In St. Petersburg, there is still a good chance of finding an apartment to live in that is in one way or another connected to the fate of one of the geniuses of Russian literature. The houses and apartment numbers of poets and writers are known, all the addresses and details have been recorded—historians and local researchers have carefully studied the city routes of their heroes: in some places they lived for years, in others only for a few months; they moved away and returned, shifted from rented apartments to permanent homes, and from their own apartments to the homes of their lovers. Sometimes relatives live in these “literary” apartments, but often they are occupied by completely ordinary city residents.
Polina Eremenko selected several St. Petersburg apartments where Vladimir Mayakovsky, Daniil Kharms, Korney Chukovsky, Anna Akhmatova, and Osip Mandelstam once lived, and spoke with the people who live in them now—about the spirit of the place, literature, and personal fate.
11 Mayakovsky Street
LIVED HERE: Daniil Kharms, 1925–1941
NOW: Nikolai Kotlyarevsky, artist, 69
I’ve lived here since 1976—the year I got married. My wife was the daughter of the art historian Vsevolod Petrov, who was a friend of Kharms. My favorite work by Kharms is the one about Susanin, who chews his beard while waiting for an entrecôte in a tavern—it’s dedicated to my father-in-law. In 1941 a bomb hit this building, and after the war the entire house was emptied out so that a major renovation could be carried out. The renovation took an incredibly long time. During that period my father-in-law, according to his own account, went to the chairman of the Artists’ Union, Anikushin, forty-two times to ask for this apartment—he very much wanted to live in his friend’s place. And in the end he got it.
After the renovation Kharms’s apartment was divided into two. I live in one of them, and in the other there’s a Canadian and some other guy. But Kharms’s room ended up in our apartment—it’s now the living room. Four years ago my wife died, and for a while I lived here completely alone. Last year a woman appeared in my life. I also have a son, but many years ago he went to Siberia on business, somehow ended up with a wife and children there, and stayed.
In Soviet times Kharms was semi-forbidden; nobody really knew about him and so it was quiet here. But after perestroika there suddenly appeared far too many Kharms scholars, and it became unbearable: they attack constantly, the intercom keeps buzzing without end. Fortunately I don’t know much—my wife used to answer their questions. They kept asking whether anything from Kharms had remained here. Only a few photographs of him taken during his lifetime: Kharms with a pipe, Kharms with someone else. I keep them in an envelope and sometimes lend them to exhibitions, on the condition they’re returned.
What does a typical Kharms scholar look like? They’re all different. There was one fat man, very distinctly Jewish, with a lot of hair. He would talk for a long time, then ask a question, write something down, and start talking again. He would sit for hours and talk. Why my wife and I were of interest to him I have no idea. He wrote a book and then died. Later there was a tall, skinny, rather gloomy man. Gloomy but enthusiastic—he would drag me out onto the staircase and solemnly announce: “Can you imagine that Kharms himself walked up these very steps!” A completely bland fellow—no hat, no pipe; I only remember that he had dark hair and wore it short. At least that Jewish guy had an interesting head of hair. Now there’s Alyosha who comes around. He’s about forty. Slim, well-mannered, extremely polite. Slightly balding. Smokes. I’m not sure any of them would have appealed to Kharms.
I myself am an artist. I graduated from the Academy of Arts a thousand years ago. I’m not a member of the Artists’ Union: when the time came to apply I was drinking heavily and didn’t get in, and later I just became too lazy. In Soviet times I sold my work abroad. When it was hard to export paintings, there was strong demand for them there, and I sold quite well—even though I drank. Now that the market is open, it’s harder to sell. So these days I more and more have to paint what the crowds like: sweet little birch trees, sweet little pine trees—everything that evokes a feeling of tenderness and standard, I emphasize standard, delight. Now you can’t just paint a plain field—you have to cram sunflowers and daisies into it.
