In society

Name and dates

November 30, 2013 Viktor Shenderovich

In December last year, in Paris, at the Gorbanevsky house.

A tiny apartment, mandatory lunch, sour cabbage soup.

- Very tasty! - I say.

“I have a secret,” Gorbanevskaya reports. - I put celery in all soups. I want it to be written at my grave: "She knew how to cook soup."

And, an hour later:

- So! There are no pure cups, reluctance to wash, we will drink coffee in a cafe!

- Yes, we have to ...

- Well, whatever you want. And I'll go!

The last shot in memory: Little Gorbanevskaya with a backpack behind the shoulders, at the door of the house.

She was a happy person, probably. She knew several simple rules and followed them. Celery in the soup, this concerned last.

Saved, along with a handful of his comrades, the honor of the people, who did not need this in this and at all, blah, did not understand, what for business - she continued to live as if that exit to the square was like an exit in a cafe.

No significance. Zero pathos.

- And I'll go!

Even as if justified, mixing conversations about her legendary courage:

- The fool was fearless ...

The well -known dryness of Gorbanevskaya in communication was a film that protected us from the temperature of her soul, from her impenetrable shame for the country, the lead abominations of which she felt as her personal guilt.

"This I did not save neither Warsaw then and nor Prague then ..."

I do not know what will be written on her grave, but I think: enough name and dates of life. "Natalia Gorbanevskaya" - it does not need definitions since August 25, 1968.

Eternal memory.





Photo by ITAR-TASS