All together and two conversations

I met Yevtushenko in the summer of 1956, in Moscow. More precisely, with that company of poets, my peers, which included it, and the figure is not the first. On the main roles were others-someone, like him, who soon became expressors of the "sixties", someone-without a trace resolved. All of them studied at the Literary Institute, which, in our Leningrad, caused a sense of contemptuous complacency.

In the next to those years, he and I met from case to case, and always, regardless of the real duration of the meetings, it seemed to me that we were visible to a glimpse. Perhaps this was explained by the even repulsion that his poems caused me, he wrote not in words, but by blocks. When he read them at a party or I stumbled upon them in print, I accepted them almost with a deliberate hostility, actually unusual for me. And I don’t remember that once as it moves to the end of the text, this feeling changed. “I will at the dawn of my two -wheeled friend” - I was embarrassed, a shame, I am ashamed to hear this pseudo -transient enthusiasm, to see the poem printed in the form of a poem. Moreover, the same system and the qualities of things are political, as if breaking out of the heart, “I am each here a shot old man” - to me, the grandson of the Germans of my beloved grandfather.

From the political, the further, the more prevailing the poems, the train of confusion stretched, discarding the shadow of distrust and the best of them. For example, “tanks go along Prague” - a model of Russian civil lyrics. An example of a sample, but I was perplexed how such an aggravated politicized poet missed the 1956 Hungarian revolution. He was then 24, and he was waiting for a dozen years to expose the same crime committed by the same tanks. It turned out that he expressed a sense of protest, only by this time ripened in a thin, but specifically influential layer of intelligentsia, joined it, during the defeat of the Hungarians, still mute. And to express someone's feelings is how to write “I remember a wonderful moment” of some Miss universe because she won the beauty contest.

Well, with all the exclusivity of his position, the frontier (albeit moderate) within the country and at the same time a representative of Soviet freedom abroad, he had to constantly encounter a reaction to the ambiguity of the figure that he embodied. Why does this power tolerate the bite of that or two of his poem-pufflet-and why does it constantly send on business trips to New York, Paris and wherever on the map? One of the most striking memories is four relatively young people, among whom he and I, at midnight, come out after a plentiful and drunken dinner from the Baku restaurant on Gorky Street. It has an unthinkable silver long wolf fur coat. The temperature is minus 20, there are no passers -by. Suddenly, a small Soviet family arises, dad-mom under forty years old, a son under ten, in heavy cotton coats. He stands across the path, exclaims loudly: “Here he is, my people, that’s for whom I am writing!” (this way) - and makes the movement to hug. The peasant puts his hand forward in the mittens and says: "You, man, from which circus?" The scene is imprinted in my memory as a milestone: the end of the first half of something-a year (say, from the mid-60s), age, companion, social circulation, life that was before this night.

The second begins. Distinctly private. Fixed as an ice floe, however, it turns out that the top or two per season advanced by the 1990s. They invite me - and the most incredible: they are released - to teach in the States, to Europe. We, that is, with Yevtushenko, begin to meet in unexpected places: on an airplane over the La-Channel, over the ocean, in the Russian Samovar restaurant, in the library of Congress. According to the very first conversation at that time, it seems to me that he seemed to have lost his own intonation and uses every new phrase as an attempt to accidentally get to it. It resembles a progress on a narrow path, trodden on the top of the ridge: the walking slopes on one or the other side and randomly fits back. But behind this, I explain to myself, there is a quarter of a century after a wolf fur coat, which, what it was for him, I do not know and the experience of which, I admit, has become instructively painful for him, if not tormenting. For the most part, he drunk during these new meetings and offers to drink more. He asks something, I answer honestly-without lunges, as in that first, half. It seems that he quickly calms down, intonation if when it is heard, I am ready to agree that the reason can be heard in me.

He says: "admit that you considered me a kagabashnik." I answer: “No. But we considered you those who deal with people with whom we would never have entered into any relationship. ” There are two notes. First: neither I nor he called these people by name, but both knew that we were talking about the same, and both understood who they were specifically. And the second, more important for him: he used “you”, but I mean four of us, who went into a tight group in the early 60s, not Bobyshev, Rhine or me, but Brodsky. After all, he really wanted to help him when leaving the country (in the form in which he imagined what assistance was), and Brodsky publicly declared it part of the Soviet system and defiantly left some kind of Academy of Arts when she accepted Yevtushenko.

