The Gate of Moment Part Two

  "What are you thinking about?" someone asked him. But Mark didn't answer; he was staring intently at a point. It grew every second, turning into a large black hole around which an ocean raged, flooding all remaining space, the darkening, gloomy sky. "Here they are, the gates!" Mark realized. "The name is written above: 'Moments', where two paths collide — the past and the future."

He heard the voice again:
"Enter these gates, my friend, and the question of everything: 'Do you want this again and again, countless times?' will weigh heavily on all your actions. If you say 'yes' to joy, you will also say 'yes' to all sorrows. Everything is interconnected..."

And Mark entered that space.


Chapter 1.

Mark's father's parental home, where they settled after moving, was in Kashgarka. It was a typical old district of a Central Asian city, with clay fences and houses. The windows of the houses faced only the inner courtyards, where it smelled of latrines and grass didn't grow because it was traditionally uprooted to leave the ground bare. Every morning, a young Uzbek woman swept the yard. Immediately after waking up, she usually covered her face with her hand as she was supposed to be ashamed of sleeping with her husband at night. So before starting her routine of sweeping the yard, she had to wash.

In these courtyards, trees grew, creating shade where topchans, covered with carpets and bolster pillows, were laid. Topchans were Uzbek table-beds where people reclined during meals or when receiving dear guests.

The age of Tashkent, as this city was called, where they moved to live, was over two thousand years. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was part of the Russian Empire, a province where high-ranking nobles who were displeasing to the royal family were exiled. For instance, Nikolai Konstantinovich Romanov, the grandson of Emperor Nicholas I, ended up in Tashkent.

Here, in the sunny land with fertile soil, an abundance of fruits, and rich wheat harvests from which rosy flatbreads were baked, many celebrities found temporary refuge. Some were exiled by the Bolshevik government after the 1917 revolution. Some fled from hunger, cold, others — from World War II. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian writer in exile and future Nobel laureate — an outstanding "Russian imperialist," nationalist, and anti-Semite, was treated in Tashkent for cancer. He wrote a famous novel about the suffering of his people in communist prisons and camps, revealing the crimes of Joseph Stalin. Solzhenitsyn, by the will of fate, became a victim of the communist regime, while Stalin, also an "imperialist," became a dictator and tyrant. Another Nobel laureate, Joseph Brodsky, a highly talented poet but with a rather vile soul, also visited Tashkent.

For some time, Konstantin Simonov, a Russian novelist, poet, and playwright with outstanding talents, lived in Tashkent. He told people the whole truth about the Patriotic War. Thanks to his efforts and contacts in literary circles, the world learned about Mikhail Bulgakov's immortal work "The Master and Margarita." However, Simonov himself did not heed the Master's wise advice given to the poet Ivan Bezdomny in this novel. The advice was: "Don't write anymore!" As a result, Simonov had to become a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda — part of the large Bolshevik lie and persecute writers who truly depicted the whole truth.

This city was visited by people with great talent and great soul — poet Sergei Yesenin, poetess Anna Akhmatova, director Solomon Mikhoels. People from all republics of the Soviet Union came here in search of warmth and bread, and some peoples, such as the Crimean Tatars and Germans, were forcibly exiled to these regions by Joseph Stalin.

This city also exiled former aristocrats and their descendants who failed to emigrate abroad. Former bourgeois, capital owners, and private property owners, that is, enemies of the people, also found themselves here.

But the main population of Kashgarka, where Mark's family settled, consisted of Ashkenazi Jews, immigrants from Ukraine and Belarus. They fled to the warm, bread-rich lands of Central Asia from pogroms, hunger, and poverty. Kashgarka somewhat resembled the poor districts of Odessa — chaotic, neglected courtyards, old sagging balconies, local quarrels, and scandals. It was also known for Jewish humor and Yiddish jargon, poverty, and the high intelligence of most of its inhabitants.

In such an exotic Uzbek-Jewish place, which arose where the Great Silk Road from China to Europe passed in the second century BC, Mark spent several years of early childhood.

Mark often visited Lusik, his elderly and incredibly overweight relative. Lusik lived with his Jewish mother, who loved him immensely, and his sixteen-year-old son Emanuel. His mother separated Lusik from his wife so she wouldn't get in their way. As they said in Odessa, "she moved their happiness."

Uncle Lusik, however, was not upset about this and was content with other joys. For example, he loved to eat deliciously. Mama Sonya cooked Jewish dishes well, and "stomach" happiness was always a celebration for him. Possessing an extraordinary intellect, Lusik, having finally broken off with women, enjoyed spiritual values. A feast for his soul was reading books, newspapers, and everything he could find in the Soviet press with its ruthless communist censorship. He had unique encyclopedic knowledge, and it was incredibly interesting to talk to him. Mark often went up to the second floor where Lusik sat on an old dirty balcony among scattered newspapers and books and left enriched with interesting facts, intellectual discoveries, and impressions of what he heard about poets, writers, composers, politicians, unusual people, or interesting historical events. Lusik was visited simply to chat, to talk about this and that by ordinary youth — school friends of his son Emanuel. Lusik attracted not only with his unique erudition but also with his ability to love those around him, sincere interest in them, attention without which you can't even communicate with pets.

When Mark visited him, the incredibly fat Lusik, delighted, would get up heavily from his chair, greet the guest, and then loudly and admiringly quote one of Mark's childhood statements about girls: "I hate girls! They are worse than Hitler and the Tsar!" So, Mark once declared to him. In this confession, Lusik was most amused and delighted by the comparison with the Tsar as a negative image. Being a very educated person, he understood all the stupidity and obscurantism of communist propaganda that even affected children's imagination. Considering his attitude towards the female sex, Mark's first impression of women sounded like wonderful music to him. "How beautifully said!" he repeated, laughing. "And exactly — worse than the Tsar!"

In this Uzbek mahalla, all the Jews knew each other. On the shabby narrow streets where Mark ran with local kids, old Jews often met him and, seeing little Mark, shouted to everyone: "Ah, this is Yosef's son!" An unfamiliar Uzbek woman, passing by, could lovingly pinch Mark's plump pink cheeks, as healthy and well-fed Jewish children have. You could observe an old Uzbek who unexpectedly spread a small rug in the middle of the road and began to pray right on the sidewalk. You often heard the cries of a junk dealer: "Old things, buy!" But the children especially liked when an old Uzbek with a long white beard, looking like a character from Persian tales, came in a cart drawn by a donkey, selling oriental sweets and exchanging them for empty bottles.

Yosef's father, Grandpa Arkady, who had long dreamed of a grandson, was now happy. He spent all his free time with little Mark, walking through the streets of Kashgarka and proudly showing his beloved grandson to acquaintances. Old Jews, shuffling along dirty sidewalks in house slippers, always greeted him with joy and special warmth. Everyone knew Arkady as a courageous and noble man who went through the entire war. He was externally handsome and physically very strong. But a head wound during the war did not go unnoticed — after a severe illness, Grandpa Arkady died, not having enjoyed communicating with his grandson.

Many years after Mark left this ancient district of old Tashkent, where he spent carefree time in childish pranks, Kashgarka would disappear from the face of the earth. A powerful earthquake would destroy the city, and the epicenter would be here, under this legendary place where the Kashgar Gates stood in past centuries, through which caravans entered the city from China. And where, in the twentieth century, the local Uzbek population sheltered those fleeing hunger, cold, and poverty — the "happy" citizens of the great communist country. The country of victors!

Over time, the people, inhabitants of this exotic place, will disappear too. The country — the great power that united citizens into a communist march to the happiness of all peoples on earth will also disappear. And these peoples will scatter to their ancestral lands, and they will hate each other, and they will turn to wars and barbarism, destroying all hopes for happiness, equality, and brotherhood. Obscurantists and liars will replace communists. And Satan will reign there!

But all this is yet to come! And now little Mark with his parents moved to another district of the city, where mainly Russian proletarians lived, in all their splendor and diversity. The "hegemon" that dominated during the revolutionary class struggle of 1917. Among them lived the descendants of former bourgeois and aristocracy exiled to these places. As a rule, it was a more educated stratum of society. For all, there was a huge yard the size of a stadium, with tall trees and lush green vegetation. People from simple families lived in houses with their small courtyards and toilets in the corner of the common yard. And the descendants of the aristocracy lived in a newly built four-story house with all conveniences and high ceilings, as they were built in Stalin's time. Large terraces were entwined with grapevines, the fruits of which could be enjoyed.

The common people treated their intelligent neighbors with respect, dreaming that their children would become equally educated. However, in the depths of their souls, they disliked them. The descendants of the former aristocracy treated simple people with some contempt. However, the residents of the large yard successfully coexisted, and the communist idea of equality and brotherhood temporarily united everyone into one big family, despite each having their own family history, traditions, material and intellectual capabilities. And most importantly, their unique genetic potential, a phenomenon not yet fully appreciated by science.

Here nine-year-old Mark walks in the yard. Neighbor girl Lyudmila approaches him. She asks Mark to talk to his mother: "Could I wash the floors in your house? We have no money, nothing to eat at home. Father drinks away his entire salary." Mark conveys her request to his parents, but they shrug and say: "What can be done for this family if their father is a chronic drunkard? And our floors are clean."

Mark spends the entire day running around the yard with Russian kids from humble and low-income families. Their parents work hard at the factory. They work as carpenters, locksmiths, laborers, drivers. Although many fathers often come home tipsy after work, the myth of universal Russian drunkenness is unfair. The children are very worried and embarrassed about their drinking parents, while the non-drinkers, in turn, despise neighbors who drink themselves into a state of degradation. Yes, exactly — degradation! Proletarians respect themselves, despite limited material and intellectual resources. Communist ideology supports their confidence that "poverty is not a vice," but rather a virtue.

Once among the children loitering around the yard, the conversation turned to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Someone explained that Lenin considered the poor the masters of life. Then little Petya, the brother of Lyudmila, who sought to earn a bit of money by washing floors, proudly said: "And we are poor!" And thereby he respected himself even more, despite the constant feeling of hunger. Mark was ashamed at the time that he lived in material prosperity: his mother was a doctor, his father a teacher.

But an even more serious accusation he often heard directed at him: "You are not only Jewish but also Armenian — the worst of the worst," Mark accepted this rebuke as deserved and didn't particularly worry about it. After all, his mother was indeed Armenian, and his father an Ashkenazi Jew.

But the neighbor in the yard Nyuska Penzina, a drunken forty-year-old woman, when she was drunk, and she was always drunk, yelled at little Mark: "You salty Yid! Fat-assed Armenian!"

And one day, when Mark was visiting his beloved relative, he asked him: "Uncle Lusik, what does 'salty Yid' mean? Drunk Nyuska always calls me that." Lusik's delight was indescribable! He couldn't stop laughing and exclaimed: "How brilliantly said! This is folk art. Only the Russian folk genius in a state of intoxication could come up with something like that!" Then Lusik explained to little Mark that Armenians are Orthodox but baptize their children in saltwater. However, this didn't stop Lusik from continuing to laugh.

And Nyuska Penzina didn't calm down. Mark's father was very popular with women because he was a handsome man. When Nyuska, always drunk, saw him in the large yard, she shouted: "I will rape you someday, Yosef. I'll corner you somewhere and rape you." All this was also part of the humor that, like rays of sunshine, illuminated the communal life in the large yard when everyone was young, cheerful, and full of hope. Even in this strange socialist experiment of equality and brotherhood, there was something that impressed and inspired.

Once, Mark accidentally found a collection of classical music records at Uncle Yakov's house, his mother's brother. Yakov's wife, Tamara, was a musicologist, and he was an engineer but had graduated from a vocal studio at the conservatory and even sang in the opera. Uncle Yakov often warmed up in the toilet — there was no other place, as his parents, wife, and young daughter all lived together in a three-room apartment. Their family was intelligent in every way, sharply contrasting with the proletarian contingent of the large yard. Mark enjoyed listening to records for hours when everyone was at work, and only the housemaid, a simpleton Lyubasha, was at home.

One day, Mark was sorting through records and playing excerpts. Suddenly, he froze, struck by a short musical theme of a few notes. He continued listening and was so captivated by the development of the motif that he listened to all parts of the symphony to the end. Mark fell in love with Beethoven's music, and later the music of other great composers, and this passion for classical music stayed with him forever.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony changed his life, which seemed largely meaningless to him in the environment of communist ideology that didn't meet his childhood and youthful expectations. He felt that life should unfold before him like a tulip, and the music of composers from past centuries, not bearing the imprint of dirty proletarian hands, led Mark into its rich, genuine world, where he could immerse himself in true creativity and separate himself from universal dullness and obscurantism.

Once Mark asked his beloved Uncle Lusik which profession he liked most.
Lusik thought for a moment. And said:
"All professions are a yoke!"
"And your profession?" Mark asked.
Lusik taught economics at the university.
"Also a yoke," he replied.
"What about an engineer?"
"An engineer is a yoke too."
To any of Mark's questions, Lusik answered: "A yoke."
"But a composer is not a yoke," Lusik suddenly said.
And Mark thought... This conversation seemed to determine his future path in many ways.

The music school where little Mark was accepted to study was located in the Lenin Pioneers Palace. It was not a fake "palace," as envious communists liked to call simple buildings intended for the leisure of pioneers, but a real palace, built in Art Nouveau style and reminiscent of the era of powerful rulers of the Ottoman Empire — a one-story mansion of Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich Romanov, exiled by the royal family from Petersburg and residing in Tashkent since 1881.

Around the beautiful mansion was a park with tall old oaks and fountains. Huge stone frogs surrounded small pools and, spouting streams of water from their mouths, filled them. Mark often sat astride these frogs and then bathed in the pool. Sometimes he collected acorns falling from the branched oaks or watched athletes who regularly trained in this park.

One day, Mark joined a group of running athletes warming up before training, using boxing equipment. They were all well-built.
Their coach, with a huge hooked nose and incredibly short stature, looked at Mark, who, with a thick rear end and plump cheeks, awkwardly ran after them, and sternly warned him: "If you bother us, we might hang you by your bottom."
Mark fondly remembered this comical episode, as he later learned that the hook-nosed coach who threatened him was none other than the legendary Sydney Lvovich Jackson, the champion of America in boxing. Born into a poor Jewish family in New York, he was raised in kosher traditions and even knew Yiddish. By a fateful coincidence, he ended up in Turkestan in 1916 and couldn't return home. He created the famous national school of Uzbek boxing and became an honored coach of the USSR.

This story sounds so fantastic that it's hard to believe it. The lightweight champion of America, Sydney Jackson, an American Jew, by the will of fate became a Soviet citizen and founder of the Uzbek boxing school, considered one of the strongest in the world.

Mark had many interesting and vivid memories of the palace. In summer, it opened as a pioneer camp — children slept right on the floor made of expensive wood, running barefoot with dirty feet through the rooms and halls decorated with incredibly beautiful oriental mosaics. Elegant Byzantine-style stained-glass windows with intricate patterns, floral motifs, and the use of gold and bright colors created an impression of luxury.

Before his death, the prince left a document stating that the palace, with all its contents, was bequeathed to the "beloved city of Tashkent."
The proletarians and their children took great pleasure in possessing such a valuable legacy of great culture from past centuries. However, this right was won by their grandfathers and expressed in the communist doctrine of "take," "divide," and "everything should belong to the people."
But over time, when Uzbekistan left the communist empire and returned to its national thousand-year traditions of feudalism, more specific and caring owners appeared for this palace. They turned it into a museum and began to carefully guard it.
But this will happen in the future, in the distant future. And at a time when everything still belonged to the people when after Stalin's death they no longer shot enemies of the people and party demagogues acquired somewhat human faces, the country experienced a flourishing semblance of democracy. The only period of warming when there were no wars and almost all the commandments of Moses were fulfilled to the "accompaniment" of the Communist Party Manifesto. Literature, cinema, music — all forms of art sang of humanism, equality, and justice concerning the Soviet person.
It was an "island in time" that many would remember as a truly happy period of Soviet life. For before that, there was a raging "ocean of time," filled with revolutions, repressions, wars, famine, and the trampling of human rights. And after this relatively happy and short period came a time of the rise of obscurantism and barbarism. Practices of "burning witches at the stake" and belief that the Earth is flat were revived. "Kremlin packs" and "wild terrorist gangs" roamed the planet.
But little Mark was fortunate to live precisely in that time which he later, many years later, recalled as a kind of earthly paradise behind the barbed wire of socialism. He had everything necessary for childhood happiness, and he began to engage in music, which enchanted him after acquaintance with the works of Beethoven and Grieg.

The classrooms of the music school where Mark studied were located in the building of the former stables belonging to Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich, the owner of the palace. And in the palace itself, group events or choir classes were held, which Mark couldn't stand. He was placed with a highly experienced piano teacher — Berta Yakovlevna. She made him sing while playing the instrument, which he disliked. In general, she thought that Mark had no musical talent and often set as an example a talented neighboring orphan boy who studied with her. That boy had no instrument due to poverty and often ran to her, asking: "Aunt Berta, can I practice on your instrument?"
And little Mark was ashamed that he had everything but wasn't as talented.
"Why teach him music?" Berta Yakovlevna, the most experienced teacher in the school, asked his parents. There was a moment when Mark, despite his love for music, threatened to burn the home piano. But his mother insisted on continuing his studies; she was a pediatrician by profession but understood and loved classical music very much. She often sang arias from operas, as did her musical brother, Uncle Yakov, who warmed up in the toilet.
Eventually, Mark was transferred to another, less experienced teacher — Natalia Mikhailovna Nadezhdina. And a miracle happened! Mark began to study with pleasure and even compose small musical pieces, and at exams, his bright musicality in piano playing was noted. However, it should be noted that his passion for serious music was not always supported by his natural abilities, necessary for full realization as a talented performer. He listened to records with recordings of compositions by great composers for hours, imagining himself as either a conductor or a performer. It was like unrequited love of a short and not very attractive young man for a tall and beautiful girl who needs a suitable guy. The young man knows that with his physical data, he won't win her heart, and is simply happy that he can love her.
This discrepancy, this human drama with which God "rewarded" people, permeates all times, all epochs, and all conflicts.
But love and passion sometimes work wonders and realize themselves, breaking through in a different path, like streams of water in rocks.
For example, the love of the Italian poet of the Middle Ages Dante Alighieri for Beatrice Portinari, with whom he could not be together. To this woman, whom Dante Alighieri loved all his life and even after her death, he dedicated the "Divine Comedy." Perhaps he wanted to be with her, to unite with her at least in his imaginary world. This love created his immortal literary masterpiece, in which even hell "is created by the highest power, the fullness of all knowledge, and the first love."
Yes! The possibilities of love are inexhaustible! But the impossibility of realizing one's passion due to natural physiological shortcomings sometimes leads a person either to a feat or to a crime.
Mark believed in his star, and this naive illusion led him in the right direction. Naive illusions, despite their dramatic nature, often work wonders, like various religious beliefs that have preserved civilization and life on the planet.
Even unfulfilled dreams and hopes can have a positive influence and lead to unexpected results. Mark remained in such a state for many years. It was very dangerous, but some divine force protected him from personal catastrophe. Thanks to illusions, his life in this obscurantist society was more meaningful with motives and goals.

Natalia Mikhailovna, Mark's new teacher, was a very intelligent woman with a kind heart. She was the wife of the famous composer Boris Borisovich Nadezhdin, who made a significant contribution to the formation of the composer school in Tashkent. For his great merits, one of the city's music schools was named in his honor.
In general, the formation of musical culture in Uzbekistan under the influence of European musical traditions occurred quite unexpectedly. It was one of the rare but historically significant successes of the ideology of the communist regime.
After the Great Patriotic War, many outstanding cultural and art figures who were evacuated from Leningrad and other cities occupied by the Germans remained to live and work in Tashkent. In sunny and bread-rich lands, one could survive, create, and continue pedagogical activities, thereby preserving the valuable creative heritage of the European school and introducing it into the national cultures of Eastern countries. This marked the beginning of the flourishing of musical art in Uzbekistan and throughout Central Asia, which brought many interesting creative discoveries to the world.
Nevertheless, the "Marxist hairy paw of the communists" lay on this area of intellectual development of society, especially controlling and suppressing composer innovations and modernist styles. Innovations in classical music were not welcomed: they were considered the harmful influence of the West. Therefore, Mark was inspired by good old traditions, composing musical pieces that his friends liked.
He enjoyed visiting the Nadezhdins' home, where Natalia Mikhailovna engaged him in music.
Boris Borisovich usually had lunch at that time and sometimes, unintentionally listening to Mark playing scales with mistakes, joked: "He gets something like C-sharp flat major."
They had a large green yard where Mark loved to spend time with the youngest son of the Nadezhdins, Igor, who also composed music and was already studying composition with famous professors. Once Mark showed him his compositions, and Igor liked them. "There is both meaning and imagery in this music," Igor praised. "You see, you have above-average abilities," Natalia Mikhailovna rejoiced, encouraging Mark.
She always tried to create a positive aura around herself, her family, and her students. Their home was filled with intelligence and nobility, rooted in the aristocratic traditions of Russian families of the nineteenth century when European culture dominated in Russia. Thanks to this, masterpieces of Russian national art were created — painting, music, and literature.

Once after a lesson, Mark played chess with Igor in the yard where lilacs and cherries grew. A boy passed by them, seemingly unnoticed, silently. Mark looked at Igor questioningly, and he smiled: "This is my older brother Boris. We have only Borises in the family for centuries," Igor laughed. "He is preparing to enter the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, studying all day and completely absorbed in his passion — physics."
Boris, the eldest son in the Nadezhdin family, was very determined, always busy, and paid no attention to those around him.
Mark had to remember this modest, always self-absorbed youth many years later. It was a period of obscurantism in Russia, a period of the destruction of Russian civilization. Boris Nadezhdin, the son of that very Boris, with whose brother Igor Mark was friends in childhood, was a well-known political leader of one of the democratic parties and ran as a candidate for the presidency of Russia, and many Russians associated his surname with "hope." He tried to stop the "sliding avalanche of obscurantism" that had accumulated over the years of Soviet power. But the avalanche of socialist scum began to bury all of Russia, and it was already impossible to stop it. Nevertheless, Russian human rights activists in the West believed that politician Nadezhdin was a hidden prot;g; of the Kremlin and did not trust him. But Mark believed! He remembered his family — that aristocratic spirit polished by centuries-old traditions. He understood that it was from such families that the Russian intelligentsia would one day revive Russia and its spiritual values. Mark remembered his teacher Natalia Nadezhdina.
Many years later, various events of the past came to life in his memories, and the question arose: what of all this has the greatest value? Success in career and creativity, meetings with bright and talented people, romantic love adventures, or other significant events? No! He concluded that the most valuable are those people, teachers, who give us soulful light and knowledge, warmth, and paternal attention. And Natalia Nadezhdina lived in his soul as such a person and teacher, as if he had only parted with her yesterday.

In that distant period of childhood, in warm lands with bright sunshine, an abundance of fruits, flowers, and the rainbow illusions of communism, little Mark immersed himself in the world with all its shades of beauty and ugliness. He was passionately engaged in his creativity, and, apparently, genetics strongly influenced him in this regard, being a more significant factor than many realize.

"Why does he need this, Yosef, composing music?" asked Boris Abramovich, a relative of Mark's father, with a typical comical Jewish-Odessa intonation, scratching his balls. "Will Beethovens be needed in Uzbekistan?"
"Let him do something useful, not run around the streets of Pervushka with hooligans and drug addicts," Yosef replied.
But Mark was a curious teenager and managed to run through all the streets of the city, including Pervushka — it was a famous district, like Deribasovskaya in Odessa, and the oldest undeveloped sloboda in Tashkent.

They said that the area was called Pervushka since the time of the Russian merchant Pervushin, who in 1866 sent his son from Moscow to Turkestan. The son opened stores there, set up a distillery, and undertook the construction of many government institutions, including a military hospital and a church. The Pervushin company became the first investor in the development of production in the Turkestan region.
On the banks of the Salar River in Tashkent, a sloboda appeared where factory workers and railroad workers lived. Opposite the factory lay a vast caravanserai where visiting merchants from Russia stayed before market days.
Since 1950, Russian proletarians settled here, moving to warm and fertile lands where there was a high demand for labor. Their children grew up with Mark, and he adopted their habits and customs. Together with them, he ran through dangerous areas of the city and fell in love with their Russian girls.


