Tiraspol. The first day #
On August 24, 1964, my father and mother and I moved from the small town of Sokiryany, in the Chernivtsi region, to the large, by our local standards, Tiraspol, where my beloved Aunt Tsilya, younger sister of my mother Clara.
The Ivano-Frankivsk-Odessa train arrived on schedule at about 4 am. For a couple of minutes of parking, I had to literally throw out huge old suitcases and trunks from the high steps of the car. On the platform, we were immediately alerted by two pleasant young people who offered “for nothing!” carry our heavy loads.
Walking from the station to Victory Park, behind the theatre, as my aunt explained in a lengthy letter, was quite far away, and it was a pity to pay for a taxi - I still had to rent an apartment and settle in a new place. But, surprisingly, our suspicious assistants fulfilled their mission with real dignity and honor, in the end politely refusing a modest reward, about the size of which dad and mom quietly quarreled all the way.
We, now, are fellow countrymen - Tiraspol residents! - the guys said proudly, leaving us in a slight bewilderment. However, very soon, we, apparently, having inhaled enough of the air of goodwill and mutual assistance, which imperceptibly carried a light, pleasantly refreshing breeze from behind the Kitskan forest across the Dniester, became the same attentive and sympathetic people ourselves.
It is not surprising that many of the Tiraspol residents subsequently became Leningraders (Petersburgers), who also always had similar special properties of inner intelligence.
The day after arrival, despite a strong desire to sleep, I had to force myself to get up early. After all, it was August 25, my mother's birthday, when I wanted to please her, tortured by endless ailments, at least a little. This time, everything was much more complicated by the fact that, unlike Sokiryan, where I would immediately run to Alekseeha, the priest's wife, who knew how to collect a beautiful bouquet in her garden in a minute, Tiraspol was a huge city.
Zhanna volunteered to help in this responsible matter. She led me to a kiosk next to the building of the Pedagogical Institute, the flowerbeds of which were buried in luxurious, truly royal gladioli and roses. Having bought a congratulatory card, I begged three rubles from my father and bought a luxurious women's handbag with a mirror in the store. For the rest of the trifle, Zhanka and I did an excellent job of walking.
She took me to the never-before-seen fortieth store, where we tasted a delicately pink doctor's sausage, the smell of which, in itself, immediately caused profuse salivation and a brutal appetite.
Carefully sliced by an obscenely red-cheeked saleswoman, we barbarously combined slices of sausage with pieces of a hot crispy loaf broken off in a hurry for thirteen kopecks and washed down with sweet soda from a nearby machine ...
At that time, my father was running around the city, where, just before the start of the school year, he feverishly tried to get a job as a teacher of chemistry and biology, at least in some school. As a result, in the early years he managed to teach from early morning until 11 at night in daytime and evening schools, and successfully pay off the debts of numerous relatives who lent us money for a cooperative apartment.
Mother, very pleased with my gift, was touched, but after a couple of minutes, she cried a little, actively continued to put our little things in order. Uncle Borya disappeared at work. Aunt Tsilya, having taken a short vacation in her dentistry, energetically prepared a festive table, and Zhanka, Marina and Svetka and I were furious in the yard, where the process of my first acquaintance with wonderful fellow countrymen and an amazing city was in full swing ...
Illusion #
In vain the old ILLUSIONS were called cinemas. The world of dreams, sophisticated fantasy, adventures, it seems to me, much more accurately, juicier and more colorfully absorbs this word sparkling with colorful festive lights: Illusion
After the small, sweet, cozy Sokirian cinema of my childhood, Tiraspol cinemas amazed me with their diversity, size and different characters. Each of them, like the Sokirian one, was alive for me, with its own temper, special smells, the quality of the human flow that fills and animates them ... The main Tiraspol cinema of that time was Sputnik, where the highest-grossing premieres took place: Fantomas, Operation "Y", "Prisoner of the Caucasus", and many many others.