Therefore, this story is only indirectly, I have no reason or right to judge it. But I asked Brodsky what he had soared so, and now I mention her in the assumption that what came to my mind could shed some light on the judgments of people, completely outsiders. I do not delve into the internal motives (add accounts, annoy) due to the speculation of such a recess, but Brodsky’s answer, unconvincing and even enough, dare to say stupid, came down to the fact that let everyone take the place that took the place, and that if “then” went on the irreparable paths, there is nothing to lead a shadow on the wicker now. I said: "But because of Voznesensky they did not come out." He responded funny to this; He said that in a matter of time his intersections with Voznesensky, he immediately turned out to be so close to him that the opportunity not to enter into a conversation and not even agree on a new meeting. Then he spoke something like inappropriately about the language, but I understood this just as the answer to "rose." He categorically did not want something except what he wrote, could be perceived as “Brodsky”. Therefore, he talked about Akhmatova more restrained than could be expected. He did not apply about the arrest and link “For parasitism”, he never thanked Vigdorov (although her photograph was on his desk), not to mention the others, for recording the process, and the record played a decisive role in his release. And even more so, he did not allow any muti in the picture of relations with the distant he, in order not to say - with an antipode that had some defocated reputation in the West. In order, that is, not to appear by the student of Akhmatova; the hero of resistance to the authorities and the victim of their persecution; Duplicate of dissent a la Evtushenko. I am a servant and rider of the Russian language, I achieved all achievements with my talent and labor, do not confuse me with anyone. If you like, this was the implementation of his young - and somewhat annoying - the motto "The main thing is the greatness of the plan." Alas, such a direct obsession is not, no and leads, to my taste, to pettiness. In a penny story with the Academy, I was not on his side.

For several years, Yevtushenko returned to the Kagabashnik at least five times: I am not at random, counted. The latter is in early March 1996, just in the Samovar. On the 40th day after the death of Brodsky, there was a memorial ceremony in the Cathedral of S Ain T John The Divine in New York. I was called as one of the long-standing friends of the deceased, read the poem “Thought of you is deleted, like a demoted servant”, about Maria Moiseevna, his mother (in the vast space of the cathedral about someone closely close-a special feeling). At the end, we went to the opposite edge of Manhattan for the commemoration. There Susan Umbar came up to me and invited me to one of the nearest evenings to the restaurant, to remember together: "What do you prefer?" I said that I was used to the "samovar" - "Oh, this is from my loved ones." We sat talking when Yevtushenko appeared at the door, the owner approached him, Roman Kaplan, said something, our table was in the far corner. He moved to us. As if to me: he was familiar with the umbrella hat, they fought against the war in Vietnam at some prehistoric congress. I turned to me, but including it in the conversation. He asked if I read his recent “anti -government” poem. I did not support the topic, she, noticing this, said that she was not impressed by the position of indifferent, that she recently set Shakespeare (forgot what exactly the play) for the forces of the Bosnian peasants. I said (somehow letting know that it was not seriously): "Who were you invited to the restaurant, me or ...?" Laughed. He asked if I was busy after dinner: having learned that no, he said goodbye, he moved to the table to the novel.

We dedicated, agreed, I put her in a taxi and returned to the restaurant. No, Yevtushenko said, you believed that I was a kagabashnik ... I said: you ask for the fifth time, always subshof, there is no guarantee that you believe today, therefore - I don’t answer ... Today I will believe ... No, they didn’t think.

About twenty years have passed. Suddenly he called from Oklahoma. He spoke piercing, touching things. Concerning only me. And others, the same piercing and touching, concerning only him. Two weeks later, he called again. Again a long conversation, without discounts, without overexposure, without complaints. But even without the underestimation of that made, so lived. When I hung up, an easy thought of it slipped in my mind, the main thing in it was: remember that light, benign, almost cheerful, just do not think, do not let her become knowledge, to heavy as much as it.

And Yevtushenko died. All together and those two telephone conversations first came as a keepsake. I felt bitterness. And at night, when I fell asleep, I thought of a “light thought” as if without my participation. Maybe he actually considered himself sent by fate with purpose. Someone between Grigory Rasputin and Yesenin. Not Solzhenitsyn, convinced that he knows how to live to everyone and everyone and the world as a whole, especially not for lies. Not Brodsky, supposedly believed in the magic of emptiness, because it can be filled with an endless word. Not a broom of Erofeev, who had never seen the Kremlin, because every time he went out to him, in his place stood the Kursk station. And the poet, who composed simple verses, comforting, reducing the crowds to the stadiums, directing behind them, like the flags of guides, in short, who were the way to the hearts of those whom he called his people. Poetry, as he and they interpreted this phenomenon.