Chapter 2

Yes! Love adventures — light, playful — already then stirred the imagination of children living in the yard. They matured quite early and plunged into their first romantic feelings. Probably, human nature required such early maturity and understanding of the essence of being. The eastern climate, an abundance of flowers, and the aroma of love in the hot air contributed to this.
Thus, the great poet Dante Alighieri was born in emotion-filled Italy, with the southern color of the surrounding nature. Therefore, it is not surprising that at nine years old, he fell in love. And his childhood love for Beatrice Portinari became a stimulus to create, years later, the immortal work — "The Divine Comedy."
However, Mark's romantic passions led to more prosaic and even dramatic events — harsh reality invaded life and controlled the fate not only of him but also of many of his young friends.
Often Mark saw in the yard a neat ten-year-old girl with slanting Tatar eyes and fair hair when her mom led her by the hand from music school. The girl held a music folder and always stuck her tongue out at Mark when they met — he responded in kind. It seemed this was their first reaction, the first clash of two little humans sensing some common energy field.
Attraction or conflict? Apparently, nature predetermined for them a natural attraction to each other, thanks to which the human race has not yet died out.
But this happened beyond their consciousness. Instinct?.. One could say so, although it sounds crude. What then? No one has yet properly answered this question, and I will not attempt it.
In any case, it is not romantic love like Dante's, and certainly not sexual attraction like most bipedal humanoids. Rather, an unconscious realm of the unknown, curiosity — that's probably what Mark felt in the first minutes of their meetings.
As a rule, girls mature faster. And Lara, as this ten-year-old girl was called, was the first to give a sign and show signs of a feeling resembling infatuation.
At that time, there was no internet, so the children used sign language. They quickly mastered the signs of this language and enjoyed communicating at a distance with gestures. For them, it was a game and entertainment.
Both of them lived on the top floor of a Stalinist four-story building. Below, under the lower floors entwined with grapes, small green gardens were outlined. Further, a large common yard was visible, covered with dense trees reaching the level of the highest balconies. Mark sometimes even had the temptation to fly a few meters and, grabbing the upper branches of trees, hang on them.
He loved looking at the world from the height of his floor, especially at night, when the darkening trees seemed mysterious and frightening, and the light-blue sky — fabulous from the sparkle of many scattered stars and the shining, like an angelic eye, moon. He often, falling asleep on the veranda, gazed into this enchanting space, promising something very good and kind, and listened to gramophone recordings of Haydn's symphonies. It was his favorite pastime on the veranda.
One day, Mark saw that Lara was looking at him from her veranda. When she caught his gaze, she began to speak to him in sign language. He understood her airy message to him. These were the words "I love you." This was the only expression in English that the children knew and often used playfully.
A strange, unfamiliar feeling caressed his heart and slightly excited him. He seemed to respect himself more and felt needed by someone else besides his parents. That is, he was already a person too!
Mark did not respond to Lara with the same love message but decided — now her feelings belonged only to him! And he behaved from that moment as the master of her childish soul; he wasn't thinking about the female body then.
However, Lara did not expect a reciprocal declaration of love from Mark, feeling his virginal naivety and inexperience. She was already mature enough to be aware of her feminine charms, and it was enough for her that she herself confessed her love to him. Now he belonged to her! So she thought. Her nature, inherently authoritative and frivolous, was already manifesting itself here.
And romantic, inexperienced Mark eagerly carried this new feeling that unexpectedly arose in his consciousness and completely captured him. He plunged into an unknown sweet world, about which everyone talks and writes, dreams, and creates works of art.
It is a world of great achievements, diseases, feats, and crimes. It is a world where the meaning of life is found and lost. This is what the Almighty punished Adam, Eve, and all humankind for, binding them in the chains of love and the slavery of passion.
Yes! Mark was in love!
When he, returning from school home, crossed the entire large yard, his eyes looked only upward. No, not at the sky. At Lara's veranda. He thought: maybe she's there now?
They often communicated with mysterious gestures from their verandas. And in the late evenings, they spent time by the fire, which they kindled from golden dry leaves and baked potatoes on it. It was a special, unique smell of smoke from autumn leaves and wonderful evening hours when all the children of the big yard gathered by the fire together and told each other extraordinary stories, played "stream" or other children's games. And inevitably, someone was in love with someone. Children's romances were born and disappeared like singing night crickets in the bushes growing everywhere in this large yard, and they seemed to chirp about the same.

All the children knew about Mark and Lara's infatuation and treated it with understanding, even with some reverence, despite their young age.
Fourteen-year-old Vitaly, who lived with his aunt because he had no parents, advised Mark to send Lara a love letter with poems he wrote especially for Mark. Vitaly, like many teenagers, was fond of poetry and composed poems, apparently having certain abilities and youthful creative fervor. The poem consisted of a set of high-flown words about love that he heard or read somewhere. He imagined the author of the poems as a knight in love with his lady heart, just as children fascinated by a game imagine themselves as captains on long voyages or pilots of spaceships.
But Vitaly himself was in love with another girl — Natasha. She was dark-skinned, pretty, and looked either like a gypsy or a Moldavian. Natasha was a few years younger than Vitaly and reciprocated his feelings. He promised to marry her when they grew up.
The most interesting thing is that all such relations between children were platonic, without any touch between them, and nevertheless were called love, bringing both pain and suffering and moments of happiness — all that usually accompanies true love.
Vitaly seemed like a leader among the children, as he was older and more confident in himself and his views on life, which form in a person simultaneously with growing up. He was engaged in boxing, trained yard kids in this sport, rode his motorcycle, and taught Mark to be brave and not afraid to tell the truth: "don't cheat like a Jew," as he expressed it, being under the influence of his proletarian environment.
However, he treated Mark with special sympathy, though his ideas about Jews were distorted by communist anti-Semitic propaganda. If he knew that the revolution, which brought rights to disadvantaged proletarians, was carried out by Jews together with Lenin; that the idea of communism was put forward by the Jewish dwarf Marx; that in World War II among the Heroes of the Soviet Union were one hundred seventy Jews; that in the church where their grandmothers pray every Sunday, all the icons are Jews; and that Sunday is the day of the resurrection of the Jew Yeshua, the Son of Man, then Vitaly would understand the entire drama of this people and, with his youthful noble impulses, would speak of them more delicately.
But for the most part, the proletarian children were primitive and with a certain plebeian tinge, often harmful, evil, and aggressive.
However, some turned out to be quite smart, capable, and believing in truth and justice. Their parents worked hard for low wages and dreamed of higher education for their children, as it elevated them to a higher social level, into better conditions of intellectual labor and life. In the country of communists, this was very important, and parents faced the main task of getting their children into institutes through connections and the favor of influential people. Few of them studied well in school themselves, although everyone wanted to live better. Most proletarians had no acquaintances or connections with influential people. Many very capable children could not realize their talents and remained on a lower social rung, like their parents.

One day, a neighbor organized a trip out of town for the children of their large yard. Mark’s parents forbade him to participate because the goal was to relax on the shore of an artificial sea, and the transport was an open truck. The organized group of children left early in the morning, and Mark, lonely and sad, sat in the yard when Vitaliy saw him from his yard, where he was boxing with a punching bag.
He approached Mark and asked:
— Why didn’t you go with everyone?
— I wasn’t allowed, — Mark replied meekly.
— But you wanted to go?
— Yes, of course! Very much.
— You must be more persistent and achieve your goals, — Vitaliy said. — Do you want to go to the sea on a motorcycle right now? We’ll swim and come back immediately.
— But it’s two hours away, — Mark noted.
— While everyone returns home, we’ll make it, — Vitaliy assured. — But we’ll achieve our goal. Tell yourself: ‘And went towards the sea!’ And sit in the back seat.
Mark obediently sat on the motorcycle, and they rushed to the sea, feeling like brave travelers. On the way, they had to stop: the chain came off. And while they were repairing the motorcycle, they heard squeals and shouts — the children from their yard were already returning home and noticed Mark and Vitaliy by the roadside.
— We’ll still achieve our goal, — Vitaliy said.
They reached the sea, quickly took a dip, and rushed back.
At home, panic had already begun. The returning children managed to tell that they saw these two brave travelers on the road. Of course, there was a big commotion and scandal in both Mark’s and Vitaliy’s families.
The next day, Vitaliy met Mark in the yard and proudly declared:
— We still achieved our goal. ‘And went towards the sea!’ — he proclaimed his slogan with pathos once more.
— Yes! — Mark agreed, like a faithful student sharing his ideas of courage and belief in justice.
However… Mark was more impressed by images of a different kind — not heroic; he loved to dream, listen to classical music, read books, and compose something, that is, engage in creativity.
Vitaliy’s native Russian soul, with his courage inherent to Slavs and his people, evoked deep respect and even admiration in Mark. But he found it all rather dull.
However, courage is inherent in any people when threatened with danger or destruction; in this, all peoples are similar. But in everything else, all nations, like people, are unique and diverse, which makes them interesting.
Of the Russian national values, Mark liked folk tales the most. Therefore, he loved to read fairy tales, for which his father scolded him, urging him to start reading more serious literature.

Mark constantly thought about Lara and eventually sent her a letter with poems composed for him by his ideological inspirer Vitaliy.
Of course, the letter ended up in the hands of her parents, but they treated the poetic confession with understanding and respect. Moreover, they began to hope that someday, perhaps, Mark would be with their daughter. They liked him because, unlike the primitive courtyard children, he was intelligent and engaged in creativity.
Lara’s mother had no education and worked in a kindergarten, while her father, also uneducated, took orders as an artist: he painted advertisements, posters, and the like. He loved to drink with fellow artists but behaved modestly and with dignity. They were one of the simple Russian families with a very delicate and noble soul.
Once, Lara’s father, a bit tipsy, came to Mark’s mother. She opened the door and, in the official tone of a pediatrician, said: «I’m listening to you». He was confused and stood silently, unable to utter a word. Apparently, he hadn’t thought in advance how to say that he and his wife would like their daughter and Mark to be friends. After a few minutes of silence, he simply turned around and left. However, even a more educated and sober person would find it difficult to find the right words to express such a delicate wish.
In the future, Mark often recalled this strange and comical visit, as everyone’s life turned out to be so dramatic that Lara’s father’s behavior was probably explained by his paternal intuition — some wise and anxious foreboding of future events and even tragedies. Mark was unlike the simple guys surrounding their daughter; he had refinement and blue blood. But their dream that Lara and Mark would remain together was not destined to come true.
While the intelligent, dreamy Mark was running after Lara, she, responding to his feelings, increasingly realized her power as an attractive girl and showed more and more interest in other guys who were older, more confident, and had a Russian soul and courage. Mark was very appealing to her externally, but she was already drawn to something new, unexplored, more muscular and manly. To say — «manly»? That would be too lofty for such girlish inclinations.
Once Mark returned from school and looked into Uncle Yakov’s garage. The garage had an exit to a small inner courtyard where Uncle Yakov kept pigeons. He often let them fly. His pigeons had become lazy from the excessive care of their loving owner and, after flying one or two circles in the sky, landed on the roof of the high-rise building, right above the veranda where Mark admired the fairy-tale eastern sky every night.
Uncle Yakov, being a leading pedagogue of the institute, an associate professor, and head of the department, behaved like a child when fussing with pigeons. He even threw stones on the roof like a courtyard prankster to make the birds rise into the sky. Pigeons, like people, from excessive care and kindness, degenerate, grow fat, and lose their ability to fly.
Stones fell on the roof of a neighboring apartment where two elderly women lived — twin sisters with the surname Talskys. In the past, they were famous doctors, descendants of former aristocracy, fate cast them into these Asian lands, they lived together all their lives and had neither family nor children. The Talskys sisters were angry at Uncle Yakov because his pigeon chasing spoiled their slate — the roof covering over their apartment; outraged by his behavior, they said he had a disease of infantilism — immaturity in development, although he was a pedagogue and lectured at the institute, and even on educational TV channels.
To avoid angering the intelligent old ladies, at Uncle Yakov’s request, Mark sometimes climbed onto the roof and chased the pigeons with a long stick with a red flag on it through the attic. And this time he climbed into the attic and for a while didn’t let the birds land on the roof; the pigeons circled in the clear, cloudless sky for a long time. «Why are they so lazy?» Mark thought. «How much I would give to fly in this endless space».
As he descended, he met a neighbor girl on the landing. «And your Lara secretly talks with Yurka on the other side of the house so that no one sees them», she tattled to Mark.
His heart turned to stone and plummeted into the abyss. He paled and headed to the street, which overlooked the backside of the high-rise building. There he saw Lara and Yurka. They were cooing like doves, leaning out of their windows up to their waists. Their apartments were close to each other.
Mark waved the stick he had just used to chase the pigeons, and apparently scared them off too. Lara, startled, quickly shut the window and disappeared. Yurka, angry, also hid behind the window. He was a few years older than Mark, physically stronger and taller; he probably also fell in love with Lara.
From that time, Mark often noticed their love «cooing». They peered out of their windows on the backside of the building so that the neighbors wouldn’t see them and conversed. For a while, Mark pestered Lara with claims, but his jealousy bored her. Once, in a fit, he grabbed her by the hair, and she slapped him. «I love him!» she declared angrily. After this incident, Mark cursed her with all sorts of words.
Older guys, a few years older than him, once asked Mark:
— Well, do you still love her?
— She has such a beautiful figure! — one of them said admiringly, clearly to tease him.
— If I see her naked, I’ll immediately stop loving her, — Mark declared categorically.
He imagined her naked and was horrified that his romantic image of Lara was so disfigured.
Their enthusiasm knew no bounds. The older courtyard guys laughed for several days, retelling this revelation of the dreamy Mark to each other.
At night, on his veranda under the open sky, Mark couldn’t stop thinking about Lara, and for some time didn’t listen to Viennese classics.
The time had come to descend from this light-blue fairy-tale sky, where stars are scattered like pearls, to the ground where insects crawl and people live. Yes! God’s laws exist, but not there, not in heaven, but on earth. And these laws are determined by the Almighty, not by our desires. And we are elementary particles subject to these laws. If we wish to create our world of being and become gods too, well — that is also possible, and it is part of His divine plans. And Mark had to come to terms with these laws, and as a result of this humility, he gained the ability to create his own world, in which he too might someday become a god.


Chapter 3

In the summer, Mark was sent to a pioneer camp — somewhere far in the mountains, among green forests and fast cold rivers with the purest water, children spent the whole summer. And it was free, like many other social benefits in the land of the communists. A vast country occupying one-sixth of the land could afford this, as the state took almost all of the money earned by the Soviet worker into its budget, leaving the person only the minimum that allowed them to live modestly. This means everyone equally. But at the same time — from each according to his ability. True, there was some difference in income between people with higher education, ordinary workers, scientists, and artists.
In this «neofeudal pyramid» of the socialist state, party officials had more privileges than ordinary citizens, and this likened them to the «noble grandees» of past centuries, with whom their communist grandfathers fought so fiercely. There were pioneer camps for children of high-ranking party workers. For example, «Artek», located in Crimea on the Black Sea coast, in an amazingly beautiful place. Getting there was possible only by special order of ruling figures — party leaders. But Mark’s parents belonged to the Soviet intelligentsia and had no special privileges. Therefore, the place where Mark found himself that summer was a pioneer camp for the children of ordinary workers, mostly workers of an agricultural machinery plant, that is, proletarians.

After Lara’s betrayal, Mark decided to descend from heaven to earth. His first desire was to get rid of excess weight — to lose weight and become slim. Children often teased him as a fatty. The standard of an adult man for proletarians is a muscular athlete with a hammer in his hands, and the standard of a teenager is a skinny, hungry, and poor boy. Mark didn’t fit this image and looked like a foreigner among the children of proletarians. His plumpness, grooming, slightly swarthy skin, and intellectual features of the face irritated them, and sometimes even aroused hatred.
To lose weight, Mark chose an original way that could only come to a child’s mind. In the pioneer camp, friends liked to play table tennis for food: the loser gave away their portion during dinner or lunch. Mark deliberately played tennis with stronger players, guys older than himself, and often lost, remaining hungry. Sometimes he lost not only lunch but also dinner and came to the dining room at a non-lunchtime to ask for a piece of bread, as there was nothing else to eat at this time. As a result, he quickly lost excess weight and confidently moved towards his goal.
But his decision to transfer to the first squad, where there were older guys, turned out to be not the most successful. He was hoping for communication with more interesting and intellectually developed comrades. He dreamed of participating in their sports games. However, his desire was ambitious and absurd.
The first squad consisted of teenagers fourteen to sixteen years old, with pimples — «hottentots» — already appearing on their faces, and their view of the world became greedy, aggressive. Except for a few modest and good guys, most of the teenagers were evil and unfriendly towards Mark. They constantly fought and treated each other little better than wild animals. Authority for them was strength and rudeness. Many had known each other for a long time, as their parents mostly worked at the plant and, apparently, communicated. Mark was a foreigner among them in every respect. However, he was not taken into the football team not for this reason: he simply played football poorly, although he loved this sport and dreamed of playing in their team. He sometimes imagined himself in a beautiful blue football uniform and light blue socks.
Each squad had pioneer leaders aged twenty years. If the squad was male, it would be a guy, and if female — a girl.
Every morning, the bugler woke the entire camp by playing a fanfare with a red flag attached. Then everyone lined up for a roll call, that is, distributed by squads on the parade ground. It all looked like in the army. The leaders of each squad reported to the chief pioneer leader of the camp that squad number so-and-so was lined up for roll call. And this also resembled the army. Then the camp director spoke, giving various orders. After that, to the performance of the state anthem on the bayan, a red flag was hoisted on a tall pole as a symbol, and the squads of young pioneers dispersed to their pavilions to the beat of a drum.
All activities in the camp, including entertainment and sports, had a militarized character. It created the impression that someone might attack the fairy-tale country of the communists, as if enemies surrounded it on all sides.

In addition to table tennis, Mark loved billiards. Once he joined a group of guys playing «knockout», that is, the defeated one leaves the game, and the winner plays the next game with a new opponent. Born under the sign of Sagittarius, known for its accuracy and excitement, Mark played billiards well.
Suddenly, Valery Sergeyevich, the pioneer leader of the first squad, came in. He looked pale and angry. The guys parted and cleared the table for him. For a while, he gloomily walked around the table alone and pocketed balls.
— How are you feeling, Valery Sergeyevich? — Vera from the second girls’ squad asked him sympathetically. — Maybe bring you some water to drink?
Valery Sergeyevich silently and lazily walked around the billiard table, looking for a convenient angle to pocket the ball. He had just returned from the hospital after an appendicitis operation, so he was in a bad mood. All the children reverently watched how skillfully he pocketed the balls. They felt sorry for him: after all, he had undergone such a serious operation. And Valery Sergeyevich felt like a hero somewhere in front of the surrounding children.
He soon got bored playing by himself, and he announced:
— Tomorrow, in our camp, they are showing the movie «Son of the Regiment», be ready. And tell the others.
— What’s the movie about? — asked a boy named Andrey with a non-Russian accent. He was Greek, so the guys often made fun of him.
— About how in the forest, in a shell crater, Soviet artillery scouts found a ragged, hungry peasant boy Vanya Solntsev and took him with them to the artillery regiment, — Valery Sergeyevich explained and immediately left.
And Mark decided to wait not for the hungry and ragged Vanya Solntsev but for the moment when the real sun went down over the horizon to swim secretly in the pool when it became dark and no one would see him. He was joined by the Greek boy Andrey. When the sun set, they both swam, laughed, and splashed in the cool water, enjoying the view of the starry night sky above their heads. The warm air gently enveloped their bodies, creating a feeling of freedom and carefreeness. They told each other about their interests. Andrey entertained Mark with stories from ancient Greek mythology, and Mark shared funny incidents from his life and his creative plans in music. At that moment, they felt not only friends but also part of something greater — eternity, where there are no borders and barriers. They got out of the water and, sitting on the edge of the pool, began to contemplate the night sky, dreaming of adventures that awaited them ahead.
Well, the adventures didn’t take long to wait. Their happy laughter and splashing water, mixing with the wind, reached the ears of the red-haired Svetlana, the leader of the girls’ squad. In a gazebo hidden in the night silence, she was hugging the projectionist, who sometimes showed movies in the camp.
When Mark and Andrey returned to the pavilion and went to bed, no one noticed them. But in the morning, after the general line-up on the parade ground, the pioneer leader of the first squad, Valery Sergeyevich, lined up all the guys and announced:
— The first squad is deprived of watching the movie «Son of the Regiment» today. Everyone is punished!
A murmur of disapproval ran through the line, voices were heard: «Valery Sergeyevich, what for?»
— Two from your squad were swimming in the pool after lights out, — he said, peering into the faces as if trying to identify the offenders.
— Who are these Judases? — voices were heard from the crowd.
Mark’s heart went cold, and his knees went numb.
— Were there many Judases? — Andrey asked him in a whisper; he seemed not to quite understand what was happening.
— They probably think that since all Jews are Judases, that’s why they call them Judases, — Mark suggested.
But Andrey, a bit more versed in the biblical story, since his parents were religious people, asked:
— But Jesus was also a Jew, so he’s Judas too?
While the children unsuccessfully tried to figure out the New Testament, the red-haired Svetlana entered the pavilion with a sly smile on her face; she looked carefully, with some sweet pleasure, now at Andrey, now at Mark.
— So is it them? — Valery Sergeyevich asked her.
Svetlana nodded with satisfaction and left.
— Because of these two discipline violators, everyone will be punished, — Valery Sergeyevich said strictly, pronouncing the last words as a verdict, understanding what would follow.
An air of inevitability hung in the air. Valery Sergeyevich immediately left, clearly not to interfere with the reprisal of the guilty. As soon as he left the pavilion, someone punched Mark hard in the nose, and his nose bled. Meanwhile, Kolka, the oldest, was beating Andrey with his large fists. Mark didn’t wipe the blood off his face so that any of the avengers who wanted to beat him would see that he, like the first Judas, had already been punished.
And indeed, when Kolka searched for Mark with his eyes, he asked: «Where’s this Armenian bitch?» — and, seeing him bloody, calmed down. «You’ve already been given, you bastard», he said with satisfaction.
Andrey’s parents came to visit the next day. Seeing him bruised, they immediately took him from the camp with a big scandal. The camp director summoned Valery Sergeyevich and gave him a serious scolding. Mark didn’t like to complain, so he said nothing to anyone.

But Mark didn’t dwell on the negative moments of life in the camp. He was attracted to Russian girls, especially simple ones. Apparently, he had read enough Russian folk tales. He no longer thought about Lara but began to notice Vera from the girls’ squad. He showed interest in her, but she treated him with contempt because he was slightly swarthy, either Jewish or Armenian, and still chubby.
Every morning the children washed and brushed their teeth on the bank of an aryk — a narrow but deep canal near the camp. One morning, Mark bent down to scoop water into his hands and felt a kick in the back. The push sent him into the water. He swam well and quickly climbed ashore. Several guys stood by the aryk and showed by their appearance that they didn’t know who pushed him. He thought someone was joking at his expense for fun and bent down for water again. Again followed a push in the back, and Mark ended up in the water again. Climbing ashore, he asked indignantly: «Who’s doing this?» But everyone insisted: «It’s not me, it’s not me». Mark was used to their rude behavior, but this seemed too harsh even for him. He approached the water for the third time to rinse his toothbrush and again flew into the aryk from a push. All those standing on the shore shrugged — they didn’t know who was doing it.
A lanky guy in glasses with a square face — brother of the very Vera who Mark liked — extended a hand to him as if to help him climb out of the water. And when he pulled Mark out, he pushed him back into the water. This already looked like some kind of sophisticated reprisal, a lynching.
— Why?! — Mark exclaimed offendedly.
— For my sister! What did you say about her yesterday, you bastard?! — said the lanky guy with a furious expression on his face. It’s hard to describe the hatred with which he looked at Mark. Such hatred doesn’t arise instantly but has roots going back to the distant past.
— When? — Mark was surprised.
— During the dead hour, — he said angrily. That’s what they called the children’s daytime rest in pioneer camps.
Mark began to remember what happened yesterday during the day’s nap. Yes, he said something, referring to his sister, but didn’t mention her name. He remembered something like: «And my chick is having fun now». He was just practicing slang he picked up from older guys.
— I didn’t name your sister and didn’t mean anything bad, — Mark said.
The lanky guy, of course, knew that his sister, simpleton Vera, liked Mark.
— You even looked at me when you said it, — he said in a prosecutorial tone.
Mark had nothing to reply except what he had already said — he didn’t mean anything bad. He just showed off a little, imitating the older ones. Then Vera’s brother’s friend intervened:
— I would kill him, the bastard, if he said something like that about my sister!
Both of them, like wild panthers with burning eyes, looked at Mark, ready to tear him apart with «teeth of hatred».
After this incident, Mark didn’t pay attention to Vera. He felt that this was a foreign world to him. There was an abyss between them. Most likely, it wasn’t related to education or their Russian nationality, but something else. However, even an adult finds it difficult to comprehend this difference. Some aspects of metamorphoses in human genetics are still insufficiently studied.

Mark usually spent the whole summer in camp. A new shift arrived. The former bayan player who performed the state anthem every morning on the parade ground was replaced by a new musician — an eighteen-year-old Jewish guy named Izya. New girls appeared in the second girls’ squad, and new guys in the older squad where Mark was. Mark had already lost excess weight, often losing in tennis and skipping dinner or lunch, and became slim. Girls began to pay attention to him.
The guys from the boys’ and girls’ squads came up with an interesting game: boys and girls corresponded to find out who liked whom, but instead of names, they used numbers. If a guy wanted to know who he received a letter from, he could find the girl’s name by her number in the girls’ squad where the list of names was kept. If he wanted to write to a girl, he first found out her number, as letters to the girls’ squad came not in the recipient’s name but in the number.
The children invented this game for greater secrecy, embarrassed by their first feelings and creating a more romantic and intriguing atmosphere.
The fascinating correspondence of young Romeo and Juliet was conducted daily, and in the evenings, the camp hosted dances where children’s love intrigues emerged and swirled in the warm summer air. The talented Jewish guy Izya played waltzes and other dance music on the accordion. One day, Alex, the volleyball instructor, asked Izya to play something for him.
— What would you like to listen to? — Izya asked.
— Play me what you like best, — Alex replied.
— I love Jewish songs, — Izya said, and for an hour played Jewish music. Alex listened reverently and was happy.
Mark began attending evening dances. Izya persuaded him to overcome his shyness. Besides, he was often invited by some girls to dance, as he had slimmed down, became slender, and appealed to them.
One day Vitek, a good modest guy, of whom there were not many in their squad, said to Mark cheerfully: «Letters from the girls’ squad came to your number, and there are many». There were indeed more letters than usually came to other guys. Some received only one message and were very happy about it, while some didn’t receive anything at all.
The girls wrote rather modest words, for example: «I want to be friends with you». Or something like that — harmless but significant for them as their first life choice. In these trembling and modest messages, like early sprouts on branches, the first female feelings of the continuators of the human race were visible.
Izya liked Marina, a very quiet and modest girl. When Mark showed him the letters he received from the girls’ squad, among them Izya recognized her note by the number. He was very surprised: «I didn’t expect to see her message! Such a modesty! Such a quiet girl!» He laughed but with a slight touch of white envy, without malice and jealousy. He was a light person in everything: in music and thoughts. In his blue eyes always shone joy, as if he understood that life is a gift, not a privilege or some kind of exclusivity.
In contrast to him, Anvar, a local guy from the boys’ squad, felt black feelings towards Mark. He didn’t receive any messages from the girls’ squad and pestered Mark:
— I want to fight with you.
— Why? — Mark asked in surprise. — I have nothing against you.
But Anvar continued to pester him every day, and then Izya said:
— Fight with me and leave Mark alone!
Anvar, smiling and fawning, replied:
— No, Izya, I won’t fight with you.

