It is known that Alexander Vertinsky donated his fees to the aid of the fighting Red Army. The ditties about a girl sniffing cocaine and weeping Yvette, whose little song was over, became the confirmation of the sincerity of his longing. The neurasthenic ditties were perceived as attributes of depressive exoticism. The Soviet regime profitably exploited the theme, although the great artist first took the lilac negroes with harlequins abroad from his homeland, and then they were repatriated with him from Shanghai to Moscow.
Having received forgiveness in '43, Vertinsky kissed the platform; propaganda profitably exploited this episode as well, but only the initiated Shanghai residents, among whom was Vera Petrovna Obeznyuk (Leskova), who had settled in Odessa, knew that money was collected for a coat for the artist. He simply had no coat; the Shanghai climate made it possible to save on warm clothes.
In 1947, several thousand Russians left China for the USSR; Odessa took in three or four dozen. The addition was modest but noticeable. To this day they remember Boris Petrovich Leskov, Vera Petrovna's own brother, who taught English at the 1st Railway School, now Secondary School No. 16. Nearby, at School No. 57, Viktor Mikhailovich Kasyan taught us to pronounce the interdental 'th'. Kasyan's pronunciation was classical; even when talking to us, he never ruined it. We shouted out the half-animal dialogues from the American film "Tarzan" from the acacias of the Spartak stadium in English. Kasyan, of course, was also called Tarzan. Once, when the awards for Teacher's Day were announced, a forgetful counselor read: "Viktor Mikhailovich Tarzan is awarded a certificate of honor." In the honorary nickname were focused both admiration, and trust, and the impulse to which Viktor
Mikhailovich was prone. We often met him in Otrada with girls. They said that in Shanghai Kasyan worked as a salesman in the fabric store of the Kosovsky manufactory on Avenue Joffre; he kept up his style on Irogovskaya as well. Sometimes Kasyan was visited by his colleague Leskov from the 1st Railway School, fortunately, the schools were nearby, separated by Kulikovo Field.
The Leskovs were natives of Harbin, which in novels about Kolchak is represented as a kind of hearth of Russian spirituality and patriarchality. Did Harbin really look like that?
Before the revolution, the Leskovs lived in the village of Shelapugino in Chita Oblast. Kuzma Semyonovich Leskov's family was impressive - eight children, seven girls and one boy - Pyotr Kuzmich Leskov, Vera Petrovna's father, then simply Verochka. The great-grandfather was a priest in the Urals; in 1917 they feared persecution, and so they moved. They built a house in Harbin near the gunpowder warehouses on Nadezhdinskaya Street and bought horses. Pyotr Kuzmich earned his bread by carting, often brought hungry people into the house; there were hungry people in Harbin, and beggars, and robbers. Vera's mother, from a Cossack family, often quarreled with her father, did not get along, and it sometimes came to fights. In '35, her mother and Vera's little brother suddenly left for Shanghai. Grandfather Kuzma Semyonovich condemned her by mail, writing: "Anya, you know what awaits her!" Vera was taken to the Maksakova School by her aunt.
"Aunt Anfisa kidnapped me," recalls Vera Petrovna, "handed me over to a specially hired woman, and she took me by train to my mother in Shanghai." By that time, stepfather Semyon Medvedev, a former sailor of the Russian merchant fleet, had appeared on the Shanghai horizon. The stepfather drank and molested the seven-year-old girl. Vera complained to her mother, and she, enraged, kicked out her husband... and her daughter.
Thank God, the aunts sheltered her. Life in Shanghai was incredibly hard; the aunts worked as nurses and street vendors, there was no other work; they trudged on foot to the other end of the huge city for cheap bread. The city was divided into concessions: French and English. The latter was considered more prosperous, which is why Vera was placed in an English school. But the education was paid, and the school administration applied for the transfer of the capable child to a convent, a boarding school at a Catholic monastery, where the poor were allowed to live and study for free. Sister Dorris or Sister Anthony would let her go out on a pass once a week. Vera cleaned the aunts' rooms and did laundry, and they bought clothes for the quickly growing child.
In 1941 she learned about Germany's attack on the Soviet Union and cried. She wanted to become a nun, but her aunts energetically protested, the family was Orthodox. At the Soviet club she listened to Vertinsky. "His wife was tall and very beautiful," she recalls. "To the charity concerts in aid of the Red Army, the Vertinskys brought a little one in a stroller." In the stroller, the eldest daughter Marianna was sucking on a pacifier. The youngest, Anastasia, as is known, was born in '46 already in Moscow. "When Vertinsky was leaving with his family," says Vera Petrovna, "Russian emigrants, mostly wealthy people, such as Terekhov, outfitted him. There was a large Terekhov photo studio in Shanghai. Russian Jews also helped; there were plenty of them in trading Shanghai."
In 1944 she finished school and got a job at the German confectionery Kraft; the owner was married to a Russian woman. After work she studied typewriting and shorthand in the English sector. The acquired skills allowed her to join the American bus company "Bus Service". A quite decent salary, though in yuan, allowed her to dress up and visit the Soviet club more often, where she still went secretly from her aunts. There she met Nikolai, also a Harbin native, from a family of Russian diplomats; his father was a consul in the city of Chefoo. They got married, a little son was born, but Nikolai enjoyed wild success with ladies, and their common life went off the rails. Vera took the infant and left for Qingdao. In her act one can see a certain fatal choice: Qingdao is a metropolis with a population of five million, a sister city of Odessa. A year later she returned to Shanghai.
