A Room and a Half

School - Studio "SHAR"

and The Federal Agency on Culture and Cinematography

present

St. Petersburg

New York

Two crows live in my yard.

The first one came two years ago, when my mother died.

The second - last year, after my father's death.

Alice Freindlich, Sergey Yursky, Grigory Dityatkovsky

in the film by Andrey Khrzhanovsky

I can't see myself touring my homeland

where I was born and lived for 32 years.

A ROOM AND A HALF or a sentimental journey back home

based on works by Joseph Brodsky

It's easy to do. Baryshnikov and I had a plan:

We fly into Helsinki, then go to St. Pete by sea; Finns don't need a visa.

Incognito from New York, so to say.

A journey is the best time for memoirs.

Especially a journey by water. Water is the image of time.

I never forgot that I'm a photographer's son.

My memory is simply developing a film.

Hello, my boy! Did I scare you?

It's me, your father. I'm back!

War finished for my father in 1948 in China.

He was a counselor and photojournalist there.

I remember the December evening when he came home.

Why do I see it today clearly, as if through a powerful camera lens?

This is how you realize how precious the coming of peace was.

Look at this...

How pretty!

This is just for you.

Let me see. Thank you...

What is this?

Ki-mo-no.

A real mask from the Japanese Noh Theater.

Did you conquer anything more useful over there?

Music.

La Cumparsita, the most brilliant musical piece of our time.

I could never dance, but I could listen to those wails for hours.

If nobody was around - I'd move to the rhythm.

Oh, Sasha...

The night is light, Clouds are asleep,

And your stranger's hand Is lying on my palm...

The morning calls me Off to war again...

And as I leave your little town I'll walk by your gates.

Osya!

Calm down. It's not loaded.

He's a man, it's okay. Put it down!

No sense in trying to observe the right order of my memories.

Their lack of continuity is like the movies, right?

What I remember most is the window.

The most important window of my life.

A great view of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral.

My whole life in Russia was tied to this cathedral.

During the war, the services didn't stop even for a day.

Prayer ...for all eternity, Amen. Our father, who art in heaven...

hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done...

on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread...

There was no bomb shelter in our house.

During a raid my mother would drag me into the cathedral basement.

She told me I had my own spot there.

Next to the box for the names of the dead to be prayed for.

Help me write this, I forgot my glasses.

Ivan, Lyudmila... Alexey...

Tengiz, Zurab. Don't forget Suren.

Rachel, Sara, Joseph, Isaac, Zulfia, Abdul, Ishmael...

I can't see me lying under this church during raids.

I can't feel it, or even force a memory.

George, Maria, lgor... innocent murder victims...

...forgive us every transgression, both voluntary and involuntary...

...and grant the kingdom of heaven. Amen.

The cat has a golden cradle.

But my baby's cradle is better...

We were evacuated in the 2nd year of the war.

Father took us to a military airdrome.

He had a friend there, a bomber pilot.

Mother worked as a translator in the prisoners of war camp.

The camp was on the other side of the river.

A prisoner drew a painting on a piece of plywood and gave it to Mom.

Springtime, river, birch trees, a water pump.

This painting was on the wall in our house for a long time.

A few times Mom took me along to the camp.

I remember, the first time I even asked:

When are we going to drown?

God forbid.

One winter I saw a decorated Christmas tree.

In the barracks for German prisoners.

Among the decorations was a baby with wings.

Mom told me that's an angel. Since then I've wanted to fly.

For a miracle, take one shepherd's sheepskin, throw

In a pinch of now, a grain of long ago,

And a handful of tomorrow. Add by eye

A little bit of ground, a piece of sky.

After evacuation we moved into a different apartment.

On the opposite side of the square.

It's that Mauritian-style House of Muruzi.

It's like a huge, six-story cake...

The poet Anna Akhmatova said:

My parents took me in a carriage to watch this house being built.

Everyone thought it would be the most beautiful building in St. Petersburg"

...It's all communal apartments now, of course.

It used to be this long enfilade, where very different people lived.

Blok used to visit and stay in this house.

I don't remember who else. I know we lived in the enfilade.

Merezhkovsky and Gippius also lived in those rooms.

When she yelled obscenities at the sailors,

Gippius was doing it from our balcony.

It was a beautiful city.

I think it still is.

Impeccable perspective and wonderful architecture.

All human rubbish stands out against it.

After the revolution...

The compact housing policy broke up the enfilade.

One room per family.

Walls between rooms were made of plywood.

Unbreakable union of freeborn republics

Great Russia has welded forever to stand!

Created in struggle by will of the people

United and mighty, our Soviet land!

We lived in a city whose color was fossilized vodka

Electricity came from afar, from swamps,

And at evening the apartment seemed

Soiled with peat and mosquito-bitten.

Clothes were clumsy, and this betrayed

The Arctic's proximity. At the other end of the hall

The phone tinkled, hardly coming back to life

After the recently finished war.

The 3-ruble bill decorated with portraits of pilots and miners

I didn't know that one day it would all be gone.

Sorry, you're so hard to please.

So, did you hear?

Kaganovich's daughter got married.

It took 50 meters of fabric for her dress.

You know how much that is?

Enough to wrap around 10 times. And still...

And we can't even get some sackcloth.

I've been wearing the same skirt for 5 years.

Many times I remembered our kitchen.

There was something primeval about this dimly lit cave.

Pots and pans hanging over dirty stoves...

...they wanted to turn into tam-tams...

What is breakfast or any meal in general?

For our generation, it is this book:

"Book of Delicious and Healthy Food".

Come here, boy. What do you want?

What kind of sausages?

Mikoyan, Munich or Bavarian?

Any kind.

Maybe the "Friendship of nations" sausage?

It's a mixed filling: A little ground veal,

a little beef, and a bit more pork and lamb?

Yes, that's what I want.

20 years after my death, enemies will fill it

with niter, starch and other poisonous chemicals.

People's right to high-calorie science-based diet will be lost.

They will start dying from cancer and gastric ulcers.

Georgian-style lamb kebob, very delicious!

But that's not right for breakfast.

Liver - foie gras with almond cream.

Ah, the aroma! Fish baked in a dough shell.

Stuffed pike, nightingale tongue souffl?

So, which will it be?

What can I have?

Nothing. This is all wrong for breakfast.

So what do I do?

You wait. I never eat in the mornings.

I drink Georgian tea and sit down to paperwork.

But I'm hungry!

You're a Jew, boy.

And Jews eat only matzo. I don't have any.

But I have a good idea for Jews.

Do you like to travel?

Yes.

Great.

Osya, stop reading.

Go, boy.

Go wash your hands, potatoes are getting cold.

I'll take care of you.

You'll have a lot of matzo in Birobijan.

Book of Delicious and Healthy Food

Mother used to say:

"You're walking around in socks again?

That's a bad sign; there'll be a death in the house."

Come on, Masya.

Just socks again? How many times I told you:

That's a bad sign. Put on some shoes and get to the table.

Keep your nose out. Let me see your hands.

Are they clean? They're not.

You were playing with the cat. Go, wash them, quickly.

That's Stephan Batory, from Gdansk.

I recognize the horn.

Why are you not eating?

It's not healthy to eat in the mornings.

What idiot told you this?

What is this? Eat!

Are you tired of potatoes?

How about this fungus drink?

It's a very good fungus. It helps cure cancer.

This is all nonsense.

It is not! Old Rabinovich drank some before his death,