Why did they send me to the kindergarten? With two unemployed grandmothers and two housekeepers - both my grandfathers were Professors. But my parents were determined: the child has to be socialized.
Kindergarten - I hated it from the first breath. The terrible mixture of the smells of a public catering establishment and a government institution made me sick.
At night, I would wake up at home, see large clusters of stars in the window, and pray to who knows Who (Who knew how miserable I was, loved me more than my mama, compassionate, and infinitely pitied me) that the night would never end and the morning would never come.
"Mama! I want it to always be night and for me to always stay at home!" I would wail, but Mom would only laugh, and every morning they would take me back to Kindergarten.
It was, by the way, in the house next door. Before school, when I turned six, I suddenly realized: no big deal - this is my home, here I am (joyfully jumping over my rubber jump rope - by then I'd already learned to play alone), and they'll definitely come and take me home. How could it possibly be any other way? But at three, that was a long way off.
I was skinny ("Girl! Suck in your tummy!" holiday-makers teased me on the beach in Gagra, where our family went in August. When I sucked in my stomach, it literally stuck to my back - my mother would get offended and take me away), I ate poorly, for which the teacher once rudely and unexpectedly shoved my nose into my plate while I was dreamily staring at it, my thoughts elsewhere.
The only escape from Kindergarten was frequent colds and sore throats. Then I'd calm down and enjoy being sick, then spend a long time recovering and playing in the small room - my grandparents' bedroom - opening the door and putting it together with the door on the adjoining wall, between the bedroom and the living room. By which creating a wonderful little house, my Kingdom, and I was in it the Princess, a real one, not an imaginary one. I saw that Princess in my dreams, too: she sat on her throne in a sparkling green dress, with long white hair and blue eyes. And it was me, though I was looking at her from the outside, from within myself, as I was - with short brown hair and hazel eyes.
But that was at home. At Kindergarten, things were different. There was a Princess there too. Her name was Lena. Lena Talochkina. She was the leader, along with her friend Nadya Kholodova. They also had their own kingdom at the back of the playroom, near the toilet, but I was never accepted into the game. And I so longed to share my princesshood with them - in truth, not in a dream, and not alone in my little house, which was constantly ravaged by the adults entering the rooms and closing the doors.
No, they didn't let me in. If the teacher went to chat with the cook in the kitchen, the girls would make dresses for themselves out of bed sheets, but the real magic was not in the dresses, of course, but in the princess unity. There were two, sometimes three girls, and each knew - the others were Princesses too, but no one knew that I was The Princess. And Lena was absolutely beautiful.
"Mom! Lena and Nadya don't accept me into the Princesses..."
"Princesses? And where do they pretend to be Princesses?" Mom asked.
"Well, over there, behind the lockers, next to the toilet..."
Mom laughs:
"My dear! You're a big girl now, you have your music exam soon, and you're suffering because you're not accepted as a toilet Princess."
That was true. My family had started teaching me music very early, before I went to Music School. A teacher from Merzlyakova Music School came to audition me, and there it was, my first exam: I'll play on par with the music schoolchildren."
"And I'll spit on this whole listening committee," I declare the day before the exam, when Mom tries to explain the full significance of the day ahead.
Mom drops her hands and looks at me for a long moment, making me dread. Then she says:
"How shameful! How ashamed I'll be to have a daughter like that!"
"Okay," I agree, "then I'll play with mistakes and without nuances!"
The exam went brilliantly. I wasn't at all afraid, despite the intimidation of the wise adults, and performed my etude and piece flawlessly and with nuances.
When it was my turn to go on stage, I suddenly heard a woman sitting behind me whisper to another:
"And where's that little girl who takes private classes from Irina Mikhailovna?"
At that moment, my teacher was already walking down the aisle and, taking me by the hand, led me to the piano.
"There she is, the Princess. With such a bow!" the other woman replied.
My heart sank.
As opposed to my music exam, my first performance at Kindergarten, went differently. I was assigned to learn a quatrain for The New Year. I wasn't included in the dance of "Snowflakes", because I had had my angina and did not know the steps.
I walked to the center of the playroom, took a breath to begin reading, when suddenly the teacher hissed loudly from somewhere off behind the stage, so to speak:
- Archer! "Hello, Grandfather Frost. Have you brought us presents?"
I caught my breath again and was just about to begin anew when I heard the teacher's dry, hot whisper once more:
- Archer! Have you forgotten? "Hello, Grandfather Frost. Have you brought us presents?"
Then I took a step forward and cried out - loudly and heart-rendingly:
- YOU ARE ALL FOOLS!
Besides the fact that I was soon enrolled into the preparatory class at the Music School, another very important event happened in my life - I fell in love. Passionately, with all my heart, with all the magic of my princess-like, unknown mysterious soul.
The boy's name was Igor Voronov. He'd run up to me every now and then, show me something athletic and ask mockingly, "Can you do that?"
Of course, I couldn't. How could I? I'd just begun to recover from my bilateral pneumonia.
"So what," my mother shrugged. "Why don't you show him your gymnastics "Ring" and ask him: "Can you do that?" We'll see then."
One day, seizing the moment when the group was running behind the lockers during the physical training session, Igor, turning a dashing сartwheel, stopped dead and asked me, his eyes laughing, triumphant superior lights dancing in them:
"Well, can you do that?"
And then I lied down on the carpet, on my belly, and made my gymnastics "Ring". I tried so hard that I felt as if I hadn't only touched my head with my feet, but curled up into an actual tube.
Igor's mouth fell open. He lied down on the carpet, and... oh, horror! He was a real log, stiff and immobile. Totally unflexible.
And yet I loved him more than Mom.
"Mama! I love him more than you!" I confessed, like a traitor, discovering this feeling inside myself.
Mom laughed as usual:"Do you remember how you used to say when you were little: "Mommy! I love you with both my arms and hands and both my legs and feet, with my head and my whole body, so fresh and clear!"
Of course I remembered. I loved Mom so much! She was the most beautiful woman in the world.
That there was an even more beautiful woman - Elizabeth Taylor - I only discovered the following summer in the Crimea, during the film "The Blue Bird."
"Mama! She's even more beautiful than you!" I exclaimed in amazement as we walked out of the film theater into the light.
Mom smiled and began talking to a young man who had joined us and apparently did not share my point of view.
to be continued