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Loving hurts. It's like I gave permission

refresh yourself, knowing that the one, the other,

can leave with your skin at any moment.

Susan Sontag. "Diaries"

When the coffin was lowered into the grave, the wife

even shouted: “Let me go to him!”,

but she did not go to the grave for her husband ...

A.P. Chekhov. "Speaker"

hundred 1997, Sergei Dobrotvor died

sky. By that time we had already two months

were divorced. Thus, I did not

his widow and did not even attend

funeral.

We lived with him for six years. Crazy, happy

lively, light, unbearable years. It so happened that these

The years were the most important in my life. Love

to him, which I cut off, with the strongest love.

And his death - and my death, no matter how pathetic it may be

In these seventeen years there was not a day that I was with him

didn't talk. The first year passed in the half-conscious

nominal condition. Joan Didion in The Year of the Magical

thoughts” described the impossibility of breaking the connection with the dead

our loved ones, their tangible presence

near. She - like my mother after my father's death -

could not give the shoes of her dead husband: well, how can he

after all, there will be nothing to walk in if he returns, - and he

will definitely return.

Gradually, the sharp pain receded - or I just

learned to live with it. The pain is gone, and he stayed with me.

I discussed with him new and old films, asked

him questions about work, bragged about her career,

gossip about acquaintances and strangers, told

about her travels, resurrected him in repeating-

I didn’t fall in love with him, I didn’t finish, I didn’t

trill, did not divide. After he left, my life

fell on the outer and inner. Outwardly I have

had a happy marriage, wonderful children, a huge apartment

tira, wonderful job, fantastic career

and even a small house by the sea. Inside -

frozen pain, dried tears and endless dia-

log with a person who was no more.

I've become so used to this macabre connection, to this

Hiroshima, my love, with a life in which

the past is more important than the present, which I hardly thought about

that life could be very different. And what

I can be alive again. And - scary to think -

happy.

And then I fell in love. It started off easy

enthusiasm. Nothing serious, just pure joy.

But in a strange way it's a weightless feeling, no matter what

unpretentious in my soul, suddenly opened in it

some gateways, from where gushed what had been accumulating for years -

mi. Tears welled up, unexpectedly hot. gushed

happiness mixed with unhappiness. And it's quiet inside me

mouse, the thought scratched: what if he, dead, me

let go? Will he let me live in the present?

I talked to him for years. Now I started writing to him.

letters. Anew, step by step, living our life with him

life holding me so tight.

We lived on Pravda Street. Our truth with him.

These letters make no claims to be objective.

portrait of Dobrotvorsky. This is not a biography, not a memoir.

ry, not documentary evidence. It's an attempt

literature, where much is distorted by memory or created

imagination. Surely many knew and loved

Serezhu completely different. But this is my Seryozha Dobrotvor-

sky - and my truth.

Quotes from articles and lectures by Sergei Dobrotvorsky

January 2013

Hello! Why don't I have your letters?

Only a few sheets with your mixes have survived.

nye rhymes, written-drawn hand-

creative typeface. A few notes too

written in capital block letters.

Now I realize that I hardly remember your

handwriting. No emails, no sms - nothing then.

No mobile phones. Even the pager was

an attribute of importance and wealth. And we handed over the articles

Vali printed on a typewriter - the first (286th) computer appeared with us only two years after

how we started living together. Then into our life

also included square diskettes, which seemed to be something different

planetary. We often passed them on to the Moscow

"Kommersant" with a train.

Why didn't we write letters to each other? Just

because they were always together? One day you left

to England - it happened, probably, in a month or

two after we got married. You were not there

not for long - a maximum of two weeks. I do not remember how we communicated then. Did you call home? (We

then lived in a large apartment on 2nd Sovetskaya, which was rented from the playwright Oleg Yuryev.)

you were in America without me - for a long time, almost two months.

Then I came to you, but that's how we kept in touch

all this time? Or was it not so crazy

needs? Separation was an inevitable reality, and people, even impatiently in love, knew how to wait.

Your longest letter took the maximum

half page. You wrote it to the Kuibyshev Bolshoi

where I was taken in an ambulance with blood

course and where they diagnosed “frozen

pregnancy". The letter disappeared in my travels, but I remember one line: “We all hold for you

fists - both moms and me.

Life with you was not virtual. We were sitting

in the kitchen, drinking black tea from huge mugs or

sour instant coffee with milk and talking

until four in the morning, unable to break away from each other.

I don't remember these conversations interspersed with kisses.

louis. I don't even remember our kisses. Electric

quality flowed between us, not turning off for a second, but it was not only sensual, but also intellectual

al charge. However, what's the difference?

I liked to look at your slightly haughty

moving face, I liked your jerky

affected laughter, your rock and roll plasticity, your very bright eyes. (You wrote about James Dean, whom, of course, you looked like: “neurasthenic actor

with a capricious childish mouth and sad old

eyes” *.) When you left our home

space, it became obvious disproportion-

the value of your beauty to the outside world, which needs

* All quotations without references that appear in the text are taken from

you are from the articles and lectures of Sergei Dobrotvorsky. - Note. ed.

was constantly something to prove, and above all -

own wealth. The world was big - you

was small. You must have suffered from this incompatibility.

dimensions. You were occupied by the phenomenon of hypnotic

impact on people that makes you forget

about short stature: "Little Tsakhes", "Perfumer",

"Dead zone". You also knew how to charm. I loved

surround yourself with those who admire you. Loved being called a teacher. adored lovers

students in you. Many of your friends have contacted

to you on “you” (you to them too). Many were called

patronymic.

I never told you this, but you seemed

me very handsome. Especially at home where you were

proportionate to space.

And in bed between us there was no difference at all

I remember so clearly the first time I saw you.

This scene is forever stuck in my head - as if

frame from a new wave film, from some “Jules

and Jim."

I, a student of the theater institute, stand with

with their fellow students at the crossing near the embankment

Fontanka, near the square on Belinsky street. Against

me, on the other side of the road - a low blond

Dean in a blue denim suit. I have hair

up to the shoulders. It looks like yours is pretty long too.