I’ve never seen old women falling out of windows, like Kharms wrote about, thank God. I don’t like old women. Neither living ones nor dead ones. Most of all I dislike the type of old women who complain in shops. I paid at the cash register and one of them shouted from the line: “Put the basket back where it belongs.” I said, “No, I won’t, my hands are full.” — “Look at you, what a gentleman! His hands are full!” Old woman, what the hell is it to you?
Though as an artist I sometimes find it interesting to look closely at an old woman. When wrinkles have furrowed the whole face and it’s shriveled like a baked apple—it’s not very aesthetic, but it’s convenient for drawing. An old woman’s eye contains both shadow and half-shadow: there’s something to work with. You can watch for hours how an aged eyelid covers the eye socket, how one wrinkle sinks into another. Thin old women are especially good for drawing: you can clearly see the skull. Fat old women are valued less by artists. Let fat old women bake pies and look after their grandchildren.
I don’t think Kharms would have liked me. I know very little, whereas he was an erudite man. He was interested in mathematics and astronomy, knew music well, and even played the harmonica. I don’t even have any interesting eccentricities. I’m just lazy. Too lazy to work. I lie around all day with a book. When I get tired of lying down, I stand by the window and smoke. One night I was standing there and noticed someone stealing a car below. A kid in a hood kept sticking something into the car door, then leaving, coming back, looking around. I thought about shouting something, but it was autumn and cold, and I imagined the cold air coming in if I opened the window, and I was too lazy to open it and scare the thief away. I finished my cigarette and lay back down on the sofa.
7 Zhukovsky Street
LIVED HERE: Vladimir Mayakovsky stayed in the apartment of Lilya and Osip Brik, 1915
NOW:Margarita Timoshenkova, young mother, 25
I never liked Mayakovsky. I don’t see any beauty in his works. It seems to me he had a lot of issues. That harshness and the way he shouts—it all comes from insecurity. What are our evenings in this apartment like? Mostly children parties now. Yesterday friends of our two-year-old daughter Alisa came over and gave her a real butterfly. The butterfly probably won’t live very long, but we’re putting slices of orange out for it so it won’t starve.
As for home entertainment, we mostly draw and read. What do we read? Suteev. Our favorite story is the one about “four sons and a lovely little daughter.” As for myself, I’m a mechanical engineer by profession. But since Alisa was born I’ve been on maternity leave. I’m not sure I want to go back. I used to like the exact sciences and saw my future there—I wanted to work in railway-car construction. But I don’t want to spend an entire workday at a factory for 16000 rubles.
Right now the main goal of our lives is that Alisa grows up to be a smart and educated girl, without any revolutionary tendencies. I myself was a pretty brutal teenager—I listened to metal, wore black nail polish, combat boots, had all my ears pierced, and walked around cemeteries dressed like that. To be honest I still like metal, but I can’t play it when the child is around, and the child is always at home. At home we put on classical music for her. Alisa likes Bach.
Pavel Sharshakov, assistant director at the Mikhailovsky Theatre, Margarita’s husband, 42
When I was a schoolboy, I liked Mayakovsky. I was a teenager then—a rebel, very blunt about everything. Back then I knew he lived with a lover, though I didn’t know her name. But I had no idea there were three of them living together. I didn’t even think much about it—well, they lived that way, and that was their business. But when I moved into this apartment in 2000, curious people started coming up from the street asking if Lilya Brik had lived here. That’s when I became interested in who this Lilya Brik was.
Well, I found out. And in my opinion, what was happening in my apartment a hundred years ago was shameful. The proper way in love is when there are two people. When there are more than two—that’s already wrong. The “glass of water theory,” you say? (The “glass of water theory” was the idea that sex should be treated as an ordinary physiological need. The desire to have sex was compared to the desire to quench thirst—like drinking a glass of water. The theory was popular in the first years of Soviet power. — The Village.) If someone likes that kind of lifestyle, they can call it whatever they want—it’s their business.