In 1947 they were allowed to repatriate to the Soviet Union, luggage was accepted in any volume without restrictions. Suitcase fever gripped the entire Russian colony. Vera's aunts left: Evdokia, Taisia, Anfisa, Raisa, Agrippina, only Varvara stayed in Shanghai. On November 13, '47, the steamship "Ilyich" set course for Nakhodka. Her ex-husband was strolling along the deck tipsy, the aristocratic family also went to Bolshevik Russia.
Upon arrival in Nakhodka, they were placed in a filtration camp. In the neighboring barracks, captured Japanese soldiers chattered; overall, the surroundings retained the familiar Asian motif. They also noticed compatriots with plywood plaques on their chests reading "I betrayed the Motherland." Strict investigators meticulously found out details of life abroad, asked which relatives had served under Semyonov. True, they were fed for free. After two weeks, they were given dry rations: rye crackers and semolina porridge for her son. At night they were led to load into freight cars; they didn't explain where they would be taken. At stations Vera traded things for circles of milk frozen in bowls. They stopped often, the train lingered for a long time on sidings of nondescript halts; they jolted for three weeks to the Urals.
In Berezniki, she got a job as a waitress at the nitrogen-fertilizer plant, feeding the whole family. Her ex-husband played piano in the station restaurant and even sang; from him Berezniki learned about banana-lemon Singapore. His abilities allowed the ex-husband to also work as a club decorator, and the extra money was spent on young ladies and drink. After a drunken brawl, the ex-husband ended up in prison; Vera bought him out.
Meanwhile, Vera's mother married for the third time - to Odessa resident Rudolf Borisovich. His nephew came to Berezniki and took the large family to Odessa, hospitably settling them on Chkalov Street, at the corner of Kanatny Lane.
Solely thanks to Rudolf Semyonovich's connections, she got a job as a saleswoman in the art fund store, which is still on Richelieuskaya Street. The salary was two-digit, but she was surrounded by decent people; the art director of the fund was for a long time Heinrich Grigoryevich Pinsky, a couplet singer known in the city since the times of Vladimir Koralli. Heinrich Grigoryevich bought Rudolf Semyonovich a coat; the stepfather, like Vertinsky, was outfitted as if for summer.
Her work record book barely has two pages of entries. For communicating with foreign crews at the Moryak Hotel, a floor attendant with knowledge of the language was needed, and in '70 she was hired. Why not as a translator? In the filtration camp in Nakhodka, they destroyed her documents: a certificate with excellent grades from the English convent and certificates of completion of shorthand courses, also, of course, English, enemy ones. Therefore, a bonus of seven rubles for her brilliant knowledge of the language was not added to her salary of 70 rubles. In addition to crews, on the important second floor there were also seminar participants of the IMCO maritime organization at the UN and other important maritime people. Their impression of our poster reality was negative, especially the militant atheism grated. She was ashamed of the historical Soviet homeland. Vera Petrovna tried as best she could to soften the impression, but heartfelt rapprochement was suppressed by plainclothes comrades; she was watched over, and she got used to it. The hotel director Nikolai Bakovsky, later at the turn of eras, admitted guiltily: "Vera, I could not say anything in your defense, I could not even encourage you."
Over time, staff translators with university diplomas and poor knowledge of the language appeared at the hotel; the guests themselves asked that the floor manager translate. In '91, market logic triumphed: she was transferred to the position of translator and... her salary was reduced by half a million coupons.
Chinese people also often came. She won over those on assignment from People's China to herself, but not to the revisionist country. The Chinese trusted her, asked her to get a mongrel dog to decorate the table for Chinese New Year, which falls in February. The situation was delicate, but she emerged from it with dignity: she lured the stray dogs away from the hotel entrance with liverwurst sausage to Lenin Park.
Her son, for whom she bought disks of frozen milk at Transbaikalian sidings, was ill and died early. She is married; her husband is a working man, so her active life did not pass by; it took place and even continues. True, letters with foreign stamps have become rarer. Her Harbin uncle died of tuberculosis in Paris. One of her aunts lives in the state of Kentucky; she visited them. The aunts complained that before Nixon, life in Kentucky was easier.
She, however, does not complain about life. With the sea chaplain, Father Roman Popravko, Vera Petrovna often visits ships arriving at the ports of Greater Odessa; Filipinos completely trust her, not noticing the difference in age. She treats the Chinese, who have flooded the markets, with awe. "When I see them," she admits, "I even tremble. They are wonderful, hardworking people." A Chinese acquaintance, Lenya Li, who opened a restaurant on Bolshaya Arnautskaya, also a native of Harbin, told her that the building of the Churin manufactory has survived to this day. Her godfather worked as an accountant at Churin's.
Vera Petrovna was tempted to call Radio "Chanson" to have them play something from Vertinsky's repertoire. Vertinsky can also be heard at the Harbin restaurant with little dragons under the pagoda roof on Glushko Avenue. Lilac Negroes returned for the second time, already with the Chinese.