My childhood friend

Mother Maria's story about her friendship with K.P. Pobedonostsev Events and people that have gone down in history become, in the eyes of even those who lived with them at the same time, some kind of ossified figures; some kind of unwritten canon is implemented according to which each historical person can be depicted only according to this ossified idea of ​​him. Virtues are always pure virtue, villainy is also painted in one common color, and as a result, the persons described acquire the meaning of symbols rather than living people. My memories relate to the person who has perhaps become the most symbolic of all. I want to talk about my childhood relationship with K.P. Pobedonostsev. These relationships took place during the period when I was five to thirteen years old, and this determines the fact that I perceived Pobedonostsev not as a statesman, not as an ideologist of the reaction of the reign of Alexander III, but exclusively as a person, as an old man, extremely tender towards children. Pobedonostsev’s letters have just been published, complementing his overall canonical portrait: a pillar of reaction, the inspirer of all the internal and church policies of Alexander III, an imperious, cold extinguisher who knows what he wants. Its historical significance is fully defined. It seems that at this moment my memories will be of interest, since they will outline his appearance from a completely different point of view, embodying him a little in the human image, devoid of all the certainty of the iconographic canon, which always sins against the truth of life. So, every winter, our whole family went to St. Petersburg for one or two months to visit my grandmother, my mother’s aunt, Elizaveta Aleksandrovna Yafimovich. After a free and spacious life at home, in a small town on the Black Sea coast, my grandmother’s apartment seemed to me like something completely different, a fairy-tale world. We didn’t see St. Petersburg during these visits: each time we had a runny nose while on the road, and our mother didn’t dare let us go for a walk around St. Petersburg right up until we left. We left the train in grandma's carriage, then if we visited other relatives, we rode in a carriage with Ivan on the box seat. Thus, my only early memories of St. Petersburg are the elevator in my aunt’s apartment, two huge Chinese vases in the windows of the Anichkova pharmacy on the corner of Nevsky and Fontanka, two golden bulls on the butcher’s sign opposite the windows of my grandmother’s apartment, and the dead. My grandmother read about them in advance in Novoye Vremya and notified us. In the morning we were waiting for them at the office windows! Particular honor was given to those who were buried with music. They were distributed in turns - grandma's, mine and brother's... and again grandma's, whoever was lucky enough to listen to the deceased with music. Grandmother’s apartment was huge, with fourteen rooms, at 57 Liteiny Prospekt. There were carpets on the floor that had not been removed for eighteen years. In the living room the furniture was carved, the work of Lizeray. Portraits hung on the walls: Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, three sculpted busts; Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna; then a portrait of L.E. Naryshkin (by Angelica Kaufman). He sits in front of the bust of Catherine II and on the paper in front of him is written “it is better to acquit 10 guilty people than to condemn one innocent one.” Then a portrait of my grandmother’s husband – huge, in oil paints; then the grandmother herself and her sisters - both young, with curls on their ears and open shoulders (Elena Pavlovna's maids of honor). There were several clocks in each room. During the battle, the whole apartment was filled with a kind of music: the low and slow hum of a hundred-year-old clock shimmered and was overtaken by the silvery ringing of Sevres, then the clock began to chime with a tower chime, then it was no longer possible to make out what time and what clock was striking. Grandmother lived alone, surrounded, as it seemed to her, by the minimum necessary servants. The footman Ivan and the maid Polina were ordinary beings, and the bartender Anton Karlovich, who was shaven and inspired great respect in my brother and I, came to report that dinner was served. He always stopped on the same square of carpet and spoke loudly in an unknown language: “Diner ist serviert, gnedige Frau, excellence.” The grandmother herself was a person who had long outlived her time. She often said: “I love you all, my friends, and yet you are strangers to me. All our loved ones have been in their graves for a long time.” She was born in 1818 into the Moscow noble and wealthy Dmitriev-Mamontov family. She was raised by her grandmother Praskovya Semyonovna Yafimovich, nee Naryshkina, a woman of great intelligence. Our grandmother always talked about her endlessly. At the age of eighteen, my grandmother became the maid of honor of the Grand Duke. Elena Pavlovna and in all her memoirs she made little mention of the role that Elena Pavlovna played during the reign of Alexander II as the only liberal and cultural Grand Duchess of all time. She talked more about the very life of the Mikhailovsky Palace, about how the French cook fed the Grand Duchesses and ladies-in-waiting with frogs under the guise of young chickens. She remembered how Mikhail Pavlovich called her “Mamanosha” and how Nicholas I ordered all the ladies-in-waiting of the large Court to learn to curtsy from her, crouching very low and without bending their heads. She treated the memory of Elena Pavlovna with adoration. She spoke with the same adoration about