difficult moment, came to her for advice and help, inevitably became her constant ward: he was no longer able to deny himself the happiness of exposing all his hardships, plans, intentions to the light of her mind and heart. He was drawn there again - to her fearless ingenuity.

As a child, when I was ten years old, I was given a book about wonderful travelers. At that time, I was already free and read a lot. But this book turned out to be too tough for me: oddly enough, I was repulsed by the incomprehensibility of the title. On the cover, against the background of tents, deer and yurts, it was written in two lines:

good will".

"People" separately and "good will" separately ... This confused me, I did not know how to connect them. And reading these words in a row, I did not understand them, the case connections turned out to be too difficult for me: "people" - what? "good will". The leap of incomprehension turned out to be so strong that the simple meaning of the phrase eluded me, and I stubbornly refused to read interesting essays for several years.

I never met a single remarkable traveler in my life, but Tusya was by far the greatest of all people of consciously directed goodwill that I happened to meet.

“We need to consult with Tusya,” each of us, her friends, said when he was overcome by bewilderment, grief, anxiety, when something went wrong in work or in life. And now Tusins ​​calm and keen eyes are already focused on your misfortune; she delves into it with all the power of her mind, drawing on conjecture and experience to help; and now her fast-moving, bold hands are ready to spread your bitter misfortune. You are no longer alone with your troubles. "Let's understand," Tusya says in an energetic, cheerful, sonorous voice. And under the sound of this voice, somehow in a new way expounding to you your own sad circumstances, under the wave of these energetic hands, you begin to understand the true price, the true size and appearance of your misfortune, its hopelessness and the way to overcome it.

Maybe Tusya, more than anything in the world, loved to "shrug someone else's misfortune." This was her calling; here in one knot intertwined - her religion, her kindness, her mind - high and practical at the same time - and her fearlessness. And, strange as it may seem, the artistry of her nature, which allowed her to draw characters and situations from one vague line, guessing the "beginnings and ends" lurking in life.

The most complete expression of Tusya's personality was her voice, which we will never hear again - so rich in shades, sonorous, freely expressing both mockery, and sadness, and seriousness, and anger, and fearlessness, and strength.

As a secular person, as a person devoid of nervousness, irritability, hysteria - Tusya mastered him perfectly. And the worse it was for her, the more affectionate to the other her voice became. When we are in pain, bad, when we are exhausted, our voices sound impatient, irritated. Tusi is the opposite. When I, in the last months of her illness, picked up the phone and heard a response addressed to me, weak and somehow delayed - not from grief, but from tenderness - the answer:

About 25 years ago, in Leningrad, I came to the hospital to take her home after a major operation. I stood at one end of the corridor, and the nurse led her by the arm from the other end. Tusya walked with difficulty, staggering, a little out of breath, and said something to me from a distance - I did not hear the words, they blurred in the corridor rumble - but her voice, through her breath, was full of diligence: I will come, do not be afraid, I will manage.

For 5 days before my death, I stood over her bed and watched her sleep. Suddenly I remembered that she had a thermometer under her arm, and she could crush it in her sleep. I quietly pulled it out - she woke up. I lit the lamp and held the thermometer up to the light.

Put it out, Lidochka, - said Tusya, - because your eye hurts, - you can’t look at the light.

___________________________________________

Notes

I thank Josephine Oskarovna Khavkina, Lidia Korneevna's assistant of many years, for her help in preparing this publication.

_______________________________________________________

1 It's about about "Excerpts from a Poem", see Lydia Chukovskaya. Works in 2 vols. T. 2, p. 315.

2 Grigory Iosifovich Mishkevich, editor-in-chief of the Leningrad branch of Detizdat in the mid-1930s. For more on him and his ugly role in the destruction of the publishing house, see: Lidia Chukovskaya. Notes about Anna Akhmatova. T. 1. M., 1996, p. 297-300.