This cinema, whose foyer shone behind huge glass windows, was a real aristocrat. During the premieres, with the inscriptions “Children under 16 are not allowed” that upset to tears, it was guarded by the most strict and harmful controllers. For me, the former little prince of the Sokyryan cinema, where my grandmother Riva was an usher and our close relatives worked and it was possible to watch the same film many times, even up to 16, many times, it was especially difficult to get used to new conditions. The satellite was directly opposite the exemplary school No. 3, where I studied in that starting year, Tiraspol. My dad also taught chemistry there. I will always remember our first and, unfortunately, the only joint trip to the cinema - my father always worked hard. It was the Sputnik cinema. We sat, of course, side by side and watched in fascination as the heroine Svetlichnaya undressed in the legendary “Diamond Hand”. The entire male half of the hall shuddered convulsively, struck by a particularly powerful electrical impulse, from a simple, tiny clasp of her bra, deafeningly bursting on the screen ... And how we are with a neighbor in the yard Marik Shor, to the envy of all our peers, being at 14-15 years old enough tall and, for the first time, wearing father's ties with elastic bands, were they able to get into Fantomas?..After the small, sweet, cozy Sokirian cinema of my childhood, Tiraspol cinemas amazed me with their diversity, size and different characters. Each of them, like the Sokirian one, was alive for me, with its own temper, special smells, the quality of the human flow that fills and animates them ... The main Tiraspol cinema of that time was Sputnik, where the highest-grossing premieres took place: Fantomas, Operation "Y", "Prisoner of the Caucasus", and many many others.
Quite different was the cinema "October Revolution", located next to the post office. There we enthusiastically watched the exploits of the "Kibalchish Boy", together with him fought against the vile "Bourgeois", deafeningly whistled and clapped for the success of the "Elusive Avengers" and the fiasco of the funny Popandopulo and Staff Captain Ovechkin ... Before the session, he always spoke there with an interesting story of some kind or a veteran of the war or revolution, hung with orders and medals, to whom we asked a bunch of questions. Once, there was even an old man who saw Lenin himself live, making a speech at one of the Moscow railway stations in front of young soldiers going to the front. Before one grand concert at the stadium, where megastars Maya Kristalinskaya, Emil Gorovets, and Edita Piekha performed, an old open-top car passed in front of us, where an actor in the image of Lenin waved his hand. It's hard to describe what happened! Thousands of schoolchildren instantly jumped up from the stands in wild delight, with deafening cries of "Hurrrra !!!" It seemed that this was the appearance of a real Deity, and communism will come tomorrow, and there will be happiness for everyone! ..
On the same days, near the post office, in a brand new, ultra-modern, it seemed completely glass, two-story cafe "Chudesnitsa", which we were all especially proud of, we were lucky to see Edita Piekha herself with her capricious daughter, apparently terribly spoiled there, in her Leningrad. How could she refuse unprecedentedly delicious cookies, cakes, cocoa, which filled the hall with fantastically delicious smells?!
And the cinema at the Officers' House club?
All the cartoonish menu of that time from Wait a minute, The Bremen Town Musicians, as well as high-grossing Indian films starring Raj Kapoor, was served there.
In high school, we, boys, were completely in love with the heroine of the charming Olga Ostroumova from "We'll Live Until Monday."
On the eve of the premiere of this film, a teachers' conference was held in Tiraspol, at which the issue of allowing this rather bold film to be shown in the city was decided ...
"Three Musketeers" could be watched with pleasure in the club of the plant. Tkachenko, or in the old cinema, whose name I have forgotten, which was located next to the prestigious school number 6, where the famous chemist Zelinsky studied.
In its place, subsequently, the most beautiful Palace of Pioneers was erected, which was also admired by everyone. We were proud of the unique building of our theater, where brilliant solo performances by director Alik Uchitel and the composer, my half-sister, Rosa Glazer, were staged, we were proud of the best river in the world, the bridge across the Dniester, a small "Koliboi" - a small restaurant in the forest where you could cook shish kebab yourself . We praised the success of our rowers from the sports base, who regularly won the Olympic Games. We were proud of the world's best factory of communist labor 40 Years of the Komsomol, headed by (a friend of Lenya Brezhnev himself!) the legendary Solovieva, a research institute for irrigated agriculture, headed by academicians Dvornikov and Zhuchenko, the future President of the Academy of Sciences and my leader ...
