Vienna transit

Continuation of memories of emigration in the 1970s

Marina Efimova: At the end of July, an unfamiliar couple of Petersburgers came to us: poet Igor Burikhin with his wife Lena Vargaftik. They just arrived in Vienna - exhausted and almost without things. Burikhin was one of the six people arrested in St. Petersburg in the Etkind case in 1974. He looked sick, said that his head often hurts - he was terribly beaten either during his arrest or in the police. It seems that in our time the KGB and police - like Captain Segura from the novel "Our Man in Havana" - among opponents of the regime were those who could not beat (fearing the Western intercessors), and those who did not have intercessors and who can be beaten. Burikhins, to our horror, reported that Dovlatov was arrested in St. Petersburg. Igor (mine) that evening wrote an article in defense of Sergei and sent to Paris, to "Russian thought". The next day, he went to the Vienna Office of Amnesty International. The reaction there was slurred - it seems that they were very selective in who to protect, whom - no. The article in "Russian Thought" did not have time to get out, as Seryozha was released and gave permission to leave.

Someone told us that the place of gathering emigrants in Vienna is the apartment of Rudkevich-the representative of the magazine "Sowing" and the NTS-the People's Labor Union-the most combat anti-Soviet organization in the West. I still did not know anything about the long, contradictory and rather tragic history of this organization. NTS seemed to me something like a "union of a sword and screaming" from "12 chairs." But everyone went to Rudkevich, because he allowed to read (and sometimes for good) the books banned in the Soviet Union. We went to him with the Burikhins.

Rudkevich turned out to be a disheveled young man - kind and caring to touching. In his poor apartment, which he still shared with someone, was a warehouse of not only literature, but also the clothes that those who left from Vienna left the newly arrived. We ourselves had to use something from there when the cold began. And then, leaving, we also left the inheritance everything we could.

Nowadays, the KGB and police among opponents of the regime had those who could not beat, fearing the Western intercessors, and those who did not have intercessors and who can be beaten

Rudkevich arranged literary and political seminars. Igor read excerpts there from the Metapolitics just published by the Professi; Cosinginsky - his memories; I read the stories that arrived at the end of August Dovlatov. The audience most often gathered intelligent and calm, but there were also cases of rebellion. When Igor read from Metapolitics, nervously walking at the door, a young emigrant suddenly screamed with a tear:

- But how do you know all this?! Maybe there was none of this! .. There is nothing to hang noodles! ..

It was freedom. There were no more censors, editors, there were no experts and experts, everyone became a thinker. When Igor managed to go from Vienna to Paris, he brought bitter impressions of the ideological split of a serious literary emigration: Sinyavsky with Kopelev and Mikhailo Mikhailov - one way; Maximov with Maramzin and Gorbanevskaya - to another, Solzhenitsyn - in the third. The Soviet door did not have time to slam behind us, as all the former like -minded people became ideological opponents. But during an uncertain, shaky still in Vienna, many emigrants wanted to look like dissidents just in case. Sergei Dovlatov in December 78, when we were already in America, wrote to us from Vienna:

"... everything is still here. Vadik B. told the radio to the radio that he had seven assassures. Right Lev Trotsky. We had an interview in the consultant. I did not like the official. He got attached to my stupid tattoo, for a long time and hostilely asked about the arrest. They were deadly tired of the dissidents. Especially false ... Rudkevich’s salon arrived. I did not like the head of NTS.

See also Viennese transit. The first impressions

Already in America, in the early 80s of Dovlatov, someone led to visit people close to the NTS, and then he joked that they "seriously plan a military coup in the Soviet Union and even a role was given a role." Then we could not dream that in less than 10 years a coup d'etat would really happen. True, without the participation of cavalry.

Our children were also mastered in Vienna. Natasha was invited to the third floor to visit the mistress of our apartment, who had a little boy. Lena met at Kertneressetrasse with the pretty American young man Kevin, her peer, who, with incredible readiness, accepted the invitations to have lunch with us. And once at dinner, he suggested that I and Lena and I go to the Vienna Opera Theater on the Swan Lake with Nureyev, for the daily performance. We looked at him as a madman. And then Kevin explained how they go to the Vienna opera for free.