3 Preis - Liya Yakovlevna Preis (pseudo: Elena Ilyina, 1901-1964), writer, sister of S.Ya. Marshak, and her husband Ilya Isaakovich Preis (d. 1958), a philosopher.

4 M. Bulatov, children's writer, in his processing, fairy tales of different peoples were printed.

5 "Iosif Izrailevich Ginzburg (1901-1945), engineer, was arrested for being indignant at the pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany in the presence of colleagues. This was before Hitler's attack on Soviet Union. But in the fate of a man arrested for anti-fascism, the attack of the Nazis on the USSR did not change anything. He remained in the camp and died near Karaganda, working during the flood on the dam.

6 Petr Ivanovich Chagin (1898-1967), director of Goslitizdat (1939-1946); Alexander Nikolaevich Tikhonov (Serebrov) (1880-1956), publisher.

7 You can't take a minute away from Miklukha. - OK. worked on an essay on Miklukh-Maclay and edited his diary for the Young Guard. The brochure "Lydia Chukovskaya. N.N. Miklukho-Maclay" was published in the series "Russian Travelers" in the State Publishing House of Geographical Literature (M., 1948, 1950, 1952, 1954). About the book in the "Young Guard" see note. 12.

8 Alexander Sergeevich Myasnikov (b. 1913), editor-in-chief of Goslitizdat in 1941-1947; in 1949-1953 - member of the editorial board and head of the department of literature and art of the magazine "Communist". Author of articles and brochures on social issues. realism, partisanship and nationality.

9 Iliny - M. Ilyin (real name and surname Ilya Yakovlevich Marshak, 1895-1953), children's writer, younger brother S.Ya. Marshak) and his wife E. Segal (real name and surname: Elena Aleksandrovna Marshak, 1905-1980), children's writer, wife and co-author of M. Ilyina.

10 Wolf Messing, famous hypnotist.

11 Grigory Karpovich Kotoshikhin (c. 1630-1667), clerk of the Ambassadorial Department. In 1664 he fled to the Commonwealth, in 1666 - to Sweden. By order of the Swedish government, he wrote an essay about Russia. Executed for the murder of the owner of the house in which he lived.

12 Ivan Vladimirovich Sergeev (d. 1964), publishing editor of The Young Guard, for whom L.K. prepared a book: N.N. Miklukho Maclay. Travel / Articles, editorial and notes by Lidia Chukovskaya. - M., 1947.

13 Boris Alexandrovich Shatilov (1896-1955), writer.

14 Susanna - Susanna Mikhailovna Georgievskaya (1916-1974), writer. One of her books was edited by T.G. Gabbe.

15 Vanya - Ivan Ignatievich Khalturin (1902-1969), editor of children's magazines and compiler of books for children. An old friend of L.K. and T.G. since Leningrad times. He and his wife V.V. Smirnova lived in a dacha next door to Tamara Grigorievna.

16 Isai Arkadyevich Rakhtanov (1907-1979), writer.

17 Fridina Sasha is the little daughter of Frida Vigdorova.

18 Sofia Mikhailovna - wife of S.Ya. Marshak.

19 Vera Vasilievna - Smirnova (1898-1977), critic, wife of I.I. Khalturin.

20 Lyubov Emmanuilovna - Lyubarskaya, doctor, aunt of Alexandra Iosifovna Lyubarskaya.

21 Iosif Abramovich Kassirsky (1898-1971), therapist, academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

22 Yuri Nikolaevich - Petrov, artist, employee of the Leningrad Detizdat.

23 Nikolai Leonidovich Stepanov (1902-1972), literary critic.

24 Konstantin Fedotovich Piskunov (1905-1981), director of the Moscow publishing house "Children's Literature" (1948-1974).