We were proud of the Tiraspol cinema in advance, which did not even exist yet. Exciting rumors about the appearance of a multiplex cinema in the center began to roam the city, probably 10 years before its opening ...
Yes, with the advent of computers and the Internet, reading paper books and watching movies in cinema halls are slowly but surely giving way to other ways of obtaining information - this is how dryly and cynically they now call the process of reverently opening books with the magical smell of illustrations, going to the cinema a cheerful gang, animatedly discussing an interesting fantasy story… But! Beautiful Memories of the Wonderful never die! Deep in the Soul always sweetly vibrates and sings from the anticipation of meeting with the enchanting world of ILLUSION!!!
Sasha, Svetka, Yurka, Marik! - they ran to watch a MOVIE!!! Today in the MOVIE they show ... ..!!!!! Hurrah!….
Guys from our yard #
(at the request of Alik Schwartzman)
With rare luck, we have a magnificent yard. In a couple of years, three of the same ones were added to our first five-story building, built back in 1965, one parallel, and two perpendicular. So there was a special, bright, flooded with warm Tiraspol sun and smiles of friendly neighbors, SPACE - our favorite yard. The energetic and joyful tribe of our parents moved into the new apartments, who had something, nothing at all - from thirty to forty. Drivers of Mebel vehicles, lined up at the freshly painted entrances, constantly quarreled because of the queue for unloading endless, often polished in the latest fashion, furniture Walls, Tables and other sets. Vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and siphons for carbonated water entered the houses dozens of times a day.
Huge queues lined up at the gas stations for these glass, pot-bellied aluminum, pink-blue and gray-brown-crimson siphons, especially before the holidays.
This suited Yurka Slobodenyuk and me very much. We tried to get along with Marik, the lanky smart guy from the first entrance, who studied at the most prestigious sixth English school more often. Marik, too, was flattered by our voracious attentions, with which we asked him every day about the happy day of the next replenishment of home soda supplies. The secret was simple: Marik Shor was a phenomenal storyteller of fantastic stories. He perfectly, almost one to one, remembered and perfectly told us everything that he had swallowed over the past few days. Often, due to its intonational artistic abilities, it was more impressive than the original. We admired Veda Kong and Darr Vetre, the heroes of Harry Harrison, Ray Bradbury, "Monday that started on Saturday" ... We passionately wanted the line to gas station to move as slowly as possible. It happened that when we came home, we looked for additional siphons and went to the endless queue again, for a priceless portion of the beautiful from the wonderful worlds ...
Despite the fact that I myself actively consumed printed materials, starting from the school library, where our good fairy, Serafima Mikhailovna, carefully selected active readers every day, the next books in accordance with interests, in Tiraspol, along with the rich district, flourished with might and main. a large city library, where the most popular genres of that time were adventure and fantasy. Meticulous librarians demanded that we take home one book of science fiction and read at least two popular science books.
When exchanging books, they subtly elicited details and often exposed cunning people who did not want, for example, to read Perelman's Entertaining Physics. I and very, very many of our guys, as they say "to the grave of life", are grateful to these inconspicuous women who helped us learn more about this sparkling wonderful world that surrounded and hugged us all this time ...