Green light - we start moving towards

each other. Boyish thin figure. springy

gait. You are hardly alone - around you on Mokhovaya

always someone twisted. I see only you. in a feminine way

thinly carved face and blue (like jeans) eyes.

Your sharp gaze pierced me sharply. I stopped-

I'm on the roadway, I look around:

- Who is this?

– What are you! This is Sergei Dobrotvorsky!

A, Sergey Dobrotvorsky. The same one.

Well, yes, I've heard a lot about you. ingenious

critic, the most gifted graduate student, golden boy, favorite of Nina Alexandrovna Rabinyants, my

and your teacher, whom you adored for

Akhmatova's beauty and for the ability to the most confused thoughts

lead to a simple formula. you with enthusiastic

breath is called genius. You are wildly smart. You

wrote a diploma on the disgraced Wajda and Polish cinema.

You are the director of your own theater studio called "On the Windowsill". There, in this

studios on Mokhovaya, a stone's throw from the Theater

institute (as it is written on the ticket), are engaged

a few of my friends - classmate Lenya Popov, girlfriend Anush Vardanyan, university prodigy

Misha Trofimenkov. Timur Novikov, Vladimir Rekshan, the long-haired bard Frank drop in there,

still very young Maxim Pezhem plays the guitar

sky. There hangs around my future fierce enemy and yours

close friend, poet Lesha Feoktistov (Willy).

My friends are obsessed with you and your window sill.

no one." To me, who despise this kind of ritual, they remind me of sectarians. Underground films

and theater cellars do not attract me. I want

to become a theater historian, recklessly rummaging through the dusty

archives, I squint myopically, sometimes I wear glasses

in a thin frame (not yet switched to lenses) and deep

entangled in a relationship with an unemployed philosopher, gloomy and bearded. He suits me as a father, torments

me with jealousy and curses everything that one way or another

takes me away from the world of pure reason (read -

From him). And the theater institute leads away - everyone

day. (No wonder the theater in my favorite Serbian -

"disgrace", and the actor - "fool".)

The theater institute was then, as they would say

now, a place of power. These were his last gold

days. Tovstonogov still taught here, although he

It didn't last long, just a few months. you called him

happy death - he died instantly (about death

they say "suddenly", after all, nothing more

do not speak?), while driving. All the cars started when

the green light turned on, and his famous Mercedes

did not move. So the hero of Oleg Efremov dies

driving an old white "Volga" in the film with unbearable

by the same name “Prolong, prolong,

charm "- under the then hysterically cheerful

hit by Valery Leontiev “Well, why, why, why

Was the traffic light green? And because, because, because

He was in love with life."

We went to Katzman's rehearsals. His previous

The next course was the Karama Brothers' stellar course.

calling” – Petya Semak, Lika Nevolina, Maxim

Leonidov, Misha Morozov, Kolya Pavlov, Seryozha

Vlasov, Ira Selezneva. Katzman loved me often

stopped on the institute stairs, asked

questions, wondering what I do. I'm sick

vaguely shy, babbled something about the topics of her

term papers. Together with Katsman on Mokhovaya he taught

It was then that Dodin released Brothers and Sisters, which we went to ten times. The best teachers

were still alive - theater students were thrilled

from the lectures of Barboy or Chirva, in the classrooms there were

erotic vibes. Actor students were running around

with their unrealized talents and obscure

future (about the brightest they said: “What a beautiful

naya texture!”); female art students wore long

skirts and homemade beads (you called this style

to dress up as “Ganges shop”); film director students

conversations about Brook and Artaud in the institute cafeteria

over a glass of sour cream. So the Leningrad theater

and LGITMiK (he changed so many names that

I got confused) were still full of life and attracted

gifted and passionate people.

Then, on the Fontanka, when I stopped

and turned around, I saw that you also turned around.

In a few years, everyone will sing: “I looked back

to see if she looked back, to see if I looked back. I thought you looked

almost contemptuous of me. With your little

growth from top to bottom.

You told me later that you don't remember this

meeting - and that he saw me in the wrong place at all

and not then.

So sad that you weren't with me today.

I went to the David Bowie exhibition in London

Victoria and Albert Museum. I heard so much about her

and read that it seemed that I had already been there. But, having provided

shis inside, I felt that now I will lose

consciousness. There were so many of you that I exhibited this

slipped almost tangentially, unable to let in

into yourself. Then she sat somewhere on the windowsill at the

morning museum courtyard and tried to keep

tears (alas, unsuccessfully).

And it's not that you've always admired Bowie

and he looked like Bowie. “Fragile mutant with a rabbit-

whose eyes” is what you once called him. And not

is that your collages, drawings, even your semi-

the printed handwriting so resembled him. And not even in the fact that for you, as well as for him, the express

Zionist aesthetics, so important were Brecht and Berlin, which you called a ghost town filled with

pathos, vulgarity and tragedy. The point is that life

Bowie was an endless attempt to transform herself

into a character, and life into a theatre. Escape, hide, reinvent yourself, fool everyone, shut down

I found your article about Bowie twenty years old

prescription. “Cinema by definition was and remains

is the art of physical reality, with which

Bowie fought for a long time and successfully, synthesizing his own

flesh into a kind of artistic substance”.

I remember how you admired its colorful

eyes. He called him the divine androgyne.

How I admired his character - an icy blonde

beast - in a speculative and static film

Oshima's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence", which you loved for the inhuman beauty of the two

main characters. As said that the vampire kiss

Bowie with Catherine Deneuve in "Hunger" - perhaps the most

beautiful screen kiss. Then all this is not me

too impressive, but now suddenly struck

straight into the heart. And in the same article of yours I read:

“Cinema has never grasped the law by which

lives this ever-changing body. But who knows, maybe right now, when virtual reality

ness has finally supplanted the physical, we are all

we will still see the true face of the one who does not discard

shadows even in the dazzling beam of a movie projector.”

Why, why do I have these stupid tears?

You are dead, he is alive. Happily married to a luxurious

Iman, settled down, found quite a physical

reality - and somehow lives with his virtual

And you died.