25 Alexander Terentyevich Kononov (1895-1957), writer, author of Stories about Lenin.

Tamara G. Gabbe(1903-1960) - Russian Soviet writer, translator, folklorist, playwright, editor and literary critic. Author of popular fairy-tale plays for children (“The City of Masters, or The Tale of Two Hunchbacks”, “Avdotya-Ryazanochka”, “Crystal Slipper”, “Tin Rings” (“Magic Rings of Almanzor”), etc.).

Biography

Tamara Gabbe was born on March 16, 1903 in the family of a military doctor Grigory Mikhailovich and his wife Evgenia Samoilovna. In the late 1920s, she lived in Leningrad and worked as an editor for the children's department of the State Publishing House, which was headed by S. Ya. Marshak.

In 1937, the editorial office of the Leningrad Detizdat was destroyed and ceased to exist. Some employees (including L.K. Chukovskaya) were fired, others, including Tamara Gabbe, were arrested. In 1938 she was released.

During the Great Patriotic War, she remained in besieged Leningrad, where she lost her home and loved ones. For seven years she was a nurse at the bedside of her terminally ill mother.

After the war she lived in Moscow. In recent years, she has been terminally ill. She died March 2, 1960.

Buried in Moscow Novodevichy cemetery(plot No. 5) together with his mother E. S. Gabbe-Gurevich and stepfather S. M. Gurevich (the author of the monument on the grave is M. R. Gabbe).

Creation

She was engaged in folklore, the most significant work in this area is the book “False and fiction. Russian folk tales, legends, parables”, which was published posthumously in 1966 in Novosibirsk with two afterwords - by S. Marshak and V. Smirnova. Earlier (also posthumously) the collection “On the Roads of a Fairy Tale” was published (co-authored with A. Lyubarskaya, M., 1962). During the life of Tamara Grigoryevna, in her translations and retellings, French folk tales, Perrault's tales, Andersen's tales, the Brothers Grimm, as well as Gulliver's Travels by J. Swift were repeatedly published.

Editor of the novel "Students" by Yuri Trifonov, for which the latter received the Stalin Prize of the 3rd degree.

Plays

• 1941 - The Crystal Slipper, a dramatic tale in four acts
• 1943 - "The City of Masters, or a Tale of Two Hunchbacks", a performance in four acts
• 1946 - "Avdotya Ryazanochka", a dramatic tale in four acts and six scenes
• 1946 - "Crystal Slipper" (option for amateur performances)
• 1948 - "Further Follow", a comedy in one act
• 1950 - "The City of Masters, or the Tale of the Two Hunchbacks" (option for amateur performances)
• 1953 - "Tin Rings" ("The Magic Rings of Almanzor"), a fairy tale-comedy in four acts.
• 1953 - “The Piper from Strakonice” (I.K. Tyl. A fairy tale play in three acts. Translation from Czech and a new stage version by T. Gabbe, F. Daniel, B. Metalnikova)
• 1958 - "The Tale of a Soldier and a Snake", a performance in four acts and eleven scenes

Screenplays

• 1958 - "Fulfillment of desires" (based on the fairy tale "Zerbino the Unsociable" by E. Laboulet)

Memory

The image and work of T. G. Gabbe are devoted to the chapter from the essay by E. L. Schwartz “The Phone Book”, the article by S. Ya. Marshak “How old is the fairy tale?” (“Theatre”, 1961. No. 12), prepared by E. Ts. Chukovskaya, publication of excerpts from the diaries of L. K. Chukovskaya “In Memory of Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe” (“Znamya”, 2001. No. 5).

In 2010, the Kultura TV channel aired a program about Tamara Gabba "The Sorceress from the City of Masters" in the author's cycle "Childhood Writers" by Sergei Dmitrenko (directed by Andrey Sudilovsky).

