Translated material
Coco and Vanya
Only the war could turn human lives so that an ordinary Russian guy and the most gorgeous Frenchwoman were saved together from trouble and loneliness
He lives in a one -room apartment on the second floor, the windows in the square. He removes, cooks, feeds the cat - the only creature close to him in the sublunar world. He goes for groceries and considers money for a long time. He is very old and lonely: his wife died a long time ago, there were no common children, the relationship did not work out with a stepson and two stepdaughters. He has several photos of a miniature woman with expressive black eyes and a cunning half -smile. On one woman sits, throwing her legs on the handle of the chair, on the other - she catches his hands on the hem of the skirt with his hands in the bracelets, on the third - leaves the chic car near the triumphal arch on the Champs Elysees. These photographs, cut out of foreign magazines and photo albums, are the work of the best masters recognized by masters and luminaries. Corifaers and masters would be incredibly surprised to learn that this woman and the current resident of a small apartment, a modest Moscow pensioner, connected almost a year of most tender friendship ...
Militia
Ivan Nikiforovich was captured near Vyazma. They, militias, were sent here, not really teaching to hold the rifle. And they raised the attack. Both hips sewed bullets from MG-34, but in a happy way they did not hurt either bones or arteries. At the edge of the forest, seeing from behind the bushes how the Germans finish the wounded in the field, he found in the bag of the murdered binta sanitary designer and bandaged himself. There was a small red bottle of alcohol in the bag. He drank alcohol, sniffed his overcoat with his sleeve, wiped his tears, pulled the torn skirt of the sanitary designer, took two sticking caramels from his pocket and crawled into the forest.
The through wounds somehow dragged on, but from the day the Germans split the militias, about two weeks passed, and he went out of the forest, staggering from hunger. He smoked a cigarette from birch leaves. The sound of approaching trucks was heard from behind, but he did not even have the strength to fall into the ditch. The gray-haired German in the first car passing by the car threatened Ivan a finger at the aisle-they say, young is still young. From the second, another German jumped and indicated the direction - where to be captured. The second German was not an opponent of nicotine, he gave Ivan two cigarettes stuffed with light weak tobacco and a small tin jar of marmalade. Ivan smoked cigarettes, threw Marmalad - he was afraid that the second German wanted to poison him.
sculpted him from the Russian prisoner of war
Photo: AP Photo
By a happy coincidence, he did not fall into an ordinary camp for Soviet soldiers, in the open air, almost without food, but to the hospital. Ivan was fed, the German doctor examined the wounds, he was bandaged, then they nevertheless stuffed it into the wagon and taken to the west, and transferred from the camp to the camp, until he was in the Ruur region, at a metallurgical plant. The Moscow FZU helped, ended before the war, as well as tolerable knowledge of the German language, thanks to the German neighbor in the Moscow communal apartment, or rather her daughter, who was left at the freez, after they were shot by her husband and father, Telman's ally. But most of all it helped that Ivan used the location of the senior master, who resembled his son who died in Greece. When the Führer’s favorite sculptor Arno Brekter needed workers in his workshop, the senior master seconded Ivan. Ivan also liked the Brester, even posed for him for the figure of a torch -bearer. Breker sculpted Ivan's face, seeing in him a model of the Nordic race, and then sent as an auxiliary worker to his Parisian workshop on the island of Saint-Louis, in a mansion confiscated by Elena Rubinstein.
Then he did not know that the Brex, who used the work of prisoners of war and foreign workers to create his monumental creations, was a student of sculptor Moses Kogan. The Brex could not help Kogan issued by the Wichists and sent to Auschwitz, but at the next breakfast from the Fuhrer asked for Pablo Picasso, whom the Gestapo was about to take away to his hands. And Breker, before his final departure to the Reich, straightened out the certificate of Ivan, according to which he was able to overwhelm in Paris before the arrival of the Allies. And then Ivan met her ...
Coco and Vanya
“It happened by chance,” says Ivan Nikiforovich. - I just walked down the street. And she left the store with windows. What are the windows? I don’t remember, I only remember that she turned her leg and broke the heel, and I managed to grab her under the elbow. I did not know anything in French, I did not understand anything except the “Amur-Tuzhor”. She bursts something, and I nod and help her to go. Passers -by - I noticed it right away - turned on to her with interest and some fright. Then I found out that she had some kind of shashons with the occupation authorities. And who she really is, also found out later. But that her name is Coco, on the same day. Well Coco and Coco! What names I have not recognized for three and a half years of captivity!