I miss you so much today! Rummaged through the net - all of a sudden

Is there anything I don't know about you at all? tracked down

letters from Lenka Popov, a brilliant theatrical

critic, one of those who called you a teacher.

He died two years after you - from leukemia.

They say that on the eve of his death he asked for a theatrical

poster - I was sure that by the end of the week he would be able to

go to the theater. He was thirty-three, less than

you at the time of your death. He died so ridiculously, so early. Why? He did not run away from himself (you wrote that

romantic hero always runs away from himself, which means - in a circle), did not comprehend his adored

theater as a tragic medium. But what did I know about him?

I then missed Lenka's letters. I am so much

years after your death lived like a somnambulist - and so

a lot of things slipped past me. In one letter

Lenka writes to his friend Misha Epstein, this

1986: “Mishka, have you seen this man?! So what

to speak here? Whether to talk about what happiness with him

work, communicate with him and in general? .. If he is far away

not a mediocre actor, a brilliant organizer (this is

fault of the director's success), a great teacher, indefatigable

ascended storyteller, interlocutor and drinking buddy,

a great connoisseur of modern art, philosophy, music - well, what is there to list all his virtues?

After meeting with him, we met with Trofimenko-

you somewhere about half a year and couldn't talk

nothing but him."

It seems that it was Lenka, your fanatical stu-

dude, dragged me to the premiere of Vonnegut's play

“Happy birthday, Wanda June!” in your theater studio

"On the windowsill." (Here he habitually wrote “Lenka”

and remembered that Popov always passionately defended

the letter "yo". So - after all - Lyonka.) Or maybe

be, I was called by Anush, a friend of the first year of my

institute life. In Armenian bright Anush wear-

la bold raspberry raincoat pants that

I borrowed from her at crucial moments and played

in "Wanda June" the main female role. You then

told me more than once that the director must be in love

in his actress, and I think was a little in love

in Anush. I went to this performance reluctantly, nothing

good without expecting. I felt instinctive

rejection of any amateurism - from parallel

nogo cinema to underground theater. passed me by

euphoric stage of group unity, which, probably, needs to be passed in youth. I'm stories

wail to you that in childhood roared in horror at the demonstration

tions, was always afraid of the crowd and never fell in love with

big companies. “Every herd is a refuge

incompetence,” I quoted Pasternak. And so far

I've been running from everywhere. That is, I even get

have fun, especially if I drink a lot of champagne-

th, but quickly there comes a moment when I need to be quiet

disappear. When we were together you always left

with me. And when you were without me, did you stay?

Your performance "Wanda June" was played in the summer

eighty-fifth year. So I was nineteen

10 years - as well as Trofimenkov, and Popov, and Anush.

And you are twenty-seven. Well, you seemed to me

so mature, despite your boyish appearance.

I was given a program printed on a photocopier, from which I learned that you drew it yourself. And what

you yourself will play one of the roles - the hanged

a Nazi major who came from the other world. And the costumes

made by Katerina Dobrotvorskaya - it seems that

that's how I first learned that you have a wife.

They showed me my wife - in my opinion, she also appeared

in the play in a small role. But on stage I don't

remembered. I was struck by how tall she is

me - and much higher than you. Swarthy, thin, with a hoarse

From what happened on the stage, I don’t like

nothing hovered. Abstruse text, wooden Anush, more

some people, luridly painted. I was

it's embarrassing to look at the stage. Lenka Popov in one of

letters wrote that the process fascinated you more than

result. I am now so ashamed that I never speak

rela with you about this studio, about this performance,

got rid of them as if they were amateurish nonsense. You, with your

self-esteem, knowing my attitude, also don’t talk about it

remembered. I crossed out the whole - so huge -

theatrical piece from your life. Considered it inadequate

worthy of you? Jealous of the past, where I am not

was? I was indifferent to everything that directly touched me

really didn't concern? Or - as always - afraid

any underground, feeling danger, realizing that I

there is no place that you elude me there - and there

will you eventually leave? I would like to sit down now

with you in the kitchen over a mug of cool black tea (on

your favorite mug was the emblem of Batman) and everything

ask you. How did you find this studio? Why

decided to do Vonnegut? Why did you choose such a boring

new play? And how this basement was taken away, and how you ran to fight for it in the regional committees and tried to

charm aunts with challahs on their heads (I found out about this

only from your short letters to Lyonka Popov

to Army). And is it true that you were in love with Anush?

And would you give this role to me if I came along

with her to your studio “On the windowsill”? And how are you

spent days and nights on this window sill? Everyone, of course, looked at you with enthusiastic eyes, opening their mouths?

Did you puff up with pride and be happy? Nothing

I never asked, editing like a pig

your life, which did not fit into my scheme.

Yes, everything in this basement studio (pretty painful)

shoy and even unexpectedly light) it seemed to me

sad and meaningless. Everything but you. You

appeared in a black shirt, covered in blood, with a

lanky and painted face, like on Halloween, in women's boots and with a toy monkey in his hand.

The demonic makeup was not scary, but funny, but I

for some reason it wasn't funny. Now I'm sure that you

drew his makeup with Bowie, but then I hardly knew who it was. The energy emanating from you was so

so strong it gave me goosebumps. I remember

Nila your sharp look then, on the Fontanka. When you

went on stage, I also acutely felt your physical

physical presence.

I always believed only in the result, I don’t care

novated the process. I did not recognize geniuses until

was not convinced that they created something really

ingenious. I left this performance feeling

I eat that I watched the nonsense created by the outstanding

man.

I'm sorry I never told you this.

I haven't spoken to anyone about you for years. With no one.

I could quote you or remember one of

your brilliant remarks. But I couldn't talk about you. It hurt too much. It felt like I was betraying you. Or share with someone. Even

if your parents said something like “Here

Earring would probably now ... ”- I was silent in response.

And suddenly, I spoke. I was surprised to find

lived that not only did not feel pain, pronouncing your

a name or a strange phrase “my first husband”, but I even enjoy it. What is this?

Why? Is it because I began to write to you (and about you), gradually releasing my demons? Or because

I fell in love?