Some productions

• 1944 - "City of Masters", Central children's theater(staged by L. A. Volkov, V. S. Kolesaev) (The Stalin Prize of the Second Degree for 1943-1944 in 1946 for the performance was awarded to the directors, the performer of the role of Caracol I. D. Voronov, the performer of the role of Duke de Malicorne M. S. Neumann, T. G. Gabbe was mentioned in the decision on the award of prizes as the author of the play, but was not awarded).
• 1951 - "City of Masters" (Latvian. "Meistaru pilsta") was staged at the Riga Youth Theater in Latvian - (dir. Vavere A.; scene. Mikelsons R.)
• 1959 - "The Magic Rings of Almanzor", Moscow academic theater Satires (staged by O. Solius).
• 1959 - "Crystal Slipper" ("Cinderella"), Kaluga Regional Drama Theater (starring P. G. Vaneeva, L. M. Filyakina, E. P. Khavrichev).
• 1960 - "The Tale of the Soldier and the Snake", Oryol Regional Drama Theater (starring V. M. Avdeev, V. S. Burkhart).
• 2006 - "The Magic Rings of Almanzor", Saratov Academic Theater for Young Spectators named after Yu. P. Kiselev (staged by A. Ya. Solovyov).
• 2012 - "The Magic Rings of Almanzor", Theater of Youth Creativity (staged by D. V. Lavrov)

Screen adaptations

• 1965 - City of Masters (Belarusfilm, dir. Vladimir Bychkov)
• 1977 - Rings of Almanzor (film studio named after M. Gorky, dir. Igor Voznesensky)
• 1983 - Tin rings (Leningrad television, dir. Gleb Selyanin)

Scenarios

• 1957 - Fulfillment of desires (Soyuzmultfilm, dir. V. and Z. Brumberg) - the script for the cartoon based on the fairy tale by Eduard Laboulet "Zerbino the Unsociable".

Tamara G. Gabbe

City of masters. Fairy tale plays

CITY OF MASTERS

CHARACTERS

The Duke de Malicorne is the viceroy of a foreign king who has captured the City of Masters.

Guillaume Gottschalk, nicknamed Big Guillaume, is the Duke's adviser.

Nanasse Moucheron the Elder - foreman of the workshop of jewelers and watchmakers, burgomaster of the city.

Nanass Moucheron the Younger, nicknamed "Klik-Klyak", is his son.

Master Firen the Elder is the foreman of the gold embroidery workshop.

Firen the Younger is his son.

Veronica is his daughter.

Master Martin, nicknamed "Little Martin", is the foreman of the armory.

Master Timolle - foreman of the cutting shop.

Timolle the Lesser is his grandson.

Master Ninosh - foreman of the cake shop.

Gilbert, nicknamed Caracol, is a sweeper.

Grandma Tafaro is an old fortune teller.

Traders:

Mother Marley‚

Aunt Mimil

Veronica's friends:

Margarita.

One-eyed man.

Lapiders, gunsmiths, shoemakers and other inhabitants of the City of Masters.

Armored men and bodyguards of the viceroy.

The curtain is down. It depicts the coat of arms of the fabulous city. In the middle of the shield, on a silver field, a maned lion clutches a snake that has entangled him in his claws. In the upper corners of the shield are the heads of a hare and a bear. Below, under the feet of the lion, is a snail that has stuck its horns out of its shell.

A lion and a bear come out from behind a curtain on the right. A hare and a snail appear on the left.

BEAR. Do you know what will be presented today?

ZAYATSZ. Now I'll take a look. I have a flyer with me. Well, what is written there? City of Masters, or the Tale of Two Hunchbacks.

BEAR. About two hunchbacks? So it's about people. Why, then, have we been called here?

A LION. Dear bear, you talk like a three-month-old bear cub! Well, what's so amazing? It's a fairy tale, isn't it? And what kind of fairy tale does without us, animals? Take me: in my lifetime I have been in so many fairy tales that it is difficult to count them - at least in a thousand and one. It's true, and today there is a role for me, even the smallest one, and for you too. No wonder they painted us all on the curtain! Look for yourself: this is me, this is you, and this is a snail and a hare. Maybe we are not too similar here, but even more beautiful than on the grandfather. And it's worth something!