But I’m not sure everyone in that arrangement was happy. When a man in the prime of his life shoots himself, that’s at the very least strange. If someone shoots himself at fifteen, that’s one thing, but Mayakovsky was already a grown man.
And when I think about what Lilya Brik told Andrei Voznesensky (this refers to Voznesensky’s memoirs, where he recalls Lilya Brik telling him: “I loved making love with Osya. We used to lock Volodya in the kitchen. He struggled, wanted to come to us, scratched at the door and cried…”), it seems horrible to me, completely abnormal. How can you lock up a grown man like that? A normal grown man would simply break down the door. Maybe they actually just made him stand in the corner like a schoolboy and he stayed there himself and didn’t want to leave? No, I don’t want to think about it.
I wish Dostoevsky had lived in this apartment instead. Dostoevsky was a talented man, he knew how to describe Saint Petersburg. That sweltering summer Petersburg in Crime and Punishment—when you read it, you feel like you’re roasting on that street yourself. Of course he also had Sonya Marmeladova, but that exists everywhere—that’s reality. As for myself, I worked for twenty years as a corps de ballet dancer at the Mikhailovsky Theatre.
Now I work there as an assistant director—I run the performances. The scenery, the lighting—everything happens on the director’s cue. You ask why I’m so conservative if I work in the theater. First of all, it only seems as if theater is full of bohemians partying all night long. Successful performers get up in the morning, go train, rehearse all day, perform in the evening, and then go straight to sleep. Secondly, with age people become more conservative—it’s normal, it happens to everyone.
6 Manezhny Lane
LIVED HERE: Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, 1919–1938
NOW: Vladimir Stryapan, 55, businessman
What would my fairy tales be about if I sat down to write them like Chukovsky? My life principle is simple: “Don’t live where you f***. And don’t f*** where you live.” I realized that in the 1990s. You’ll never manage to be good for everyone. If you go around asking everyone who knows you, someone will say you’re a good person, and someone else will think you’re a piece of shit. That’s how it is for everyone. So the best thing you can do in life is simply not be a piece of shit to the people close to you.
I’ve lived in this apartment for the last twelve years, but I’m originally from the Rybatskoye district—basically the slums. In my neighborhood things were awful: Khrushchev-era apartment blocks smeared with that stinking stuff they use to seal the cracks in panel buildings so the wind won’t get through. We only ate mandarins for New Year’s eve. What did I dream of becoming as a kid? I don’t remember. I really don’t remember. I never went to university; my parents were factory workers and nobody pushed me toward anything.
The 1990s were tough—raspberry-colored jackets and all the rest, just like you’d expect. But I liked that time—it was a man’s time, a human time. Of course there were excesses; nobody says it was perfect. But I never smashed anyone’s windows or took the last thing they had, because I always believed there had to be fairness. By the end of the 1990s some people had died, some had gone to prison, and some realized in time what life was really for. I had a good support in my wife. With her advice I calmed down. Now I work in car maintenance.
Here’s another principle for a fairy tale. A person should have one face both at home and outside. But there are people who drive their car obeying every rule, looking around carefully, acting all restrained. A normal man should just get in the car and drive. But then in the evening that same weakling comes home, gets into bed with his wife, has sex with her, she says to him, “What a man you are,” and he answers, “Yes, my Tamara, I’m this and that.” Outside he’s a piss-soaked horse, but at home he imagines himself a hero. What kind of behavior is that?
Do I like Chukovsky’s fairy tales? Of course—who didn’t grow up with them. In my apartment something has even remained from Chukovsky’s time: an old fireplace. I put a small bust of Stalin on the fireplace as decoration—it belonged to my father. My dad treasured that bust; he was a Stalinist and kept everyone under strict discipline. Now that bust gives me warm memories.