The third camp shift was ending, and summer was coming to an end. On the eve of the last day of the season, a big pioneer fire was ceremoniously lit on the parade ground, a holiday was arranged, and pairs of young lovers danced farewell waltzes and swore eternal friendship. Marina invited Mark, and during the dance said she would write him letters when they return home. Mark promised to write her too, and they exchanged addresses and light kisses.
Marina was externally very attractive and liked by many guys. Her father was the director of the plant where the parents of the children resting in this camp worked.
But for some reason, Mark didn’t respond to her letters upon returning from the camp, and then she wrote that if he didn’t reply, she wouldn’t write to him anymore. He didn’t answer, and their paths diverged in unknown directions for each other.
In the future, Mark often recalled Marina, regretting that they stopped communicating. He realized that he matured too late, was indecisive and infantile, unlike her. He didn’t notice and understand such wonderful and modest girls like her, with whom he could possibly be happy. He regretted often making the wrong choice in women. That’s why, probably, Mark remembered the fleeting little romance, from which true love could grow, as a sprout from which a blooming garden could grow, not wild dangerous jungles where his life passed.

Shortly before the ceremonial closing of the camp season, the senior squad went on a hike with an overnight stay in the mountains. Along the way, Mark became even closer to Izya, who joined them as a senior comrade and assistant tourism instructor. Izya was well built and physically very strong. He engaged in bodybuilding. From time to time, he put Mark on his back and climbed with him, training his leg muscles. They often spent time together, pondering life. Before young people spread the future, like endless space, which they admired from the height of these mountains, or unapproachable snowy peaks, alluring with whiteness. It seemed that something special, better, celestial, lay there — that future paradise.
At night they sat by the fire and baked potatoes, watching the eastern sky, where the stars shone so brightly and seemed so huge that it was impossible to take your eyes off them, as if being hypnotized. Sometimes there were so many of them that it was terrifying from this infinity.
On the last night, Mark and Izya didn’t sleep and together met the dawn. They lay down to rest for an hour only in the morning when the sun had already climbed onto the snowy peaks. All night they talked, curious Mark asked many questions. Izya, based on his little experience, shared with him what he had learned about life in his eighteen years. At one point Mark asked:
— I don’t understand, Izya, why are Jews disliked?
— Well, Russian girls still like you, — Izya said with a smile. Apparently, he remembered Marina again.
— Yes, — Mark replied, — and I like them very much. And you are respected and loved in the camp. Not only for your musical talent but also for your human qualities. Why, then, do Jews seem bad in their eyes?
— Well, firstly, not all, — Izya said. — I read a little of the philosopher Nietzsche, and he writes somewhere that if you repeat the same nonsense for a hundred years, it becomes wisdom; in general, something like that. So, the prejudices about Jews are two thousand years old. But people often prefer nonsense, rumors, and superstitions, repeated for centuries, over logic or scientific arguments.
— So Jews are disliked mostly by uneducated people, — concluded Mark.
— No, — Izya said, — unfortunately, the intelligentsia also sins with this. Even great creators like the writer Dostoevsky or the composer Tchaikovsky.
— How Tchaikovsky? I love his First Piano Concerto! — Mark said sadly.
— I also love his music very much and sometimes perform pieces from «The Seasons» on the accordion. But in Tchaikovsky’s correspondence with his patroness and friend von Meck, they both wrote with such hatred and contempt various abominations about Jews! I was very upset when I read these letters.
Mark was also upset, hearing this. He sat sad and puzzled. And Izya continued:
— And this in «gratitude» to the Rubinstein brothers, Anton and Nikolai. Jews by nationality. Great musicians to whom Tchaikovsky owed his career as a composer. They founded the St. Petersburg and Moscow conservatories, nurtured a whole generation of talented musicians and composers, and promoted Tchaikovsky’s music.
Mark gloomily looked at the smoldering fire, from which glowing particles quickly flew up — into the starry sky and disappeared there.
— The potatoes are probably burned, — he noted.
— Well, to hell with them, — Izya waved his hand.
— I can live without Tchaikovsky, — Mark said, — but without Beethoven — no!
Izya laughed.
— Not all composers were anti-Semites, — he said. — Don’t worry. Mussorgsky, for example, did not feel hostility towards our persecuted nation. They say he treated the Jewish people with special warmth, even with admiration. I performed his musical piece «Two Jews» from «Pictures at an Exhibition».
— And yet I don’t understand, — Mark was not appeased, — is it really due to some legends and religious tales that we are so disliked? There must be some other reasons?
— There are quite a few. — Izya thought.
Mark waited for an answer, understanding that his elder friend was gathering his thoughts.
— Jews are a persecuted people, — Izya continued, — they had no land of their own for two thousand years. They had to adapt to foreign laws, cultural traditions, customs, and mentality while maintaining their own identity and religion.
— And what is «identity»?
— I don’t know how to explain it. I just feel it.
Mark also felt more than understood Izya’s words; it was all still complicated for him to comprehend at his age.
— Not having their land, — Izya continued, — and constantly adapting to foreign peoples, Jews formed their own survival immunity. Good people with broad souls developed the highest and most valuable qualities in themselves. They could even be great people, such as physicists Einstein and Landau, composers Mendelssohn and Berlioz, poets Blok and Heine. But Jews with small souls could be vile, cunning, dishonest, corrupt. For some reason, an entire nation is judged by the worst. But in every people, there are both. In all their failures, people look for a culprit, and as soon as they find one, they calm down, as if undergoing therapy conducted by Sigmund Freud himself.
— Who is that? — Mark asked.
— A great scientist, doctor, founder of psychoanalysis. By the way, also a Jew. So, it’s easiest to blame Jews for their problems, as they are a minority. Their number in the world is minuscule compared to, for example, the number of Arabs — there are about half a billion of them. But even that is not the main thing. — Izya thought and paused for a long time. — Every nation must have its land! — he said affirmatively. — In our socialist country, they like to repeat: «Motherland — mother!» And they are a hundred percent right about this. Your own land! Your own Motherland!
— And is my «Motherland» here? — Mark asked. — I wasn’t given another, and I didn’t choose myself. And Dad recorded me in the passport as Armenian — by my mother.
— Probably so you wouldn’t face the difficulties due to anti-Semitism that he encountered, — Izya said.
— And how should I now relate to other peoples, knowing that most of them don’t like us?
— Very simply. They love us selectively and dislike all at once. And don’t you treat other nations the same way? Do you love everyone?
— No, — Mark agreed, — I am biased towards many nations.
— Well, let them do the same. And be friends with those you like, regardless of their origin, — Izya smiled. — It’s very simple. However… no! Neither in our country of proletarian internationalism nor in America does this process yet proceed easily and without conflicts.
— And do you yourself do as you advise?
Izya paused, then quietly said:
— I, Mark, chose a different path.
— Tell me which one?
— I dream of leaving for Israel, — Izya admitted.
— Is that possible?
— Not yet. From our fairy-tale country, where everyone is happy, for some reason, no one is allowed to leave anywhere. They take care of us. They know better what is good for us. They allow only those Jews to leave for Israel who are older and will not be drafted into the army to participate in wars with the Arabs. Our communist party is on the side of those who hate Israel and want to eliminate the «Zionist presence in Palestine» — as they express it. But I believe the time will come when I can leave. And if necessary, I will fight there.
— You, Izya, are loved by everyone here, appreciated. Do you think it will be the same there?
— No, I don't think so. Jews from all over the world gather there. Everyone has different cultures and languages. They are assimilated in the countries where they have lived for centuries. It's unlikely they'll understand and appreciate me as much as our Alex, the volleyball coach, for example.
Or our camp director, Anna Pavlovna—a woman of wonderful spirit. Or my teacher, a true intellectual, the likes of whom I may never meet in Israel. And by the way, they are all Russian.
— Then why did you decide to leave?
— How can I explain... — Izya pondered. — You see, I want to live in my country for something greater, something that connects me to the soul of the people. I searched for meaning in life and realized that this persecuted people are my people, and the meaning of life for me is not to let them disappear and dissolve into other nations.
— Yes! That's great! — Mark supported him, lost in thought.
The campfire with the burnt potatoes had already gone out, the stars in the sky thinned, and the moon disappeared somewhere. It got colder. Morning was approaching.
— And I would like to engage in creativity, — said Mark, — any creativity.
— You'll find your calling, don't doubt it, — Izya encouraged.
— Classical music inspires me, — Mark continued, — but I think I'm not musically gifted enough to reach the heights I would like to climb. Like these mountain peaks, for example. They lure with their beauty, but I'll never climb there. But then again... You know, Izya, I feel classical piano music so deeply that sometimes I throw this reality out of my head and am confident in great success if I play these compositions.
I imagine myself performing them on stage and passionately desire it not for fame, but to reveal my soul through music. Many say it's self-deception and you need to think realistically. Not everyone who feels music deeply, at the level of outstanding musicians, can realize themselves. They claim that special natural talents are needed, such as phenomenal memory and sharp hearing.
— Yes, that's true! But not everyone who has these abilities you talk about can deeply understand music, — Izya said. — I think it's a very complex set of talents that is rare, and when a happy coincidence occurs, great composers and performers are born.
But if you love something, Mark, — pursue it all your life and don't think about the result. Your life is your path, not where you end up in the end! This path will be your meaning, this will be you! What's important is where you are going, in which direction! Your life is movement! And the result? A play of nature, a coincidence, or something else incomprehensible to us.
By morning they went to sleep, but soon the instructor woke everyone up. The tourist group immediately set off, and by evening they returned to the camp.

After the farewell evening on the parade ground, with promises to stay friends, meet, and write to each other, the children went home. Mark never met Izya, Marina, or those kids he lost his lunches and dinners to in table tennis again. Nor with the aggressive group of teenagers—the offspring of proletarians, who were the majority in this country and who, apparently, owned the future. He also did not meet Valery Sergeyevich, who tried to create a "favorable environment" for the effective upbringing of children.
Izya will probably fulfill his dream and move to Israel someday. Marina will meet a worthy person and arrange her personal life. With her intelligence and attractive appearance, she will most likely leave too—for America. Mark will go his own way, where there's no logic, but there is destiny. Movement, as Izya said, is the meaning!
And the offspring of proletarians will continue the path of their grandfathers and "complete" what they did not manage to "complete." They will likely create a society that will poison the whole world in the future. The "favorable environment" Valery Sergeyevich cared for, the senior pioneer leader, is usually created for harmful bacteria in an organism that eventually dies. A similar environment also arose for "harmful people" who multiplied throughout the communist empire.
Communists believed in the primacy of matter and the absence of God, thinking they could create a fair world since their party consisted of the best representatives of society. However, these "best" turned out to be those "harmful bacteria" that multiplied in the "favorable environment" created by the Bolsheviks in 1917.
Since the proletarian class gained rights and ordinary people gained freedom, they became engineers, scientists, artists, and politicians. Yet their soul and conscience remained the same, and aggression, like the imperial disease, was always part of their essence. As Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

When Mark returned home from the camp, his mother cried when she saw him. "What have you become? You've lost weight! Your neck is thin like a bird's," she lamented.
Yes, he had lost excess weight, built muscles, leading a sporty lifestyle at the camp, becoming slim and even attractive.
But this did not particularly please his Armenian mother, who wanted to see him still a child and continue to feed him, if not mother's milk, then at least traditional Armenian dishes.
Describing the culinary masterpieces prepared at their home could appreciate Mark's heroism, who gave up his usual abundant diet to achieve a goal worthy of a man—to gain a slim figure.
Names such as dolma, eggplant caviar, lavash, stuffed peppers! Kyata, baklava. Walnut and fig jam. French cakes: meringue, Napoleon. And much more, remembered as the "golden age of the stomach."
But even more interesting in this story is how the Armenian family—Mark's mother's parents—ended up in the distant Asian regions, where their daughter met the twenty-year-old Jewish young man Joseph, Mark's future father.


Chapter 4

   Mountainous Armenia! Yerevan with narrow dusty streets, stone houses, and unique structures made of a special type of stone—pink tuff. Balconies open into courtyards with fruit gardens.
Millions of years ago, where beautiful Yerevan now sprawls, volcanoes raged. The hardened compressed ash gradually turned into volcanic tuff, well-suited for construction, and therefore for centuries lava rock of reddish color has been used here as a building material.
According to biblical tradition, during the Great Flood, Noah landed nearby with his entire family and livestock. And the history of Armenia and other civilizations in this part of the world began.
Basking in the sunrise, the city always looked pink, like a festive cake. The smells of vineyards and wine cellars spread in the pure mountain air, creating a special atmosphere. The capital of Armenia was founded more than 2800 years ago—almost thirty years earlier than Rome. Here, where Armenians have lived for centuries, whose ancestral roots go back to biblical times, Mark's mother's parents were born and raised.
In the ancient city, there was a practice: they hung the carcass of a slaughtered domestic animal, like a sheep, on a tree, and if it remained untouched and unspoiled, it was perceived as a sign of blessing from the gods or ancestors, and it was considered that this place was suitable for building a house. In such a place, on the elevation of old Yerevan, Mark's mother's great-grandfather built a luxurious two-story house of black stone with high ceilings and marble staircases. A large balcony opened into the yard, where there was a fruit garden, a magnificent fig tree, and a lemon tree, whose aroma spread throughout the neighborhood. At that time, lemons were used to treat diseases, and the house's owners generously distributed the golden healing fruits to those in need.
The house was always lively. Relatives and acquaintances gathered, and an atmosphere of goodwill and love prevailed. The balcony overlooking the garden was often full of guests, and on summer nights served as a bedroom in the open air. Despite the heat, this stone house remained cool all day, and the abundance of gardens in the city created a pleasant, mild climate. In the evenings, it was even cold, and the smell of apricot and fig trees gently spread around.
In this house, among her sisters and brother, in an atmosphere of love and care, Mark's grandmother Arpik, meaning "sun," or simply Alla, as she would be called in the future after the "coming" of the communists to the holy land of Armenia, grew up.
Arpik's parents owned gardens and vineyards on the banks of the Zangu River. They harvested grapes and sent them to winemakers who produced the famous Armenian cognac. It was exported to France and other countries. Later these gardens and vineyards were taken from the owners by the Bolshevik government and transferred to the ownership of the communist government of Armenia. On the seized lands, party officials, "hard-working and caring" for the welfare of the Armenian people, built dachas for their families.
Arpik graduated with honors from a local gymnasium operating under the French educational system and reached an age where the question of her marriage arose. The choice of a groom for the modest, smart, and educated Arpik was handled by her older brother, who took care of the family after their father fled from the Bolsheviks to France (otherwise, he would have been shot as a plantation owner and trade entrepreneur) and soon died there.
The choice fell on the Abramyan family, owners of a cognac factory. During the acquaintance, Arpik liked the young Paruyr, one of five brothers. He was well-educated and, most importantly for the young girl, very handsome, with light curls, which is rare among dark-haired Armenian guys. However, all the brothers were handsome and intelligent people. The union of cognac factory owners and vineyard owners, the education and good reputation of both families made this marriage ideal in the eyes of relatives and friends.
Arpik and Paruyr were married according to the rites of the Armenian Apostolic Church. During the wedding, the godparents were supposed to hold scabbards and a sword over the bride and groom's heads, and the priest tied their hands with a cord of red and green threads, the ends of which were sealed with wax. But the groom was nowhere to be found! They found him in a tree; he was watching someone or something there. Paruyr was so young that he did not fully understand the seriousness of what was happening and that his life path was changing at that moment.
The wedding celebration lasted a week, following all the ancient traditions of the Armenian people. And the young couple began their life together in the groom's parental home. Paruyr was a cheerful and frivolous guy. He was once found in the bed of a young maid, but there was no scandal: Arpik, a serious, balanced, and smart girl, understood that Paruyr was too young, spoiled, and hoped he would mature over time. They were not quite suited to each other, but their marriage, in general, took place. Soon they had children: son Yakov and daughter Anzhelika—Mark's future mother. The family lived harmoniously and happily until another misfortune struck the land of Armenia.

Paruyr was full of energy, patriotic ideas, and became involved in politics. The Dashnaktsutyun party (Armenian Revolutionary Federation), of which the young heir of the cognac factories became a member, initially aimed to achieve political and economic freedom for Turkish Armenia through revolutionary means. The unification of the nation—the eastern and western parts of historical Armenia—had been a long-standing dream of the Armenian people.
Turkey always sought to destroy this ancient biblical people, although many progressive Muslims rebelled against the obscurantist regime created by Turkish army general Mustafa Kemal and other Turkish pashas—imperialists, bloody political monsters who planned the Armenian genocide.
When Turkey ordered an attack on Armenia, simultaneously with the Turkish troops, the Red Army entered Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan. Russia or Turkey, Bolsheviks or Kemalists—Armenia had no other choice, and Yerevan handed power to the Bolsheviks.
Although Russia had been a friend of the Armenian people for centuries, it repeatedly betrayed Armenia if its imperial interests were higher. Mount Ararat, on whose slopes, according to legend, lie the remains of Noah's Ark, is considered one of Armenia's symbols, yet it ended up on the territory of neighboring Turkey. The borders of Soviet Armenia were established by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.
In world history, there was a period when the Armenian Empire was so large that it covered the territory from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea and from Mesopotamia to the banks of the Kura. However, Rome during the time of Pompey and Caesar proved stronger. Armenia was at the crossroads of conflicts, interests, and constant wars between the West and the East. This determined its dramatic fate, led to the loss of territories, and the scattering of the Armenian people around the world. The fate is in many ways similar to that of another biblical people—the long-suffering Jews.
After the Bolshevik occupation of Armenia, the Dashnaktsutyun movement was recognized as counter-revolutionary, and all its participants were arrested and either shot or exiled to provincial towns in Russia. Paruyr, Arpik's husband and father of two children, was sentenced, as a distributor of counter-revolutionary literature and newspapers, to exile with his family to Vologda. All his brothers, sympathetic to the Armenian opposition, were also expelled from Armenia without the right to live in central and major cities of the Soviet Country.
Much later, Arpik told her grandson, little Mark, about his grandfather: "When he was arrested and led at gunpoint by two Red Army soldiers, I stood among the crowd with the children, little Yasha and Anzhela—your future mother. And he walked with his head held high and proudly looked at those around, pretending to be a hero. And I pointed a finger at my temple and shouted, 'You fool! Look at your children. What are you proud of? Where have you led us?'"
Paruyr was soon released from custody, and he left Armenia with his family. The cognac factories, vineyards, and cellars with ten-year-old cognac were all confiscated by the Soviet authorities. Wealthy families were evicted, stripped to the bone, and left their homeland as beggars. The dream of the rabble and local scum, which exists in every society, came true! The people, if they can be called that, rejoiced! The proletariat became the master of Armenian land, and the entire communist country, and, it seemed, the whole planet!


Chapter 5.


In the spring, the young Armenian family with two children arrived in Vologda, and the city met them in all its glory.
Once, Tsar Ivan the Terrible fell in love with this city and even considered making it the capital. In Moscow, if you look at the sky, you can see gray clouds or the Ostankino TV tower from everywhere. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower. In Vologda, wherever you cast your gaze upwards, white church domes stand out against the blue sky, as if the road to God runs through here.
In this ancient city, among the bright green parks and on the banks of a beautiful river, white churches stand everywhere like brides awaiting blessings from above. Their multitude speaks of religion being the main spiritual foundation of the people for centuries, not only in Vologda but throughout Russia. Most buildings in the city are wooden, with carved fences and national ornaments; there is a very beautiful white Kremlin ensemble. It is clear that the soul of the Russian people rests here, and the destruction of religion, the abolition of church influence by the Bolsheviks, became a catastrophe for Russian civilization. They fired directly into the heart of their own people and corrupted its soul. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote and warned about this in all his novels. Leo Tolstoy also spoke and wrote about it constantly, but no one listened to them.
Upon the Armenian family's arrival in this wonderful city, they were lucky not only with the spring and the surrounding beauty of ancient architecture. They were taken in by a lonely Russian woman with a very kind soul. She had a two-story house, and a large room on the upper floor was given to the arriving family. Paruyr and Alla, as Arpik was called by the residents of this city, quickly found work, as they were educated, which was rare among the illiterate population of the young communist country, ruled by the proletariat.
But in this beautiful, cozy, peaceful city, winters were long and cold compared to their native Armenia. And the most terrible thing—hunger, the result of Bolshevik collectivization and merciless struggle with kulaks and peasants, was depleting the local population. When winter came, people died right on the street, falling to the ground from hunger fainting and freezing there.
Once Alla went for bread, which was distributed by coupons. On the way, she saw a nine-year-old boy lying in the snow. She approached him and began to peer into his face, white as snow and all covered in icicles.
"He's dead," she heard a woman's voice, who was clearing snow on a nearby path. "He's been lying here since morning. Soon they'll take him away. Over there, in the basement of the house opposite, they gather all the corpses, until a car comes and takes everyone away. It's good that it's cold and there's no smell."
Alla was struck dumb with horror! At that moment, she saw with her own eyes and understood the entire reality of what was happening and the consequences of Lenin's revolutionary ideas and his great predecessors—philosophers, ideologists of communism.
It was the thirties. The Bolsheviks were fighting kulaks in villages and hamlets and robbing peasants—both poor and rich. They took everything from them to the last grain, destroying private farms. They shot "individual farmers" with whole families, sparing neither children, women, nor the elderly. They sent them to forced labor to harvest timber: to fell forests for sale abroad. Grain stocks collected as a result of robbing farmers and agriculturalists were also sold to Europe. The authorities needed gold and currency to build military factories.
The Bolsheviks feared they would be attacked, yet they intended to capture the entire world so that everyone on earth would sing the "International" like them and live happily—in the world of communism. Apparently, just like that boy, who remained lying on the snow when Alla walked further to stand in line for bread by coupons.
She hurried, she was cold, as there was not enough money to buy a winter coat. All the money was spent on children so they would not starve. Alla and Paruyr themselves were undernourished.
Alla was already completely frozen while standing in the long queue when she took a loaf in her hands. It was still warm and fragrant. With frozen hands, Alla was struggling to slip it into her bag when suddenly a sixteen-year-old boy ran up to her, snatched the bread from her hands, and began to shove it into his mouth so that even if they took it away, at least he managed to eat something. No one thought to defend Alla and take the bread from this boy. Everyone was concerned with the queue, to get their portion. Alla also did not take the food from him, cried, and went home. She felt sorry for him, and for herself, and for her children, and for that boy who remained lying on the snow.

The house mistress's name was Lyubasha, and when she saw Alla crying, she asked what had happened. Learning that they had nothing to eat except potatoes and some old vegetables, she set the table and invited everyone to dinner. Besides bread, potatoes, pork, and pickles, there was vodka on the table. Accustomed to select cognac, Paruyr, having tasted cheap Russian vodka, was happier than ever. They also invited a neighbor, the old woman Manichka, a distant relative of Lyubasha. Manichka often came to their house and helped Alla with the children, dressed them, and taught them Russian. She was a linguist by profession and once taught in a parish school.
After dinner, they drank tea with old pastries. No royal feasts in the past life of Alla and Paruyr on their native Armenian land could compare with the happiness they experienced at this modest table. Lyubasha's kindness sharply contrasted with the horrors happening around, which other Russian people, turned into zombies, carried away with revolutionary ideas and the fight against kulaks, arranged.
After the meal, slightly tipsy Lyubasha began to sing Russian folk songs. Alla also sang a sad Armenian song. However, Russian songs were not very cheerful either. Alla had a good ear, and she said she loved Azerbaijani music very much. And Paruyr, as it turned out, loved Tchaikovsky's music, although he had no musical ear.
There was, in general, nothing to tell about the young Armenian couple. Their life was just beginning, with all the accompanying happy and dramatic events. But Lyubasha had something to tell. She was already over forty, and in recent years she had no one to share her experiences or just talk to, except for Manichka. In the company of this Armenian family, Lyubasha felt not alone; she felt a special warmth emanating from their southern hearts, and, mellowed by vodka, she started talking.
— It would be better for you to go south, to warm fertile lands, somewhere in Central Asia, — she said. — You have children, and there's famine here. The Bolsheviks are dispossessing everyone and driving them into collective farms. They call it "collectivization" and fight with enemies of the people, that is, with kulaks.
— Those who do not laze around and can feed themselves and others, — inserted Manichka.
— We've seen something similar, — said the tipsy Paruyr.
— That's why we were exiled here in the first place, — added Alla. — Although we gave them everything ourselves.
— We had everything! But we didn't even have time to use it, — said Paruyr with a laugh, cheered by vodka, and waved his hand. — As you Russians say, everything went to the cat's tail.
— We were also well-off, — said Lyubasha sadly. — We had cows, piglets, and other livestock. Our own butter churn. We sold our Vologda butter to Europe. It's special! Appreciated everywhere!
— And our Armenian cognac! We sold it to Paris, on their special orders. Contracts were for many years, — Paruyr proudly said.
— Yes! — old Manichka intervened in the conversation. — I used to love teaching children and read a lot of books. And now I just look pointlessly at some point, and I don't need anything anymore. Not even our beautiful city. People are beasts! People are creatures! — Manichka lamented and cried.
— Well, not all. What are you saying, Mania? — reassured her Lyubasha.
— I know what I'm saying, and you know it!