HARE. You're right. Here it is impossible to demand complete similarity. The drawing on the coat of arms is not a portrait, and certainly not a photograph. For example, it doesn't bother me at all that in this image I have one ear in gold and the other in silver. I even like it. I'm proud of it. Agree yourself - not every hare manages to get on the city coat of arms.

BEAR. Far from everyone. In all my life, it seems, I have never seen either hares or snails on coats of arms. Here are eagles, leopards, deer, bears - sometimes such an honor falls out. And there is nothing to say about the lion - for him this is a common thing. That's why he's a lion!

A LION. Well, be that as it may, we all occupy a worthy place on this shield, and I hope that we will find a place in today's presentation.

BEAR. There is only one thing I cannot understand: what will the snail do on the stage? In the theater they sing, play, dance, talk, but, as far as I know, the snail can neither dance, nor sing, nor speak.

snail (pokes its head out of its shell). Everyone speaks in their own way. Don't just listen.

BEAR. Tell me, I've spoken! Why were you silent for so long?

SNAIL. Waiting for the right opportunity. In today's performance, I have the biggest role.

HARE. More of my role?

SNAIL. More.

BEAR. And longer than mine?

SNAIL. Much longer.

A LION. And more important than mine?

SNAIL. Perhaps. I can say without false modesty - in this performance I have the main role, although I will not participate in it at all and will never even appear on stage.

BEAR. Is that how it is?

Snail (slowly and calmly). Very simple. I will explain to you now, the fact is that in our area the snail is called "Karakol". And from us this nickname passed to those people who, like us, have been carrying a heavy burden on their shoulders for a century. Just count how many times this word "Karakol" will be repeated today, then you will see who got the most honorable place in today's performance.

A LION. Why are you so honored?

SNAIL. And for the fact that I, so small, can lift more weight than myself. Here, you big beasts, try to carry on your back a house that is bigger than you, and at the same time do your job, and not complain to anyone, and maintain peace of mind.

A LION. Yes, it hasn't crossed my mind until now.

SNAIL. So it always happens. You live, you live and suddenly you learn something new.

BEAR. Well, now it’s completely impossible to understand what kind of performance it will be, what this fairy tale is about! That is, I understand, I am an old theatrical bear, but the public probably does not understand anything.

SNAIL. Well, we'll tell her, and then we'll show her. Listen, dear guests!

We got off today
From the city coat of arms
To tell you about
Like in our city
The fight was raging
Like two hunchbacks
Fate judged
But the first hunchback
There was a hunchback without a hump,
And the second was a hunchback
With a hump.

When it was?
Which side?

It's wise to say this:
Both numbers and letters
On our wall
Long gone from time.

But if from time to time
The carving has worn off
The years couldn't erase
A story where there is both love and struggle,
Where people and animals from the coat of arms met -
And a hare, and a lion, and a bear.

STEP ONE

Picture one

Early morning. Square of the old town. All windows and doors are still closed. You can’t see the inhabitants, but you can guess who lives here by the guild coats of arms and signs: there is a pretzel flaunting over the shoemaker’s window in a huge shoe; a skein of golden yarn and a huge needle indicate the home of a gold seamstress. In the depths of the square - the gates of the castle. An armored man with a halberd stands motionless in front of them. Against the castle rises an old statue depicting the founder of the city and the first foreman of the weapons workshop - Big Martin. On Martin's belt is a sword, in his hands is a blacksmith's hammer. On the square, except for the sentry, only one person. This is the hunchback Gilbert, nicknamed "Caracol", - a sweeper. He is young, moves easily and swiftly, despite his hump. His face is cheerful and beautiful. He handles the hump as if it were a familiar burden that does little to hinder him. Several colorful feathers are stuck into his hat. The jacket is decorated with a branch of a blossoming apple tree. Caracol sweeps the square and sings.