There were two empty piecesopposite to our house for a long time. Then the owners have appeared at one of them, which was to the left. More specifically they were the mistresses: one – theelderly woman, the second one– middle-aged woman who was coaeval with me. Theyhave enclosed the piece with a fence and built a small toy like home. The most unusual thing was thatthey have painted it in bright yellow color.It was strange, but beautiful. We liked this “chicken” house, as we called it, and I quickly got to be friends with the mistresses. A name of elder woman was Olga Ilyinichna Belousova; her daughter had a name like me – Tatiana. Every day we spent together for three to four hours at the Pirogovskoye water reservoir which was not far away.The summer was hot, and it seems, thata half of Moscow homed in on the shores of our Pirogovka making it like the southern coast of Crimea. The jet skis have particularly beleaguered, whose owners tried to shoot as close to the shore as possible in order to make boast ofthe skill. The snow-white pleasure yachts royally slid farawayunder canvas.
– Wow, how beautiful!– I exclaimed. – Just like in a novel ofAlexander Grin... Allthat'smissingaretheCrimson sails.
–And you know, my dear Tanya, – Olga Ilyinichna suddenly replied, leaning on her elbow and looking at yachts, – I was familiar at some time with the real Assol. She was a wife of Alexander Grin, to whom he dedicated “Crimson sails”.
– And where did you meet her, in the Crimea?
– No, in the North. In Stalin’s camps.
In generally it is written not so much about Grin’s wife – Nina Nikolayevna Grin – and especially about her stay in the camps. And I thought that the story of my neighbor from the cottage may be of interest to all lovers of creative work of the wonderful romantic writer.
The Sun rises,butis not setting
The story about how 20-year-old Olya from Moscow wascaught in the camps is both tragic and banal for those terrible times. She was born and raised in Moscow, in an intelligentfamily. When the Germans came to the capital, her family was evacuated to the relatives at Kuban. There Olga Vozovik (it’s her premarital surname) continued her studies in the local teacher’s college. She was an excellent student, risible and had a sharp tongue. This characterhas short-soldher.
Once at a seminar the students analytically discusseda poem of Kazakh poet Jambyl which was devoted to Stalin. The great leader of all time, of course, was compared to the Sun –as any other metaphors would be too small for him. Easily amused Olya whispered to her girlfriend: “The sun rises and is setting...” It was enough to appear in a land where the sun is not setting for six months, and then the same periodis the polar night.
Then there was an investigation whichlasted several months and the transit prison, where all prisoners – menand women –were stripped naked and aligned in from the “customers” who came from the camp to find a new portion of free labor power. The “customers” walked along the rows of prisoners, touching them and selecting the strongerhuman commodity –as the physically hardy people were required to work in the tree felling and the mines. It was very similar to the slave market, about which Olya red in children’s books. Then she could not even imagine that something like that could happen in their beloved Soviet Union...
Most of all Olya was afraid that no one from the “customers”would want to take her out of jail – she was very weak ofbeing in the solitary-confinement cell and could hardly stand. Perhaps one of the visitors red the speechless entreaty in the eyes of impossibly skinbound, shaking with cold, nude teenage girl, and his heart trembled. In “Stolypin’s”general service waggonwhich was used for theanimals transportation, she was sent under escort along with other selected prisoners to the North, to the camp at Vorkuta.
In the specialtrain she closely faced the first timewith criminals, who represented a blatant, cruel, ruthless power consuming crumbs of bread from the other prisoners, including her own. During the travel time Olya became so weak that could not independently get out of the car on arrival.
But there was another power in the camps – political. The pick of the intellectuals, disgraced academicians, professors, doctors and teachers, whoconsolidated against criminality and tried to support each other:the administration had to reckon with them,because subsistence of the campsdepended in many ways of them. They arranged so that Olya Vozovik first was taken into the hospital and helped her to leave bed, and then were able to wangle her into a job here asa nurseon duty.
Nina Nikolayevna Grin worked in the same hospital.
The picture at the head
Way to the camps of Grin’s wife was much more complicated and confusing. After his death in 1932, she stayed with her sick mother in the Old Crimea. Here they found occupation. The first time they lived by selling the old things. When there was nothing to sell, she had to look for a job. And what kind of work the weak intelligent woman could find in the occupied Crimea? Nina thought that she was lucky – the place of proofreader has turned up in the print shop opened at the German newspaper. Nobody knew what this “luck” wouldplay outin the future...
Of course she did not write and could not write any notes praising the “new order”. At any regimea proofreader is the most low-key position which influences nothing.But she was accused of that cooperation with the Germans after the war. Additionally it was added a stay on slave labor in Germany, where Nina Nikolayevna wasabducted along with other local residents in 1944.
She was in a camp near Breslauthere. She escaped using opportunity of bombardment by the allies in 1945, and got with difficulty back to herfavourite Crimea.But soon she landed up in a camp again – now in Stalin’s camp. It did not help even the eyewitness testimony that the Grin's wife personally saved the lives of 13 people during the war who were taken as hostages after a German officer’shomicide: Nina Nikolayevna ran into the council and miraculously persuaded the council’s head to set them free...
Nina Nikolayevna was about fifty years at that time when she met the young Olya Vozovik. Olya was a little more than twenty years. However they became friends quickly.