Nothing else old remained in the apartment. Before we moved in it had been a communal apartment—twelve rooms—and all of them full of cockroaches. It was a complete nightmare here. It’s clear why Chukovsky wrote so well about cockroaches in his poem “Tarakanishche” (“The Monster Cockroach”)—he knew the subject. But he exaggerated about Africa in Doctor Aybolit. You can immediately tell he had never actually been to Africa—he sat here with the cockroaches and wrote. I’ve been to that Africa, in Guinea-Bissau, and it’s not a cheerful picture like in Chukovsky: heat, stink, kids defecating everywhere, fish rotting. They cover rotten fish with salt and sell it as salted fish. If Chukovsky had seen all that, he wouldn’t have been able to write about gorillas and crocodiles the way he did.
Chukovsky and his Africa are like the musician Mikhail Krug: he never actually went to prison, but he wrote songs about criminals and prison life. Still, Krug was good, by the way—he sang well and chose his words properly.
17 Tuchkov Lane
LIVED HERE: Anna Akhmatova, 1910–1912
NOW: Vera Begunova, 60, pensioner
I’ve lived in this apartment since 1991. Before that I had lived my whole life three buildings away from here. But in 1991 my old building was cleared out to turn it into a hotel. When they handed us the keys at the housing allocation office, they said, “Your new apartment has a little secret.” But they didn’t say what it was. I figured out what that secret was a couple of months later. My daughter got an assignment at school—to write about Akhmatova. When I was checking her spelling, I looked and saw that the address in the essay was ours. Was it a mistake or not? I started reading about it, and sure enough Akhmatova really does write about an apartment in Tuchkov Lane. There are also accounts of their gatherings with literary friends here in our home. Interesting gatherings, apparently: they say Akhmatova would demonstratively crawl under a chair in front of the guests to show how flexible she was. I definitely don’t fit under a chair. There’s an opinion that Akhmatova performed all those flexible tricks to show off in front of her husband—that she wasn’t particularly beautiful but liked competing with men intellectually.
I don’t compete with my husband. I already know he’s a hundred times more talented than I am; I wouldn’t even make a decent assistant for him. Recently we had a little puzzle at our summer house: we needed to put in a staircase, but there wasn’t much space for it, and we wanted a staircase comfortable enough that your leg wouldn’t get tired climbing it. My husband didn’t just draw the design—he actually built it himself.
Anyway, I remember that when I discovered this “secret,” I was still working at the Grey Wolf sewing factory in Pushkin—which, incidentally, is where Akhmatova and Gumilyov used to travel from here. That day I was riding the commuter train to work and thinking about it: Akhmatova had lived in my apartment and traveled along the same route I was taking. It put me in a lyrical mood—when we were young and breaking up with boys, we used to rummage through Akhmatova’s volumes of poetry all the time. She’s wonderful to read when you’re unhappy in love. But once family life begins, those moods quiet down a bit. I got to work and told my friends, and they said, “Oh come on, what a silly goose you are!” And we had a good laugh.
Almost all my days now are spent at a recreation center for pensioners. It’s very interesting there—we even have our own anthem that we wrote ourselves: “Pensioners Are a Cheerful People.” We have sports and painting classes. I paint in gouache now. Recently the theme was “Storm,” and I painted waves. The teacher praised me and said the waves looked foamy. I used to think art and self-expression were mostly for narcissists and that I wouldn’t be able to do it, but at our center they encourage us and say, “Don’t worry, everyone will succeed.”
Akhmatova had a portrait drawn of her by Modigliani, and now I have my own portrait too. Last year I worked as a model at the Academy of Arts—my painting teacher from the recreation center arranged it. The students drew me. They compared my face to Catherine the Great—my head is held high, my cheekbones are prominent, my features strong. One day they even brought a wig and tried it on me, laughing the whole time. There really is something there. They also talked about my grace and my proud look. They asked me to stay for another posing session, but I said, “No, I’m going to my summer house.” They gave me my portrait as a keepsake.