Today I saw Tanya Moskvina for the first time in

many years. You studied together at the institute, you are amazing

greeted by the power of her critical gift and the ability

fear nothing and no one. Tanya always cut

the truth-womb, was irrational, biased

and clearly suffered from the fact that her subtle soul was placed

into an inconceivably large body (you probably also

suffered from his "pocket" size). Once, when my son Ivan was still very young,

Moskvina came to visit me. Ivan carefully

looked at her bright asymmetrical face. She is like

and I, suffered in my youth neuritis of the facial nerve. When

I was brought at eighteen with a half para-

lyzed person to the hospital, nurse, record-

who gave me my data, asked: “You work,

study?" - “I study at the theater institute, at

theatrical faculty. “Thank God that

theatrical. You won't be an actress now, with such and such a face. What will not come out of me now

a gray-haired woman and that this is much more for me

drama, she didn't care.

Why is one eye smaller than the other? -

Ivan asked Moskvina.

- Now I'll give you something in the eye, and you will have something

the same, - Tanka immediately retorted. What

this is not usually said to young children, she

and did not come to mind. So she lived - in nothing

no restrictions. You are your rebellious nature

painfully taming, moreover, was delicate

and didn't like hurting people. And Tanya allowed herself

always and in everything to be yourself and do nothing

half. If a bottle of vodka - then to the bottom. If

passion - then to the bitter end. If hate is

then to the very liver. She knew how to be so intoxicating

free and so obsessively wrong that you're a little

envied her. She always gave you credit, as if your blood type, implicated in

St. Petersburg patriotism was the same.

Today Moskvina told me how you first

showed me to her - in the library of the Zubov Institute

on Isaakievskaya, 5, where you go with her twice a week

went to the presence.

“Look, what a girl,” you said proudly. -

This is Karina Zaks. She is very interested in rock culture.

- And our romance has already begun then? – asked

- It seems not. But he was clearly in love.

Well, yes, rock culture, of course. In the third year

training, I wrote a term paper called

"Catcher in the rye". Then it was fashionable to talk

about youth culture. Alternative youth, in many ways showing contempt for the public

for some reason they called the system, and shaggy tattoos

young men who chanted “We

together!" at the concerts of "Alisa", - system specialists

(now the system is called those who are grouped

around power and money, and systemicists - those who

fixes computers). “The world as we knew it is coming to an end,” with a special Leningrad ad-

Grebenshchikov sang with his breath, throwing his head back and closing

wow eyes. He was the first rocker whose cassette

I listened ten times a day, still not knowing how he

golden-haired and good-looking. Leningrad rock club, plunging us into sexual ecstasy, the Latvian Kar-

tina “Is it easy to be young?” Choi, similar to

Mowgli and always dressed in black, mad Kinchev

with lined eyes in the film "Burglar", re-

dachas "Vzglyad" and "Musical Ring" in Leningrad-

Russian television, where adult uncles condescendingly

tried to deal with informals and somehow for-

matte rockers (the easiest way to format this is

niyu succumbed, of course, BG, which for any

The system never cared.) I wrote passionate

coursework in the first person, where my dad spoke

vulgarly conciliatory ideas of the older generation, where

institute cloakroom attendants scolded the vile hair-

that young people and where are the quotes from “Aquarium”, “Alice”

and Shinkarevsky's "Mitki" illustrated my best

clear thoughts about spiritual freedom. This choking

the supervisor liked the student work

critical seminar for Tatyana Marchenko. She showed-

gave it to Yakov Borisovich Ioskevich, who together

I made a collection of articles about youth culture with you.

I was called to Isaacievskaya - to meet with you

both. I prepared for this meeting, ruthlessly

curled her long hair with hot tongs, blushed

la cheeks with cotton wool, thickly painted eyelashes (mascara had to be

diluted with saliva) and applied layers of tonal

cream. Why I did this - I have no idea, my skin

was perfectly smooth and did not require cosmetics.

But from childhood it seemed to me that it was possible to be better, more beautiful, I wanted to bridge the gap between what I really was and what I could be if ... If only what? Well, at least the hair was curly, the eyes were bigger, and the cheeks were rouge. As if smearing

face with foundation (a product of co-creation

L'oreal and the Svoboda factory, of course, are wrong

shade, much darker than required by my pale

skin), I hid behind a mask. At the same time, I put on

six-zip jeans - youth culture

all the same. Not a beetle sneezed.

I was sure that you would praise me, because

not every third-year student is going to print

thief in an adult scientific collection. You entered

pulpit, measured me with an icy look (I asked

yourself, do you remember our meeting on the Fontanka) and arrogantly said:

I am not a fan of the style of writing like yours.

I was silent. And what could be the answer? I something

I thought I wrote something really cool.

And in general, I didn’t ask for it here, you called me.

– You write in a very feminine, hysterical and emo-

rationally. Very snotty. Lots of stamps. And besides

but it will have to be cut in half, - saying

all this, you almost did not look at me. You then spoke

me: “You were so regal and beautiful that

I was completely at a loss, got rude to you and even looked at

afraid of you."

I continued to be silent. At this point in the department

Yakov Borisovich entered.

- Oh, so you are the same Karina? beautiful

work beautiful. Very decorate our collection -

written so passionately and with such a personal intonation.

I remember that I was grateful to him

and resentment against you, who at this moment is indifferent

looked out the window.

I actually cut the text in half. But

did not remove her father from the ending with his remarks

from the repertoire of the then “daddies” (“daddy’s” at that time

time was called not only cinema). You this final

seemed stupid, but to me - principled, because

did not pass for a long time, I could not forget how you are with me

managed. Since then it seemed to me that you continued

despise me, and when I met you somewhere, I

style ... "And muttered to herself:" Well, I'm not a fan

your intellectual boredom."

But I have already begun to understand the price of this tediousness.

Hello! I start a letter and get lost - how can I contact you

address? I never called you Seryozha or

Earring. And certainly never said - Sergey.

When you lectured with us, I could turn to you

"Sergei Nikolaevich". However, hardly; most likely, I avoided the name, because I already understood that between

us there is a space where the middle name is not

relies. I never addressed you by your last name, although your other girls - before me - did.