I did not have time to slam the Soviet door slammed behind us, all the former like -minded people became ideological opponents

On the day of the performance, the solemn uninhanted building of the Vienna Opera (built, by the way, Czech) was fenced off from the area of a light removable fence like a police officer. Behind her in the morning, a crowd of applicants for a free, as it turned out, gallery was gradually gathering. The crowd consisted of one youth (and I am among them). About 20 minutes before the start of the performance, the fence was quickly removed, and the crowd rushed to the storm. The Vienna Opera Gallery is at an altitude of at least the fourth floor. We rushed up the endless staircases-some side, not for those that a pure audience rises. Everyone overtook me. When I finally reached, the gallery was already full, but I saw that Lenka and Kevin waved to me almost from the second row, where they resolutely keep the defense of my place, although according to the rules this was not supposed to do this - the one who ran the first one could take any place. There were no individual seats on the gallery - only a bench. The scene was visible far below, like at the bottom of the gorge. It is good that I brought with me from St. Petersburg grandmother's theater binoculars (shaved, the beginning of the century, but Zeisovsky) - Lenka and I took turns looking at him at solo parties. All the same, from such a skyscraper, I could not appreciate the magic of Nureyev, but for the first time in my life I saw a general drawing of ballet from above. And he was delightfully beautiful.

In the intermission, Lenka and Kevin went down to reconnaissance, but Lenka quickly returned and said: "Let's go, you have the only chance to see Viennese society." We went down to the stalls lobby. It was painfully similar to the St. Petersburg Theater Foyer - a decor, but not a public. In the lobby of the Vienna Opera, a mass of mass from the film "Big Waltz" was walking in a circle. Ladies in ball dresses are long. Men are in tuxedos (even little boys). The jewelry was sparkled, there was a slight aroma of spirits. The ladies touched each other with cheeks, men kissed their pens. The boys bowed to the learned sharp movement of the heads. The girls made hasty kicksen. The waiters carried narrow glasses with champagne on trays. And the gallery stood on the walls and stared. I noticed several emigrant faces, but basically they were young Americans, all (both boys and girls) in jeans, sometimes in torn. But somehow it was immediately clear that this was not poverty, but style. They looked at the Viennese bomond without envy and without our funny admiration, looked with a good -natured, slightly ironic curiosity - as at the second performance.

Lenka was mistaken - I had another case to look at the Vienna (though semi -Russian) aristocracy - partly thanks to the wife of the poet Burikhin Lenochka Vargafik. I liked her with a surprise to my personality. A quiet complete woman, with a person who did not betray her intelligence, Lenochka Vargaftik, who had just arrived from Leningrad, was already a finished Europeanist. I remember my amazement when she invited me to go together to Salzburg. No, I already knew that she was a Germanist, but did not know to what extent. In St. Petersburg, I was familiar with several wonderful translators, whose conversational language without practice remained very weak. And here - for the first time in the country, two weeks in Vienna, and already - by train, to another city ... I agreed with enthusiasm. I must admit - I did not remember Salzburg. He was too implausible - a revived tourist postcard, a toy Christmas city against the background of the mountains. (Later, the same strange impression arose from the vicinity of Vienna, through which we were turned by Austrian acquaintances. The towns were so toy, clean, whitish, drowning in roses, as if not people lived there, but the heroes of the Disney film). I was more excited by a trip by rail in the Alps, conversations with Lenochka Vargaftik, the event itself is the first trip to Europe! - Let only one -day.

In the lobby of the Vienna Opera, a mass of mass from the film "Big Waltz" was walking in a circle. And the gallery stood on the walls and stared

When Igor was worried about the release of Sergei Dovlatov from the arrest, the Amnesty International was asked for a photograph of the arrested. Igor remembered that the photograph was in the magazine "Youth", where one Seryozhin story was printed. He decided to look for a magazine in the National Vienna Library, and Lenochka Vargaftik gave him the name of the head of the Russian department - Maria Andreevna Razumovskaya. "Razumovsky?! The descendants of the favorite of Catherine the Great?!" “And him,” said Lenochka, “and the Ukrainian hetman Kirill Razumovsky, and Count Grigory Kirillovich, a geologist, great-grandfather, Maria Andreevna.”

After meeting in the library, Igor and I were invited to dinner to Razumovsky, but not to Maria Andreevna, but to her mother - Countess Ekaterina von Wigstein. The countess and her husband lived on one of the cozy Viennese squares, in the apartment of an apartment building, as it seemed to me, but beautiful, ancient. We called from the street at the front door, Maria Andreevna opened us, and when we began to climb the stairs to the second floor with her, we saw a giant, from floor to ceiling, the portrait of Emperor Nicholas II - in full growth. The hosts politely met us in the hallway: the sister of Maria Andreevna and the countess and her husband. He is completely old, and the countess is very for 70, but peppy, with a tenacious look. Our manners were, I think, below the acceptable level - Igor did not kiss the pen. Nevertheless, the owners were friendly - especially both sisters. As it later turned out, they were in a rather regular connection with relatives in Moscow and represented a somewhat theoretical, but charming, Vienna version of the Moscow dissident intelligentsia.