— Yes, the world is not without good people, — agreed Manichka.
— This Siberian man, he practically saved them, right? — Lyubasha continued. — And my brother was arrested because he had one cow. Fat, they said, means it gives a lot of milk. And in his house, they also found a new model butter churn — arrested out of envy. The cow was taken to the collective farm, and the butter churn — for themselves. He had a younger son Ivan, only fifteen, and my father left. And when my two other brothers stood up for him during the arrest, a brawl began. We assume that my father had a heart attack during the fight, and he died right there on the spot. They gave two days for the funeral, and all the brothers were declared enemies of the people and all property was confiscated.
The chief in a leather coat with fur came up and said to another, the main one among them: "We will send almost all the kulak scum from the Vologda region to the Urals, and then to the timber harvest. But here's another problem, comrade commissioner: from the final stations to the place of exile — two hundred to three hundred kilometers, sometimes even a thousand. And mass transportation in winter... There's no way around it, there aren't enough resources." And this, translated from their bureaucratic language, meant that many would not reach the place. They sent them to special colonies and drove them on foot to the Tomsk region, to Narym.
My godfather Fyodor visited his relatives there, and when he returned from there, all sick, he told: if they drive the dispossessed in the spring, they start building huts; if in autumn — then dugouts and harvest the forest. And in winter, they burrow into the ground. People live in hastily assembled barracks. There are places where the cubic volume per person is less than a coffin. With the onset of spring, the ground in the barracks will thaw, water will flow from above, and the entire population will stick together in a dirty, rotting lump. They went insane, many became epileptics. And when typhus began, they said at least forty people died every day.
— Did the special settlers resist, did they try to escape? — Paruyr, a former counter-revolutionary, asked heroically.
Alla looked at him strictly and skeptically.
— I don't know about that. And speeches in the villages?.. — Lyubasha thought. — I heard from someone about the Murmantsevo district of the Omsk region. On the eve of the uprising, there were mass arrests of kulaks in their villages. But there were prosperous places, and they arrested only respected people. The next day the crowd came to the village council to burn portraits of the leaders and beat up representatives of local party bodies. Everything happened spontaneously. That is, there was no organization or leaders, and when regular troops gathered in the district after five days, all the rebels were killed.
Lyubasha sighed. She wanted to speak. She had not shared with anyone who would look at her with such warmth and understanding as this young Armenian couple for a long time. Both beautiful, intelligent, educated, and also "enemies of the people."
And Lyubasha continued:
— The fact is that the riffraff participated in the process of dispossession because they wanted to profit at the expense of the wealthy. They would just take and divide. They said to each other: "Well, you participate in collectivization. Go to the collective farm, take from the rich, give to common property. As your supposed share. And maybe in the collective farm, you won't starve to death." And the propagandists of the new regime told them: "Just join the collective farm — and the kingdom of abundance will come."
— I once saw myself, — suddenly old Manichka spoke up, — how a cart with prisoners stopped not far from my old acquaintance's house. I was visiting him in the village then.
— Ah! That one, Nikolka? With whom you had a love affair, secret and passionate, in your youth? — Lyubasha laughed.
Manichka waved her hand indifferently.
— There was, and it's gone. So, — she continued, — one of the kulaks entered his hut, grabbed the first icon he came across, and began to smash it to smithereens. It was the most intense moment of their departure. At that time, hundreds of carts from other districts began to flow in, forming a traffic jam. And a strong blizzard rose. But the kulak carts were still sent on their way. And at night, their families, those who had not been taken yet, but were driven out of their homes and completely stripped, went around the peasants' yards and begged for bread. People told terrible things. They said it was a beastliness — to drive children out into the street in such weather. In some sleds lay three or four dead children.
— And you, Manichka, had Red Army soldiers too, — Lyubasha reminded.
— They were, they were! I only had books and dust on them at home — that's all they found.
— And then?
— They spat and left! Damned Antichrists! But the leaflets, which I collect, they couldn't find. I always carry them with me. They are written by peasants from Vologda villages.
— What kind of leaflets?
— Here they are, I'll read them to you.
And Manichka took out a pack of papers from the pocket of her worn old jacket and, with a happy smile, began to read:
— "Dear brothers peasants! They made us worse than slaves. They force us to work for scoundrels, loafers, robbers-communists under the guise of class struggle. They instill hostility among us to make it easier to rob us."
And here's another:
"Soviet emblem — sickle and hammer, death and hunger.
Comrades peasants! Believe in God! Do not forget the tsar! Quit all the collective farms, enough to endure all these mockery and persecution! Not a single honest worker goes to this robber party, which forces us to fight for its robber rights."
And here's another one:
"And don't go, kids, to school. There's no God, no Cross.
One Lenin sits on the picture, bulging his eyes."
— Yes! — Lyubasha sighed. — It's not funny now! Now both collective farmers and "individual farmers" are dying of hunger. Children eat everything that is not supposed to be eaten by humans, starting with carrion and ending with oak bark and all kinds of swamp roots.
— I would say, — suddenly Manichka added, — all sorts of fantastists and utopians, various oddballs, they generally think that yes, we need to endure. Yes, there will be excesses, but then a golden era for the village will come.
The children, Anzhelika and Yasha, had already fallen asleep at the table. Manichka got up and went to put them to bed. Paruyr reached for the vodka bottle, but Alla moved it away.
— We need to sleep, get up early tomorrow, — Alla said. — Thank you very much, Lyubasha, for the bread and salt and for your kind heart.
Lyubasha hugged her.
— Good night, my dears, — she wished, and everyone quietly went to their rooms.
Old Manichka hurried home before nightfall when Bolshevik "angels" everywhere — in cities and villages — began to descend from heaven and perform their miracles on earth.

Did the communist party leadership, leading the people into a bright future, know about the sacrifices made to achieve this goal? Of course, they knew and justified these sacrifices, believing that they, the communists, were superhumans capable of changing this world and making everyone happy. No one managed to do this before them, but they could! That's why they rejected God, turning their hearts away from the death of millions of ordinary people, throwing them into the millstones of building a bright future.
Their faith, like the faith of German Nazis in "superhumans," was a single surge of collective mind obscuration. This disease of humanity's brain is brilliantly depicted in the works of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, beloved by Adolf Hitler:
"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman — a rope over an abyss.
Dangerous is the crossing, dangerous is the being on the way, dangerous is the gaze turned back, dangerous are fear and stopping.
In man, what is important is that he is a bridge, not a goal: in man, one can love only what is transition and destruction.
<…>
I love those who do not seek beyond the stars to perish and become victims, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, so that the earth may someday become the earth of the superman."
"Beyond the north, ice, death — our life — our happiness. <…> ...We remained far from the happiness of the weak, from 'humility.' Thunderclouds around, darkness inside us: we had no way, the formula of our happiness: one Yes, one No, one straight line, one goal."

In the distant future — in the two-thousands, after the fall of the communist regime, which still did not withstand the test of time and did not make all people happy, Armenia, the homeland of Alla and Paruyr, will be betrayed again. But now it will be betrayed not by the communist, but by the mafia Russia. Armenia will be handed over to the bloody dictators — like "wild animals" — surrounding its small holy land, lost in the space of political chaos, far from civilized countries.

Alla, Paruyr, and their children will never return to their homeland. Their further path is determined by fate.
Surviving another winter in Vologda, they filed a petition to the government to move south, justifying it by saying that they, Armenians, accustomed to a warm climate, find it hard to live in the cold northern region of the country. Mentioning hunger was forbidden at that time. By spring, permission came to move to Central Asia. Alla chose Tashkent — a city with generous sun, fertile land, and, as everyone told them, very hospitable local people.
Soon they left Vologda — this pearl of Russian culture, lost in the north of sick Russia. In their hearts, they carried both pain and disappointments, and the warmth of simple Russian women Lyubasha and Manichka. As well as the tragedy that befell all the peoples united in this toxic communist system of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The question arises: what are all these millions of human sacrifices and broken destinies for? And what are all these great theories of philosophers, politicians, revolutionaries, patriots, fighters for equal rights, or for racial purity worth, if only one thing decides everything — force and collective schizophrenia? There is no answer and probably never will be!

Politicians are the most harmful and disgusting creatures with inflamed brains. They throw entire nations into the hell of enmity and mutual destruction for the sake of their imperial and patriotic ideas, often devoid of common sense. For these madnesses, which they infect, ordinary people pay, born into the world to simply live, create families, build homes, travel, gather friends around their table full of treats and wine, raise children, and bury parents when the time comes.


Chapter 6.

Spring had arrived. Everything around was blooming. Alla and Paruyr found hope—a hope that always follows the young. Hope, along with their two wonderful children, was the most precious thing in their lives.

Their inheritance—vineyards and cognac factories they couldn't use—no longer had value to them. The main thing was life, opening new horizons. While the Bolsheviks sought to build a fair society and the proletariat aimed for material gain, Alla and Paruyr simply wanted to live. Like many intellectuals caught in this historical mess, where neither justice nor God ruled, nor even the devil, but envy and collective madness.

With their small children, bundles, and few belongings, they traveled on trucks to the Semirechensk railway via Cherepovets. There, they boarded a freight train destined for Tashkent in Turkestan. The carriage was filled with exhausted and sick people, and it smelled of cattle manure. Everyone settled on the hay scattered throughout the carriage, for the livestock hadn't been loaded yet.

After two days, passing through Orenburg, the landscape drastically changed. Instead of green vegetation, a golden carpet sparkled in the sun. Juicy, bright yellow grass stretched everywhere, with herds of elegant horses visible in the distance. However, as they moved south, the steppe became more lifeless, with dry, barren land and occasional camels. The heat was immense, but the breeze from the open door of the carriage brought relief.

"It's nothing like when my relatives were transported to Tashkent in winter," a woman sitting opposite Alla said.

Paruyr and Alla looked at her questioningly.

"Yes, it was terrible," she nodded. "They left last year. They were dekulakized but thankfully not arrested as enemies of the people, just exiled. Three months later, I received a letter from them asking us to come to Tashkent. In it, they described the horrors of their journey. Now it's somewhat better for us. But listen to what they wrote…" The woman pulled out a crumpled letter and began reading: "Dear Masha, come to Tashkent. It's warm here, with many fruits and vegetables. You can start your garden. The soil is fertile, and the Uzbeks are kind people who love children. They take in many orphans from Ukraine and Russia, saving them from starvation.

Our children Galichka and Petechka died on the way to Tashkent. It was winter. Everyone in the carriage was sick, and there wasn't any free space: so many people crammed in by those Bolshevik monsters. Our children caught something and died. There was no way to bury them. The train stopped briefly at stations. No one accepted the dead. We had to throw the bodies onto the frozen ground of the Kazakh steppes. I write to you with tears. How long will these communist fiends torment us? Here in Tashkent, we have some relief, but no more Petechka and Galichka.

What else is there to write? Masha, come to Tashkent. It's easier and safer, and we can help each other." Finishing the letter, the woman carefully folded it back into her bag.

"When we were sent from Ukraine to Russia, northward, it was also terribly cold," a young woman from Ukraine, listening intently, joined the conversation. "Breastfeeding babies and pregnant women traveled with us in cattle cars, giving birth right there—such outrage! Then, they threw the newborns out of the wagons. In Vologda, they placed us in churches and filthy, cold sheds where there was no room to move.

"Did they really put the dekulakized in Vologda churches?" Paruyr exclaimed.

"Yes, with three-tiered bunks," continued the young woman from Ukraine. "Thousands of children were left to their fate, like dogs nobody wanted to notice. They kept us half-starved, cold, dirty, and lice-ridden. Tens of thousands came from Ukraine: some fleeing famine, others forcibly evicted. We all fell ill from the air and drafts, and children died like flies with no medical help for so many sick. We were sent there to perish. What kind of kulaks are we with just a horse, a cow, and eight sheep? We were harmless to the state, working to feed people, and now we're dying."

"I always wanted to visit there," Paruyr said. "Vologda's churches are so beautiful, dreamlike!"

"Dream indeed!" said Masha with bitterness. "What a dream! Better not to go there now. The communists have ruined everything."

"Why didn't you go, Paruyr, if you wanted to so badly?" Alla asked tearfully, affected by the women's stories.

"We have a different religion in Armenia," Paruyr replied.

"What different religion?" Masha asked. "Aren't you Orthodox too?"

"The Armenian Apostolic Church," Paruyr explained. "The first preachers of Christianity in Armenia and the founders of the Armenian church were Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus—two of Christ's twelve apostles. By the way, Armenia was the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion!" Paruyr said proudly.

"I thought it was the Greeks," Masha remarked uncertainly. "But I don't know."

"A woman just gave birth on the train yesterday," said a man in his forties sitting near Paruyr.

"We didn't hear her giving birth," Paruyr was surprised.

"You were asleep," Alla said. "You even asked in your sleep: 'Who's groaning? Is someone dying? They won't let me sleep!'"

"Yes, she gave birth easily," the man noted cheerfully. "A boy. Peasant women give birth easily, like puppies."

"A boy?" Masha asked with a happy smile, then became sad. "Another for the war, since it's a boy."

"Will they throw the baby out of the train?" Paruyr asked fearfully.

"Don't say such things," Alla replied.

"You've learned Russian well," Paruyr laughed and pinched her.

"The child will survive," the man said. "At every station, you can buy milk, dried fruits, dried and salted vegetables, even honey. Many Kazakh villagers have their own farms, gardens, and pastures."

"And they haven't been confiscated yet?" Masha asked.

"Not yet. Everything's delayed here. But we won't starve. Their milk is horse milk, called koumiss, intoxicating like wine. My cousin lived here for a while. He told me Uzbekistan has everything. And the flatbreads are so golden and tasty!"

"Can anything compare to our Armenian lavash?" Paruyr asked wistfully.

"Yes, it can!" the man replied. "And soon our lives will change for the better. The communists are on the right path; they'll do everything."

"What are you saying, Mitya?" a woman behind him, perhaps his wife or sister, protested. "They don't even believe in God!"

"I know what I'm saying. There's no God," he interrupted irritably. "A time will come, I believe! They want good for everyone, not just a handful of rich. They'll change and build everything. I used to go to church every Sunday, believed! Now I know: Stalin and Lenin are right! Their goal is a worldwide revolution, which will soon put half the world under the red flag. Yes! You can't achieve these goals without sacrifices. Only terror can get results. What do you think?" he suddenly addressed a bearded man who looked intelligent but was very thin with bruises on his face. He seemed like a former bourgeois, miraculously surviving. He sat on the hay to the right, listening sadly.

"If people don't matter and half the world under the red flag is the main goal, then they're right," the intelligent man said weakly, his voice sick. "If a person is just a means, then go ahead, execute one, another, thousands. Or a million—it doesn't matter. As long as there's a red flag! To a cannibal, they're right too. A cannibal wants to eat."

Mitya continued to preach to the entire carriage, ignoring discontented glances: "The economy will develop at a fantastic pace. According to all forecasts, not ours, but international experts, our country will soon reach the level of the United States. We'll be the main competitors of the USA in the twentieth century, and the population will grow to seven hundred million. They promise, so it will be!"

"Do all these sufferings justify the bright future?" Masha asked.

"They do," Mitya assured and pulled out a pack of crumpled, greasy newspaper clippings. "I'll read to you instead of your tearful letters."

And Mitya, a believer in communism rather than God, began to read. He read quickly, pronouncing the words clearly—apparently an educated man, though rural: "With proletarian will and pressure, we'll turn this harsh and backward land into an industrial North!"

"On November 7, 1928, the first stone was laid for a machine-building plant, which was to replace the 'Red Plowman' plant."

"The 'Northern Communard' became the first major machine-building plant in the Russian North."

"In 1930, Vologda began constructing buildings for a mechanized bakery, a meat processing plant, a feed and rosin plant. In the mid-1930s, the Clara Zetkin sewing factory building was built, producing more than half of the gross output of the Vologda region's sewing industry. Efforts were made to modernize public production in other directions as well. In the 1930s, the production of Vologda Traction Workshops was reconstructed."

"Amid industrialization successes in the second half of the 1930s, a mass movement began in the USSR to increase labor productivity and efficient use of technology. The movement came from below."

"So, what do you say, citizens 'enemies of the people?'" Mitya said with a smile. He looked left and right, as if expecting approval or applause.

"You're the enemy yourself," said the tired Masha quietly. She lay on the hayloft and, as she fell asleep, continued to grumble: "Because of such idiots and informers, Bolshevik fiends seized power everywhere."

"I used to work as a midwife," a woman sitting next to Alla whispered unexpectedly. "When newborns lay in the delivery room, we even combed their heads. Some were born with hair. They lay naked to get used to room temperature. We adored them: so funny, helpless, trusting! But if one started crying or screaming, all the others did the same. We midwives knew this effect and took it calmly. But now… I'm amazed! I just realized: adults don't change. Everyone goes mad together—like this Mitya. Some collective insanity!"

"Yes, it really looks like collective madness," Alla agreed. "In psychology, it's related to the concept of the collective unconscious. Austrian psychologists long ago noticed that individuals, groups, or entire nations can succumb to mass psychosis." Alla probably once read Jung.

Meanwhile, the young "enemy of the people," Paruyr, watched a mother breastfeeding her newborn. The woman appeared so robust, like "blood and milk," sharply contrasting with the hungry passengers packed in the cattle wagon like livestock. He stared, unable to look away, at her large, beautiful white breasts. "She could be painted like an icon," Paruyr thought to himself.

Alla dozed off, comfortably settled on a soft bundle of fragrant hay.

"Maybe we should give her some money?" Paruyr asked Alla.

"We'll need the money ourselves," Alla replied through her sleep. "Give her your cigarette case. She can trade it for milk or koumiss at a station."

Paruyr approached the young woman feeding the baby and placed his silver-plated cigarette case beside her. She looked at him with a grateful smile.

Night fell, bringing silence. Angelica and Yakov slept in each other's arms, warming each other on the hay. Paruyr covered them with his old coat. Cool steppe air flowed through the open door, and the monotonous clatter of the train on the tracks lulled all the passengers who had suffered for years—enemies of the people, kulaks, former capitalists, believers in God, believers in a bright future, and those who believed in nothing but simply wanted to live, no matter what life was like.

By morning, it grew cold. The train stopped at stations where horse milk could be bought or traded for valuables, though it was often diluted and smelled sour. Locals also sold dried and salted vegetables from gardens not yet confiscated. Like in northern Russia and Ukraine, famine raged in Kazakhstan, and residents sought ways to feed themselves. Trading in surrogates—food substitutes and ersatz tobacco—was common. Surrogates became widespread among the local population. Additionally, "ersatz bread" made from cake and sawdust was extremely expensive.

Paruyr bought these surrogates—bread products and koumiss for his children. He even treated the nursing mother, reminding him of a Madonna—Leonardo's Madonna nursing the child, epitomizing maternal love as the greatest human value. In the train carriage doorways, he saw not the mountain landscapes speaking of harmony and grandeur like in Leonardo's works, but the Kazakh steppe with cracked, drought-stricken soil.

As they neared Uzbekistan, the landscape changed. It warmed up, and the cattle car passengers, having eaten some vile food like surrogates-ersatz, cheered up and began to talk. A young Vologda balalaika player sang folk songs. In the folk environment, it was always a traditional way to express feelings about events.

"Under Tsar Nicholas,
We wore satin.
Under Comrade Lenin,
We've donned burlap.

No God, no Tsar needed,
Down with the bourgeoisie!
Our banner turned red
Over the Soviet country!

Love the Komsomol youth,
Must change—
No cross around the neck,
No praying to God.

My sweetheart's brainless:
Prays to God in church.
I don't need gods—
I will be a Komsomol.

Oh, my bast shoes,
Checkered bast shoes!
Oh, mother, send
The five-year plan!

We won't walk without knives,
Without stones—never.
The sun won't chase farther,
Siberia's our land.

My sweetheart's a Komsomol,
I want to be a Komsomol girl.
He told me today:
'I'll teach you Leninism.'"

Alla and Paruyr began to get used to simple Russian people and cheered up too. They saw that the Russians had the same beautiful and innocent souls as their compatriots, and that Russians also suffered from obscurantists, seemingly sent by the devil himself to this earth.


Chapter 7.

On the square near the Tashkent station, people sat with suitcases and bags. Those who had nothing just sat and waited. What exactly for? They didn't know themselves.

Compared to others, Alla and Paruyr's family seemed small. They sat for a long time, but no one approached them. Alla began to worry: where to go, whom to ask for help? Suddenly, an elderly Uzbek approached them and said, "You have small children, and I have many children."

"How many do you have?" Alla asked, a bit confused. He looked at her kindly and smiled warmly. It was clear that he liked the Armenian family. "If there's enough food for five, then there'll be enough bread for a sixth — that's what we say." And he took them in.

This elderly man turned out to be a teacher. Their yard was large, and the house was not small, but there were no extra rooms. The Armenian family was settled in a shed, and the only cow, which gave milk, was temporarily moved outside under a canopy.

In the house, they didn't lay wooden floors as was customary in poorer Uzbek families, and they walked on untreated earth in rubber galoshes. The family that sheltered the refugees was quite poor, like many others in this part of the Old City. All the houses were made of clay, and the windows faced only the courtyard, so no one from the street could peek inside and see anything personal, like a young woman.

There was a characteristic smell everywhere, as toilets were located within the courtyards. For hygiene, dried clay stones were used instead of toilet paper. This surprised the newcomers a little, but they gradually got used to the new living conditions.

The Armenian family was most touched by the warm welcome and care they received from this large Uzbek family. They gave everything they had and shared what they could. If they offered something to their child, Alla's children were also not left out.

And if Anzhelika and Yakov went into a neighbor's yard, they were immediately treated to tea or bread — sharing the last of it. They ate a little bit here and there, which helped a lot. It seemed like a small piece of bread, very small — but what happiness it brought!

Sick children were coming to Tashkent from all over the country. The communists were systematically destroying villages and private farming. Hunger was rampant, and infections spread quickly. Anzhelika caught something and fell ill. The head of the family, the teacher who had sheltered them, offered Anzhelika his room and bed until she recovered, while he slept on the floor, on bare ground, laying out a kurpacha — an Uzbek mattress.

Alla was moved to tears when she saw this. She realized once again that the simple Uzbek people were as wonderful as the Armenian people. But what was happening in the country? Who had sold their soul to the devil? Who were these people? Where did this nationwide madness come from? She found no answer to these questions.

Soon, Paruyr got a job at the tram depot. He was hired as an accountant because of his literacy. Moreover, his fair-skinned, handsome Armenian looks appealed to the Russian women working at the depot, and they promoted him. They didn't even ask him about his class background, though they suspected he wasn't from the workers and peasants as he claimed. This was evident from his noble manners and education, which further endeared him to women inclined towards intimate relations. Paruyr didn't resist much, combining pleasure with usefulness.

The secretary of the party cell at the tram depot, Ekaterina Mechnikova, favored the young, handsome Armenian. To say the least, he stirred her feminine imagination and more. She helped him get in line for an apartment, which was no easy task. Alla knew her husband had this weakness — a constant attraction to the opposite sex — but she was more concerned with survival.

During these years, kulak and bay farms in Uzbekistan were eliminated. The number of liquidated farms reached a thousand. Hunger spread to Central Asia as well. In some areas, battles with Basmachi continued. The descendants of local wealthy bays weren't keen on sharing their wealth. Moreover, religious opposition to Bolshevik ideas united even the common people.

Alla enrolled the children in a Russian-language school, and they traveled from the Old City to the center, which took an hour. Anzhelika once came home from school agitated and pale.

"What happened?" Alla asked.

"I saw some men in leather jackets chasing a young Uzbek. He barely managed to run into a yard and open the gate when they shot him, and he fell." Anzhelika burst into tears.

"What happened?" the homeowner asked, noticing the attention by chance.

Alla waved her hand. "She saw some guy getting killed. They chased him. Probably the NKVD," she said grimly. The teacher nodded silently.

"Is it far to the school? Do they walk?"

"Yes," Alla said. He thought sadly, bowed his head, and left.

There were already trams and buses, but most locals still used donkeys and arbas. Once, the children came from school and said they saw someone sticking a stick into a poor donkey's backside. Anzhelika was outraged and felt sorry for the donkey. But Yasha laughed:

"To make the donkey move and not be lazy, they stick a stick into its butt, but a horse needs to be whipped on the sides."

"Don't talk like that!" Alla scolded her son.

Every day, she took the children to the club for music lessons and even bought Yakov a violin. She sought to develop their intellect even under such conditions when people stood in line for food at night. Dust, hunger, poverty surrounded them, and the revolutionary Communist Party of Uzbekistan was also involved in the nationwide construction of a bright future — communism. Yet, unlike other republics, survival in Uzbekistan was possible thanks to the warm climate and fertile soil yielding rich harvests of vegetables and fruits. Above all, thanks to the kindness of the locals, who were not yet infected with the Bolshevik virus and treated newcomers, especially children, with love.

One day Anzhelika entered the shed where they lived and complained: "Mom, Aunt Gulchekhra is squatting in the middle of the yard covering her face with her hands. Maybe she's crying?" Gulchekhra was the name of the teacher's wife, the mother of the household.

"She's been sitting like that since morning," Yasha laughed.

"Why are you laughing?" Alla was outraged. "Her husband is cheating on her. He fell in love with some young teacher. So she sits like that for everyone around to see her suffering. Maybe he'll come to his senses? They have so many children."

"They say all Uzbek women used to wear veils," Yasha continued cheerfully, "so other men wouldn't see how beautiful they were and fall in love with another man's wife."

"And look how many women still walk in veils on the streets," Anzhelika noted.

"They're all old, those in veils," Yasha continued jokingly, "but the young Uzbek women have already taken them off and want everyone to see how pretty they are."

"They should wear them," Alla sighed sadly. She knew Paruyr was also unfaithful, but she endured and kept quiet. He was a good father, provided for the family, and given the hard times, Alla put up with it.

Closer to winter, they found another place to live. They were settled in a balakhana. This traditional Uzbek structure, the size of a room, is a small veranda, often glazed. Talking about intimate relations between husband and wife in such conditions was out of the question...

For a long time, Alla and Paruyr wandered from apartment to apartment, experiencing difficulties that fell upon all citizens of the young communist country. They said it was temporary and that the Soviet government would gradually ensure the promised prosperity — patience was needed. And, strangely enough, the government did not deceive. Active construction of factories, schools, hospitals, and modern multi-story residential buildings for valuable specialists arriving to live and work in Tashkent began. Higher educational institutions such as the medical institute appeared. Before the revolution, it was a one-story city. Now life in Tashkent was visibly changing. Many believed it was thanks to socialism and the communists, while others were sure it was despite them.

The twentieth century brought communal utilities and separate apartments with high ceilings in multi-story buildings. Paruyr and Alla received an apartment in one of these four-story buildings. Life smiled at them and changed for the better: the wanderings ended. In a three-room apartment, they had all the conditions for living, including imported gas for the kitchen, hot water in the bathroom, and a gas stove heating the entire apartment. Grapevines planted in the garden, hung with red and green fruits, densely entwined the wooden veranda and climbed to the very top floors of the house.