There were about a dozen of us guys, about the same age, in the yard. We all learned something from each other, adopting everything good and not so good, but always something interesting... Every Sunday after Viktor Tatarsky's legendary radio program "Record on your tape recorders", which began at 2:05 pm, we excitedly discussed new Beatles hits , Rolling Stones and Credences… Sashka Keener took out the guitar and tried to play interesting passages. He was the first of us to learn to play music and even began to earn extra money as a musician at various celebrations, which greatly added to his authority in our boyish environment. Yura Slobodenyuk was Pan Sportsman for us. He not only made daily multi-kilometer runs, but also exhausted himself for hours in rowing training, sometimes coming in completely wet in winter, after capsizing the boat. He then mastered the Polish language in order to translate books on karate and yoga, often showing us unthinkable poses, forcing us to beat him in the stomach with his feet and fists, demonstrating his impenetrable muscular shield ... From the group of our musicians who entered the famous Tiraspol Music College, - Igor Roseblat and Grisha Lyubarsky, Sasha Barbakh, who later graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory, was especially distinguished by his artistry. It was Louis de Funes, and Arkady Raikin and Charlie Chaplin in one bottle. His well-aimed statements, dramatic exclamations and fantastic pauses, framed in an amazing look and general facial expression, blew up any company with laughter ...
Alik Shvartsman, with his special sensitive attitude towards everyone, accustomed to intelligence and good manners, Sasha Schofler - to masculinity,
Seryoga Pelekhov, being the legendary captain of a basketball team in a sports school, a brilliant student and a very bright person, aroused a strong suspicion that there are angels on earth. Volodya Lyubarsky taught a serious attitude to friendship, Arkady Kotlyar - to drafts, Valera and Vova Kochnev, were distinguished by amazing simplicity and goodwill, Borya Kogan - sang beautifully, Grisha Filstein and Genka Nestoiter - knew how to make friends easily and tell funny stories, Yurka Vozmilov taught us to believe in dream - became a military pilot, despite all the obstacles ...
Of course, we scattered to cities and villages. Grains of Tiraspol now shine with might and main with their precious rays in Moscow and Ukraine, in Israel and Australia, in Germany and other Europe, in the States and Canada. All those who grew up together in an amazingly wonderful bright time of Love and Goodwill diligently continue to radiate these wonderful properties around them, warming many, many Hearts ...
Vilya Mikhalych #
ꟷ Vilya Mikhailovich… Vilya Mikhalych!?! Take, take us to the team!
Sasha Schofler and I, 10-year-old friends from the same five-story building that suddenly appeared along October 25, 1 Street, got to the stadium, which is behind the beautiful Tiraspol theater, stubbornly waited for the end of basketball training and hopefully awaited the decision of a large, imperious man who sternly shouted at more hot workout guys ...
ꟷ Vil Mikhalych!, - Eska Yazlovetsky stood up for us, a picturesque short-haired boy with thick, as if painted eyebrows and shiny, moving, slightly bulging lively eyes, - Yes, they are good guys. They really want to work with you!
We nodded our heads in unison, trying to convince the coach, who looked skeptically at our clumsy, frankly, not very athletic figures. Sasha was overweight, and I was too skinny ...
ꟷ I'll learn how to play them myself, - as always, apparently anticipating his coaching future, Eska said arrogantly, almost ruining our brilliant basketball career ...
ꟷ You still don’t know anything worthwhile yourself, - Vilya Mikhalych snapped, - Okay, let's see what kind of birds you are. At the same time, he sharply, very sharply for his plump figure, crowned with a solid belly, threw a basketball in my direction. Without having time to figure anything out and with difficulty holding the heavy ball, I, unexpectedly for myself, rather instinctively and no less abruptly, returned the ball to the coach who did not expect such a trick. Surprised, he swayed and barely kept the ball.
Then he laughed and said:
ꟷ I see that there is character. You will work hard, you will be a good judge! Come the day after tomorrow, at 4 days for training! Do you know where the sports school is?
ꟷ Who did not know this two-story building with a sports ground, located in the very center of Tiraspol! It was only necessary to take a trolley bus to the Constitution Square, to walk three hundred meters past a small, foul-smelling "Stinky" - a small river flowing into the Dniester, rustling under a small bridge on our main street ...
