"He raised us the only possible way: showed beautiful things"

Andrey Bykov - about Eduard Uspensky

I got my first hours thanks to Assumption. The father was sent to Bulgaria to a book fair, there was a large company, mostly science fiction writers - Lukyanenko, Lazarchuk, I knew all of them in childhood, because then everyone was like -minded people. Or they weren’t, but this was not visible, because not everyone still managed to quarrel. And my father asked what to bring to me, and I wanted the first hours and ordered them.

Naturally, it could not just be a clock. When they were taken to the ancient city of Veliky Tarnovo, he found a silver onion in an antique shop, brought by officers of the regiment of the regimental ass on the occasion of the name of the name, with the corresponding inscription. Probably, this watch remained in Bulgaria from the Russo-Turkish war, or got there in some other way, but the most amazing thing that they went (and go to this day, if you start). They cost terrible money, which the father did not have. Then the Assumption, who was also in this group, began to bargain with the owner of the watch. He seduced her. He began to sing. He danced to her Lezginka. He bought a bottle of pink oil from her and a rusty pistol that would still not have been lowered on the plane, but he liked the gun, and he began to aim from it, allegedly dying of love. In short, after a half -hour trade, the price fell in half, and my father, sobbing with greed and tenderness, bought me this gift.

My father would have plunged something symbolic in his spirit, such as I live by Ouspensky’s watch, in his time-but I can’t imitate him so literally. With this watch, I went to school for some time, and everyone went nuts, and if I said that it was from Uspensky, no one would have believed at all. Because the people of our generation, I will say with disgusting solidity, was twofold about the Assumption. One thing is that he has died a long time ago, because a person who invented Cheburashka cannot be our contemporary. After all, Cheburashka was always, even before the parents. And the second is that he is generally a mythical creature, because one person cannot invent so many things.

One person cannot be the author of the “plasticine raven”, “Prostokvashin”, the series about the crocodile Gena, “Guarantee men”, “Grandmothers of the Pirate” and the detective “The investigation is conducted by the Koloboks”. A modern person is unlikely to believe that a Thumbelina lives in Lilia, but what warranty men live in the receiver - I personally are convinced so far. One person cannot invent “Radio Radiyan” and “Abvgdeyka”, which I know from old records and partially the Internet. And "octopus." Anyone would be enough for eternal glory and several cottages.

But the Assumption existed, and the father even, according to his boastful statement, thumped with him. In my view, it was how to have lunch with the monument to Pushkin or, God forbid, to clock with the Monument to Mayakovsky.

But then I nevertheless saw him alive-on a writer's walk in 2012, where his father walked between the two Assumptions-Edward and Mikhail, and from all sides, people with bored, literally collapsing books fled to them. The Assumption M. was carried by a variety of “Zhikharya”, and to the Assumption E.-for some reason most often “guarantee men” and “toad Zhabichy”. Probably because the previous works were read to a completely indecent state. The writers bowed and signed, and the father, going between them, made a desire that all this merry would last and would not result in terrible repression. Whether his desire came true, you can easily see yourself, but all because you need to make between the namesakes, and not between the namesakes.

When I think about the Assumption - and I think about him often, because it is very stuffed with quotes for all occasions - one almost indecent consideration comes to my mind. Here Uspensky did not teach anything.

It is inconceivable to imagine that he asked the child when he met who he wants to become, or suddenly began to explain to him what is good.

This can also be done talented, it will even go into the tongue, who would argue. But this will not be the case of Assumption. And the Assumption (more precisely, both of them) is a phenomenon of dazzling talent, and only, and nothing more. And there is no morality behind this, and it is quite strange for me to read now that the Assumption allegedly taught inner freedom and humanity. Inner freedom is already there, or it is not, and then it cannot be taught. And if he brought up, then the only possible way: he showed beautiful things. Exclusively because he knew how to do them. And when you see a perfectly done thing, you somehow automatically educate. This phenomenon has never been explained and, God will give, will not be. But a good picture in which the overgrown pond is drawn, brings up a person more reliably than a bad picture in which "mercy nourishes a frozen dog." (Dog - from the story of Vera Inber “How I was Small”, a home saying that denotes excessive sentimentality.)

And so the Assumption is such a pure talent, talent in a fiercely pure form, he has it in everything, in any nonsense, and when this Bengal fountain beats in front of you, for some reason you become better. Although, of course, you do not know how and do not even try. In search of confirmation of this simple thought, I climbed into the book of Uspensky - to the late, which my father brought with the inscription after the interview. The “knight in sparkling armor”, as a child was designed by a robot -guard. And it describes the design bureau, whose employees were very friends and did everything together - went on campaigns together, solved the tasks about mushrooms together ... This is “about mushrooms” - genius, it cannot be explained. But the reader flies with Uspensky in these words, because these mushrooms were stuffed with his school to vomiting, he will recognize it, melting and further taken warm.

There is a lot of such raisins in every book of Uspensky. This must be said so - "Do not in vain in vain, take care of cartridges!" This must be said about the physician that he was taught “art to put an enema, Marxism, Leninism” at the institute for six years!

And for some reason, people who grew up on all this turned out to be much more morally, in other words-kinder than people who taught patriotic prescriptions by heart. Uspensky was generally the most patriotic children's writer, because he used the Russian language universal. And he colossally multiplied the amount of love in the world, because everyone loved him. And even those who hated-because they really loved him. Salieri loved Mozart most of all, because he knew his price.

Andrey Bykov - especially for "New"