her husband, Vladimir Matveevich Yafimovich. And she measured everything modern by them. Her theory of aristocracy was curious. Later, laughing, I said that I was the first to learn the basic principles of equality and democracy from my grandmother. She argued that a true aristocrat should be equal in his relationships with everyone. Only the "parvenu" (upstart) will make a difference in their relations between the nobles and the ignorant, and the common people and the aristocrats always treat everyone equally. And indeed, in her living room one could see Princess Helena, granddaughter of the Grand Duke. Elena Pavlovna and grandmother’s goddaughter (the daughter of her seamstress) or our childhood friend-tutor, shaggy student Borchkhadtse, and next to him a member of the State Council, Baron M.A. Taube - and it was impossible to notice even a shadow of a difference in the hostess’s treatment of her guests. She often had guests. My brother and I were then called from the nursery. I always had to recite Zhukovsky with feeling. I don’t remember these verses now, only the last lines remain in my memory: “O Holy Motherland, what heart does not tremble, blessing you.” Among the frequent visitors of my grandmother’s closest friends was Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev. He lived just opposite, window to window. In the evenings one could see some figures moving in his office. My grandmother's friendship with him was long-lasting. Just as Pobedonostsev first appeared at the Court of Elena Pavlovna as a young and promising man, so in his grandmother’s view he was a young man even into old age. I don’t remember what connected them at all; my grandmother did not feel any interest in any politics. I think that they were both simply the old guard, which was becoming less and less. Grandma listened to Pobedonostsev’s advice very much. One day she wanted to enter a monastery. Pobedonostsev, initiated into this plan of hers, rebelled! “For mercy, Elizaveta Alexandrovna, why don’t you live like a monk? You have no idea how terrible our monasteries are! Hypocrisy, pettiness, gossip, quarrels! You don’t belong there!” But I would like to tell you now about my relationship with Konstantin Petrovich, something that does not at all fit with the usual idea of ​​him. Pobedonostsev passionately loved children. As far as I could judge, he loved all kinds of children - noble and ignorant, of all nationalities, boys and girls - regardless of any relationship to their parents. And children, always sensitive to real love, repaid him with real adoration. In my childhood, I don’t remember another person who could be so attentively and sincerely able to take an interest in my childhood interests. Other people, out of courtesy to my parents or because I was saying something funny at that moment, listened to me and smiled. But Pobedonostsev became seriously interested in what interested me, and therefore seemed the only equal of all adults. I loved him very much and considered him my truest FRIEND. This friendship went like this. I was probably about five years old when he first saw me at my grandmother’s. I made a curtsey (sat down), appeared in the living room, read some poems with feeling and sat down next to my grandmother on the sofa in order to be silent as a matter of routine and listen to what the adults were saying. But I didn’t have to remain silent, because Pobedonostsev started questioning me. At first I was a little shy, but very soon I felt that he was seriously interested in my world, and the conversation became completely relaxed. After he left, he sent me a doll, English picture books and an invitation to my grandmother to come and visit me as soon as possible. We went... Grandma didn’t walk the streets at all. I did five miles in my room every day. To visit Pobedonostsev, who lived opposite, she went like this: she got into a carriage, drove to the Vladimir Cathedral, there they turned and drove up to Pobedonostsev’s entrance. The huge, old-looking doorman Roots opened the door. The Synodal House where Pobedonostsev lived was huge; the countless number of rooms completely confused me. I remember a small room, all filled with icons and shining with lamps. Pobedonostsev’s wife, Ekaterina Aleksandrovna, compared to her husband, was still a very young woman, “belonged to the world of adults,” and therefore was of little interest to me. Much later, I noticed that it was very majestic and beautiful - I became interested in it, having already learned that Tolstoy allegedly wrote his Anna Karenina from it. Her hair was magnificent, tied low in heavy plaits, and on her shoulders she wore a velvet, special red talma (or is that not what they call it anymore?) They had an adopted daughter, Marfinka, she was three years younger than me. She had long curls and her face was thin and capricious. And despite the fact that there was a child in the Pobedonostsevsky house, no one thought that they were bringing me to visit Marfinka - I went to my FRIEND Kostantin Petrovich. Grandmother used to sit with Ekaterina Alexandrovna and drink tea, and Konstantin Petrovich and I would drink tea separately. If at this moment there are other children, and they almost always were (I remember two girls in red dresses who said that they were born in Constantinople) - then Marfinka is with them, and I am certainly with Konstantin Petrovich. I remember how he took me one day to his business office. There were a lot of people there. A huge and fat nun, a bishop, important officials and generals. I don’t remember what questions they asked me and what I answered, but all the time I had the consciousness that I was with my FRIEND, and everyone understood