The Uzbek land is so fertile that when Yakov ate cherries and playfully tossed pits into the garden, one unexpectedly grew into a cherry tree. In spring, it bloomed, and in summer, berries could be picked right from the veranda.

Life improved throughout the country: ration cards for bread and other products, and later for manufactured goods, began to be canceled. The common people breathed a sigh of relief. But high-ranking party leaders, Bolshevik-Leninists, and communist heroes were shot "every other one" by Joseph Stalin. Now, not only kulaks and bourgeois exploiters were called enemies of the people, but those who had previously exterminated them. Their turn had come. Repressions began. The "Great Terror" and the most extensive political purges occurred in 1937–1938. The highest ranks of the army command, as well as scientists, writers, artists, and unreliable representatives of various nationalities, suffered most.

And then a turning point in history came: in 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Because of this, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. The conflict quickly expanded, engulfing many countries and continents.

Paruyr usually rested after dinner, watering the garden by his veranda with a hose and then reading the newspapers. It was the last warm day of November. After the rains, the soil was already wet, but Paruyr poured water out of habit, as a form of relaxation. He called Alla and showed her an article in the newspaper "Pravda," where a statement by Stalin was published. It said:

"...a) Germany did not attack France and England, but France and England attacked Germany, taking responsibility for the current war;
b) After the start of hostilities, Germany appealed to France and England with peace proposals, and the Soviet Union openly supported Germany's peace proposals, as it believed and continues to believe that the sooner the war ends, the easier it will make the situation for all countries and peoples;
c) The ruling circles of France and England rudely rejected both Germany's peace proposals and the Soviet Union's attempts to achieve a quick end to the war.
These are the facts.
What can the caf;-chantant politicians from the Havas agency oppose to these facts?"

After reading this article, Paruyr looked questioningly at Alla.
"We just started living like humans — and here we go again!" she said confusedly.
"Why are you worried?" Paruyr said. "Let them fight among themselves. What does it have to do with us?"
"Our Yasha will soon be eighteen," Alla said anxiously.
"Don't worry! Germany and our country have pledged not to attack each other for the next ten years," Paruyr reassured her. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed recently.
"And seven days after that, Hitler invaded Poland," Alla grumbled. "And two weeks later, Soviet troops entered Poland. And yesterday! Molotov's speech on the radio: 'Finland's hostile policy towards our country forces us to take immediate measures!' We'll never have peace with these fiends. Something terrible is happening," Alla said and called her son.
"Did you call me, Mom?" Yakov asked.
"Yes..." She hesitated. "You need to urgently enroll in drafting courses. Attend them after school. You have a talent for drawing, and it will likely come in handy soon."
"Arpik, what's wrong with you?" Paruyr, who sometimes called his wife by her Armenian name, smiled. "Soviet troops entered Poland in accordance with international norms and to ensure security in Eastern Europe. This invasion was necessary to protect the Ukrainian and Belarusian population. The deployment of troops was probably agreed upon with Germany."
"Do you believe Stalin?" Alla asked him. "Do you understand who Adolf Hitler is? It's war!"
"Come on, really?" Paruyr was indignant. "Germany will never attack us."
"Then Stalin will attack anyone," she said. "Just give him a reason to wage war. These are devils — Nazis and Bolsheviks. Haven't you understood that yet, haven't you seen what they're doing? What have they done to us? And not just to us. To their entire people!"
Paruyr fell silent. He pondered. And the next day it became known that Soviet troops invaded Finland. The reason for this, as Molotov announced at the time, was "a vile provocation by Finnish White Guards."

Yakov indeed had a talent for drawing, which was noticed at school, and he was offered courses where they prepared engineering assistants for drafting on factory floors. Yakov enrolled in the courses and attended classes in the evenings. He took them with pleasure because he loved drawing and didn't think about why his mother insisted on this education. Moreover, their life was going normally, peacefully, and calmly. But this did not last long.

When Yuri Levitan announced Germany's attack on the Soviet Union with his powerful dramatic bass, people were confused and bewildered.
Alla asked Paruyr:
"Where's your Stalin now? He's been silent and unseen for ten days."
"I don't know," Paruyr replied.
He did not wait for the "great leader's" speeches on the radio: Paruyr was urgently conscripted and went to the front.

Yakov was eighteen years old. He graduated from school and worked in the design department at a factory. His entire class — 26 boys — was mobilized, and none returned from the front, as young recruits were thrown into battle as expendable material in the early days.
Yakov was exempted from military service because he was making drawings and was needed at the plant, which now fulfilled orders for military needs.
The 1941 war burst into their lives like a hawk swooping down on prey. They didn't even have time to realize that their usual way of life was destroyed and that they faced hard trials once again.


Chapter 8.

Mobilization of men and partial mobilization of women began. Previously, it was forbidden to draft "persons of exploiting classes" into the army, namely children of former nobles, merchants, manufacturers, and kulaks. But in 1939, class restrictions on conscription were lifted — anyone could defend the Motherland. Therefore, Paruyr, the former heir to a capitalist and an "enemy of the people," immediately went to the front.
Yakov was promoted at the plant and worked as the head of the design department. Anzhelika also had to work, studying in the evenings. Alla enrolled in courses and six months later was already working as the chief accountant at the "Svoy Trud" artel.
This textile association produced cotton and woolen fabrics, and the leaders were mainly elderly Jewish merchants. Recognizing Alla's sharp mind and intelligence, the director of the enterprise jokingly said, "Alla Alexandrovna is the only Armenian among us, but she alone will give all Jews a run for their money." The team consisted of women seamstresses. The men went to the front.
Alla had a high salary and significant bonuses. She was valued not only for her sharp mind but also for pretending not to notice their minor dealings. But money didn't help: hunger struck the country again.
The invasion of Soviet troops into Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States in 1939–1940, the seizure of foreign territories, and a militarized economy catastrophically affected the food crisis. In 1941, the rationing system was reintroduced. The seamstresses complained: "We lived to see a good life in the twenty-third year of the revolution. Rejoice now! Again, nothing to eat!"
Although it was possible to survive in the bread city of Tashkent. People from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and other regions of the country rushed to Uzbekistan, especially from areas occupied by the Germans.
The German army advanced, capturing more western territories, crawling like a black shadow. "Great Kremlin marshals" laid carpets of Soviet boys' corpses mobilized from all corners of the country. But it didn't help. Besides the astonishing heroism that even amazed the Germans, Soviet soldiers had nothing to oppose the superbly equipped enemy.

Hitler well understood Stalin's imperial essence; the advance on the world of capital fit into communist ideology and was quite consistent with Bolshevik calls for world revolution. It is possible that the F;hrer had informants in the Kremlin, and he knew about Stalin's ambitious planned campaign to the West, so he prepared an attack from December 1940. Probably, Hitler also knew about the secret plans of the Soviet command, which involved a preemptive strike in the southwest in 1942 and an attack on Germany. Otherwise, it's hard to imagine the Germans being so foolish as to start a war with a country whose population exceeded Germany's by a hundred million, at a time when battles were still decided by the number of fighters, heroism, and, most importantly, motivation!

Hitler watched the transfer of Soviet troops to the western border in early summer 1941. He had information about Stalin's statements, made, for example, in May 1941 at a banquet for military academy graduates. Stalin said then, "We must transition from a defensive policy to offensive actions. The Red Army is a modern army. And a modern army is offensive."
The F;hrer outstripped Stalin and attacked first, not waiting for the communists to do it.
This attack shocked Stalin; he thought he was the greatest visionary and arbiter of peoples' destinies, but after real insight, he couldn't come to his senses for ten days.
Two devils clashed in a deadly fight, and the zombified peoples of Germany and the Soviet Union were forced to fall to the ground to resolve the dispute between these two demons and satisfy their passion for greatness.

Trains rushed to Tashkent from all over the country. People fled from war, hunger, and cold, many from Stalin's repressions, which had not yet raged so fiercely in Asian lands.
The city changed before our eyes not only due to new buildings but also because of demographic diversity. The local Uzbek population gradually dissolved among European faces.
Various celebrities appeared at the eastern bazaars. Their eyes shone and darted from the abundance of fruits and vegetables; it all seemed like a fantasy to them in times of widespread hunger. The evacuated people were different, but among them, cultural and artistic figures made up a significant portion. They arrived here in entire trains from the center, and Tashkent became their home for some time, and for some, forever.

The house where the famous writer Alexei Tolstoy lived stood on a very quiet street; there was no transport here, and cars rarely passed. Anzhelika, returning from the medical institute where she was already studying, loved to walk past this house. It was very beautiful and romantic, and Anzhelika always imagined that the great writer was sitting there writing something great. "Or maybe he’s already left?" she wondered.
Once a month, she treated herself: bought her favorite pastry and, strolling past this house, ate it. The pastry cost a lot — 40 rubles. It was her entire scholarship, and she had to study well to receive it. Anzhelika could afford not to work, only to study.
Alla became skeletal, spending all her salary on the children so they could study, saving on herself. Yakov was also a student — he entered the engineering faculty but had to work at night because he had a deferment from mobilization to the front. Sometimes he slept only two or three hours a day.

Hunger triumphed over socialism even in this bread city. The head of the family, Paruyr, periodically sent products from the front, allowing their family to survive. Through the Lend-Lease program, the Americans provided food to Soviet troops amidst food shortages. Canned meat, or stew, was especially valuable, but the children most awaited their dad's American chocolate, a rarity in a country heading towards communism.
Paruyr once even managed to procure and send his daughter beautiful shoes, in which she went to take her exam in party history. The examiner was incredibly surprised and asked where she got them. At the time, beautiful shoes looked like something unattainable, some fantasy. "My dad sent them from the front," Anzhelika said. The teacher nodded approvingly. At that time, the children of front-line soldiers were treated with special respect.

Every day in Tashkent, trains arrived from Ukraine and Russia with the wounded or those who had survived the Holodomor. Many arrivals did not work and roamed the city in search of food. One night, Anzhelika woke up and screamed. She thought it was a dream but then realized that the black shadow she saw was not a ghost but a thief who had broken into their apartment. He jumped out of the veranda and ran away, frightened by the scream. In the morning, it turned out he had stolen stew from the cupboard and Yasha's trousers, which contained his student ID. The thief turned out to be relatively honest: he returned the ID to the university dormitory where Yakov studied. The stew, apparently, he ate, and he wore the trousers around the sunny city where one could always find something and somehow survive. The newcomers especially loved wandering through the eastern bazaars, where someone would offer a treat. Uzbeks sympathized with the starving, especially children.
An immeasurable number of orphans arrived from the front-line areas, whose parents died in the war. Uzbek families took in infants and teenagers. They became both mother and father to Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Jews, Kazakhs, Latvians, Germans, and Tatars.
The incredible kindness of the local Uzbeks amazed the newcomers, who didn't care who was starving — an academic or a beggar; they pitied everyone and fed them what they could.
Of course, in "Tashkent — a bread and warm city," a stream of swindlers of all kinds, deserters, homeless children, and refugees flowed. However, the best specialists in the country — engineers, designers, scientists — were also sent here; prominent writers, poets, artists, composers, and directors were saved from hunger, cold, and disease.


Chapter 9.
               
The Ball at Elena Sergeyevna's

At the corner of Zhukovsky Street stood a small adobe one-story house with a balakhana. It belonged to the Uzbek writer Abdulla Kakhhar, who sheltered representatives of the Russian literary elite evacuated to Tashkent. This house was jokingly called "Noah's Ark" because famous poets, writers, art critics, and literary scholars saved from the "world war flood" settled here. On the balakhana lived Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, the widow of the great writer. She was extraordinarily beautiful at fifty and kept a large black cat, leading many to believe she was a witch. This cat was named Yasha.
One day, Yakov's classmate and friend, a Jewish guy named Efim, said to him:
"You know, I recently visited Elena Sergeevna. It's in that house on Zhukovsky where famous writers and poets now live. She's considered a witch, and, imagine, she has a huge black cat named... Yasha."
"So, did you compare me to this cat?" Yakov smiled.
"Wait to be offended," Efim continued. "Elena Sergeevna is the widow of writer Mikhail Bulgakov. She brought one of his fantastic books, still unknown to anyone, and reads it to those she trusts. For this book, you can even be sentenced and sent to a camp."
"And how did you get there?"
"You know, I write poetry and prose; my dream is to become a writer, although I'm currently forced to study engineering. Tatiana, an acquaintance, invited me, and she vouched for me. Tatiana read my poems, she liked them, and she introduced me to Elena Sergeevna, who asked me one single question: why am I not at the front? This alerted her. I explained that I was discharged due to ischemic heart disease and now I can freely attend these readings and listen to incredible stories. This is amazing fantasy, the world has never known such a thing!"
"And who is Bulgakov, and what does the black cat Yasha have to do with it?" Yakov asked.
"Bulgakov is a genius writer! The black cat is a character in his novel, but there he is called Behemoth. They say Stalin visited a play based on one of Bulgakov's plays many times. Stalin liked how in this play the lousy aristocrats flounder in confusion at their defeat to the proletariat. But the writer Bulgakov is now banned."
"Why, if Stalin likes him?"
"Bulgakov is too truthful! And today, there's only one truth — our newspaper 'Pravda,' you know."
"But why is his wife considered a witch?"
"She's the main character in the novel, and her name in the novel is Margarita; she turns into a witch and flies naked over Moscow. Then she becomes the queen of the ball at Satan's, where she receives sinners from the past, who have risen from their graves for the time of the ball — once famous historical figures and criminals."
"So it's a fairy tale?" Yasha asked disappointedly.
"No! It's great philosophy, biblical level! And, of course, it's an allegory, fantasy, grotesque. You could even say modernism or surrealism."
"I don't really understand that, but I'd also like to come and listen if I can," Yasha said.
"Yes, of course, I can vouch for you."
"You're in such trust with Elena Sergeevna?"
"The thing is, Tatiana, who recommended me, is very trusted by Elena Sergeevna, and this Tatiana is a close friend of my sister. Tatiana Yesenina."
"So, is she related to the famous poet Sergei Yesenin?"
"His daughter. She lives here with her family now. Tanya is currently unemployed; everyone is afraid to hire her because her stepfather, the famous director Meyerhold, was recently repressed and executed. And her mother, Yesenin's former wife, was killed."
"For what?"
"Tatiana said: she was a very truthful and strong-willed woman. Apparently, they dealt with her for daring letters to Stalin, found during searches; her letters about the rudeness of NKVD employees were not yet sent. The day after Meyerhold's arrest, unknown people inflicted seven knife wounds on her and disappeared, taking nothing."
"Why so many wounds? One is enough to take a life."
"Hate! I think there was also anti-Semitic hatred. Zinaida Raikh. In her flowed not only German but also Jewish blood."
"How interesting! The quintessential Russian national poet, and now his daughter is Jewish."
"Only Jews truly appreciate him. Tatiana's mother loved Sergei madly, and her second husband, Meyerhold, knew she would go to Yesenin if he only beckoned."
"Yes..." Yasha thought. "And my mom doesn't allow me to read Sergei Yesenin. She's afraid of everything."
"And rightly so. He's a genius poet, but our government views his work with suspicion. They don't reprint it anymore. So, in general, the day after tomorrow, on Sunday, we'll go there. Just don't tell your mom," Efim warned, saying goodbye.
"Of course," Yakov nodded.

Alla was against Yakov spending the night with Efim.
"Why, Mom? Don't you like that he's Jewish?"
"What nonsense are you saying? He's just a carefree guy and careless in his statements about our government. Reads banned literature. He can be arrested at any moment, and you along with him. I've experienced this once. Enough!"
"Don't worry. We just spend time together. We're going to a play. The Moscow Jewish Theater of Mikhoels has come to Tashkent. They've staged the comedy 'Alai Bazaar.'"
"I'm sure sooner or later Stalin will deal with your Mikhoels too."
"Why do you think so?"
"Too talented a Jew. Do you know how many talents they've already ruined?"
"Well, who?"
"Mandelstam, Babel, Meyerhold. Isn't that enough? And the Bolsheviks didn't spare Gumilyov either."
"Except Yesenin, I don't know anyone, Mom."
"You will!"
"And in this play, they say, even Alexei Tolstoy will be involved; he got the role of a shoemaker."
"Shoemaker?" Alla smiled. "Alexei Tolstoy is serious. Well, go, but be careful. If someone starts telling a political joke or conducting anti-Soviet conversations in your presence, leave immediately."

They met Efim as agreed at six in the evening at the corner of Zhukovskaya Street, 54. They had to go deep into the yard and climb a shaky wooden staircase, on the steps of which doves sat. The staircase led to the balakhana, with dark ivy covering the walls and windows. On the balakhana, there were no bookshelves or decorations, only monastic simplicity and strictness. This summer veranda was turned into quite a spacious room, with one table and two chairs.
"It looks shabby," Yakov noted.
"Don't look at the appearance, Yasha," Efim said. "You'll meet the cream of the creative intelligentsia here. Today, there will be a 'great ball' at the witch Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova's place. You'll see the most talented people of our time. And she will read the twenty-third chapter of Bulgakov's novel 'The Master and Margarita' — 'The Great Ball at Satan's.'"
Suddenly Tatiana appeared with two chairs — pretty, young, and very much resembling her great father.
"Oh! Guys! You've come? Great! Take two chairs downstairs, they've already been brought. And then, Efim, I'll introduce your friend to Elena Sergeevna."
Yakov and Efim took the chairs and sat in the empty room waiting.
Then an older, aristocratic-looking man entered. He was breathing heavily after climbing the creaky steps and immediately addressed Tatiana Yesenina:
"Tanya, my dear, how are you? I wrote to Sofia about your difficult situation, about how you're not being taken for creative work, and she's already appealed to the presidium of the Writers' Union to help you, as Sergey Alexandrovich's daughter."
"Thank you so much, Alexei Nikolaevich."
"That's Alexei Tolstoy himself," Efim quietly said to Yasha.
Tolstoy went out onto the warped wooden landing, lit his pipe, and started walking along the narrow veranda with old creaky boards. There he met Gafur Guliam and Aibek — popular Uzbek poets, who were climbing the stairs to the balakhana.
"Tashkent is Istanbul for the poor," Tolstoy joked, smiling and smoking his pipe. "I mean, your colorful eastern city, like Constantinople once, is now subjected to an invasion of Europeans."
"Assalamu alaykum! Peace to you, Alexei Nikolaevich! We are glad to see you," Gafur Guliam said cheerfully. "And don't forget, please, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tashkent is also your home!"
"Rakhmat, rakhmat!" thanked Alexei Tolstoy.
And then the poets began setting the table with eastern sweets and placing tea settings.
"Alexei Tolstoy takes such care of Tatiana Yesenina. Are they relatives?" Yakov asked.
"No, he's just very kind to everyone and helps writers settle here, in evacuation. But Sofia Tolstaya-Yesenina, to whom he wrote, is the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy and Yesenin's last wife; she's a distant relative of Alexei Nikolaevich because he's also a descendant of Leo Tolstoy. She lives in a small house on Pervomayskaya. Tanya says that Alexei Nikolaevich is finishing his 'Peter the Great' here. Everyone calls him 'the red count.' He's valued in the Kremlin. Some writers don't like him for his excessive 'friendship' with the authorities."
Yasha felt something gently rubbing against his leg. He saw a huge black cat looking at him with curiosity and a clear desire to make friends. Yakov, pleased, picked him up: "Ah, namesake, well hello!" Yasha adored animals, and the cat, feeling comfortable, didn't get off his lap.
"Well, you've met," Efim said and suddenly stood up sharply from his chair. "Hello, Elena Sergeevna," Efim said, a little embarrassed. "This is my friend Yakov," he introduced Yasha.
Before them stood a beautiful tall woman with a regal smile. She elegantly extended her hand to Yasha. He was flustered by her hypnotizing gaze, capable of making any man fall in love. She looked at him with large, bottomless eyes, filled with a special feminine romanticism. Everything about her was fresh; her mood — triumphant and welcoming.
"Indeed a witch," Yakov thought to himself.
He tried to extend his hand in response, but the cat, comfortably settled on his arms, did not allow him to do so. Elena Sergeevna laughed:
"Well, since my cat trusts you so, I have to as well. You are likable to me, Yasha, and Tatiana spoke about you."
Displaying genuine aristocracy, she did not mention that her cat was also named Yasha, foreseeing that such a comparison, even as a joke, might not please everyone.
"I wish you to have a pleasant evening with us," she said and went to greet the guests who were gradually arriving. Each of them brought a chair.
Traditionally, in Uzbek homes, chairs were not always used, preferring tapchans, where one could recline after a hearty meal. However, the word "hearty" remained in the history of cursed feudalism. And there weren't enough chairs.
"Many of those present live in this house," Efim said to Yasha. "Today you will see a whole constellation of wonderful poets, writers, directors. Over there, in the right corner, stands Nikolai Pogodin. A magnificent playwright. Tatiana says he handles housing issues for writers relocated here from Moscow."
"And next to him?" Yakov asked.
"That's Iosif Utkin, a magnificent poet, who was wounded and is now being treated in Tashkent. Soon, I think, he will be sent back to the front."
"And that one, standing next to them?"
"Poet Vladimir Lugovskoy, author of the song for the film 'Alexander Nevsky' — 'Rise up, Russian people, for our mighty land...' Do you know this anthem of resistance?"
"Of course, everyone knows it."
"After her husband's death, Elena Sergeevna lives with him; she is his lover, but she won't marry him."
"Why?" Yakov was surprised.
"Bulgakov, dying, asked her, 'Live freely as you please, but I ask you: don't marry anyone.' And he also told her before his death, 'Everything I wrote in recent years, living with you, I wrote only for you. I regret only that my books will not be read.' And she replied, 'I promise you, Misha, that your works will be published.' This seems utterly unattainable today, even to herself. Bulgakov is banned. Even the closest people say that he will never be published."
"How do you know all this?"
"She herself told. For Elena Sergeevna, the main goal in life now is the publication of his works. I heard her once say, 'To get Misha published, I will give myself to anyone.'"
"Apparently, she'll have to do it," Yasha said with a smile. "And by the way, why isn't her lover Lugovskoy at the front? He looks like a healthy man."
"Lugovskoy fought in the Finnish War and was seriously concussed," Efim explained. "He was discharged, but many believe he is sitting it out, and this is now his personal drama. Oh, and there's a favorite with children — writer Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky."
"Yes. I know him well," Yasha said, stroking the cat both with and against the fur. And the cat, like a fluffy black devil, purred and attentively examined the guests together with Yasha, his namesake.
"And this is Ekaterina Peshkova, Gorky's first wife," Efim continued introducing Yasha to the famous people arriving at Elena Sergeevna's 'ball.' "She mostly deals with paperwork, and next to her is playwright Nikolai Virta, who has taken on the responsibilities of settling and organizing writers in Tashkent."
"And you know everyone?" Yakov was surprised.
"I've just been here for a long time. Look at the woman sitting by the window silently. She has a regal bearing and a profile like in a painting by her lover Modigliani."
— I don't know her or Modigliani. Who are they? — asked Yakov.
— Anna Akhmatova, a brilliant poetess. Also in disfavor. Her son has been arrested and is in a camp. She was taken out of blockaded Leningrad almost on the last plane and sent to Tashkent; otherwise, she would undoubtedly have died from cold and hunger, as she is not adept at maneuvering and elbowing her way. Recently, Tatiana told my sister about her. Now Akhmatova will live here, in this room, and Elena Sergeevna and her son are moving to Lugovsky.
— And who is this Modigliani who painted her profile?
— Modigliani was an Italian of Jewish origin, a brilliant modernist or post-impressionist artist. He lived in Paris.
— I don't understand their artistic styles, though I love drawing and creating designs myself.
— But Anna Akhmatova understands. For the artist Modigliani, that was enough. I think soon the world will know about him, and her too! Although he's no longer alive.
— Will there be poets performing before the novel reading?
— I think she might read something for us.
— What are her poems about?
— Her poems seem to me like a poetic requiem for those entering hell. Only an aristocrat, who has found herself among the great heap of human soul filth, could write like that. — And after thinking, Efim added: — Where we all live now.
— Efim! Be careful! — Yasha said fearfully. — You can say that to me, but be careful not to forget yourself somewhere in society. People are different, you yourself said — we live among a heap of filth.
— I'll try, I'll try, — promised the naive Efim, smiling.
— And there's some famous movie actress, I don't remember her name, and Faina Ranevskaya with her, sitting together on one chair, — Yasha noted.
— That's Maria Mironova. And over there is the widow of the amazing poet Osip Mandelstam, with her brother, and they also fit on one chair.
The room was overflowing with listeners, and there weren't enough chairs. Among the audience was the distinguished Uzbek poet Hamid Alimjan, and together with poets Gafur Gulam and Aibek, they were serving tea and sweets to the guests, traditionally placing a hand on their heart with a slight bow of the torso and head in a sign of respect.
Suddenly, an imposing-looking Uzbek entered, accompanied by two young men about thirty years old.
— Hello, Rahim Medzhidovich, — the poet Aibek addressed the newcomer.
— Hello, Musa, — he replied and greeted everyone present.
— Aibek is a poetic pseudonym, — Efim explained to Yakov, — his real name is Musa.
— Do you know everything about everyone? — Yakov was surprised.
— Meet, dear guests, — this is comrade Rakhimov, director of the Uzbek opera theater, — the poet Aibek introduced.
And Rakhimov immediately addressed all the guests:
— I have invited two very talented and charming young people to you, comrades: composer Nikita Bogoslovsky and actor Mark Bernes. They are filming a war movie in Tashkent and are now living in our house. Today they will introduce you to their work and tell you about the filming. I thought it would be very interesting for your event. Unfortunately, I must leave you: business...
— Well, make yourselves comfortable, — the poet Aibek addressed the newcomers.
Mark Bernes turned to the audience and said:
— We would also like to listen to the reading of Bulgakov's new novel if you don't mind. They say there's something enchanting, fantastic, and extraordinary in this novel. And in gratitude for this, we will introduce you to our work.
— Of course, of course, gentlemen, — said Elena Sergeevna, entering the room, and everyone instantly sat in their seats, under her spellbinding gaze stopping conversations and laughter.
A dead silence formed. The windows were open, and against the colorful sunset from somewhere far away, from a Muslim minaret, the fading sounds of the muezzin's call to prayer were heard.
The young artist Bernes, tuning his guitar, boldly said:
— Nikita, start!
A handsome, intelligent-looking young man, composer Nikita, stood in the middle of the room and shyly said:
— Last night, something very interesting happened to us, you could even say an adventure. The film director Lukov came to me late in the evening and said: "Listen, I can't make the dugout scene work without a song." And he described so vividly and colorfully what the song should be that a miracle happened: I sat down at the piano and played the entire melody from start to finish without stopping; subsequently, I didn't change a single note. It was the first time in my life that a song was composed in precisely the time it takes to play it.
Lukov, the director, liked the melody. We urgently called the poet Vladimir Agatov, who, sitting at the edge of the table, wrote the lyrics almost without corrections. Then we woke up Mark, — Nikita pointed to the smiling Bernes, — he was catching up on sleep after endless filming. We went to the studio, committed an illegal act — broke the seal on the sound department. And Mark, who usually took months to learn songs, learned it in just fifteen minutes. We recorded him, and in the morning we were already filming this scene in the dugout to the song's soundtrack. Of course, a professional guitarist accompanied. But Mark plays guitar a little and will now sing this song for you. Imagine: a dugout, explosions heard, night, and two soldiers. One writes a letter home, the other thoughtfully strums the guitar strings and hums something softly. And in the morning, they have to go into battle.
And Mark Bernes, without waiting for a pause, quietly sang:

— Dark night, only bullets whistle across the steppe,
Only the wind hums in the wires, dim stars flicker.
In the dark night, you, my beloved, I know, are not sleeping
And by the child's bed, secretly you wipe away a tear.