Your first wife Katya called you "Dobsky" -

I've always cringed at that doggy name.

Or maybe just out of jealousy.

It only recently dawned on me that none of the

I could not call my beloved men by name, as if afraid to touch something very intimate.

And none of them called me Karina in the eyes, they always came up with some gentle or funny

nicknames. But when they did call it, it hurt

me as something almost ashamed. Or maybe I just

names were needed that would only

ours - not frayed by anyone.

When we started living together, pretty soon

began to call each other Ivans. Why Ivanami?

Too bad, I don't remember at all. I don't remember how

and when that name made its way into our vocabulary. But I remember

all its modifications - Ivanchik, Vanka, Vanyok, Vanyushka, Ivanidze. Always masculine. And I remember how we once began to laugh when I first called

you Ivan in bed. You didn't like talking

in bed? And I still remember how your mother, Elena Yakov-

Levna, roared into the telephone receiver:

“You named your son Ivan, didn’t you?” In honor of

It was the day I heard about your death.

When did I fall in love with you? Now it seems to me that

I fell in love at first sight. And that each follow-

this meeting was special. Actually at that time

I was in love with another whose value system

unconditionally accepted. I felt you strongly, that's for sure. But it took a few years before

than I realized that this is love.

It happened when you lectured with us on

film history, replacing Yakov Borisovich Ioskevich.

I was in my last year, so I was a year old

twenty two. And you, respectively, are thirty, quite a serious age. We like Ioskevich's lectures

curled, but seemed too abstruse. When together

a hundred of him you came and said that Yakov Borisovich

ill and that you are going to take a few classes, we

rejoiced.

You stunned us - as you stunned all your

students. Nervous beauty, bewitching

plasticity of hands, an unusual combination of unscrewed-

sti and composure, energy, erudition. We kaza-

elk that you went through all the tiny cubes

I'm waiting for my voice to return. Probably the words will return with him. Or maybe not. Maybe for a while you will have to be silent, cry. Cry and keep quiet. With words, a person speaks to cover up embarrassment, to plug the black hole of fear, as if it were possible. My friend wrote a book and I just read it. Tomorrow (already today) I have to turn in the script, and I imprudently dived into Karina's manuscript. I emerge in the morning - dumbfounded, wordless, helpless. Someone to help me. Serezha is dead, Karina... What time is it in Paris? Minus two. No, it's early, she's sleeping. And, I don't want to talk. Impossible to speak. My friend wrote a book. And all I can now is describe my crying. An ancient woman's cry.

Karina and I had a short, but incredibly sharp "attack of friendship." As if our then friendship was some kind of exotic disease, which our healthy and young organisms later coped with. They managed to cope, they even developed a strong antigen, but later it turned out that each of us carries the attachment virus in ourselves - for life. A lot of things happened to us at the same time, in parallel. We exercised our love muscles often on the same objects, we were ill, like children, with the same diseases, including jaundice (at the same time) and appendicitis (with a difference of a week). And after thirty years of dating, we wrote a book. I - a little earlier, my "Wax" was already published. Both books are about death and love and about the only possible equal sign between them. “I wrote a little earlier” - this means: I screamed a little earlier from the horror that opened up in myself, from the inability to hold back the cry. She screamed early, like a twin born ten minutes early.

Karina's book touches me in exactly the same way that her life touches me. Like the life of Seryozha, Sergei Nikolaevich Dobrotvorsky, like his death, concern me and many others. “Touches” is not only “related”, it means “touches” and with its touch causes pain, almost voluptuous, erotic, equal to pleasure. After all, one must be able to write like that, discarding any hint of stylistic prettiness, of philosophizing! And in order to have the right to write like this about the main event of her life, about the main sin, for which she herself executed herself for years, one must live the life of Karina Dobrotvorskaya, which is impossible for an outsider. And my night cry, the cry of the first morning after reading "Letters to Seryozha" was: "My poor! What have you done with your life?!"

They were together, she left, he died a year later - bare facts."Has anyone seen my girl?" This courageous girl? This bitch? This angel?

One day, our mutual friend with Karina, listening to another exciting story about our early love escapades, suddenly asked: “I don’t understand. We (he studied at some technical university) also have girls - they fall in love, and go to parties, and suffer, and talk about it. But why do you do it so beautifully, but they usually do ?! The question was rhetorical, but it aroused cheerful laughter and youthful pride. Yes, we are!

In this logic, the meeting of Karina and Serezha, romance, marriage, partnership were supposedly a foregone conclusion. No, it was not stamped with imperishable golden letters on some cosmic tablets. “We should have met” - this, in my understanding, is pure logic. After all, “we are like that!”, Everything should be the best for us, and then I don’t remember anyone better than Seryozha. The sacred berry of eros within these relationships was, remained uncrushed, unrotten until the very end. Between these people lived something that could not be profaned. And he still lives.

And it was also not surprising that they broke up. It was a pity, it was painful, as if it was happening to me (I was talking about parallels: in those same days I experienced my own painful breakup), but not surprising. Love is full of pain. This is apart from everything else.

Hey somebody! Has anyone seen this steel woman with the eyes of a frightened teenage deer? She executed herself all her life - effectively, terribly, burned out feelings in herself, like some kind of mystical vivisector from a horror movie about the Alien - with fire, napalm. And every line of the book is a chronicle of a desert survivor. And then the execution suddenly became public. And saving. Speak, people, rage, be angry, condemn, but she did it - she wrote about him, about herself and about eternal love.

It's not about the documentary (although the book is documentary) and not even about the veracity (actual and emotional) of the memories. The point is the impossibility of losing them and the impossibility of keeping them. And another thing is that the deceased Seryozha did not die. He is the only reality in which Karina is sure, in which and in which she lives.