this, and it was quite natural that the already middle-aged Pobedonostsev was my FRIEND. Next to the office there was another SPECIAL ROOM. All the walls were covered with children's portraits, and in the corner there was a real magic wardrobe. From there they took out dolls, books with magnificent pictures, various toys... I remember once I was with Konstantin Petrovich for Easter. He took out an egg made by Lukutin from the cabinet and said Christ to me. Inside the egg was written: “To His Excellency Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev from the St. Petersburg Old Believers.” I then kept this egg for a very long time. One day, Konstantin Petrovich came to his grandmother in his usual greasy frock coat, a tie crookedly tied in a bow, and said: “I was just now, dear Elizaveta Alexandrovna, in Maria Feodorovna’s palace...” - and then he began a long conversation about what kind of people there used to be (Elena Pavlovna!....) and what kind of people have gone now... I was terribly surprised. For me, kings were something completely fabulous. I was sure, for example, that the royal carriage must travel on carpets, and, by analogy with the boats launched from the shore into the sea, which I often saw. I thought that the carpets in front of the royal carriage moved in the same way as the trestles on which the boat moves.... And then suddenly Konstantin Petrovich’s greasy frock coat and crooked tie. When I came to St. Petersburg, my grandmother wrote to Pobedonostsev that same day: “Dearest Konstantin Petrovich. Lizanka has arrived! And the next morning he appeared with books and toys, smiled affectionately, asked about mine, talked about himself. Having learned to write, I began to carefully congratulate him on Easter and Christmas. Then the correspondence became more frequent. Unfortunately, I now do not have his letters. But this is approximately their content. On a half sheet of mail folded in half, each subsequent line begins further from the edge of the paper than the previous one. The address is always: “Dear Lizanka!” The first letters, when I was six or nine years old, contained only a message that my grandmother was healthy, missed me, gave Marfinka a huge doll, etc. Then the letters become more serious and moralizing. I remember one phrase for sure: “I heard that you study well, but my friend, this is not the main thing, but the main thing is to preserve a high and pure soul, capable of understanding everything beautiful.” I remember that in moments of all sorts of childhood troubles and sorrows, I sat down to write to Konstantin Petrovich and that my letters to him were the most sincere presentation of my childhood philosophy. Pobedonostsev met my mother at my grandmother’s five or six times. I never saw my father; I think that my father did not feel any sympathy for him. And so, despite the fact that my family was a complete stranger to him, Konstantin Petrovich quickly and accurately answered my letters, really feeling me not as a “bummer and a bug,” but as a person with whom he has a certain relationship. I remember how our friends were always surprised: why did Pobedonostsev need this correspondence with the little girl? I had a precise answer to this: “Because we are friends!” This is how things went until 1904. I was twelve years old then. The Japanese war was ending. The revolution was beginning. In our wilderness, both the war and the revolution were felt, of course, less than in the center. But the war gave both my brother and me a feeling of some great humiliation. I remember my father entering the library and reading a newspaper to my mother describing the details of the Battle of Tsushima... and then the revolution. I perceived it as something directed against Pobedonostsev! And oddly enough, of our entire family, at first I was the most intolerant of her. In those days, I remember how a Georgian came to my father’s house on business and my father left him to drink tea. I heard from someone that he was a revolutionary and that if this was discovered, he would face hard labor. From a distance, I decided that this was how it should be, but when I saw that there was still a young man sitting at our table, coughing desperately, looking very sad, I remembered all the rumors about him, and I felt very sorry for him. But I immediately decided that this was weakness. I went into the living room, took out a portrait of Pobedonostsev with the inscription “To my dear Lizanka”, and in the portrait an unruly tie on one side had come out from under the collar - she sat down in the corner and began to look at him, so as not to weaken, not to give up, not to regret, in order to remain faithful to my friend... Later we moved to Nikitsky Garden near Yalta; my father was appointed there as director of the school of viticulture and winemaking. The events of 1905 began. Students went to Yalta for rallies. One day, dad was informed by phone that on the way back they were going to be beaten by the “Black Hundred” - pogromists from Vorontsovskaya Slobodka. The father rode out in a stroller to meet them and help them out. My father was a huge man, a head taller than anyone and weighing more than eight pounds. I thought that he was going to help them out, relying on his physical strength, which was truly incredible. But his calculation was more correct. When the hooligans saw the well-known carriage of the director of the Nikitsky school, and the students walking decorously around it, they of course decided that the fight would not happen with impunity, and the students returned home safely. A big struggle began in my soul. On the one hand, a father who defends all these revolutionary-minded young people who seemed