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

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СКАЧАТЬ They were virgin lands in the 50’s and 60’s. All those years, the years of Khrushchev N.S., we lived at Pretoria

      It was the time when the world was on the brink of nuclear war, the time of changing the way people thought

      At that time father read the newspapers attentively, listened to the radio and told me much about the presidents of other countries and about the international situation

      We were children then and all these problems did exist but without our participation. Besides it was the time of the first space flight of Yuri Gagarin

      In the days of Khrushchev, father suddenly felt drawn to the memorable places in Leningrad. It continued till our sudden movement to Vologda Province in 1967, nearer to Leningrad

      Those years we had lived within our own peculiar dimension. A lot of events were shaking the world of which we were witnesses. Father crammed us with information on all fields of knowledge. He read much and rapidly. In the evening he read aloud to us. He was in a hurry because each day could be his last day. He tried to be among the people and took me along. I often asked for his permission to go to the drivers who lived in our club-house in the summer. They were mainly from Leningrad. They would take me along to the field, to the combine, where the trucks were being filled with grain. Then a truck would go to the barnyard where women tossed grain up to the transporters with wooden spades. Boys of my age worked as combiner’s assistants, as, for instance, Yasha Kliver, but I could not – father forbade me, he was concerned for my health

      At that time father was a Village Soviet deputy and therefore he tried to be everywhere. He helped the Board to accommodate people who had come from other cities to harvest

      In those distant years mother mainly looked after us. In the summer, when it was posible she would work as a tutor in the Young Pioneer camp. During the days my sisters would be on the lake or in the gardens with the other children of their age

      When we lived in Pretoria, we did not have a garden of our own. His entire spare time father would spend fishing. He tried to disconnect himself from the political environment in which we had to live

      In the evening he would go to the kitchen garden, dig out rain-worms, then go home, check his fishing-rods, mainly of bamboo, and choose one. At about 5 o’clock in the morning he would go to the river, first investigating the weather-forecast, he looked at the barometer, at the sunset colours, and checked the wind. On the river he would usually choose a place on the lee side, near the stones. If the fish were biting, he would catch 10—15 red-eyes, and some chubs, go home and gave his catch to mother, “na zherekh” – (to frizzle), as he would say. Usually it was already 7 o’clock, and the distance to the river was 1.5 km, so father, apart from his callisthenics, kept in training by walking, and he splashed himself with cold water. It should be emphasized that walking to the river required special skill, because in some places near the river Gusikha the land was marshy, with tussocks, and one ought to jump from tussock to tussock. The bog was about 100 m long, but father did so. I wondered how he managed it despite his physical deficiency. His one leg was bad, but he covered the distance there and back, and with a load. The load was a 3- or 5-litre can with water and with living fish. Father would wait impatiently while mother fried the fish, then he would sit down at the table and rapidly eat them up. When he was eating, it was better not to ask him anything, he would never answer. He followed the rule: “When I’m eating, I am a deaf-mute”. When anyone of us did not follow this rule, he would get a blow on the forehead with a wooden spoon (not powerful, though). Part of the catch was left for a fish-soup for dinner. Father was the single constant angler, on the river. Many other teachers had cars, three-wheel motorcycles, they bred cattle, had poultry, and cultivated gardens with vegetables and fruit. They did not go fishing often. Neither did the collective farmers. Partly because they worked in the field, partly because there was no need. But we had neither garden, nor cattle, nor poultry or a car, though father all his life wanted to get an invalid’s cart. For this purpose it was necessary to go to the medical commission. But he never went to doctors. When possible we would have hams usually hanging in the passage. But it was later, when I was about 9 and we got our own house

      It was a three-room house. The house was of saman brick. This brick had been made at our place. It was made of clay and straw. It was all made in a large pit filled with clay, water and straw/ Then it was mixed up. A horse was driven into that pit and it trod and mixed up the mortar till it became workable

      Then the mortar was poured into rectangular boxes 30x20x10 cm in size. Then the moulds were taken out and dried in the open air. The resulting bricks were then used in building. But this does not mean that every house was built of straw. There were some built of real brick and wooden planks. There were many who had gardens. It was hot in summer. They had steel tanks, pumped water into them and the whole day the water got warmed in the sun. In the evening they watered their gardens. We had nothing of the kind. Our small house stood near the old shop. There was a road in front of the house, but it was screened with enormous lilac bushes. Two windows faced the road. If one stood in front of the house then the shop and the road to Mikhailovka (a branch of the kolkhoz) was on one’s left

      It was a three-room house, not including the kitchen: two small rooms and one large. In the hall, as father called it, there were bookshelves, a round table, the radio, and bookstands

      The entrance was from the roadside. On one’s right there was the entrance to the corridor. The small corridor had a double door to keep the warmth. (The plan of the houses was standard). Then, on one’s left there was a kitchen (10m²⁾, on one’s right – a children’s room (12m²⁾, farther, straight ahead, – a large room, “hall” (20m²⁾, and – parents’ bedroom (16m²⁾. There were two windows in the “hall” – one window looked on to the road, the other – on to the neighbour

      So, when you entered the “hall”, on your right, in the corner, was the radio with a bookstand underneath. The table stood in the center. Near the door to the parents’ room there stood a bookcase. The hall was illuminated with a lusters. The house was heated by the stoves. One stove was in the kitchen, the other was in the children’s room. By order of the director of the school, the parents as teachers were always provided with coal. Father and I unloaded the coal with the spades and then carried it to the shed in buckets. One and a half bucket was enough for one day to heat the rooms in winter. Winters were very cold – we were located on the steppe, with surrounding hills

      Father liked to associate with people. Not simply to speak with, but to play chess, dominoes, to go wolf-shooting, duck-shooting, fishing. He loved to take part in performances, in amateur concerts, to lecture, to see films, and to participate in competitions, etc. When we lived in Pretoria, a former middle-school director of studies Kliver Yakov Yakovlevich lived just across the street. He was a pensioner. Father often visited him, they played chess over tea. Father was friends with Yakov Shmidt. He was a miller, his son studied at father’s school. Father distinguished him from the rest and said that he was a genuine man. Father had one close friend – the chairman of the “Karl Marx” kolkhoz Konstantinov. He also associated with A.A. Makarov, an old man who later moved to the village of Sud’bodarovka. During World War II, he was in captivity in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He had two sons: Sasha and a younger one, Kostia. There was a thrown-away lorry in our yard. We would often sit in it, giving ourselves out to be drivers, as if we were travelling. I remember this because father with Makarov and the chairman would go either to the chairman’s house or to the Board, and we were left all by ourselves. Makarov worked as a supply manager in our new, brick-built school. Once F father told me that this Makarov was captured during the beginning of the war, but before the war he had worked in the NKVD and that he was an untrustworthy СКАЧАТЬ