The Unknown Tsesarevitch. Reminiscences and Considerations on V. K. Filatov’s Life and Times. Oleg Vasiljevitch Filatov

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      Дай крепость нам, о, Боже правый

      Злодейства ближнего прощать

      И крест тяжелый и кровавый

      С твоею кротостью встречать

      И в дни мятежного волненья

      Когда ограбят нас враги

      Стерпеть позор и оскорбленье

      Христос Спаситель, помоги

      Владыка мира, Бог Вселенной

      Благослови молитвой нас

      И дай покой душе смиренной

      В невыносимо страшный час

      И у преддверия могилы

      Вдохни в уста твоих рабов

      Нечеловеческие силы

      Молиться кротко за врагов

      Holy God, give us patience to bear the persecution and tortures

      By our butchers in time of trouble

      Do give us, God, the ability to pardon the evil deeds of our

      Neighbours and to meet meekly the heavy bloody cross

      Christ, Saviour, help us endure insults and disgrace

      When enemies are robbing us. God, bless us and restrain our souls at an unbearably horrible hour

      And at our mortal hour give us the superhuman power

      To pray for our enemies

      Of course, the poems are not of equal value and have been written on different occasions. But it seems to me that even a self-trained reader will find in them a consistence in style and form of expressing oneself. I deliberately cited these poems at the beginning of the chapter, because these poems seem to explain splendidly father’s state of mind and his ability to adapt to another life, even one built by his enemies who had killed his family, and, having adapted to it, to live in a fitting manner. Forced to conceal his real origin, he had to disguise his knowledge and breeding, to make himself as inconspicuous as possible

      He lived as if everything around him was a sort of mirage, i.e., everything was different, not his. My sisters and I were close by and felt his inexplicable force and influence. We believed that his whole life is some other life, unknown to others

      What was it? Probably, a mirage of his former life

      Being alone with him, somewhere, like simply in a field, one could often observe how he would suddenly stop (and we were going to the management board of the kolkhoz, the chairman of which was a friend of his) and start counting the birds flying above. Suddenly, as if he recollected something, he would recite Esenin’s poem: “You’re still alive, my little old woman, and I am still alive. My kind regards to you, my greetings. Let the in extinguishable light stream above your hut…”

      Then, as if he recollected something, he would look at me and say: “Come along, Oleg, We should go to the Board now.” I later understood that he was grieving over his mother, fair-haired, beautiful and kind

      He associated with people easily. He would come to the Board with me. The chairman would say: “A-a, Ksenofontovich, do come in.” Entering the room, father would stand just inside the doors, look to see who was where and only then would he move on, and I with him. Father wore his cap on one side. He would take it off and keep it in his right hand. When he put on the cap, he would take its vizor by his left hand and with his right hand he would put it onto the back of his head and, holding it with his right hand he would pull the vizor down to the forehead, as if fixing it. Before putting on his cap, he would always shake it. Another thing he did was check his boots for comfort. He would put on his boots in the following way: he would put his right foot on a low stool, tie up the lace with a seaman’s knot, first showing it to me, then he would do the same with his left boot, straighten his back, shake himself, and take along his field bag and – out he went. At that time I thought that he had been a military man. He would leave for work early, 30 minutes before the beginning of lessons, though the school was 300 m from our house. He would sit in the teachers’ room and take his time to prepare to his lessons

      His whole life was given to school and to his family. He was an authority at school. He would always find a simple form of expression for the material. The children loved and respected him. One time he taught geography in the 6^th grade. I saw how he tried to help the pupils even if they hardly knew the material. He did not let them know their marks. At the end of the lesson they would come up to him to ask about their marks for the lesson, but he first put dots in the class register and then would say either “a satisfactory” or “learn better”, but he never gave a “two”

      At the next lesson he would simply ask, for instance, Andrei Yancher, whether he was ready to answer or not. If Andrei could answer the new material then he would not ask him about the old. He did not ask me until I raised my hand. I would come to the blackboard and answer the questions. He would listen to me without interrupting and then say: “Well, Filatov, you know the lesson, I’ll give you a “five”. But I felt confused: he was my father, after all. Of course, I did my best not to let him down in order that others would not think that I got “fives” because I was the teacher’s son

      When father lectured on the material, he never looked at the pupils, but if anybody made a noise, he, without looking at the pupil, would call him by name, and it was effective, the pupil stopped immediately. Father would go about the classroom, leaning on the pointer

      If the noise continued, father would glance once at the pupil and silence fell immediately, because the look of his eyes was special. He gave the pupil a piercing glance – and he would shrivel up. When Father brought films on geography and showed them, many pupils from other grades would come to see the films. For instance, a film about the conquest of the North he showed in the assembly hall during a long break. Father did everything himself, like the projectionist

      He would come home very tired. He would change his clothes, go to the kitchen, have dinner, then go to the room where the desk was, sit down and read the newspapers, and listen to the radio. In the evening we would come home having had plenty of running about the fields where the steppe tulips bloomed in the spring, the grasshoppers chirped, butterflies flew the in summer, and gophers often ran about. We spent our time on the river Gusikha, on the first lake. When we came home we first drank milk and ate wheat-bread which had been baked in the oven which stood in the street. We baked bread from our own flour. We ground wheat in the mill which had stood in our village from the times of Catherine II. Our district was famous. Tatishchevo was close by, where Suvorov had captured Pugachev. The environs of Tatishchevo СКАЧАТЬ