attractive to me, and on the other hand, Pobedonostsev is on the reserved table. There was a lot to think about. The father suggested that the students organize a council of elders and allowed rallies. I listened to the speakers coming from Yalta, I myself was subjected to daily propaganda from the students and felt that everything was cracking, everything except my personal friendship with Konstantin Petrovich. Down with the king? I easily agreed to this. Republic? Power of the people? – everything also went smoothly and deftly. Russian Social Democratic Party? Socialist Revolutionary Party? Of course, I had a hard time understanding this. For me, she was a little personified by the student Zosimov and the lame Yalta orator, and the other by the student Petrov and his stories about all sorts of exploits and sacrifices. In general terms, this whole fussy, enthusiastic and heroic revolution was very acceptable, just like socialism, without causing any objections. And struggle, risk, danger, conspiracy, feat, heroism - they simply attracted me. On the way to all this there was only one, BUT HUGE OBSTACLE - Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev. His passion for revolution seemed to me like some kind of PERSONAL betrayal of Pobedonostsev, although by the way, he and I never talked about any politics. And it seemed incredible. That knowing him for so many years. Being in a very real friendship with him, I overlooked and did not notice what was known to the entire Russian people. And my friendship with Konstantin Petrovich and the opportunity to observe him directly told me that the Russian people were wrong and I was right. But against this there was the fact that the entire Russian people cannot be mistaken, but I alone know the truth, and this doubt was theoretically insoluble. I remember the satirical magazines of that time. Against the red background of a revolutionary fire are the green ears of a bat. It just offended me. I loved Pobedonostsev’s old face with intelligent and gentle eyes in glasses, with folds of dry and wrinkled skin under his chin. But to portray him as a “bat” with green ears was, in my mind, a clear slander. But this all lay in the realm of theory and internal experiences, which I only told my father about. But in practice everything was much simpler. I remember my father was leaving for Simferopol. We saw him off at the pier. The famous Yalta police officer Gvozdevich happened to be there too. Apparently, wanting to mock his father, who had already become known as almost a revolutionary, Gvozdevich waited until the ship began to set sail and then shouted to his father, “...that I forgot to say earlier, but now there should be a search at the Nikitsky School and probably some arrests.” The father waved his hands helplessly as the ship set sail. He knew that not everything was going well for the students in this regard and that he, as a lawyer, as a director, should have been there during the search in Nikitsky. I clearly remember that when I saw his helpless gesture, I immediately decided to take part in this matter. From the pier I went to a hotel that belonged to the father of my classmate, with whom we were friends, and called one of the students by phone and reported everything I had heard. The search, of course, still took place. But from the moment of my conversation on the phone until the time Gvozdevich managed to arrive in Nikita, all the stoves in the school were heated (!) and naturally nothing reprehensible was found. Thus, I have already practically cheated on my FRIEND. I wasn't with him. By the spring of 1906, a reaction began; this happened following a denunciation by a housekeeper who served in the secret police, and a priest, in company with other teachers, to whom my father’s regime seemed unacceptable. I decided to clarify all my doubts from Pobedonostsev himself. I remember how excited I was when I went to see him! The same affectionate look, the same greasy frock coat, the same interest in my interests. It seemed to me that in one moment the issue would be resolved in favor of Konstantin Petrovich. – Konstantin Petrovich, I need to talk to you seriously, in private. He was not surprised, took me into his office, and locked the door. How can I explain to him what's going on? You need to say everything in one word and get an answer to everything in one word. I sat opposite him in a deep chair. He looked at me intently and affectionately through his large glasses. – Konstantin Petrovich, what is truth? The question was Pilatov's. But it really says everything and in one word I wanted to get the same answer. Pobedonostsev understood how many questions he covered, he understood everything that was going on in my soul. He grinned and answered in an even voice: - My dear friend Lizanka! The truth is in LOVE, of course. But many people think that the truth lies in love for the distant. Love for something distant is not love. If everyone loved his neighbor, the real neighbor(!) who is really near him, then love for those who are distant would not be needed. It’s the same in business: distant and big things are not business at all. But the real things are close, small, unnoticeable. The feat is always unnoticed. The feat is not in pose, but in self-sacrifice, in modesty... I then decided that Pobedonostsev did not pass the exam and those who looked at him from afar were right. He himself, apparently, also felt that something had broken in our relationship. This was our last meeting. Soon we left St. Petersburg to the south, to our small town. I don’t remember now when Pobedonostsev died. At the time of his death, I was again in St. Petersburg, but did not go to the funeral...