I don’t remember the servants at dinner, the sisters were ruled, in my opinion. At the table, somehow it immediately became clear what we should tell. And we said: I - about Leningrad in the blockade, about the Soviet village, about the communal apartment, about friends. Igor - about the literary life and the Union of Writers, about the trip to Czechoslovakia (where he was allowed, mistakenly accepting for another writer). The Razumovsky listened with interest (except for the old man who dozed in his chair). The countess glanced at us intently and a little suspiciously. But the sisters were sincerely laughed, sincerely horrified, they were sincerely touched ... It became clear that these long-ago Russian aristocrats were still passionately interested in Russia and still hope ... for what? In the 1978 Vienna, they seemed to us touching idealists.

We were not invited to visit Razumovsky anymore. Most likely, they just did not like it. But it also seemed to me that this lunch, arranged in the house of his parents, was not a acquaintance with us, but with a non-digestible look (or even a subspecies)-a Jewish, semi-Jewish intellectual, an anti-Soviet in spirit, but irreparably Soviet in origin and education. Perhaps our (assumed by them) atheism or even agnosticism played a repulsive role. Unlike us, Helen Vargafik was Orthodox and not just believing, but a devout. Thanks to her, I looked at the Russian Church in Vienna at Valfishgasse-the Holy Nicolaev Cathedral. Teremkovy, patterned, it was built in 1812 according to the Russian project, but the Italian architect and therefore seems to be a particularly carefully executed example of "traditional Russian architecture." In 1978, the cathedral was sewn up by birches and made the whole lane of Walfishgasse similar to the street of the provincial Russian city of the times of "War and Peace."

The visit to Razumovsky left a sad feeling of our restlessness - apparently, in the West, our subspecies is doomed to remain in many loneliness, in the nameless space between different, but equally alien political directions, religions and cultures.

These long ago the notable Russian aristocrats are still passionately interested in Russia and still hope ... for what?

In mid -July - a rally in the Vienna Synagogue in the defense of Ginsburg and Scharansky, who were convicted in Moscow to 8 and 13 years of camps - "For anti -Soviet agitation and propaganda." At the entrance to the synagogue, still on the street, two young boys in blue-white piles politely, but strongly checked the contents of the bags. It turned out a small queue. One of ours nodded at the guards: "This is the Israelis." I have not seen the Israelis yet. I began to look at the boys and noticed a rare feature of their faces (which I sometimes saw at Youth in Israel)-some noticeable expression of readiness-I don’t know what ... to everything.

In the synagogue hall, two hundred people gathered. Everyone stood in a crowd. The speakers spoke from the stands: in Russian, in German, in Hebrew. Then he came out a gray-haired, large man, spoke in German, and a noise passed through the hall. The man spoke without a microphone - loudly, passionately, I did not understand a word, but I felt that trembling began to be removed. I asked, looking around: "Who is it, who is it?" And Kirill of Kostsinsky, leaning towards my ear, exhaled:

- Wizenthal. This is Simon Vizenthal.

So what is charisma!

In the 1980s, Simon Vizenthal still hunted the Nazis, and in the Western press, skeptical, so as not to say ironic, notes slipped towards him. They wrote that in the main achievement of the Jewish Avengers-in the capture of Adolf Eichmann-Wizenthal played a very small role that he often exaggerated the guilt of the current Austrian and German officials who were obsessed with the idea of revenge during the war ... Meanwhile, in 1972 in New York, a welcoming lady Hermin was in Queens. Ryan, who in 1943 was Untersharfuhrer SS Magda Braunsteiner, nicknamed Kobyl Maidanek. She was engaged in selection among prisoners - who else to work, and to whom in a gas chamber, including among children. In 1945, she was lost in the post-war chaos, in 1959 she emigrated to America and in 1963 became a citizen of the United States. Wizenthal calculated it and found it in Queens. The American authorities for 10 years refused to extradite it to Germany. Finally, in 1973, she appeared in court in Germany among nine other Nazis accused of killing 250,000 prisoners of the Maidanek concentration camp. The court ended only in 1981, Brushter received a lifelong opinion and died in prison in 1999. By the way, we saw the history of such a belated trial over a group of women-Sesovites in 2008 in the wonderful film "Reader", staged by the British director Stephen Dardley based on the novel by a German lawyer and writer Bernhard Shlinka. Simon Wizenthal died in Vienna, in 2003, having survived the last of 1100 Nazi criminals for four years, whom he managed to identify and bring to court.