How I love the depth of your gentle eyes,
How I long to press my lips to them now!
The dark night separates us, my beloved,
And the anxious black steppe lies between us.

I believe in you, my dear friend,
This belief kept me from bullets on a dark night.
I'm joyful, I'm calm in deadly battle,
I know you'll meet me with love, no matter what happens to me.

Death is not terrifying, we've met it in the steppe more than once.
Even now, it circles over me.
You're waiting for me, not sleeping by the child's bed,
And that's why I know: nothing will happen to me.

Bernes finished the song and sat silently, waiting. The room was in dead silence. No one applauded. Many had tears in their eyes. Everyone perceived this song as a hymn to humanity and love.
— Applause is not appropriate here, — said Anna Akhmatova. She stood up, approached the young composer, and kissed his surprised young face. Then she embraced Mark Bernes and said: — Your song will last for centuries.
Many of those present stood up, hugging and congratulating the young artists.
And then Anna Akhmatova stepped into the middle of the room and addressed the Uzbek poets:
— Only here, in your city, did I learn what scorching heat, the shade of a tree, the sound of bubbling water, and human kindness are. Thank you! You saved my life and the lives of many of my compatriots.
And she bowed low to them, to the floor, in the Russian way.
Everyone was waiting for her poems, she knew it.
— I will read to you today, — said Akhmatova and began with excerpts from "Requiem":

Before this grief, mountains bow,
The great river does not flow,
But the prison locks are strong,
And behind them the "hard labor holes"
And deadly longing...
<…>
It was when only the dead smiled
Glad to be at peace.
And unnecessary, dangling like a pendant
Near their prisons was Leningrad.
And when, driven insane by anguish,
The condemned marched in ranks,
And the short song of separation
Was sung by the locomotive whistles,
The stars of death stood above us,
And innocent Russia writhed
Under the bloody boots
And the tires of black Marus.
<…>
Quietly flows the quiet Don,
The yellow moon enters the house.

Enters with a cap askew.
The yellow moon sees a shadow.

This woman is sick,
This woman is alone.

Husband in the grave, son in prison,
Pray for me.

No, it's not me, it's someone else suffering,
I could not bear it, and what happened,
Let the black cloths cover,
And let the lanterns be taken away...
Night.
<…>
And a stone word fell
On my still living chest.
It's okay, I was ready,
I will manage somehow.

Today I have much to do:
I must kill memory to the end,
I must make my soul stone,
I must learn to live again.

Otherwise... The hot rustle of summer
Like a holiday outside my window.
I have long foreseen this
Bright day and empty house.

She continued to read, and read, her audience listening with bated breath, begging for more and more.
— What tragic poems! — Yasha marveled. — Is she writing about herself?
— Yes! And about our time, — said Efim, — actually, about all of us. These are not only poems but also a historical and cultural document.
"This is dangerous," Yasha thought. "Mom is right: it's dangerous!"

No one noticed when the sun set and night fell; that very midnight when in Bulgakov's novel "The Great Ball at Satan's" began. And the "queen of the ball" Elena Sergeevna finally began to read the novel, for which one could receive several years in camps. But in this small house, where the public reading took place, this Bulgakov novel sounded in full voice. Her words flew out of the windows into the night space and soared over the city, like the heroine of the novel once flew out of her house window and soared over Moscow. The words sounded like a call to prayer, floating from the Muslim minarets, which had already dissolved in the silence of the night sky — yet without stars and without a moon.
Elena Sergeevna read the chapter "The Great Ball at Satan's," and everyone plunged into the magical Bulgakov world:

"Then Margarita, accompanied by Koroviev and Behemoth, stepped from the pool into complete darkness.
— I, I, — whispered the cat. — I'll give the signal!
— Go ahead! — replied Koroviev in the darkness.
— Ball! — the cat shrieked piercingly, and Margarita screamed and closed her eyes for a few seconds. The ball fell on her immediately in the form of light, along with it — sound and smell. Taken by the arm by Koroviev, Margarita saw herself in a tropical forest. Red-breasted green-tailed parrots clung to lianas, skipped along them, and screamed deafeningly: "I'm delighted!"

"The man in a tailcoat standing before the orchestra, upon seeing Margarita, turned pale, smiled, and suddenly raised the entire orchestra with a wave of his hands. Without interrupting the music for a moment, the orchestra, standing, doused Margarita with sounds. The man above the orchestra turned away from it and bowed low, widely spreading his arms, and Margarita, smiling, waved to him.
<…>
— Who is the conductor? — asked Margarita as they flew away.
— Johann Strauss, — shouted the cat, — and let me be hanged in the tropical garden on a liana if such an orchestra ever played at any ball. I invited him! And note, not a single one fell ill, and not a single one refused."

"Where are the guests? — Margarita asked Koroviev.
— They will come, queen, they will come, they will be here soon. There will be no shortage of them."

"But then suddenly something banged below in the huge fireplace, and a gallows with a half-decayed corpse hanging on it jumped out of it. This corpse came loose from the rope, hit the floor, and from it jumped out a black-haired handsome man in a tailcoat and patent leather shoes. A half-decayed small coffin ran out of the fireplace, its lid popped off, and another corpse fell out of it. The handsome man gallantly jumped to it and offered a hand in a curl, the second corpse folded into a naked wriggling woman in black shoes and with black feathers on her head, and then both, the man and the woman, hurried up the stairs.
— The first! — exclaimed Koroviev, — Mr. Jacques with his wife. I recommend to you, queen, one of the most interesting men! A convinced counterfeiter, a state traitor, but a very decent alchemist. Became famous for — whispered Koroviev into Margarita's ear — poisoning the royal lover. And that doesn't happen to everyone! Look how handsome he is!
<…>
Mr. Jacques' wife was already kneeling before Margarita, pale with excitement, kissing Margarita's knee."

"Running alone up the stairs was a single frock-coated man.
— Count Robert, — whispered Koroviev to Margarita, — is still interesting. Note how funny, queen — the reverse case: this one was the queen's lover and poisoned his wife.
— We are glad, count, — Behemoth exclaimed.
<…> Now on each step were, seemingly identical from afar, frock-coated men and naked women with them, differing only by the color of the feathers on their heads and shoes."

"— A charming and solid lady, — whispered Koroviev, — I recommend to you: Mrs. Toffana, was extremely popular among young charming Neapolitan women, and also among the inhabitants of Palermo, and especially those who were tired of their husbands. After all, it happens, queen, that a husband becomes tiresome.
— Yes, — Margarita answered hollowly, at the same time smiling at two frock-coated men who one after another bowed before her, kissing her knee and hand."

"With the last stroke of the clock heard from nowhere, silence fell on the crowd of guests. Then Margarita saw Woland again. <…> Limping, Woland stopped near his elevation, and immediately Azazello appeared before him with a dish in his hands, and on this dish, Margarita saw a severed head...
— Mikhail Alexandrovich, — Woland addressed the head softly, and then the eyelids of the murdered man lifted, and on the dead face Margarita, shuddering, saw living, full of thought and suffering eyes. — Everything came true, didn't it? — continued Woland, looking into the eyes of the head, — the head was severed by a woman, the meeting did not take place, and I live in your apartment. That's a fact. And a fact is the most stubborn thing in the world. <…> You were always a hot preacher of the theory that upon the cutting off of the head, life in a person ceases, he turns to ash and goes into nonexistence. I am pleased to inform you, in the presence of my guests, although they serve as proof of a completely different theory, that your theory is both solid and clever. However, all theories are worth one another. Among them, there is one that says that to each will be given according to his faith. So let it be! You go into nonexistence, and I will be glad to drink from the cup into which you are turning for existence."

Elena Sergeevna stopped reading and glanced at those present. All were silent, waiting for more. Then she stood up, repeated Woland's last phrase, one of the main characters in the novel: "And I will be glad to drink from the cup into which you are turning for existence" — and, smiling, took a sip from a large Uzbek bowl of fragrant tea, which writer Abdullah Kahhar and poet Ahmad Saidov had managed to pour for all the guests. Abdullah Kahhar owned this small house with a balcony, which he gladly gave to the representatives of the Russian literary elite. Besides, they, together with poet Saidov, somehow got hold of flour and baked so many pancakes that they could treat everyone. Jokingly serving tea to the guests, they called this meeting "At the Great Ball of the Witch Elena Sergeevna."
— Gentlemen! — Bulgakov could not stand the word "comrades." — Intermission! And after the break, you can talk, discuss, ask questions if you wish. And now pay attention to what a tea, what a wonderful color! With what love it is brewed!
— And try our local sweets, dear guests, — said the happy poet Saidov. — This is shekerpare cookies, and this is rahat-lukum.
He walked around, serving everyone with some special heartfelt warmth.
— Where did you find so much sugar for sweets? — exclaimed the famous actress Faina Ranevskaya with surprise and her characteristic philosophical sarcasm. — And in our time!
— Alexey Nikolaevich helped, — said poet Saidov, smiling.
Tolstoy waved his hand as if to say it's not worth mentioning.

— Please, gentlemen, — Elena Sergeevna announced loudly, inviting everyone to converse after a short break.
— Isn't it too late, Elena Sergeevna? — asked Ranevskaya, who, along with actress Mironova, was already heading to the exit.
— "It's pleasant to delay the festive midnight a little," — Elena Sergeevna quoted Woland's words with a smile. — Gentlemen, if anyone has questions, I will be happy to answer.
— I have a question, Elena Sergeevna. Please tell us, who is Margarita really? — asked the poet's sister Lugovsky — a talented artist whose watercolors someone had already managed to hang on the bare wall.
Hearing this, Ranevskaya and Mironova quickly returned to their chair, which they had shared all evening.
— Margarita — that's me, — Elena Sergeevna said simply and calmly. — Our romance with Misha Bulgakov, like the love affair between Margarita and the Master, was inevitable, but for everyone, this relationship seemed like absolute madness!
— And in Bulgakov's novel, are there many intimate details coinciding with real relationships in your life? — suddenly asked Faina Ranevskaya in a prosecutorial tone.
The great actress spoke in her style — ironically and slowly, in a low tone, as if playing a role. Everyone smiled knowingly, familiar with Ranevskaya's manner.
— Misha described almost everything in his novel. Right here, — said Elena Sergeevna and immediately began to read an excerpt:

"Margarita Nikolaevna did not need money. Margarita Nikolaevna could buy whatever she liked. Among her husband's acquaintances were interesting people. Margarita Nikolaevna never touched a primus stove. Margarita Nikolaevna did not know the horrors of living in a shared apartment. In short... Was she happy? Not for a single minute! Since she married at nineteen and moved into a mansion, she had not known happiness. Gods, my gods! What did this woman need?! What did this woman, whose eyes always burned with some incomprehensible spark, need, what did this slightly cross-eyed witch, adorned with mimosa that spring, need? I don't know. It is unknown to me."

— How wonderful! — exclaimed Ranevskaya in delight, clapping her hands.
— Yes, — Elena Sergeevna said, — it's all true. Sometimes I would get into such a mood that I didn't know what was wrong with me. I felt that a quiet family life was not for me. Nothing interested me at home. I wanted life. I didn't know where to run; my former self awoke in me with a love for life, for noise, for people and meetings. I was left alone with my thoughts and fantasies, sat on the couch, and thought endlessly or wandered the streets.
— And those captivating words: "Love jumped out at us like a murderer jumps out from underground in an alley..." — is that true too? — Anna Akhmatova asked. — I've experienced something similar in my life. I know: it's great happiness!
Elena Sergeevna smiled at Anna Akhmatova's question and recited from memory the entire excerpt:

"Love jumped out at us like a murderer jumps out from underground in an alley, and struck us both immediately! Like lightning strikes, like a Finnish knife strikes! She, however, later claimed that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other long ago, not knowing each other, never seeing each other, and that she lived with another person... and I there, then... with this, what is her name..."

— Yes, it's all true, — Elena Sergeevna continued after quoting. — Love flared up quickly, extraordinarily quickly, at least from my side. And love for life.
When our paths with Mikhail Afanasyevich crossed, I was in a happy marriage with Evgeny Alexandrovich, the chief of staff of the Moscow Military District. I raised two sons.
Living with my husband, a wonderful man, I realized: we had everything at home, in the material sense I was a happy person. But sometimes I had a mood, a desire for some creative life. It seemed to me that something most important was missing, that I was born for some other purpose. And soon this purpose appeared. I met my "master" — Mikhail Bulgakov.
It was during Maslenitsa, at some mutual acquaintances. We sat next to each other, and my sleeve ties came undone. I asked him to tie them, and he then insisted that was the spell — it was then that I tied him for life. We agreed to go skiing the next day, and after that, we went to the actor's club, where he played billiards with Mayakovsky. In short, we met every day. Then spring came. I went to Yessentuki and received letters from him. In one of them was a dried rose, and instead of a photo — only his loving eyes, cut out of a card. For some reason, it was always fun with him.
Almost a year and a half passed after that when we met again in the restaurant "Metropol." We both realized then that we continued to love each other. I wrote a letter to my husband, simply asking him to let me go.
One day, receiving a small advance, Mikhail Afanasyevich invited me to drink a mug of beer with him. There was only one boiled egg as a snack, which we split in half. Then we finally realized that we couldn't live without each other, and Misha wrote to my husband: "Evgeny Alexandrovich, we love each other as we loved before. Pass by our happiness!"
Evgeny Alexandrovich, after a long silence, wrote back that he was letting me go. "Mikhail Afanasyevich," he replied, "what I do, I do not for you, but for Elena Sergeevna." Later he married Alexey Nikolaevich's daughter, — Elena Sergeevna glanced towards Alexey Tolstoy.
Tolstoy nodded sadly and said:
— Evgeny Shilovsky, Elena's former husband, is a most noble person, an aristocrat by birth! They are happy with my daughter! — Then, after a pause, he added: — His image I captured in Vadim Roshchin, the hero of my novel "The Road to Calvary."
Elena Sergeevna continued:
— After the release of "The Fatal Eggs," which was perceived as sharp satire on Soviet power, Bulgakov's theatrical productions were removed from repertoires. Books were not printed, and he himself could be destroyed at any moment. But none of this scared me. From the very beginning, I was his muse and wife.
She fell silent again. The room was dead silent, everyone was impressed by her story. Outside the windows, crickets chirped and fireflies flew, but neither mosquitoes nor gnats bothered, as usually happens at night in this hot climate. As if the world froze at midnight (as at Satan's ball in Bulgakov's novel), listening to the fascinating, mesmerizing love story of the great writer and the woman who decided to dedicate herself to his work and reveal him as a writer to the whole world.
— Many pages of my life I left in the shadows, — Elena Sergeevna said, standing up and indicating that the "ball" was over. — And not because I hide the truth about myself, — she added, — but because I discard everything that does not relate to Misha.
Everyone understood that it was time to leave. After warm and slightly sad farewell words, the room emptied.
On the way home, Efim said only one thing:
— In this humble room met the greatest minds, and I am convinced many of them will yet leave their testimonies about this time and create outstanding works.
They walked further without talking. Each silent about their own thoughts.


Chapter 10

— You've been quiet lately and often disappear somewhere? — Alla asked Yakov.
He hesitated:
— Everything's fine, mom, I'm tired from work and studies.
— You have vacations now, don't you?
— I need to keep studying anyway.
Alla looked at him suspiciously and worriedly. Yakov lowered his eyes and left.
— Don't forget what time and in what country we live, — his mother shouted after him and sighed heavily.

Yakov loved spending time with Efim. His friend was very erudite, wrote poems that even Tatiana, Sergei Yesenin's daughter, liked. It was very interesting with Efim because he often found entertaining events. Mostly these were meetings with writers, poets, directors, theater actors — with great artists who were evacuated to Tashkent so they could continue their creative work. Efim and his sister Mira were friends with Tatiana Yesenina, who was part of the literary elite and provided them with tickets to theatrical performances or concerts of talented musicians who arrived in Tashkent from all regions of the vast country.
Despite hunger and harsh conditions, creative life was bustling in this ancient city of the East with a feudal past. Artists and musicians performed often, shows were sold out, and tickets were impossible to get. For a provincial city with an underdeveloped culture, such a constellation of celebrities was an amazing gift, and despite hunger, hard work, and the sleepless nights of the city's residents, the concert halls were full. There were many of their own talented people, writers, poets, playwrights in Uzbekistan, and such an influx of European culture literally exploded the creative life of the city in all areas of art. At that time, the Leningrad Conservatory was in Tashkent, evacuated in the autumn of 1941 from blockaded Leningrad. In its composition arrived teachers of high professional level and talented students. They huddled in dormitories or private homes of hospitable Uzbeks. Hunger and poverty reigned everywhere, but still, there was a lot of sun, fertile land, and a grateful, receptive to art Tashkent audience that helped them survive and create.

— Imagine, — Efim told Yakov, — yesterday I was at a performance of the Moscow Jewish Theater under the direction of Solomon Mikhoels. It's incredible! Half of the audience didn't understand Yiddish, but everyone was so enthusiastic about the performance, the ovations didn't stop for almost forty minutes! The actors' play is so expressive, so many fiery Jewish dances, music, and songs that words aren't needed.
— Really? — Yakov was surprised. — I heard that many Jews from the occupied western regions, more than a hundred thousand, came to Tashkent — maybe they are the ones attending these performances.
— Not all Jews know Yiddish. And there were many other nationalities among the audience. The locals, for example, Uzbeks, responded so enthusiastically.
— They probably used programs in Russian or Uzbek, where everything was described?
— No one even looked at them.
— What was the play? Why didn't you invite me? And my sister Angelica would have gone too.
— "Wandering Stars." Tatiana brought only two tickets, but for the next performance, I asked her to get some for you too.
— For Mikhoels?
— Yes. A play based on Shakespeare.
— Mom says Stalin will destroy Mikhoels soon: a Jew and too talented.
— By the way, Stalin really liked this Shakespeare play "King Lear," — Efim noted.
— He liked the play by Bulgakov, as you told me, but that didn't help the disgraced writer, — Yasha reminded.
— Yes... — Efim pondered. — Maybe "King Lear" pleased our leader as proof of the correctness of his personal views — distrust of people: the king was betrayed by his daughters and his retinue! Stalin suspects betrayal in everyone. Anyway, I asked Tatiana to get tickets for "Lear."
— And are all the actors in Mikhoels' plays Jews?
— Of course. Although... there's one Polish girl, very young and very beautiful, she's only sixteen. To be honest, I think I'm in love with her — Etel Kovenskaya.
— When did you manage? After all, you like Angelica, — Yasha teased.
— Yesterday, after the performance, Tatiana and I went backstage to congratulate the actors. Someone gave Etel Kovenskaya flowers and a pastry — today, as you know, this is a very rare culinary product, which is expensive. She somehow shyly smiled and took these gifts. "Thank you!" — she said quietly. She is so modest, beautiful! — Efim said dreamily.
— Yes! I think you are really in love! — Yakov said with a grin. — But she's probably not Polish. Etel is a Jewish name.
— Maybe, maybe, — Efim agreed thoughtfully.
— I also want to see "King Lear," — Yakov said confidently, even somewhat demandingly. — After all, it was liked by Stalin himself!
— Stalin didn't understand a thing in this play, — Efim said. — He only saw the theme of betrayal. But the meaning of Shakespeare's play is much deeper.
— What is it?
— The king was long intoxicated by his unlimited power and became a slave to flattery. When Lear realized this, he understood much about people, about the meaning of life, about the tragedy of human existence. This is Shakespeare's brilliant philosophy! Your Stalin is too primitive to understand this.
— My mom thinks so too, but forbids talking about it.
— Your mom is smart and a thousand times right!
— Where are the performances held?
— In the Tashkent Philharmonic Hall. This concert hall is named after the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Yakov Sverdlov, — Efim said solemnly and with irony. — Before the revolution, it was a circus-variety show. By the way, Sverdlov is your namesake, Yasha, and a Jew. Lenin loved him very much: Sverdlov had a rare talent for organizing.
— And are you proud that he was also a Jew, like you?
— God forbid me! He's a devil, not a man. A disgrace to the Jews. Even Lenin was amazed by his cruelty. The murderer of the royal family. I know some secret information that remains about him. Just give your word that you won't talk about it anywhere.
— Don't doubt it! But how do you know this?
— Tatiana Yesenina learned from her mother. But remember, not a word to anyone! It's not my secret. So, the cause of Sverdlov's sudden death is still a mystery. The official version is that he caught the Spanish flu. But Sverdlov was treated not in the Kremlin clinic but at home. The Spanish flu version is doubtful because the day before Sverdlov's death, Lenin visited him. As is known, the Spanish flu is a contagious disease. So contagious that it killed more people than the First World War. Lenin could not but understand that he was at risk. So, he was sure that Sverdlov did not have the Spanish flu and came to him to find out something important.
Already in the thirties, when Sverdlov's sealed office was opened, a safe was discovered. The keys to the safe were lost. It was entrusted to a professional, a safecracker, who was specially brought from prison for this purpose, to open the find. And much was found in the safe: gold coins of royal minting — for a huge amount; gold items, many with precious stones; royal credit tickets. In addition, blank passport forms of the royal sample, as well as passports in various names, one of them a German one. Sverdlov was also the keeper of the party's "diamond fund." Perhaps this is what Lenin wanted to ask him about. Stalin discovered these treasures only sixteen years after Sverdlov's death. The "devil of the Bolsheviks" knew how to keep secrets. A devil and a thief! That's who he was, and in his honor, a wonderful concert hall was named in Tashkent, where Komissarzhevskaya, Isadora Duncan, Sergey Yesenin, and other celebrities performed.
— Yes... And we with Bulgakov's cat bear his name. And you, Efim, are of the same blood...
— Not only me, Yasha, but your Jesus too. He, by the way, is also a Jew. And his father, the carpenter Joseph, has the same name as the general secretary Stalin. In general, see you. I'll try to get tickets.
And the guys parted.

After some time, Yakov announced at home that he was going to a performance of Solomon Mikhoels' Jewish theater.
— I want to go too, — said Angelica.
— I asked Efim for two tickets. He promised.
— You won't understand anything in Yiddish, — said Alla.
— There are two Jewish languages, mom, as Efim explained to me — Yiddish and Hebrew, and Mikhoels only stages plays in Yiddish, but people who don't understand a word of this language are rushing to his performances.
— Why such interest in the theater? — Angelica wondered.
— According to Efim, in Mikhoels' plays, the heroes, residents of provincial Jewish towns, seem to rise to the level of prophets...
— And what play are you going to watch? — Alla asked.
— We are going to "King Lear," — Yakov announced. — This play was very much liked by Stalin.
— Oh, your Mikhoels will get it from this Stalin.
— Why, mom? — Angelica wondered.
— With such popularity and such talent! What's his name again, Solomon?
— Yes, Solomon.
— In the country, there cannot be two kings Solomon. There can be only one Solomon — comrade Stalin! — And, thinking a little, Alla sighed: — Well, go if there are tickets: Shakespeare is serious!

It was May 1942. The sky was blue and cloudless, everything around was fragrant, lilacs and cherry trees were blooming, wildflowers appeared along the sidewalks, and no one wanted to think about the thousands of young people dying at the front every day, lying in the ground forever. Spring! Everyone wanted to live. People hurried to the play, and among them were the young and beautiful Efim with his sister Mira and Yakov with Angelica.
In the foyer, they met Tatiana and her husband, as they had arranged.
— For the Tashkent audience, this is a premiere, — announced the lively Tatiana.
A master of ceremonies in the NKVD uniform came on stage and made an introductory speech:
— Comrades! Seven years ago, on its fifteenth anniversary, the Moscow Jewish Theater reached new heights: from nationally limited themes from the life of a Jewish town, it moved to the heights of world drama. And today's play based on the great Shakespeare has not left the theater stage since then. "King Lear" is one of the greatest tragedies in world literature. It is a story of power, betrayal, and madness. We will witness the fall of a king who, losing his mind, loses everything dear to him.
Dear viewers! The play is in Yiddish. The programs in your hands contain a detailed plot of the play, translated into Russian and Uzbek. Prepare to immerse yourself in a world where love and malice, loyalty and betrayal intertwine in a captivating and tragic intrigue.
— I know him, — Tatiana whispered, — he's been working as a master of ceremonies and with actors for a long time. He was a leading actor in the Russian drama theater in Tashkent. Very talented! Only now he's enlisted by the NKVD. "Watching" over the artists in the state philharmonic.
With the appearance of Mikhoels on stage as King Lear, the hall froze. His entrance caused delight. His entire play was subject to a special rhythm, unique to him. His gestures were deeply meaningful and often more expressive than words, they were extremely concise and formed one whole with makeup, speech, and thought-out movement on stage.
During the intermission, everyone went to a charming pavilion where they could buy Eastern sweets with tea. Such luxuries were rare during the widespread famine, but the Uzbek government had been generous for Mikhoels' performances.