Schoolchildren often come here with their teachers. Sometimes you come home and there are thirty kids in the courtyard, scattered around the garden like sparrows, waiting. Once they came from Monchegorsk (I have no idea where that is) without calling ahead and waited ten hours, everyone really needed the bathroom. What can you do? You open the door, and then thirty people rush into your toilet. My husband and I have gotten used to these visitors and bought an electric samovar and plastic cups for such occasions. We sit the children in a circle in the hallway. They settle down on the carpet and start asking questions: “Do you ever feel like picking up a pencil and paper and writing and writing and writing, as if someone is dictating to you?” I tell them no one dictates anything; if I develop schizophrenia in old age maybe then I’ll start having hallucinations, but so far I haven’t.
Sometimes they also ask how my husband treats me. Kids these days start dating at twelve and having babies at sixteen, so they imagine there must be some kind of Akhmatova-like spirit here and that my husband must burn with special passion for me. Nonsense, really. Those questions used to leave me puzzled. How are spouses supposed to treat each other? I would just smile. What can a woman say to that?
49 Bolshaya Morskaya Street
LIVED HERE: Osip Mandelstam, 1924
NOW: Galina Arkadyevna, 75, pensioner
They say the poet Mandelstam once lived in this apartment and that he had a difficult life. I myself have only been living here since last year. My home is in Novosibirsk, but my daughter asked me to come to St. Petersburg so that I could look after my granddaughter while she and her husband are at work—they’re cardiologists and work late. As for Mandelstam, all I know is that he was a poet, that the authorities didn’t like him, that he was exiled somewhere very far away, and that he died there. I feel sorry for him; my own life hasn’t been easy either. But I never complained—I wasn’t raised that way. My mother loved life and never indulged in lamenting. I grew up the same way: dry, practical, and straightforward.
I was born during the war itself, in 1941. When the bombing of Tula began, where we lived, my mother evacuated with me when I was only three months old—what she endured there, only God knows. But it hardened her for life: after that she had no time for emotions or reflection, she became a very down-to-earth person. When someone endures such hardships, they end up loving life even more; my mother lived to be ninety-two. And when we children started sighing and complaining—even though we lived modestly, and sewing a small strip of mink onto a winter coat collar was considered a luxury—my mother would immediately shut it down: “No whining!”
Literature didn’t go well for me at school. In the ninth grade my literature teacher once wrote in the margin of one of my essays: “Fail! All copied from somewhere! Not a single original thought!” But I did well in mathematics and physics. I got a technical education and worked my whole life as an electromechanical engineer at a research institute. People are all different, after all—not everyone can love Mandelstam. I didn’t read much in my life. Maybe I just never came across the right books. It’s hard to say why.
But recently I went to the bookstore and bought Balzac’s Lost Illusions. I thought: the end of my life is approaching, and I’ve never read anything by Balzac. If I read at all, it was usually only short works, but this is a novel, so I thought I’d give it a try. And to my surprise I’ve completely latched onto Balzac. I’m the kind of person who gets carried away—sometimes I sit down in the evening to knit mittens for my granddaughter and get so absorbed that I only put the needles down at five in the morning. A kind of creative obsession of its own. And now I’m rushing through Lost Illusions. It’s about the world of poets, by the way. A cruel world, I must say. Paris, the nineteenth century—difficult times, poverty and wealth side by side. A young man dreams of entering the world of poets, of living and earning among them, but he is completely poor. He meets a baroness who is quite wealthy, and they develop an attachment. And the society there is so corrupt! Someone spies on the moment when this poet shows his feelings—even though he did nothing wrong, he simply fell to his knees before the woman he loved. But then it all spreads—gossip, intrigue, quarrels. I don’t understand how people lived like that.
I haven’t finished it yet; right now I’m at the point where the poet gets thrown out because he’s dressed improperly, and after that it becomes almost impossible for him to succeed. And that’s terrible, of course. Was it similar for Mandelstam?
If I manage to finish Balzac, I think I’ll read something by Nabokov afterward. There’s a Nabokov museum right next door here. I pass that museum every day and want to go inside, but I feel I should read something first before I go.
POlina Eremenko 