The chrysanthemums in the garden have faded,
But love still lives in my broken heart. . . .
He had problems with his own love life. His wife, Nurse Valya, was a shrew who sometimes even beat Uncle Zhenya. But you couldn’t envy her life. They lived with their two sons in a small room, and they had almost no money. Valya watched Uncle Zhenya’s morality closely, and one day she practically ruined his career as an actor. An operetta theater from a big Volga city was touring in Kaluga. The theater director happened to attend an amateur concert in which Uncle Zhenya performed, and he liked his fine tenor. Uncle Zhenya was offered a job at the theater for character parts. With his secret savings Uncle
Zhenya went to the store and bought a new suit. But Valya had forbidden him the theater, singing, and the corrupt life. Still, his attraction to the theater was stronger than his fear of his wife’s threats. While everyone slept, Uncle Zhenya crept out the window in his new suit with a small suitcase in hand. His freedom didn’t last. Valya caught him at the train station in the morning in a crowd of ladies from the operetta, only five minutes before the train left. The fugitive was returned to his family’s bosom in shame.
Another threat happened later. After a short visit to Moscow, Uncle Zhenya kept talking about some woman named Frola. Valya grew nervous, but we knew that there was nothing to worry about. Here’s the story. My parents took Uncle Zhenya to meet an elite group. Among the guests was the chic Flora, who later married a famous artist. The evening went very well, and Uncle Zhenya with his arias was the star. Flora enjoyed his songs and spent most of the evening dancing with the singer. Uncle Zhenya went crazy with happiness and was so nervous that he kept calling his lady Frola, getting the consonants reversed. At the end of the evening someone put our Caruso over his shoulder and left him out on the landing, where Papa found him fast asleep.
So Valya’s life now passed under the sign of Frola. At the slightest provocation, Uncle Zhenya would threaten to go back to Moscow to Frola, who loved him and was a smart woman, a Ph.D. and not just a nurse. We didn’t rat on Uncle Zhenya and watched developments; the whole neighborhood knew about Frola by now. At last Valya couldn’t take any more and decided to go to Moscow to clear things up with Frola. Afraid of exposure, Uncle Zhenya shut up.
His life turned tragic. They moved to a big room in a communal flat. By then he was drinking heavily. He struck a neighbor in a drunken brawl, and the man almost died. What had the alcohol done to that sweet fellow who couldn’t even shout at anyone? He spent many years in jail and returned a sick old man. And then his younger son, Igor, was put away. I don’t even know if Uncle Zhenya is still alive.
APRIL 16. In the cultural sense Kaluga was far from the last city in prerevolutionary Russia. Famous scientists, artists, and writers were born and lived here. Today the city is best known for its connection with Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. His house, turned into a museum after his death, was not far from ours—left on Pushkinskaya and then down the steep street named after the scientist. When I was little, we often went to the museum. It didn’t resemble a normal museum much, for it was a modest two-story building with all the furniture and fixtures in place, as if the owners had gone on a short trip. All the space and other technological exhibits didn’t interest me. My attention was fixed on the cone-shaped metal tubes; you put the narrow part by your ear and the wide part toward the person speaking. Tsiolkovsky was hard of hearing, and that primitive apparatus helped him communicate with people. Legends abound about his life under Stalin. According to the official version, Tsiolkovsky hailed the Revolution gladly and started serving the welfare of young Soviet science wholeheartedly and selflessly. But I heard otherwise from Grandfather. Once he met a friend on the street who had just been to see Tsiolkovsky. He
told Grandfather, “I keep trying to convince the old man to accept the Soviet regime, but he simply refuses.”
My father saw Tsiolkovsky when he was a boy. He went with Grandfather to the man who did typing, and an old man with a long white beard was sitting on a chair in the corner. Grandfather whispered to Papa that it was the famous Tsiolkovsky. When the scientist died, Papa went with the other boys to Zagorodny Sad for the funeral, but it was so crowded that he didn’t see a thing. By the way, the headstone on Tsiolkovksy’s grave quotes wonderful things about Soviet rule that Konstantin Eduardovich allegedly spoke on his deathbed. The word in Kaluga is that he never said any such thing and that it was made up by his physician, who wanted to make the authorities happy.
The talented scientist Chizhevsky also lived in Kaluga. His life was tragic. He was endlessly harassed and persecuted, and his works were not published. Only recently has he been recognized, and his works are now in print and his research is studied. Once, a few years after the Revolution, Chizhevsky met my grandfather at the store, led him aside, looked around, and said in a whisper, “There’s no hope; the Soviets have won conclusively.”
Kaluga attracted people of the prerevolutionary generation in our day, too. Father’s teacher, a native of St. Petersburg and a famous academician, enjoyed visiting our little house on Pushkinskaya Street. Using a cane, he walked up and down the streets, recalling his past. There was a period he did not like to discuss, the years in a Stalinist camp felling trees. I remember that he once said with a certain pride, “You know I have a great mastery of axes and saws.” But strangely, he never criticized Stalin and did not allow political discussions in his house. As
soon as the conversation turned in that direction, he interrupted and said, looking out the window, “Look at the pretty bird flying by.” I don’t know what it was, fear or caution.
He was quite an original character. He enjoyed tricking people or putting them in stupid situations. He wore an old leather coat in winter. Once, heading for Leningrad, he took an old backpack with him to the train station. As he approached the first-class car, he began burrowing in all his pockets for his ticket. The conductor looked him up and down and said, “Gramps, you’re in the next car.” “Gramps” walked away and came back with the ticket, handed it to the conductor with a bewildered air, and said that he couldn’t understand what was going on. The conductor let the “bagman” academician into the car, and the old man enjoyed the scene he had created. He told us, by the way, that a backpack was perfect as a pillow.
But the story with the conductor was nothing compared with what he did once at an international scientific congress. Lunch was served during the break, and in typical Soviet style there were separate rooms for ordinary scientists and for professors and a special small room for academicians. Our academic entered the professors’ room with feigned diffidence and sat at the table. A society lady, a professor’s wife, who was one of the hostesses, hurried up to him and said, “Dearie, you’re in the wrong place. You should be in that room,” pointing to the room for ordinary scientists. He got up silently, went to that room, and came back to the woman. “They sent me back to you,” he said. “They said academicians aren’t supposed to be in there.” The woman turned white with horror and burst into apologies. Throughout the lunch she came over every five minutes to ask if he needed anything. It was a terrific show.
APRIL 18. I think the time has come for me to describe an important meeting in my life. I kept putting it off, but the Kaluga reminiscences have given me confidence.