Boris Vasiliev

I miss him in this life. It is not so important that we did not see each other often, but I knew that he was. I did not come to him for advice, for a conversation about our common life, and sometimes wrote down some phrases. For yourself. I can’t remember the words, but the tone, warmth, rationality I absorbed ...

I returned from under Solnechnogorsk and thought in what hysterical militia, in what tasteless competition of ambitions, in what boorish darkness we are immersed and floundered in it in search of a gentle output, how we flicker in our thoughts ... and how little (I about ourselves) we work ...

... And at that time near Moscow, on the border with Russia, in a quiet old house, a very good writer, a pure and kind person, Russian intellectual Boris Vasiliev sits at the table. And it works.

He thinks and writes.

Now I will go over the past time, because Boris Lvovich Vasiliev, who would have turned ninety years old, has been with us for a year now.

In recent years, I have not met him in Moscow. Well, yes, there were writers, directors, artists who are looking for their places in fast time and find these places. Among other capabilities, masters of culture gained the right to exist, slightly different from the manner of surviving in the rest of Russia and for a small price. This price is a minor dependence on those to whom these very masters bring up sincere love in themselves, and a small loss of the right to say “we”, referring to fellow citizens, who have not yet completely felt the merits of the new world.

Meanwhile, the world is old, its values ​​have long been formulated on the hill near the Galilee Sea, and no one denied them. Unless they forgot to complete the anxiety of the soul. Well, do not judge "...

In the house of Boris Vasiliev, I never noticed changes. Only his new books are at the end of his life about our unconscious history. The rest is as always: warm, if you are sitting at the stove or talking to the owner, on the table - boiled potatoes (your own) with salty mushrooms (your own), at the table - a delicate and friendly wife Zorya Albertovna, a cat Masha on the sofa, and a conversation. About how to live without losing dignity and face.

How to live?

The birds were jammed with voices, and through orange windows, settled on blue evening, scraps of conversation are heard:

“It is unlikely that there is another people in the world with such a weakened historical memory as ours. We don’t remember anything, we don’t learn anything ... I wrote several historical novels, gave it to read ... the names of the heroes are familiar to many, but the state where they act is mysteriously and unknown. And this is our country ... "

A dry branch will break off, drowning out the question.

“Each new century is a change of banners ... nineteenth. On the eve of Pushkin was born, and everything went under the sign of this enthusiastic genius. What was marked by the arrival of the twentieth? Khodynka. Two and a half thousand souls came to us ... And now, guys, we have not even a change of centuries, but even millennia. You need to behave carefully to survive. I write about this. "

“Write, Boris Lvovich, and survive, please,” I asked.

Vasiliev moved away from the window into the depths of the room, and his voice was no longer heard, but the direct silhouette of a beautiful person is visible. He had a good field. You can wander in it, talking. You can plow with questions, waiting for a good harvest, you can see the shoots without waiting for spring. But to lie, brutalize and betray in this field - it is impossible.

... each has their own examples. I do not impose on you Boris Vasiliev. I say: everyone has their own.