In August 1978, emigration in Vienna celebrated the 10th anniversary of the suppression of the Prague Spring. A demonstration was arranged that I did not go. In the 68th year, I was scared to demonstrate my protest (unlike Natasha Gorbanevskaya, who went out onto Red Square with a year-old son), and now I was ashamed to walk safely along the delightful street of the Raisersstrasse (analogue of the Petersburg Furshtska) and waving posters in front of the unperturbed Soviet embassy.

From the first days in Vienna, Igor led a feverish literary activity and soon began to receive small fees for articles from Germany and France. So we were able to pay for two months of my training in colloquial English courses-in the building of the Anglo-Austrian society, in foot from the house-as, however, almost everything in Vienna. I was worried, I could not imagine how I could teach me anything without explaining this in Russian.

There were 15 cadets 15, all except me-Austrians: middle-aged policeman, an official of some state institution, a beautiful lady of exotic appearance, a thin high school student ... British Nicholas, with such an appearance, with such appearance that he could become the fifth in the Beatles group. He was a hereditary Londoner - relaxed, funny, intelligent (judging by manners and intonations), but at the same time he came to classes in such close jeans that he had to look away all the time. Nicholas once immediately demonstrated to us that his classes would be a mandatory pleasure with optional training. Nevertheless, the undoubted pleasure of communicating with him tripled my weak ability to learn foreign languages.

Этот обед был знакомством не с нами, а с нахлынувшим в Вену малознакомым подвидом еврейского, полуеврейского интеллигента-разночинца, антисоветского по духу, но непоправимо советского по происхождению и воспитанию

Однажды Николас после занятий пригласил меня в кофейню. Там пахло, как в "Норде", и столики тоже были мраморные, только за окном была Вена. Мы что-то пытались рассказывать друг другу. Я – с его поминутными подсказками, а он – упрощая свой английский до того, что иногда сам начинал над этим смеяться. Когда я рассказала про бабушку, уверенную, что австрийцы должны знать по-русски "хотя бы простейшие слова", Николас сказал: "Мой отец считает, что если говорить по-английски очень громко, то всякий поймёт". После приглашения в кофейню, на занятиях, экзотическая дама, посмеиваясь, сказала: "Николас влюбился в Марину". Но она явно подтрунивала над нами. Вообще австрийцы на этих курсах – все, кроме, пожалуй, полицейского, – были людьми ироничными и даже насмешниками, что очень мне импонировало. А с Николасом у меня был счастливый случай взаимной очарованности двух людей, не имеющих возможности испортить это очарование словами.

Постепенно курсанты попривыкли друг к другу и довольно бойко беседовали – при содействии Николаса. Австрийцы болезненно помнили своё нацистское прошлое. Одна сцена запала в память – с мальчишкой-старшеклассником, у которого было имя, как у Андерсена, – Христиан. Он пропустил два занятия – съездил с приятелем в Лондон. Вернулся обиженный и растерянный, сказал, что в лондонских автобусах стоило им с приятелем заговорить по-немецки, как какие-нибудь подростки, их сверстники, кричали им: "Эй, нацистские сволочи! Убирайтесь!" Христиан – худющий, нескладный – нервно подбирал английские слова, и у него страдальчески кривились губы. Австрийцы подавленно молчали, Николас смутился. Тут этого мальчика некому было утешить, кроме меня, и я сказала, тоже с трудом подбирая слова:

– Христиан, я – русская, полуеврейка, ребёнком провела всю войну в городе Ленинграде, включая блокаду. У меня там от голода погиб дед, а на фронте был убит дядя и ранен отец. Но, пожалуйста, поверьте, ни у меня, ни у всего большого круга моих друзей нет никакого недоброго чувства к вообще всем немцам или вообще ко всем австрийцам. И уж тем более – к вашему поколению.

Поразительно, что стоило мне это сказать, как судьба тут же свела меня с людьми, которые держали зло на целый народ – на свой собственный.