What caught the Green’s wife in that naive, thin, dreamy girl? Perhaps it was her similarity to the Assol, which Nina Nikolayevna herself was in her youth, and whosedreams were ruthlessly crushed by time?
– I was like a daughter for her, – says Olga Ilinichna. – I remember I am sitting at night on duty and can hardly keep my eyes open, and then she comes: “Go get some sleep, I'll sit instead of you”. One day Nina made me a skirt out of trousers, which she exchanged with someone on the bread portion. She was a great mistress of needlework...
–And didshe keep Assol’slineaments?
– You see, she had some inherent elegance and grace. For example, she lies down on the camp bunk, but does itin a manner that you will enjoy. Everything was beautiful in her. She could eat even the loathsome camp soup like a delicious dish. I thought looking at herthat you couldremain true to Assol in the most difficult circumstances. But you must love dearly and trust for this.
Even after Grin’s death, Nina continued to love her husband to bits. She put his photograph which miraculously survived after countless searches at the head of the camp bunks, and every day tried to put next to it a green leaf, a blade of grass, or a beautiful piece of tissue - the flowers did not grow up in the camps...
Olya learned to believe in a miracle, which must necessarily occur, near Nina Nikolayevna. And this miracle happened: the camp gates opened in 1954. And then there was one the most incredible thing: a man who loved and waited for her all these years picked up her on the hands at the gates and soon became her husband...
Gift from Assol
After Stalin’s death, many peoplewere amnestied. Our heroines were as well. They continued to meet in Moscow. Once Grin’s wife invited Olga Ilinichna to the branch of the Bolshoi Theater to the ballet “Crimson sails”, where Lepeshinskaya danced. Nina was already gray-haired, but still a beautiful woman. Suddenly it was announced to the whole room: “There is none other than Assol here”. Border light literally flooded atheater box where they were sitting. The audience stood up and applauded. They tossed the huge bouquets into the box for Nina Nikolayevna. Assol as a tale, Assol as a factwas still needed for people...
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the authorities in the Old Crimea of that time, who stubbornly refused to return the Grin’s lodge to its legitimate owner. After the arrest of Nina Nikolaevna, it moved to a chairman of the local executive committee and was used as a barn. It took several years forNina Nikolayevna to restore justice and to create in the house a little Museumof Grin.
According to Olga Ilinichna in the last years of her life Nina was very worried about the museum future and would like to devisethe house to her friend from the camp. But Olga Ilinichna refused believing that shewas beneath of the king’s gift. And only in her old age she bought together with daughter’s family the “chicken” house-cottage.
Of course it is not swept by sea winds, and you can never see the crimson sails from its attic windows. And yet it seems to me that Assolinvisibly dwells here.
Instead of an epilogue
The old slander has not sadlyabsolvedthe Grin’s wife even after her death. When Nina died, the Old Crimean authorities did not allowed to bury her in the tomb where Alexander Stepanovich Grin slumbered together with his mother. A place for the unfavorable deceased was selected somewhere on the outskirts of the cemetery.
According to a legend which still exists among the fans of Grin’s creative work, the friends of Nina Nikolayevna were not reconciled to such injustice and disentombed her hearse during adeep autumn night and moved to her husband’s grave. One of the members of this covert operation left a record of the incident in his diary, which, unfortunately, fell into the hands of the investigators from the state securities.
Grin’stomb was opened,but they did not find anything, because the anonymous well-wishers guessed to hide the remains of Nina Nikolaevna not near, but under her husband’s coffin. So they are still together six feet under.
Sometimes it is necessary to believe in miracles.
Bytheway
A Deputy Director of the Museum of Grin – Alla Alekseevna Nenada –tells what happened with the Grin’s house in the Old Crimea.
Nina Nikolaevna opened Grin’s Museum on a voluntary basis in 1960. Just a few things left in the house by that moment: Nina gleaned the original objects in order to restore everything as it was still during the writer’s life. Before her arrest, she distributed many manuscripts and memorabilia to the friends, and now these values flocked back into the house. Here – inthe “nest”– shefinished a book of memoirs about Grin, which she began writing even during her exile in Pechora. The friends, writers, bookworm, studentsmet there. It was organized such semi-legal club –“nest” of Grin’s fans. It is just this“nest” that initiated researches about Grin.
... When she was told that somebody decided to open Grin’s Museum in Feodosia, she was skeptical. She believed that it would not possible to recreate such subtle atmosphere, to embody Grin himself. She had not seen and could not assessthe new museum as she died.
Sothe Grin’s Museum was opened and the House in Old Crimea became its branch. Later it was taken over by the Museum of Temiriksk culture. It was organized by Maria Sadovskaya–a brilliant museum worker. She organized this museumliterally out of nowhere in a former merchant two-storeyedvilla. Now there are beautiful gardens, and Grin’s“nest”is hidden there. It is in excellent condition – clean, beautiful, well-cared-for. There are on duty staff of the museumhere in the summer, the watchman– inthe winter. You can come at any time of the year to visit this place. Everything remained there exactly the same as it was at Nina Nikolayevna.
Tatiana Timokhina, “Teacher's Newspaper”. February 2004.
Перевод: Надя Нирванова