"I see this theater is highly valued here," noted Yakov, observing the special atmosphere in the foyer and the generous buffet.

"Oh yes!" Tatiana confirmed. "You can't imagine how necessary and beneficial Mikhoels is in Uzbekistan. Believe it or not, there are performances almost every day, sometimes twice a day. Here are some advertisements." Tatiana pulled a newspaper from her bag and began to read: "May 25, 26, 27 — 'Tevye the Dairyman', May 28 and June 1 — 'Wandering Stars', June 13, 14, 15 — 'Tzvei Kuni Leml'."

"Where are these performances held?" Mira asked.

"At the Kafanov Club on Proletarskaya Street. Part of the building is occupied by the Tashkent Conservatory, and the other part, along with the auditorium, was given to the Moscow GOSET — Mikhoels' theater."

"Oh, we live nearby — on Proletarskaya, not far from Pervushka," Angelika said happily.

"And that's not all, guys," Tatiana continued about Mikhoels. "He's not limited to working only at GOSET. He became the artistic director of the Uzbek Opera and Ballet Theater and at the film studio, where the best Moscow directors evacuated to Tashkent, like Mikhail Romm, Iosif Kheifits, Grigory Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, are either starting or already working. Even Faina Ranevskaya is being filmed. Can you imagine? Once, we decided to count how many responsibilities Mikhoels has — 'positions', as he calls them — and here's what we got: head of the Moscow State Jewish Theater, head of the Tashkent Opera Theater, chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, member of the theatrical section of the Stalin Prize Committee, professor and teacher of the theatrical studio in Tashkent, director of the Uzbek Drama Theater, and about five times more that I can't remember."

"How do you know so much about him?" Mira asked.

"Well, you know I dream of becoming a journalist and circulate in certain literary circles, studying materials, writing essays. I know a lot about the cultural events of this city."

"As Yesenin's daughter, all paths will open to you sooner or later, don't doubt it, Tatiana," said Yefim.

After the intermission, all the spectators returned to their seats, and when Lear and the Fool appeared on stage, something strange and unexpected happened. Everyone felt a strong jolt from below, the floor shook, and there was a smell of dust. Confusion swept through the rows. Those nearest the exit jumped up, and a stampede began. Everyone heard a rumble, not from the street, but from somewhere underground or from the universe. The chandelier jingled. Plaster fell from the ceiling onto the head of Mikhoels and the audience. Panic ensued. Mikhoels continued to play as if nothing had happened. His temperament forced the audience to listen to the play and return to their seats. It seemed that the earthquake was not coming from outside, but from the play itself, from the storm scene, from Mikhoels' sad cry and moan directed at the audience. There was something biblical about the whole evening.

On that May day in 1942, an earthquake occurred in Tashkent; Mikhoels did not feel it on stage. The building swayed, the lights went out, people jumped from their seats, but Mikhoels continued Lear's monologue. He later recounted that he only felt a slight dizziness. The next day, newspapers wrote: "Such a Lear on stage has never been seen. For the first time with Mikhoels, Lear rises to a philosophical and state generalization, to an epic image." The newspaper did not mention the five-point earthquake that occurred right during the performance. The audience watched the play to the end.

"I almost went crazy," shouted Alla when Yakov and Angelika returned home. "Why didn't you leave immediately after the first jolt?"

"Mom, you imagined it," laughed Yakov. "There was no earthquake."

"We didn't want to leave, mom, because it would have been inappropriate when Mikhoels continued his monologue," Angelika explained. "All the spectators returned to the hall. We watched Mikhoels as a prophet playing King Lear and therefore were not afraid."

"We just need to survive this difficult time," Alla kept repeating, "and now this earthquake and your biblical Mikhoels."

Yes, Mikhoels was indeed a hero in the biblical sense. And there was an earthquake. And at the front in 1942, key events were changing the course of the war: the Battle of Stalingrad, the largest tank battle in history, and the naval battles at Midway between the US and Japan, where the US won an important victory. Yet, German troops continued their advance, accompanied by brutal fighting.

Meanwhile, in Tashkent, directors, actors, and musicians evacuated from Moscow and Leningrad were actively working. Solomon Mikhoels was torn between three theaters, and the Uzbek Drama Theater named after Hamza provided him with an old mare and a cart. The Uzbek owner of the mare knocked on Mikhoels' door around six in the morning with a whip: "Suleiman, mine has come!" Mikhoels would jump up and, stumbling over cots, quickly run to the cart to make it to all his destinations.

In the evening, he might drop in on the Belarusian poet Yakub Kolas to listen to his new poems or meet with the Orientalist Yevgeny Bertels to learn what he needed about ancient Samarkand or to hear excerpts from the translation of Navoi's poem "Farhad and Shirin." In Bertels' house, one could meet the best representatives of the creative intelligentsia evacuated to Tashkent. Among them was always Mikhoels' close friend, artist Abdulov. With him, Mikhoels often composed and acted out improvised scenes as an actor.

One night, wrapping turbans on their heads and wearing robes, they went out into a deserted alley. Meeting an old Uzbek, apparently a night watchman, they asked him where the road to Mecca was. The astonished old man said he didn't know, that it was far, across seas and mountains. But Mikhoels, quite seriously, playing the invented role, convinced him that the most difficult part was reaching Chirchik (a city near Tashkent), and from there it was very close.

To raise the level of mastery of local artists, Mikhoels attracted highly qualified professionals who were in evacuation in Tashkent to work with them. Mikhoels himself conducted classes in stagecraft. Vocal lessons were given by the soloist of the Moscow Bolshoi Theater, Nadezhda Obukhova. They taught aesthetics, the history of music, composition, and performance art. Thanks to Mikhoels' efforts, European musical culture developed at a higher level in Uzbekistan.

Suddenly, Yakov discovered his vocal abilities and became passionate about opera singing. He started attending vocal classes to enter the conservatory.

"You wanted to become an engineer," Alla said, "now choose one thing."

"Mom, let Yasha study vocals," Angelika supported her brother.

She also loved classical music and often hummed arias from operas she listened to on records. But now, thanks to Solomon Mikhoels' enthusiasm and active work in creating an opera theater in Tashkent, it became possible to hear these arias performed live and even learn vocal mastery in the opera studio at the conservatory.

Yefim continued to write poetry and was hopelessly in love with actress Etel Kovenskaya.

"Yesterday after the play, I was backstage again," he told Yakov, "and saw her without makeup. Mira, Tatiana, and I went to congratulate the actors after the performance. The play was called 'The Enchanted Tailor.' She played a hungry boy, and her partner was the leading actor and director of the play, Zuskin, Mikhoels' right hand.

During the performance, a curious incident happened with Etel. Although, more likely, a sad one. In one scene, when she and Zuskin were dreaming about food, she suddenly fainted. The audience was alarmed, but the brilliant Zuskin improvised as if it was scripted. But we understood that she really fainted.

When Tatiana and I went backstage, someone asked Etel: 'What happened to you on stage?' And she apologetically said: 'I was terribly hungry. I'm constantly hungry lately. When I had the line: "Gehakte Leber, Gefilte Fish with horseradish," I lost consciousness. I so wanted to eat that again, like in childhood. My mother used to cook these dishes excellently!'

Zuskin then approached her and said: 'You're hungry! Here are eighteen rubles, and you'll go to the commercial bakery tomorrow and buy yourself something tasty.' She smiled and took the money from him. Without makeup, she was so beautiful!"

"Yes... I see, you're still in love?" Yakov smiled.

"But hopelessly," Yefim replied.

"Why? Tell Tatiana. Let her introduce you to her."

"Mira told me Mikhoels was urgently summoned to Moscow and is being sent to America with an important mission on Stalin's orders, and the Jewish theater is soon to return to Moscow. Mikhoels' departure was unexpected. He couldn't even say goodbye to all the actors of either his theater or the Uzbek ones; he said something like: 'My Uzbeks are left, and my unpaid obligation to them for their trust and affection hangs in the air...' The Jewish theater will perform its last play before leaving in the Russian Drama Theater venue. It will be a new play by Uzbek authors — 'Hamza'. And I know these authors. Remember Abdulla Kahhar? We were at a 'ball' at Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova's place in his house a year ago."

"I remember, I remember," Yasha said. "The 'Noah's Ark'. I remember everything. And the cat, my namesake, too."

"Well, there were two more playwrights there: Kamil Yashen and the second one, I can't recall his name. They are the authors."

"Why does Stalin need Mikhoels?"

"Stalin's up to something. Mikhoels has enormous authority worldwide among Western liberal society, as well as among Jewish financial magnates."

"And who lives now in the 'Noah's Ark', where Bulgakova lived?"

"Anna Akhmatova. You remember her? But today, Yasha, I'm interested in another very intriguing meeting," Yefim said mysteriously. "Will you come with me?"

"First, explain, what kind of meeting is it?"

"It's a secret meeting. No one should know about it. Especially your mom."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Yes! Very!"

"But why don't you want my mom to know? You consider her smart."

"If you want to tell her about this, better not come with me. She won't let you go anyway."

Yakov hesitated, but curiosity got the better of him.

"I'll go!" he said confidently.

"Tomorrow, we'll go to the most exotic area of the old city".


Chapter 11.

They met as agreed, and Yefim, acting as a guide, introduced Yakov to the streets and houses he remembered from childhood: his family once lived here after moving from Belarus.

Yakov was very interested since he had never been there before.

"Kashgarka is the oldest district of Tashkent," Yefim explained. "It lives its own crazy, special life. Of course, the 1930s brought changes — the famine in Ukraine led to a new wave of settlers who knew that Tashkent was a 'bread city', 'and not poor at all', and they came here. Among them were many Jews, but their number sharply increased recently, at the beginning of the war, and now Kashgarka is jokingly called 'Khaimstrasse'."

"Good humor!" Yasha laughed.

"Yes, yes!" Yefim laughed too. "I used to meet with Odessa Jews here, and I was always amazed by their unique 'Russian' language. For example, 'I actually went to work!' Or: 'Well, will you buy or should I forget you forever?'"

Yasha laughed, and a satisfied Yefim continued to recite from memory:

"'Solomon, what's seven times eight?' — 'Are we selling or buying?' And here's another: 'Sara Wolfovna, I don't want to upset you, but I'm doing well.' In general, something like a small Zhitomir or slightly Berdichev has appeared in Tashkent. And before, there were many representatives of the so-called criminal world and ordinary hooligans — local thugs," Yefim continued to tell as they wandered through the old cul-de-sacs, alleys, and courtyards. "This is the Sheikhan-Taur district. In this yard lived one of my school friends, by the way, our mutual acquaintance Tatiana Yesenina, and many other famous people who have already moved to the center."

"It feels like this mahalla was built without any plan — as God wills," said Yasha, who preferred strictness and order in any drawings and engineering projects.

"Yes, that's true. They say one hundred and fifty years ago, there were just over a hundred one-story adobe houses here, where people from China lived."

"And why is the river so smelly?" Yakov asked.

"They throw garbage into it. Chauli is the name of this river. A lot of different people from all over the country have come. This residential area was once clean, but now it's cluttered."

Yasha continued to look curiously at the houses, dirty alleys, and streets, as if he were somewhere in Florence.

"And we often went to this cinema, standing in line at the box office," Yefim pointed to a building of rather exotic and harsh appearance. "The club you see now is called Parashutka — the remnants of a beautiful temple. In the last century, there was a prison castle and a church, Pokrovskaya, on this site."

"Why 'Parashutka'?"

"They sewed parachutes here: when the prison castle passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks, they opened a factory in it."

Now Yasha looked with interest at the dark brown building — with thick, meter-thick walls and windows almost at ground level, with rusty bars.

"In these semi-basement rooms lived the prison staff, laundresses, some gray personalities, not much different from the prisoners."

"Walking past these windows is unpleasant," Yasha noted.

"And today's meeting, Yasha, is not for entertainment," Yefim said seriously, in a mysterious tone, and looked at him.

"What kind of meeting is it?" Yakov asked.

"You'll find out soon!... In childhood, when we ran to watch movies in this club, we didn't think that these were the remnants of a church. Old-timers said that after the revolution, they removed the crosses from the domes, dismantled the turrets, and organized a cinema in the building. Mira and I went here to see 'Tarzan'. In the last century, the inhabitants of this gloomy castle engaged in socially useful work, and the fruits of this labor appeared not only at the bazaar, now called Alai, but also at various exhibitions around 1890."

"And what exactly did the prisoners produce?"

"Furniture, carpentry, and knitting products, and even an earthquake warning device, as earthquakes often happen here. But their works of art from crumpled bread attracted particular attention. Sculpting various things from bread achieved, they say, perfection. Some of the prisoners demonstrated unique artistic skills in this peculiar form of creativity. And all this was sold or shown at exhibitions."

"What a happy time it was!" Yakov drawled.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Sculptures from bread, like from clay. And now? To get bread by ration cards, you have to stand in line all night."

"Today, Yasha, you'll learn even more! That which is hidden from everyone, and which is better not to tell anyone."

"Intriguing? Alright, I'll wait."

"In this club, our meeting will take place. I organized it. They hold concerts or show movies here. I registered this event for myself as a poetry evening, where we'll read our poems."

"And is that really the case?"

"Not quite... I'll explain now. I met a Ukrainian girl, a very nice one, she also writes poems. So..."

"Oh! You've already managed to cheat not only on my sister," Yasha interrupted him with a laugh, "but also on the wonderful actress Etel Kovenskaya?"

"Yes! I really like this girl too!" Yefim said, but with a serious face. "And after reading poems, the most interesting part will begin: we'll listen to the stories of people who came here from Ukraine and other places, fleeing the famine. They came in the thirties or quite recently. They live and work here and carry the pain — the secret of what really happened to them and is happening now in Ukraine and other parts of the country. This is what we'll learn today, and you shouldn't tell anyone about this meeting, Yasha."

"And if it's so secret... do you trust everyone who will be here?" Yakov asked.

"Everyone here is one of us. Don't worry. The guard is a trusted person; he's known my parents and me for a long time, ever since I ran around these streets as a child. He won't betray us. He was recently demobilized from the front after being wounded, returned with one leg. I agreed with him, and he provided me with a room."

As they talked, Yakov and Yefim entered the club building — the former prison church. An elderly man on crutches, with deep scars on his face, met them and led them to a small room with an open terrace and an exit to a cozy courtyard.

"Where did he get such terrible scars?" Yakov asked.

"They say he was in captivity and miraculously escaped: at night, he got out of an open grave — a ravine with the bodies of prisoners shot by the Germans every day. In the morning, partisans picked him up, half-dead."

"I heard those who were in captivity are considered traitors," Yasha noted. "Doesn't that seem strange to you?"

"What's strange?"

"He's free..."

"Don't worry..." Yefim thought for a minute. "Everything will be fine! Don't worry..."

And Yefim confidently stepped into the center of the courtyard, where a diverse audience, mostly Ukrainians, had already gathered. Some sat on chairs, while others settled on wooden benches between low bushes or on flat stones among the grass covering the entire courtyard like a carpet. It was very warm but not stuffy, as it usually is in the hot summer here: in spring, it was pleasant and easy to breathe in the open air. Yakov sat on the terrace, and someone from the locals was already setting up a Russian samovar with Uzbek piyalas and even brought some flatbread and crackers.

Yefim addressed the audience:

"Thank you, dear guests, for coming to share your stories. Îlena and I," he took the hand of the shy girl with large round, surprised eyes and a thick braid around her head standing next to him, "will read you our poems. Îlena has been writing poems since childhood. She came from Ukraine, having lost her parents during the famine when she was ten. An Uzbek family took her in. The head of this family, Anvar Ikramov, is here now," Yefim pointed to an elderly Uzbek pouring tea in the room. He smiled pleasantly at everyone and started arranging crackers on plates.

When Îlena began to read, her shyness immediately vanished — she got into character. Her poems about love initially inspired admiration for their chastity and romanticism but then horrified everyone! It was the truth about what she experienced herself.

When she read about her first childhood love — about a boy she grew up and befriended with, Yakov couldn't stand it: he got up and left. Even Yefim, who was informed about what the poems would be, was shocked. Many covered their faces so their tears wouldn't be visible. Îlena read seriously, without unnecessary emotions, keeping herself under control.

Her poem was about love, about the first kiss, and about how her beloved, frozen in the winter cold, lay alone in the middle of the road. Exhausted from hunger, he fell and froze. Îlena couldn't approach him. Nor could she help carry him home. Neighbors came to him and cut pieces from the dead body to make soup and not starve themselves.

After this poem, no one applauded. Anvar Ikramov, in whose family Îlena grew up, stood with his face buried in his hands.

Îlena began to read other poems: about Tashkent, about the Uzbek family that accepted her, about spring, about colorful Eastern bazaars. Everyone cheered up and applauded her sincerely. Yasha returned and was also impressed, but now by the good and kind poems of this talented young girl, who was apparently warmed by the care of Anvar Ikramov's family. Her last two poems were called "I Am Saved!" and "Among People."

Then Yefim began reading his poems. He didn't fight, and the best poetry at that time was created either at the front or on the theme of war — his poetic images were mainly inspired by biblical plots, but, of course, not without a love story. "Talented guy," Yasha thought and even felt proud of his friendship with him.

Suddenly, Yefim moved on to politics, and when he began to read his poem "Communism," Yasha clutched his head.

"The Bolsheviks will spawn freaks. God! Let's run from the Court. From the abyss of dark peoples To where the herds graze. Where the slender pines and firs, Where the sunbeam in the spring, Where the vile smile of the rabble You won't see in a dream."

"Quoting Alexander Blok," Yasha heard a voice and turned around. Behind him stood a smiling guard.

"Apparently, he decided to listen too," Yakov thought.

"What's Blok got to do with it?" he asked the guard.

"'God! Let's run from the Court' — our poet swiped this phrase from Blok," the guard smirked.

"It's a literary device," Îlena, standing nearby, explained.

"The guard is educated," Yakov thought with some anxious feeling.

Yefim read a few more very good poems and then suggested taking a break, drinking tea, and getting to know each other better. After a while, he again stepped into the center of the courtyard and asked the old woman sitting under a shady tree to tell her story.

"It was terrible hunger, children," she began with a Ukrainian accent and in Ukrainian folk interpretation of Russian speech. "God forbid such a thing, never such hunger. Yes! In three months in our village, two thousand people died, in three months, yes! And there were cases where neighbors, distant relatives, cut and ate an eight-year-old girl. And they cut their own children... Ate... Yes. That was so terrible, children."

"What is your name, grandmother, and where are you from?" Yefim asked her kindly.

"This is my grandmother, Maria Manko," intervened a tall teenage girl. "Grandmother doesn't understand Russian well. We're from the Chernihiv region. More precisely, she recently arrived and found me in an Uzbek family. There were ten other children from Ukraine and other places in this family. They raised us all as their children. This family is known here — the Shamahmudovs.

During the famine, someone found me, a five-year-old, unconscious in a barn in a village near Chernihiv and took me somewhere in a truck. Then they threw me in a wagon with children; the train was headed to Tashkent. That's what my grandmother says. Everyone in our family had already died of hunger by then, but it turns out I was saved. My grandmother Maria miraculously survived, and recently she was also evacuated here. She was looking for me by name, but here all names are changed because the children are small and don't remember their names."

"How did your grandmother recognize you?" Yefim asked.

"By this birthmark," the girl raised the sleeve of her dress and showed it on her right shoulder.

"Yes, yes!" happy Maria Manko nodded, seeing it, understanding what it was about, and burst into tears. "God grant that never happens. So, in three months in our village, two thousand people died. In three months, yes!"

"Well, God bless you, Maria!" Yefim said and glanced at the guests, inviting the next speaker.

An elderly man, by appearance a Caucasian, began to speak.

"Comrades! I want to say: this happened in other regions of the Soviet Union. In the thirties, people were dying of hunger in the Volga region, in the North Caucasus, and Kazakhstan."

"However, in Ukraine, the lack of food was much more severe compared to other areas," interrupted a young woman. "I'm a native of the Gusevka farm in the Kharkiv region, my name is Vera, Vera Koniayeva. I'll tell you this: if in other places the peasants were usually deprived of only grain for failing to meet the plan, in Ukrainian villages fines were introduced to cover the debt — they took away meat, vegetables, fruit, often even confiscated the prepared meal from the house. Imagine, they would enter the hut, and in the hut, well, in the pot, borscht, they took the borscht, took it out and smashed the pot in the yard, so the soup spilled. Then they took clothes as well."

"And once, people from the Cheka came to our place to dekulakize and found buried potatoes in the yard," another Ukrainian woman joined the conversation. "They took it, and our grandfather, the owner himself, they buried him in the ground. They made us, the household members, feed them, and they had vodka with them. They drank and feasted, and when they dug up the old man later, he was shaking terribly and soon died: he caught a cold, heart trouble."

"I want to add something else," apparently remembering something important, Vera Koniayeva excitedly began to tell: "Do you know who became the first victims of the Holodomor? Cats and dogs, then it was the turn of rats, frogs, and mice. When they were also eaten, the peasants began to eat leaves, tree bark, and roots. They ate dead animals lying along the roads, boiled horns from them. Or they ate frozen, rotten potatoes and beets found after harvesting in the collective farm fields.

One time, my mother unexpectedly saw the still-smoking entrails of some animal: they had slaughtered someone's cow, took the meat, and left the entrails. How glad my mother was to find it! She gathered her find and headed home. I heard noise in the yard. It turned out that a crowd of people, maddened by hunger, was already running after my mother's trail — we barely managed to lock ourselves in. They didn't leave and waited for their chance. We were saved by the fact that there was water, salt, and matches in the house. Mother gave us broth, and she could only go outside two days later, making sure no one was near the house."

"You probably don't know," another elderly man, in a shirt with a pazushka decorated with embroidery, joined the conversation, "that people from the villages tried to flee to the city to survive, but the Bolsheviks didn't allow it. Yes!" he said quietly. "It was genocide!" And he looked around cautiously. "The Cheka received orders to stop and return Ukrainian and Kuban populations who were trying to escape from starvation. They were forbidden to sell train tickets. Troops were stationed on the outskirts of the villages. Ukrainians were guarded by armed soldiers."

Here Yefim decided to summarize, also looking around cautiously, and commented, but softly:

"I think it's clear: Stalin aimed to take away Ukraine's national consciousness and create a new formation of the Soviet people from Ukrainians."

"Exactly!" confirmed the elderly man in the Ukrainian shirt. "The Bolsheviks realized that if they didn't crush our Ukraine, the national consciousness would rise so much that later the Russian authorities wouldn't be able to do anything with us, wouldn't be able to keep Ukraine under their control. So they decided to destroy the entire population, kill it with hunger."

"Yes, yes!" confirmed another guest with long mustaches and a topknot in the Cossack manner, who had participated little in the conversation until now but listened attentively to everyone. "Since we preserve our ethnic characteristics: language and culture, traditions, and morality, and you know, well, rituals and all that, Moscow decided that it was necessary to strike at the village and thereby at the national essence of Ukrainians."

"And here's what I'm going to say," another elderly woman of intelligent appearance, with good Russian speech, obviously literate, joined the conversation. "Where I lived, in that district, it's the Rodnyansky district in Chernihiv region, there were two farms in the woods. Well, in the thirty-third year, a policeman from the district went there. He enters a hut. And what does he see? A little boy is cutting a girl's leg, who was maybe five years old. He wanted to eat that. Such matters were not given a pass: thousands of cases of cannibalism, tens of thousands. In general, in Ukraine, a huge number of villages were depopulated, houses stood empty. On village councils, instead of red flags, black cloths hung. No one but the GPU and the police had the right to visit Ukrainian villages, especially those where a black flag appeared — a sign that the village had completely died out from hunger. Understand? The Ukrainian base, on which its own statehood could be created, is the village, the people who have lived in Ukraine for centuries. And all this was destroyed.

And then — mass repressions against the Ukrainian intelligentsia. They began to cut them out from the thirty-third year. Arrests, trials, executions. They exterminated independent people, thinking people. It was... how is it... political eugenics. They wanted to raise another person. No, it's absolutely clear — it was genocide!" the elderly woman confidently concluded.

"Comrades, this happened and is still happening in all rural areas of other republics, not only in your Ukraine," the "jealous" Caucasian interrupted.

"Yes, of course," Yefim agreed with emphasized politeness. "But it would be more correct to say: 'in your Ukraine.' And let's, friends, listen to everyone who wants to speak."

"Vasilyevna is my name," another woman, appearing to be about fifty or older, decided to join the conversation. "I was born in 1910, a native of the village of New Burlak, Pechenegsky district, Kharkiv region."

Yasha, who listened with surprise to all these horrifying stories, was struck by this detail: judging by the year of birth, the woman was only thirty-three, but she looked much older, almost like an old woman.

Meanwhile, Vasilyevna was telling:

"In our village, there was a woman with eight children, her husband died. Back in 1929, they ate nothing but beets all winter. And then they decided not to feed the younger ones: maybe the Lord would accept them sooner, so the older ones would have more food, they thought. They drove the little ones onto the stove and told them: 'Sit there so that your sound is not heard, or we'll throw you out into the cold. Look, neighbor Peter took his children to the station and left them there. If you make noise, we'll take you to the station too, or worse, we'll put you on a hot frying pan.' The children cried quietly so no one would hear, but they didn't get off the stove."

"And the communist press wrote that the rumors about hunger are spread by kulaks and their accomplices, who deliberately starve and die to fight against Soviet power," the Caucasian added with a grin.

"There's little funny about it," Yefim quietly noted.