В Вене мы познакомились с переводчицей, слависткой Элизабет (Лизой) Маркштайн и её мужем Хайнцем – журналистом и писателем. Лиза перевела на немецкий "Архипелаг ГУЛАГ", была главной сотрудницей Солженицына на Западе и контрабандой перевезла из Москвы в Вену его письма. Её поступок стал известен, и начиная с 1968 года Лизу перестали пускать в Советский Союз. С тех пор Маркштайны помогали писателям-эмигрантам, пролетавшим через Вену или застревавшим в ней. В 1972 году они принимали у себя Иосифа Бродского и даже возили его к американскому поэту Уистену Одену, который жил тогда в Нижней Австрии. Лиза читала и рецензировала всех заметных российских писателей 60–70-х годов – в том числе ленинградскую группу "Горожане", к которой принадлежал Игорь.

В Вене мы с Игорем ехали в гости к Маркштайнам из разных мест, поэтому я самостоятельно добиралась на трамвае в их новостроечный район – скучный и пустынный (как почему-то все новостройки мира). Чтобы не заблудиться в лабиринте одинаковых домов-коробок, я выбирала среди редких прохожих интеллигентное лицо и задавала очередной вопрос о моём маршруте. Убедилась в том, что венцы с интеллигентными лицами говорят по-английски. И готовы помочь. Правда, моим последним "регулировщиком" был пожилой хозяин газетного киоска, который спросил, почему я не учу немецкий язык. Я сказала, что учу английский.

– А сколько времени вы в Вене?

– Три месяца.

И он сказал раздражённо:

– Неужели за три месяца нельзя выучить немецкий?

Я спросила, какой язык он выучил за три месяца. Он только сердито махнул рукой – в правильном направлении.

Небольшая гостиная Маркштайнов была похожа на помещение редакции – книги, журналы, газеты и рукописи занимали всё пространство, свободное от немногой необходимой мебели. Уже в начале беседы выяснилось, что хозяева (им обоим было тогда за 50) – разочарованные коммунисты: Лиза была членом австрийской компартии до 1968 года, когда ее исключили за помощь советским диссидентам и за сочувствие восставшей Чехословакии. Не знаю, оставался ли коммунистом Хайнц, но в разговоре он всё ещё оперировал марксистскими категориями, для нас уже давно мумифицированными. В интервью, которое Маркштайны взяли у Бродского в 1972 году (оно было опубликовано только в 2013 году), Хайнц даже спросил Иосифа, считает ли он себя советским поэтом. Я бы думала, что Бродский отшутится. Но с Иосифом часто случалось, что чем нелепей вопрос, тем интересней ответ:

– Вы знаете, Хайнц, – сказал он, – у меня вообще довольно сильное предубеждение против каких бы то ни было определений, кроме определения – русский поэт. Что касается советского режима, это, при всех его заслугах и преступлениях, всё-таки режим реально существующий. И я при нём просуществовал 32 года. И он меня не уничтожил...

Тут Хайнц торопливо вставил, что в своей недавней статье он как раз писал, что советский режим уже нельзя вычеркнуть, что это есть исторический и культурный факт. Бродский подхватил:

– Культурный факт. This is the most important thing. ... Многое в творчестве людей, которые там живут, инспирировано не divine invasion, не божественным вторжением, но идеей сопротивления. Это надо всегда помнить. ... Странная история, у меня, может быть, что-то не в порядке с системой чувств, но у меня никогда не было ненависти к режиму. ... Я всегда понимал, что это люди. Это ужасная вещь. Для борца это вещь совершенно лишняя, то есть вредная смертельно. Стало быть, я не борец. Может быть – наблюдатель.

Бродский не был, конечно, только наблюдателем, но его творчество и в Советском Союзе вдохновлялось не "идеей сопротивления", а именно divine invasion. А Маркштайны были как раз борцами, но побеждёнными и потому, как мне казалось, печально-гневными.

История семьи Лизы Маркштайн – тоже венская история. Ее отец Иоганн Коплениг был главным австрийским коммунистом, по профессии – сапожником, по происхождению – сыном батрака с четырёхклассным школьным образованием. Он был солдатом в Первую мировую войну, в 1915 году попал в плен к русским, пробыл в плену три года и стал коммунистом. Вернувшись в Австрию, в Вену, он создал и возглавил тамошнюю компартию, но с приходом к власти Гитлера (который приравнивал коммунистов к евреям по степени опасности для Германии) Копленигу пришлось бежать – в Прагу, в Париж, потом, в 1939 году, – в Москву. Лизе было 8 лет. Они оставались в Москве всю войну, и Лиза училась в московской школе. В середине апреля 1945 года семья вернулась в Вену, Иоганн Коплениг вошёл в состав временного правительства и стал заместителем канцлера Карла Реннера – того самого Реннера, чью жизнь успел спасти подполковник Кирилл Успенский, благодаря тому обстоятельству, что у старлея Халимоненко заело автомат.