I noticed that people are horrified by the truth, any hint of it. Despite the plebeian cult of "sincerity", the truth - a transparent, visible and inextricable link between the phenomenon and the word by which the phenomenon is called - frightens. People, good, caring people, begin to look for the reasons for the emergence of a truthful statement. And they find, of course, and most often in a negative space. “What kind of dancing on the bones ?!”, “This is it for self-promotion!”, “I would think about my husband and children!”. This is the little I heard when Karina's book came out. And the people are completely beautiful, only they are very caring. As a rule, they did not read the book itself, limiting themselves to the annotation. But everything is already clear to everyone. Everyone already has the answers. But I know something: words grow like a palisade, fencing off meaning, from authenticity, from the sovereignty of a person. Indeed, otherwise, you need to put yourself before the obviousness of a disappointing fact: everything is not so simple, and life is blood and tears, and love is pain and chaos.

In his last spring, we met on the set of a small film that my classmate was filming. Serezha agreed to appear in a cameo. Between frames, between shots of his whiskey, he suddenly asked: “How are you?”. - "Fine". He twisted his mouth in disgust: “Yes, I was told that you were holding on.” He meant my own breakup and my lamentations about it. I was surprised. From whom did you hear? And if this is called "hold on", then I'm already losing the meaning of the words. But I answered, proud of myself: “Yes, I hold on.” - "But I'm not here." All. Dot. He is not.

Has anyone seen a girl with a stone in her palm? With the stone she uses to kill herself every day, trying to reach her own heart? To call a spade a spade is a thankless and cruel undertaking. True - this means to bypass, stop lengthy explanations, motivations and overviews of promising goals. There is only the past, perhaps the present, and, strangely, perhaps the future. The connection between them is not obvious, although it is often equated with an axiom. Only one thing can connect them, passing through the past, present and ghostly future, something unique, unique, everyone has their own - hope, for example. Blessed is he who believes... For Karina, this is pain, the sheer pain of enduring love. Has anyone seen a beautiful girl without illusions and hope? She is here, she stands and waits for the pain to subside.

Karina Dobrotvorskaya. "Has anyone seen my girl? One hundred letters to Seryozha.

Publishing house "Edition of Elena Shubina"

Loving hurts. It's like I gave permission

refresh yourself, knowing that the one, the other,

can leave with your skin at any moment.

Susan Sontag. "Diaries"

When the coffin was lowered into the grave, the wife

even shouted: “Let me go to him!”,

but she did not go to the grave for her husband ...

A.P. Chekhov. "Speaker"

hundred 1997, Sergei Dobrotvor died

sky. By that time we had already two months

were divorced. Thus, I did not

his widow and did not even attend

funeral.

We lived with him for six years. Crazy, happy

lively, light, unbearable years. It so happened that these

The years were the most important in my life. Love

to him, which I cut off, with the strongest love.

And his death - and my death, no matter how pathetic it may be

In these seventeen years there was not a day that I was with him

didn't talk. The first year passed in the half-conscious

nominal condition. Joan Didion in The Year of the Magical

thoughts” described the impossibility of breaking the connection with the dead

our loved ones, their tangible presence

near. She - like my mother after my father's death -

could not give the shoes of her dead husband: well, how can he

after all, there will be nothing to walk in if he returns, - and he

will definitely return.

Gradually, the sharp pain receded - or I just

learned to live with it. The pain is gone, and he stayed with me.

I discussed with him new and old films, asked

him questions about work, bragged about her career,

gossip about acquaintances and strangers, told

about her travels, resurrected him in repeating-

I didn’t fall in love with him, I didn’t finish, I didn’t

trill, did not divide. After he left, my life

fell on the outer and inner. Outwardly I have

had a happy marriage, wonderful children, a huge apartment

tira, wonderful job, fantastic career

and even a small house by the sea. Inside -

frozen pain, dried tears and endless dia-

log with a person who was no more.

I've become so used to this macabre connection, to this

Hiroshima, my love, with a life in which

the past is more important than the present, which I hardly thought about

that life could be very different. And what

I can be alive again. And - scary to think -

happy.

And then I fell in love. It started off easy

enthusiasm. Nothing serious, just pure joy.

But in a strange way it's a weightless feeling, no matter what

unpretentious in my soul, suddenly opened in it

some gateways, from where gushed what had been accumulating for years -

mi. Tears welled up, unexpectedly hot. gushed

happiness mixed with unhappiness. And it's quiet inside me

mouse, the thought scratched: what if he, dead, me

let go? Will he let me live in the present?

I talked to him for years. Now I started writing to him.

letters. Anew, step by step, living our life with him

life holding me so tight.

We lived on Pravda Street. Our truth with him.

These letters make no claims to be objective.

portrait of Dobrotvorsky. This is not a biography, not a memoir.

ry, not documentary evidence. It's an attempt

literature, where much is distorted by memory or created

imagination. Surely many knew and loved

Serezhu completely different. But this is my Seryozha Dobrotvor-

sky - and my truth.

Quotes from articles and lectures by Sergei Dobrotvorsky

January 2013

Hello! Why don't I have your letters?

Only a few sheets with your mixes have survived.

nye rhymes, written-drawn hand-

creative typeface. A few notes too

written in capital block letters.

Now I realize that I hardly remember your

handwriting. No emails, no sms - nothing then.

No mobile phones. Even the pager was

an attribute of importance and wealth. And we handed over the articles

Vali printed on a typewriter - the first (286th) computer appeared with us only two years after

how we started living together. Then into our life

also included square diskettes, which seemed to be something different

planetary. We often passed them on to the Moscow

"Kommersant" with a train.

Why didn't we write letters to each other? Just

because they were always together? One day you left

to England - it happened, probably, in a month or

two after we got married. You were not there

not for long - a maximum of two weeks. I do not remember how we communicated then. Did you call home? (We

". This is the first book in the memoir series "On the last breath", conceived by Elena Shubina. The book will be on sale soon. Critic Nina Agisheva wrote about "Girl", its author and main character for "Snob"

Karina, dear, I remember how my Seryozha sent me your text by mail with the words: “Look, you might be interested.” I was in no hurry to watch: I don’t like women’s prose and call it “snot with ice cream”. After all, Marina, whom we both adored, was not a woman - she was a genius. And the most interesting - and the most creative - people are those in whom both principles are fancifully mixed. But in the evening I sat down at the computer and ... woke up in the middle of the night. I have not read anything like it in terms of the power of emotional expression, in desperate fearlessness and outspoken frankness for many years. And in general, all this was not about you, not even about us - about me.