The first training was remembered by unusual overloads, when I had to run a lot with belts filled with sand. But what a magical feeling of flight that arose by the end of the workout after removing this debilitating weight! We seemed to take off to the very ring and, if not for the roof of a high beautiful sports hall, we could, what the hell is not joking, rise up above the Dniester, the Forest and our beautiful City !!!
The first who joyfully greeted us after the first training session, and then, always met us, for many years, were the twins - two fiery-red machines of soda water, escaping into faceted glasses with a joyful hiss, yellowish syrup and long-awaited freshness, cooling after intense running around … We drank these life-giving drinks with great pleasure in the summer, and in the autumn, and in the dank winter, when the water often wringed our teeth with its deep cold. Then, relaxing, slowly, slowly, for unhurried conversations about another fantastic story or an essay on literature that suddenly fell on their heads, they went to a more aristocratic watering hole, which took place on the famous Tiraspol hundred-meter train, in the Ape Voda store. They sold magical Citro, Cream Soda, Lemonade and Bauture Portocale (orange, mold), which we importantly drank one bottle for two. True, it was an expensive pleasure. Instead of 3 kopecks for a glass of syrup, which were given to us in a friendly way by the automatic brothers, here we had to pay twice as much ...
Vilya Mikhalych was wrong then! Sasha and I were of no use in the basketball field! He left first. And I didn’t go anywhere, for many years being in the position of the very, very worst player ... At the beginning of each training game, our best ones - Sashka Kvashnin, Balagula, guys from the second school, were appointed captains who recruited teams ...
The nimble Krasavin and Ikonnikov were the first to sort it out, the reckless energetic Eska quickly left, and I got to the captain, who was unlucky today. Neither worthy of dribbling, nor, moreover, vision of the field, I was not observed. Poor Vilya Mikhalych did everything to get the players interested in giving me passes. Even for the ball thrown by me, not two, as usual, but three points were counted! But nothing helped!
But I didn't leave! I liked Vilya Mikhalych, I liked his style, his Personality, his training!
At school, I was the first, the best round honors student, I excelled in the physics and mathematics school, collected victories in clusters in city and republican olympiads in chemistry, mathematics, physics, biology. And Vila Mikhalych, it seemed, I could not help in any way! But he understood me! He saw how I like the very atmosphere of his training, this kind of communication, our special, silent friendship. He grinned happily, arranging, sometimes, checking school diaries and putting me in such a rare and, at first glance, insignificant example in basketball.
ꟷ Study well, and you will also play basketball badly !!! - Esya loudly advertised my successes, who received another scolding from Vilya for more frequent C grades ... Vilya objected to the offended Eska, citing examples of the Legendary Soviet basketball team, multiple champions of Europe, the World, Olympics, where, unlike other sports, almost all were doctors and candidates of science. To this, he added the best captains of the basketball teams of our sports school, Seryoga Pelekhov and Sasha Kvashnin, who were as wonderful in their studies as in sports ...
Vilya Mikhalych himself was a legendary person who loved and helped dozens, hundreds of children. There are many, many cases when, with his charm, his authority, his Heart, he rescued children who were left without parents, kindled in them the fire of interest in life, the ability to respond to the numerous challenges of Fate ...
The ingenious African American, who personally trained my grandson who had outgrown me much in Toronto, Canada, taught him a lot. He "delivered" magnificent throws, taught "Dunk" - a delightful flight to the very ring with a dramatic collapse of the ball into the mouth of the basket, vulcanizing in response with frenzied Energy! He taught me to see the whole site! But…
In our communication with Vilya Mikhalych [Kalinnikov], there was always some special understatement. All these years, he seemed to be trying to bring to me something very important. Much more meaningful than a game or a single sport...
In Toronto, in Moscow, I try to go to the basketball court every day. Very good, one might say, even beautiful, throwing balls. Slowly, he also mastered decent dribbling. Now I'm running, not staring at the bouncing bun, but looking at the sky, where there is a ring high, very high with a goal that it would be nice to achieve ... someday ...
ꟷ Vilya Mikhailovich… Vilya Mikhalych!?! Take, take us to the team! ..