And Vasilyevna continued:

"It was the children who were most often the victims of cannibalism. They easily became prey. From a child on the table, only bones and colored ribbons from braids were left. They ate not only others but their own. For example, the mother cooked the youngest child to save the older ones. And sometimes children ate their parents who died of hunger. And there were cases when human meat was sold at the market. In the winter and spring of thirty-three in Ukrainian villages, human flesh was the most accessible..."

"The Soviet authorities left your people only neighbors and their own children?" the Caucasian asked with a smirk.

"I have facts too," joined a young woman with a tired, weary, and very beautiful face.

Looking at her, Yasha thought: "Yes, Ukrainian women have always been distinguished by special feminine beauty, but this one is somehow particularly worn out."

And the woman continued:

"The mother was forced to kill her daughters, one by one, from two to seven years old."

"Do you know her?" the curious Caucasian asked. "Is she also in Tashkent?"

"It doesn't matter," the woman didn't answer. "She and her two older ones ate the youngest. One of the sisters initially didn't want to eat the meat of her sister, but then, when it came down to it, she ate. Then it was the next one's turn... But the eldest daughter refused to eat the meat of her sisters; she understood that she would soon face the same fate, and she said: 'Well, let me be next.'"

And the young woman burst into tears in front of everyone.

"She couldn't stand it, poor thing," said Ikramov, hearing her story from the room where the samovar was smoking. The elderly Uzbek understood, and everyone understood that it was her own story — about the storyteller. Even the Caucasian, covering his face, sat silently.

"Well, it wasn't simple," the poor woman justified herself through her tears, "how they dismembered, how they threw it all away, there were heart and liver, how they cooked it in the oven..."

"I'm Makar Kharchenko," unexpectedly decided to speak a man of rural appearance. He was sitting on a bare stone, cross-legged, and had been quietly silent all this time. "In the spring of 1933, we came from the village station to Kharkiv to our parents' acquaintances, the Voronin spouses. They were emaciated, depressed. We didn't see the children, of whom they had three. We had soup for lunch, and everyone had stomach problems. When we came to our senses, we asked the hosts: 'Where are your children?' — 'We just ate them,' they replied without hesitation. 'How "ate"?' — we couldn't believe our ears. 'Like that, one by one. First, we ate the two little ones, then the eldest. The eldest herself said: if you're eating everyone, then eat me too. And how delicious their fingers were!' they said."

After this story, everyone sat silently, exhausted from the shocks, from these stories of witnesses and even some participants of these horrors, which before could only be read in the novels of Jules Verne, Mayne Reid, Jack London, Fenimore Cooper.

"Yes, and still the Bolsheviks systematically destroyed and continue to destroy both the peasantry and the villages, not only in Ukraine but throughout Russia."

"What's your name?" Yefim asked the young woman who had said this.

"Galina Tyutina. We're from the Voronezh province."

"Tell us about yourself," Yefim suggested to her.

"Of course, I can. I also have a lot to tell you. In the spring of 1930, a barge with 'dekulakized' people, there were six hundred of them, including my grandfather Alexei, moored to the shore of the Pechora River near Vorkuta. They were sentenced to exile and forced labor in logging. There, a special settlement Ichot-Di arose — 'small island' in the Komi language. Grandfather Alexei worked in Ichot-Di as a beacon keeper, guarding the beacons on the river. The exiles extracted and rafted timber down the river, then transported it to the Arkhangelsk region, and then it was all sold abroad.
In the early years, settlers lived in dugouts and barracks, where it was unbearably cold, yet they stayed in the village to establish a new way of life. My grandfather didn't intend to return, even if he could, because he was so offended by the villagers and neighbors. These "activists" who were involved in dispossession were mostly who? Paupers who never had anything and weren’t used to working. My grandfather was left in the taiga, given some tools, and he built himself a house. By 1937, when collectivization had ended in most regions, the special settlers in Ichot-Di were self-sufficient in food. Industrious and enterprising—they became prosperous again. Their homes were filled with plenty: bear coats, carpets, and food in abundance. That's when my mother and I came to live with Grandpa Alexey. But the Bolsheviks didn't have time to dispossess us again—famine struck the village again with the onset of the war. Grandpa Alexey died at sixty. He asked to be buried there, in Ichot-Di. Then my mother and I moved to Tashkent.

“Do you have a story to share with us?” Yefim asked a toothless old man, who was enjoying his tea by dipping a dried biscuit into it, while the hospitable Anwar Ikramov fussed over him.

“Yes, yes,” the old man nodded, taking a sip of hot tea, “I have interesting stories too,” he said with a smile. “There was a village council executor named Makar. He would go around the village collecting the dead. He was a big joker, never despaired. Sometimes he’d enter a house where someone was still alive, man or woman, but he’d load them onto his cart anyway. The barely breathing person would ask, ‘Where are you taking me, Makar?’ ‘Well, you’ll die tomorrow anyway,’ Makar would say, ‘so I’ll take you today to save a trip tomorrow.’” The old man laughed hoarsely and then coughed, having choked on his biscuit. He was the only one who laughed.

“Old and foolish,” Yasha thought.

“What’s your name?” Yefim turned to a pleasant-looking young man sitting silently under a chinar—a centuries-old, sprawling tree—the only one in the courtyard.

“My name is Arnie Douglas,” he said, smiling modestly.

“Were you discharged?”

“No. I might be drafted soon. I just turned eighteen yesterday. But they say they don’t particularly want children of enemies of the people at the front?”

“No, they take everyone,” Yefim replied. “Tell us about yourself. Who are you? How did you end up in Tashkent? Why do you have an English or American name?”

“My story is quite unusual and unlike those I’ve heard here, but it’s also connected to the famine. My father was repressed in 1937 and executed because he was American. My mother and I moved here from the city of Buzuluk in the Samara region. My father came to Russia in the 1920s. He belonged to the American Quaker society.”

“Tell us more about that,” Yefim was intrigued. “I’ve never heard of them.”

“It’s a movement within Christianity called the ‘Religious Society of Friends.’ It appeared in the mid-seventeenth century in England. Quakers have a unique spiritual practice, emphasizing the inner light they believe is a manifestation of God's presence in everyone. The devastating famine in Bolshevik Russia in the 1920s forced the Soviet government to acknowledge the catastrophe and accept foreign aid. Among many agreements with international aid organizations was one with American Quakers. The ARA organization was involved in eliminating famine in Soviet Russia. Thousands survived thanks to Quaker food rations, doctors, tractors, and horses. Today, no one in Russia talks about this aid, and the saviors’ names are forgotten, their good deeds consigned to oblivion. My father, who married a Russian woman—my mother—was shot as an enemy of the people. Although he and my mother were members of the ARA Quaker group and saved thousands of children from starvation. They met through this work, fell in love, and my father, having received permission from the government, stayed in Russia. He and other Americans were even awarded by the Bolshevik government. Monuments were erected for Quakers who died during the epidemics raging in the famine areas. But locals were forbidden to speak of the foreign aid; the Bolsheviks kept it secret. Some Americans, ARA members, were driven to drink by the horrors they witnessed. The Russian word ‘drink’ became popular with them. Or they went mad. Then they were sent back to America. Some left on their own or simply fled. But many, like my father, heroically continued their mission. They were the majority.

My father used to say, ‘The worst thing was when children, even infants, were left under our windows, where we lived. They hoped we would feed them. But we had strict accounting of food meant for public children’s canteens, feeding thousands of kids, and couldn’t break the rules—we’d be accused of theft. We heard the moans and pleas below our windows, covered our ears with our hands, and clamped our hearts in a vice, unable to do anything about it.’

My mother is ill,” Arnie continued, “and couldn’t come today, but she asked me to show you my father’s diary. It was written in English, but I’ll translate some excerpts into Russian for you.” Arnie opened a notebook and began to read: “The situation in the Buzuluk district is one of the worst. Shadows slipping past our windows are people who come and barely whisper. They leave their children, hoping they’ll be saved by foreigners. It’s a completely horrific, disheartening sight when someone cries and begs for a piece of bread beneath your window, and in the morning, you find that person dead. It’s an unbearable struggle with your own conscience, but the food was strictly allotted. You’re not allowed to give it away. Not because you’re a greedy foreigner, but because the work must be orderly and well-thought-out. Having to turn away from this seems like the highest brutality. But what can you do—feed each one and let hundreds die?’

‘Buzuluk, Samara province. ARA and the police guard cemeteries to prevent bodies from being stolen. Some residents consume them. An epidemic has started. Two of our Quaker girls recently died from contact with locals; they were named Mary Pattison and Violet Tillard.’

‘In a neighboring village, a family was poisoned by smoke: grandfather, father, mother, and three children. They decided it was better than suffering. They stoked the stove with elm wood in the evening, closed the windows and chimney, and went to sleep early. But the eldest boy, who lay near the door, apparently tried to open it but didn’t have the strength. The grandfather fell to the floor, and the rest died by morning.’

‘We Americans preferred to save children first, unlike Russian peasants, who were surprised by this. According to their views, those family members who worked and supported others should survive. So, to prevent stronger family members from taking food from the weaker ones, we organized free canteens specifically for children.’

‘The New York Times ran an article with the headline on the front page: “Russia asks for food, selling its grain abroad: 35 thousand tons await shipment in Petrograd, while famine threatens eight million people.” It’s clear to everyone that the Bolsheviks need currency for developing industry and building military factories. Many in the West believe that for the Bolsheviks, people are trash, and the main thing is the idea of “victory of socialism.” Western politicians ask: who is to blame—the drought or the political system? Can these questions ease terrible suffering? What meaning do they hold for those dying of hunger? Politicians worldwide, except the United States, try to find excuses to do nothing, blaming the Russians themselves. I think something has rotted in the world, but there is still a chance to fix it.’

‘In Moscow, L.D. Trotsky spoke, mentioned the death of the Quaker girls, and admitted: “...There are people who, regardless of their class views, are guided solely by humane motives and inner nobility.” And also: “When Russian people become a little richer, they will erect... a great monument to these fallen heroes.”’

Arnie closed the notebook.

“Did you know that, unlike Lenin and Trotsky, Stalin’s government didn’t allow foreign organizations like your ARA to come and help in the thirties?” a Ukrainian with long mustaches asked.

“We know, we know,” the Caucasian said. “We know everything.”

“You have a poetry evening,” Arnie addressed everyone. “Here are some poems. My mother asked me to read them to you. The author is the remarkable poet Maximilian Voloshin. Here is the whole truth about the dispossession, about what happened at that time.”

Arnie began to read:

**Famine**

*Bread is from the earth, but hunger is from people:
Sown with the executed — the crops
Sprouted with grave crosses:
The earth bore no other shoots.
Food was hidden, bought, taken away,
Taxes were taken in bread, livestock, and seed grain were taken away:
Peasants went out to sow at night.*

*Hungry and crawling like worms
In the fall they crawled along the streets.
Crowds at the bazaar were after bread.
Thieves were thrown to the ground and beaten
In the face. And he, hiding his head in the dirt, tried to swallow a crust.
Like sparrows, they shot the boys,
Gathering scattered grains on the tracks,
And the Uglich boys lay
With nuts in frozen fists.*

*The earth was nauseated with corpses, — they lay
On the streets, stank in morgues,
Rotted in open pits at cemeteries.
In ravines and dumps, skeletons
With cut-off flesh lay.
Dogs gnawed severed hands
And heads. At the market, they sold
Cheap aspic, revolting sausage.
Mutton was for sale — three hundred,
And human flesh — for forty.
The soul was long cheaper than meat.
And mothers, having slaughtered their children,
Salted them for future use. ‘I gave birth myself —
I’ll eat it myself. I’ll give birth to others...’*

*The hungry made love and gave birth
To crimson screaming pieces
Of meaningless flesh: without joints,
Without gender and without eyes. From stench — ulcers,
From the horror of the epidemic, they were born.
But the delirium of the sick was less insane
Than the routine of beds and pots.*

*And when through the winter gloom spring
Smoked over the human dung heap,
And the flame ran with tongues
Across the fields and up the bare branches, —
The fragrance seemed an insult,
The sun's ray — mockery, flowers — blasphemy.*

Arnie finished reading. Everyone sat in silence. The silence, like a moment of mourning, lasted a long time, and Arnie decided to break the prolonged pause:

“My mother told me that she was frightened in these places: for some reason, all the birds disappeared. Or flew away somewhere?”

“And how did your parents meet?” Yefim asked, also wanting to bring the conversation back to a normal course.

“There were parties, introductions, all young, and Russian girls were very beautiful. Many Americans got married and took Russian wives with them. But my father stayed; he trusted the Bolsheviks.” And the young man, Arnie Douglas, fell silent and pondered. “Now, probably, he doesn’t believe,” he added softly and sadly.

The sun had already set, even stars began to appear in the sky. It was warm and cozy in the courtyard, and no one wanted to leave. But the watchman gestured to Yefim that it was time to wrap up, and they slowly began to disperse. It was hard to see. Some said goodbye, and some just left. Many bid farewell warmly to Yefim, especially Olena. Her large round eyes shone with a special light when she looked at him.

And this farewell with those leaving somehow caused Yasha anxiety. The very fact of “bidding farewell to Yefim” caught his attention; he felt a strange chill in his heart.


Chapter 12

A month passed after the “poetry evening” at the club in Kashgarka. The hot summer arrived. Since that evening, Yakov hadn’t seen Yefim: both were busy, and Yefim hadn’t made contact. In the meantime, Yakov became interested in opera singing and joined the vocal studio at the Tashkent Conservatory, which was created thanks to professors and teachers from the Leningrad Conservatory, evacuated to Tashkent. Also, thanks to the efforts of Solomon Mikhoels, who had apparently returned to Moscow after flying to America on Stalin’s orders.

Alla once came back from the Alay market, pale and upset.

“What happened, mom?” asked Angelica.

“Where is Yasha?” Alla’s voice was filled with anxiety.

“He should be back soon from the conservatory. And then he’ll go to the factory, as usual,” Angelica said.

“Something terrible happened!” Alla sat on a chair, unable to utter a word.

The frightened Angelica waited for her explanation. At that moment, Yakov entered.

“What happened?” he worried, seeing that his mother and sister were alarmed.

“How long ago did you see Yefim?” Alla looked at her son searchingly.

“About a month ago.”

Alla was silent for a moment, gathering her courage.

“They arrested him,” she finally said.

Inside Yakov, everything twisted. He remembered that anxious chill in his heart during the farewell with Yefim after the poetry evening at the club. Yakov also recalled the watchman’s face with a strange, almost venomous smile. “That was a premonition,” Yakov thought. “Yes… the watchman! He reported him.”

“When was he arrested?” Yakov asked.

“Promise me you weren’t at the poetry evening Yefim organized a month ago.”

Yakov rarely lied to his mother, but he understood: if he told her the truth now, she would go mad.

“I wasn’t, mom!”

“I met his mother, Raya, at the market. I was shocked: a beautiful forty-year-old woman had turned into an old woman. I asked her what happened. She said they arrested Fima and started crying. Passersby stopped and asked what was going on. Raya had a hysterical fit, and I led her to a shady spot. We sat on a bench. When she calmed down a little, she said they arrested Fima the day after that cursed poetry evening. The club’s watchman reported him. Raya says she’s known him for a long time and they were always on good terms. He knew Fima since childhood, played with him when he was a kid. How is this possible? I don’t understand!”

“Did they arrest anyone else?” asked a frightened Yakov.

“Why did you turn so pale?” Alla looked at him suspiciously. “You really weren’t there?”

“I wasn’t, mom.”

“I only know about Yefim,” Alla replied to her son’s question.

“Why did the watchman do it?” wondered Angelica.

“He’s an NKVD agent. That’s all! Nowadays, every second person could be one. So, Yasha-jan, please be careful. Don’t go anywhere anymore. I beg you! Institute, conservatory, work at the factory. Isn’t that enough?”

“Alright, mom,” Yakov promised.

He realized Yefim hadn’t turned him in to the secret police. “He’s a person! — Yakov thought. — Yes… he’s a person! I’ll probably never have friends like him again.”

“Did Yefim’s mother tell you anything else?” Angelica asked.

“Well, that there were anti-Soviet talks at the evening, Fima recited poems, something like ‘the Bolsheviks will breed monsters,’ quoted Blok. I don’t remember,” Alla waved her hand. “He ruined himself! — And she began to cry.

Meanwhile, historic events were occurring on the front, changing the course of the war.

In the summer of 1943, near Kursk, the Germans planned to launch a surprise offensive. But Soviet intelligence learned of their plans, and the military leadership decided to stun the enemy with their own method—surprise. Minutes before the German offensive began, thousands of Soviet guns suddenly came to life and delivered a powerful artillery strike on the Hitlerites’ positions. The Battle of Kursk ended with the unequivocal victory of the Soviet troops.

In late August 1943, the Battle for the Dnieper began. Kyiv was liberated. A large German group was trapped in Crimea. And a decisive turning point in the war occurred.

In early winter, a conference of the Allies was held in Tehran. Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met there. The “Big Three” agreed to open a second front in Europe.

In June 1944, the large-scale operation “Bagration” began. By this time, an attack had been launched on the enemy near Leningrad, and the blockade was lifted.

Finally, in February 1945, the second meeting of the anti-Hitler coalition leaders—Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill—was held in Yalta. They discussed the post-war arrangement of the world.

In late April, Soviet troops took Berlin, and the red banner of Victory flew over the Reichstag. The official version stated that Soviet soldiers Egorov and Kantaria raised it. Others claimed the first were privates Grigory Bulatov and Rakhimzhan Koshkarbayev. They crawled on their bellies to the central part of the building and placed the red flag on the steps of the main entrance. On the same day, Hitler committed suicide, and the war in Europe ended.

A happy Paruyr returned from the front covered in medals.

“Arpik, when we ended up on Red Square, and then on the streets of Moscow,” he told her, “people greeted us everywhere. Strangers smiled at us like family. Girls showered us with flowers. It was unforgettable. Columns of fighters brought hundreds of fascist banners to the tribunes and threw them to the ground by the Kremlin wall as a victorious conclusion,” Paruyr told his wife excitedly, calling her by the Armenian name given at birth.

Although famine still raged in many parts of Russia, Soviet authorities continued exporting grain abroad. It rotted in elevators and warehouses, at railway stations, and when wagons were delayed, sacks of grain were dumped directly into the mud. Meanwhile, collective farm workers starved, but no one touched the doomed grain, guarded by the police. There was a scramble for goods everywhere, a system of favors developed, without which nothing could be obtained. Stalin did not abandon his disastrous methods in the countryside. The war was over, and famine began again. The Germans were to blame. These people were to blame. People asked: who is to blame now?

The decree “seven eight” was in effect—the “law of three ears of corn”: for picking a few ears of wheat in the field, people were sentenced to ten years in labor camps. Thousands of collective farm chairmen were put on trial for liberalism related to grain procurement.

A war invalid from the Ryazan region came to Tashkent to live with his sister, who lived in a large courtyard on Pervushka. One day he met Alla. The invalid knew that all the neighbors highly respected her and told her his story: “People stand for nights in long lines for bread. Because of my health, I couldn’t fight for it, and so my family of five went ten days without seeing bread. They all got sick and died. I'm the only one left. So I came to live with my sister.”

Years passed. Angelica was finishing medical school, and Yasha, following his mother’s advice, no longer engaged in politics or even poetry. He was fascinated by singing in the opera studio where he studied, as well as engineering drawings—descriptive geometry, which he already taught at the Polytechnic Institute. Once, Yakov was offered to perform in an opera on the stage of the state theater of opera and ballet, but he didn’t feel freedom of voice in the high registers of solo parts, and the highest notes of opera arias sounded tense. After this not very successful performance, Yakov decided to fully devote himself to engineering sciences, in which he was already a high-level specialist. But by nature, he had a pleasant tenor. He loved and understood opera music and continued to perform as an opera singer at concerts from time to time. There he met a beautiful girl, Tamara, who studied musicology at the conservatory. Once, they were swimming in a lake, and Tamara, seeing Yasha without clothes, laughed. “Like a hairy monkey,” she laughed, marveling at the Armenian type of male hairy body. On the same day, Yasha proposed to her, and she agreed.

Paruyr returned to work. Happy to be alive, awarded many orders, and having gone through the entire war, he searched for Ekaterina for a long time—secretary of the party cell of the tram depot, his beloved. He had no idea where she was now, and no one wanted to tell him.

The secretary of the party organization was another person whom Paruyr had never seen in the depot before. Once, he summoned Paruyr to his office and announced that Paruyr should appear before the party commission to review his case.

“What kind of case?” Paruyr was surprised.

“You’ll find out there,” the secretary said, looking at him with his pale, lifeless eyes, reminding Paruyr of the eyes of a captured German officer he once accidentally encountered when he was brought in for interrogation.

The commission gathered, and the party secretary spoke.

“You joined the party at the front, we are aware. But you hid your background from the party: you are not from workers and peasants, as you indicated in the questionnaire. Moreover, you were deported from Armenia for counter-revolutionary agitation. You see, we know everything about you,” the secretary smiled. “But considering your awards and that you went through the whole war, we will limit ourselves to excluding you from the party and will not pursue your case further.”

The party commission unanimously voted for this decision. However, Paruyr wasn’t very upset.

“You got lucky,” Alla said. “Look at what’s happening around. Arrests have started again. Even war heroes are being taken. Stalin has gone completely mad.”

In the end, Paruyr found out about Ekaterina. In strict confidence, he was told that she got into trouble because of her beautiful appearance. Katya caught the eye of some high-ranking NKVD official, but she refused him, and he decided to take revenge. A case was opened against Ekaterina for abuses in her work as secretary of the party organization and she was sent to Moscow for investigation. They say she was brutally tortured and raped in the Moscow detention center. She was sentenced to seven years in a general regime colony but was released after a year on appeal due to insufficient evidence. No one knew about her further fate. Paruyr was shocked by what he heard, deeply troubled, and was out of sorts for a long time.

“What’s wrong with you?” Alla asked, suspecting a woman was involved.

“Just… stress after the front,” he excused himself. “And now they’ve expelled me from the party.”

Alla knew he didn’t care about the party and that he worked in headquarters, in supply accounting, during the whole war, which is why he sent them scarce American products, saving the family from hunger. But she pretended to believe his excuses.

“What about our dad?” Angelica and Yakov asked.

“Don’t pay attention, nothing new. ‘And this too shall pass,’” she quoted her favorite saying of King Solomon.

“By the way,” Alla said to Yasha one day, “do you know what happened to your Solomon?”

“Yes, I know: Mikhoels died in a car accident.”

“No way,” Alla objected.

“Do you know something?” Yakov asked.

“My boss in the artel, Semyon Markovich, is a distant relative of Mikhoels, or rather, of his cousin, military doctor academician Miron Vovsi. But no one knows this, Semyon Markovich hides his distant kinship with them. And he’s right to do so. What I’m going to tell you now—keep it to yourself. Don’t even tell Angelica, and especially not your Tamara.”

“By the way, my Tama is said to resemble Marilyn Monroe, according to one of our acquaintances,” Yasha said proudly.

“And who is this Monroe?” Alla was interested.

“An American actress, a fair beauty.”

“For heaven’s sake, I’m happy for you. So listen to what Semyon Markovich told me.

Stalin started fighting imaginary enemies again, and arrests began, especially among the intelligentsia. Repressions have become even more massive and brutal, Semyon Markovich says. And during the war, when Mikhoels traveled to different countries trying to raise money for the Soviet army, he met with celebrities like Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. And when Einstein wrote to Stalin requesting the creation of a Jewish autonomous region in Crimea, Stalin, they say, went crazy. He always envied Mikhoels’ popularity; it tormented him all these years. And he generally hates talented people. It prevents him, a plebeian, from feeling like the ruler of the world. Plus, he doesn’t like Jews either. So this was no accidental death. Mikhoels was killed on Stalin’s orders, and the secret police did it, disguising it as an accident—a death in a car crash. Along with Mikhoels, they killed a theater critic who was an NKVD agent and took part in Mikhoels’ abduction. No one knows this, and you should forget it. Understand? I’m telling you this with one purpose—to let you know how cautious you need to be in our time, and in any time with these Bolshevik monsters, as your poet, poor Fimochka, rightly expressed.

Semyon Markovich is sure that Stalin will soon start an anti-Semitic campaign. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee is already disbanded, he says. And their Yiddish theater is being closed. Persecution of Jews will begin. Semyon Markovich believes the “honeymoon” between Stalin and Israel will soon end too. The long-suffering biblical people wandered for five thousand years and will never choose the communist path.

“Yes, mom, but in our opera studio, they talked about a recent concert in Moscow by the magnificent African-American singer Paul Robeson. The audience was delighted with his wonderful bass: they say it’s like Chaliapin’s. And he, by the way, sang a Jewish folk song in Yiddish.”

“Of course,” Alla smiled. “Stalin is cunning, likes to let a little smoke of democracy, to cloud everyone’s eyes. Especially if it concerns the oppression of blacks in America or a Jewish ghetto.”

“Angelica is dating a Jew, mom,” Yasha said, smiling slyly.

“I know… I tell her: don’t do it, stupid. She’s in love, doesn’t listen to me.”

“By the way, mom, thanks to the Jew Mikhoels, we now have opera in Tashkent,” Yasha said, a little sadly.

“Do you have your first lecture today?” Alla asked.

“Yes, the first time speaking before a large audience of students.”

“Good luck to you!” Alla looked at her son with big loving Armenian eyes. Despite her relatively young age, her head was already shaking slightly. Apparently, from everything she had gone through over the years.

On the way to the institute, Yakov dreamed of his “Marilyn Monroe”—Tamara, with whom he agreed to meet in the evening. Angelica, finishing medical school, was dating a handsome Jewish young man, Joseph—the future father of Mark—and soon married him. And Paruyr moved from the depot to a new job.

Thus, this Armenian family found themselves in distant Asian lands. From the very first steps of their life together, Arpik and Paruyr were thrown into the active volcano of time, which consumed so many millions of fates: war, famines, repressions. But this couple was lucky to survive, raise children, and their beloved grandson Mark, who continued their “journey” along this road full of trials, dramas, and communist experiments.