Although the hero of the book - the legendary St. Petersburg critic and your ex-husband Seryozha Dobrotvorsky - I saw only twice in my life. Once in Moscow, at the “Faces of Love” festival, where he received an award for his articles about cinema, and I, wanting to tell him something pleasant, secularly threw: “You have a very pretty wife, Seryozha.” The answer was not entirely secular - he looked at me very angrily and said: “No, you are wrong. She's not pretty - she's beautiful." And the second time years later, when you had already left him and lived with Lesha Tarkhanov, at Lenfilm, where I whiled away the time in the cafeteria, waiting for the next interview. Seryozha sat down at my table right with a bottle of cognac in his hands - and, although we did not know each other very well, he downed me with a stream of revelations. Not a word was said about you: he had just returned either from Prague or Warsaw and verbosely described how brilliantly this trip went, and how happy he was, insanely happy, how everything was fine in his life ... Less than through month he died. I remember then I looked at him with pity and thought: how he suffers, poor man. This is love. Now I understand that his behavior was inadequate, and I know why.

Only one post in my FB speaks about who Dobrotvorsky was and remains for the St. Petersburg intellectual get-together. A student writes: oh, read everything, a book about the famous Dobrotvorsky is coming out - you know, he died the year we entered LGITMIK. So, Karina, all your experiences, for the sake of which you started this book, have gone into the shadows - a portrait of Seryozha remains. And he is beautiful, as is his photo on the cover of the book of his brilliant articles, lovingly published by Lyuba Arkus. I like it so much that I put this book on the shelf with the cover outward - and when you first came to Lesha and me, he just happened to be opposite, and Seryozha looked at him bitterly and ironically all evening. He really looked like James Dean. And David Bowie. And in general, what can be more erotic than intelligence? Completely agree with you.

You knew Seryozha closely, very closely, you memorized many of his assessments and aphorisms, phenomenal in terms of accuracy and elegance, which are scattered in the text like a handful of expensive stones - now they don’t write and speak like that! - and at the same time, you are still tormented by his underincarnation. Yes, articles, yes, paintings, even in the Russian Museum! Yes, scripts, but who remembers these films?! You write: “How to convey a gift that has not materialized? talent to live? Artistry mixed with despair?.. Those whom you burned, irradiated - they remember it. But they won't. And you won't." Karina, there are many such destinies around ... I remember my dumbfoundedness from the early films of Oleg Kovalov, from his talent - where is he now, what is he? And those who wrote like gods, what are they doing now?! When was the last time you wrote about theater? And where are your studies on Isadora Duncan? So what? After all, the main thing is not to take a breath, as your Seryozha wrote in an article about his beloved Godard. Live. And rejoice at the "new manifestos of freedom, permissiveness and love."

By the way, about permissiveness. I don’t know many authors who can write so harshly, ironically and frankly about the mores of the bohemian Peter of the eighties and nineties. As, by the way, and women who publicly declare that they have no waist and that they do not know how to dress. I didn’t expect such “immensity in the world of measures” from the coldish-sleek boss of the Condenast. Such a volcano inside an iceberg. And a simple, eternal, like the world, explanation is love. She either exists or she doesn't. And if it is, then it does not go anywhere. Forever with you, until the last breath - and you will not get rid of it with any book. But this is so, a lyrical digression. Let's get back to drinking. Our generation not only paid tribute to him, but also aestheticized him as best he could. It is no coincidence that Dobrotvorsky said about the unforgettable Venichka Erofeev that he "preserved the tradition of conscience in a bunch of hangover shame." Or was that justification for weakness? You write with such pain about those moments when “Mr. Hyde” woke up in Seryozha that it is impossible not to believe you. And it's not for us to judge. We all will die next to those with whom we "have something to drink about." But there is a line beyond which it is better not to look. Feeling it, you left - and survived. I thought about it while watching Gaius Germanicus' film Yes and Yes. Of course, his heroine is no match for you in terms of intelligence and brilliance, but she also loved and was also saved. I don’t understand at all how the numerous detractors of this picture did not consider, did not hear the main thing: the story of pure and devoted love. And the entourage - well, excuse me, what it is. Moreover, Germanicus does not try to justify it or embellish it, stylize it as something - no, horror is horror. Gotta run. And all of us, even those who now scold the film for how much in vain, one way or another fled. How can one not remember that morality wakes up precisely when ... And one more topic arises in your book and in “women's” cinema today (I will remember Angelina Nikonova and Olga Dykhovichnaya with their amazing “Portrait at Twilight”, Svetlana Proskurina, Natalya Meshchaninova - the list is easy to continue): it is the women who again and again disagree, rebel and flee from the "doll" houses, although these houses today look more like "dead". By the way, this is exactly what Yana Troyanova plays with Sigarev. In general, only girls will survive. While the boys sit in FB and self-destruct.

Your book is generally like a movie in which all the pictures of our common life replace one another. Here is BG and Choi. Kuryokhin. Here is a stupid parallel movie for today - I didn’t like it either, although once I was even the head of a dissertation about it at the Faculty of Journalism. Here is Lynch's "Blue Velvet" - for some reason, for me, it was iconic and special. First Paris. First America. Opportunity to earn money, and considerable. It was you who wrote: "The desire for money began to corrode the soul." Not with Serezha, of course: his soul remained free, which is why it hasn’t let you go until now.

And the last. I imagine what an anthill you have stirred up with your book. And how much negativity will shed - from acquaintances, of course, because outsiders will most likely perceive the text simply as an artifact, whether they like it or not is another question. So, don't worry. Seryozha did not make his film, and you seem to have done it for him. She told about herself, about him, about all the boys and girls of the transitional Russian time. It's over, it's gone forever. And everyone will leave - and we will stay.