She had many fans, often much
younger than her. She cultivated the image sexually
attractive "lady without age"
Photo: IMS Bildbyra/East News
Of course, she looked much older than mine, but to be forty years older, I did not expect this. She was kind, called with her, and she had an apartment ... my God! Well, I have never seen such before. Castle! Some vases, crystal, bronze ... She for me: “Vanya!”, And I: “Coco!” We are sitting opposite each other - "Vanya!" And "Coco!"
She, it turned out, the ankle is swollen, I was a compress, a tight bandage. She says something, I do not understand, but I feel-thanks and feel more-she is very lonely. Well, just terribly lonely ...
And besides, she understood everything about me. That I have nowhere to go, that I have no documents, except for the Brererovsky, which she immediately burned in the oven. And there is no money either. That I only go to the Soviet mission. And who knew that later, after the mission?
So it turned out that I began to live with her. First of all, the fireplace cleaned her. He smoked very much with her. The whole, soot was enchanted ... And Coco for me - a bath. Like, perhaps Vanya is in the bath! One laughter ... I was embarrassed, especially since her bathroom had more than the room in Zamoskvorechye, in which I lived with my mother, father, two brothers and sister, and even behind the screen, the grandmother of it scratched my side and coughed. And here - marble, mirrors, it smells so that I was even scared. She is my clothes into garbage, and as she saw my scars, she just pumped her head: “Oh la-la! O-la-la! "
She gave me a suit, shirts, a hat. In the evening, we went to some kind of zucchini. There everyone turned away when she entered. Well, they pretended that she is an empty place. She threw her right into the paint, she turned me around, and we went out. We went back, and some Frenchman got behind us and yells after us something. Singing and yelling ... She walked so far calmly, and then suddenly stopped, as if she had been hit with a whip. I realized that the matter is serious, and you believe, left her to stand, turned around and that the Frenchman gave him a sopa. Well, just from the heart! He flew five meters, no less. It turned out that many saw this, but no one stood up for the Frenchman. So I became a friend of Gabriel Chanel, nicknamed Coco.
Let your homeland
She taught me the tongue, she taught me everything. What have I seen? Yard in Zamoskvorechye, FZU, militia, captivity. Of course, I gradually realized who she was, realized that this would not last forever. And when I found out how old she was, he realized: I do not long for me to be with this great woman.
True, I have been with her for almost a year, almost a year. And then he somehow took her photo standing near my bed-she gave me, wrote: “My friend Vanya is from Coco”-went out into the street, and her legs themselves brought me to the embassy. There I took it and said: so and so, such and such, I was in captivity, worked for a German at the factory, posed for another German, but now I want to go to my homeland, I have a dad, brothers and a grandmother for a screen.
With a smile so-yes, the motherland-mother is waiting for you, Vanya, waits waited! Well, I waved all the papers, went to say goodbye to my coco, and she was not at home. I left the note, with mistakes, of course, so, I wrote some nonsense and now I left forever.
What happened next? Well, a clear thing, a well -known route: Marseille - Odessa - Vladivostok - Magadan. The photo was taken in Odessa, I asked to give, the sorester - on my teeth. They could shoot, but I had one paper, Coco straightened it to me, that, they say, I helped the Picasso communist translate the currency for the movement of resistance. The lies, of course, did not know then who this Picasso was, but Coco, apparently, suggested that I could ask for my homeland, I knew that such a paper would not hurt me. The guys on the steamer advised me to throw her away, they said, there would be troubles, I did not obey and did the right thing. But nevertheless returned to Moscow as much as fifty -eighth. The brothers died in the war, father and mother and grandmother died. I only found my sister, but she suddenly tells me that I, they say, are the enemy of the people and she does not want to know me.
So, son ... do you still have questions? "
There are no more questions, Ivan Nikiforovich ...
Gabriel Boner Chanel (August 19, 1883 - January 10, 1971) is the founder of one of the most famous French fashion houses. I introduced a fitted jacket, a small black dress and a status suit “From Chanel” into a female fashion. The Time magazine was introduced by Gabriel (Coco) Chanel on the list of the hundred most influential people of the 20th century.
First published in NT No. 24 of June 26, 2009
Photo: Sipa Press/Fotobank.com