Nina Agisheva

Text: Lisa Birger

Very beautiful, very successful, and she also says something like this, probably, the average person reacts to the sudden literary career of Karina Dobrotvorskaya, president and editorial director of Brand Development of the Condé Nast International publishing house and an iconic figure of Russian glamor. It would be like writing frivolous books about fashion in the style of Vogue, advice to girls just looking for their own style, how to wear a tuxedo. But instead, first Karina Dobrotvorskaya collects the memories of the Leningrad “siege girls” into one book, building their hunger in parallel with her own bulimia, her own fears and disorders associated with food. And now she comes out “Has anyone seen my girl? 100 letters to Seryozha ”- letters to the deceased husband. This is the ultimate, very sincere and not quite prose, that is, texts that are not quite intended for the eyes of the reader from the outside. It is not even possible to say that this book should be read right now. It may not need to be read at all. That does not detract from its, so to speak, social significance.

Sergey Dobrotvorsky - a bright person and an outstanding film critic, whose memory is kept today only by the faithful team of the Seance magazine - died in 1997. By that time, Karina had already left him for her current husband and was even 9 months pregnant. He died of a heroin overdose, the friends with whom he was frightened carried the body out into the street and put it on a bench in the playground - he, dead, sat there until the middle of the next day. In the preface to the book, Dobrotvorskaya writes that his death was the main event of her life. “I didn’t like him, didn’t finish, didn’t finish watching, didn’t share. After his departure, my life fell apart into external and internal. Outwardly, I had a happy marriage, wonderful children, a huge apartment, a wonderful job, a fantastic career, and even a small house by the sea. Inside - frozen pain, dried tears and an endless dialogue with a person who was not there.

In her “letters” (the quotation marks here are intentional - too systematic, chronological description of events, these are rather letters that you write publicly, like Facebook appeals, than something really intimate) Dobrotvorskaya consistently recalls the history of romance, marriage, divorce, care. Practically - from the first university parties, the first sex, the first conversation, the first attempts to arrange a joint life, the first trips abroad (in the 90s it still meant eating one banana a day to save up for one, but a chic suit from Paris) - to last quarrels. A parallel to all this is modernity, where the heroine has a young lover, and it is he who becomes the catalyst for this sea of ​​letters breaking through. There - painful shame for hand-pasted wallpapers, an apartment without a telephone, a bathroom covered with giant red cockroaches, here - life in Paris, where every morning, leaving the house, the heroine admires the Eiffel Tower. There are ration cards, pasta with ketchup, and pancakes made from powdered eggs and powdered milk. Here - an endless raid on Michelin restaurants.

This endlessly repeated opposition of yesterday's poverty with today's chic should not and is not intended to be the main thing here. However, that is exactly what is happening. Dobrotvorskaya's book actually has one obvious, let's say, source of inspiration - it is even briefly mentioned in the preface. This is Joan Didion's book "The Year of Magical Thinking" - Dobrotvorskaya translates it as "The Year of Magical Thinking". In her book, Didion tells how she spent a year of her life after her husband, John Dunn, died suddenly in their family living room from a heart attack. This poignant, mind-boggling read is almost the main American book of the last decade. Exposing, it would seem, to the last nerve, recalling the past on repeat and describing her suffering in the present, Joan Didion legitimizes suffering for the first time in American culture. What is customary to hide - tears, grief, unwillingness to live - becomes the main plot for her.

Dobrotvorskaya also dares to write about something that is not spoken of in Russian culture. About poverty. About suffering around poverty. About the intimate life of two people, sex, betrayal. Add to this that she calls almost all the characters in her book by name - and you can imagine how many people will definitely not like her. However, the main idea, clearly borrowed from Didion, is the idea that if you start talking about pain, it will subside. Such psychotherapy in a word, the belief that it is enough to speak out, and everything will pass. So in the Middle Ages, they treated with bloodletting, believing that with bad blood, the disease also goes away. A completely erroneous thought, by the way, which cost us Robin Hood.

The trouble is that, inspired by Didion, Dobrotvorskaya read it wrong. Joan Didion never promised that the pain would go away, moreover, she repeatedly repeats that nothing ever goes away. But she is a brilliant essayist, the best of her generation, who has trained for years to turn her every experience into text. In The Year of Magical Thinking, she simply turns herself into a guinea pig for lack of other options, stepping back, watching her own suffering. She, for example, reads books about loss and trauma all the time and compares the comments of doctors and psychoanalysts with her own experience. Thus, Didion's confession is addressed to each of us, it can be tried on by anyone who knows the bitterness of loss - that is, all of us. Dobrotvorskaya's confession is a personal psychotherapy, where intimacy is even inappropriate and leaves a feeling of some inconvenience, and the author (interestingly, consciously or not) does not cause the slightest sympathy.

That is, as a book about the experience of loss, “letters to Seryozha” cannot be read. What is left in it? First of all, a story about these 90s, when everything happened: all this hunger, cards, powdered pancakes, dreams of etseter, etseter abroad. The desire to “have everything” grew out of a time when there was nothing. To read Dobrotvorskaya, it is precisely this “nothing happened” that is a real trauma for her. When you fall in love with the suits of a new fashion designer, but they cost $1,000, and your salary is $200. When you go to America and save up for a new video recorder, and it is stolen from you on the very first day in your homeland, how can you survive this?

Dobrotvorskaya quite frankly describes that she went precisely to the money, that “I wanted changes” - this is the grand cru cooling in a bucket. And precisely because she is so honest with us, it is not worth and do not want to crucify her for this. It is impossible not to notice that all this is the confession of a woman who, saying goodbye to her young lover, finally tells him “I will cancel your tickets myself.” But in the past, in addition to everyday life, there was also art - Sergei Dobrotvorsky himself and his entire circle were people in love with cinema, books, and the old culture. And we must understand that all this glamor was created for us by people who knew Pasolini's films by heart.

When Dobrotvorskaya writes about modernity, about a young lover swallowing seasons of serials, she, perhaps unconsciously, contrasts yesterday's absorption of culture with her today's consumption. A modern person knows how to turn gadgets correctly, but is unable to watch the Autumn Marathon to the end. And here it is no longer clear what Dobrotvorskaya is complaining about - the fact that she herself created this person turns out to be completely beyond the bounds of this prose.

Photos:"Edition of Elena Shubina", AST Publishing House