The Unknown Tsesarevitch. Reminiscences and Considerations on V. K. Filatov’s Life and Times. Oleg Vasiljevitch Filatov

the road. If one stood in front of the house then the shop and the road to Mikhailovka (a branch of the kolkhoz) was on one’s left

      It was a three-room house, not including the kitchen: two small rooms and one large. In the hall, as father called it, there were bookshelves, a round table, the radio, and bookstands

      The entrance was from the roadside. On one’s right there was the entrance to the corridor. The small corridor had a double door to keep the warmth. (The plan of the houses was standard). Then, on one’s left there was a kitchen (10m²⁾, on one’s right – a children’s room (12m²⁾, farther, straight ahead, – a large room, “hall” (20m²⁾, and – parents’ bedroom (16m²⁾. There were two windows in the “hall” – one window looked on to the road, the other – on to the neighbour

      So, when you entered the “hall”, on your right, in the corner, was the radio with a bookstand underneath. The table stood in the center. Near the door to the parents’ room there stood a bookcase. The hall was illuminated with a lusters. The house was heated by the stoves. One stove was in the kitchen, the other was in the children’s room. By order of the director of the school, the parents as teachers were always provided with coal. Father and I unloaded the coal with the spades and then carried it to the shed in buckets. One and a half bucket was enough for one day to heat the rooms in winter. Winters were very cold – we were located on the steppe, with surrounding hills

      Father liked to associate with people. Not simply to speak with, but to play chess, dominoes, to go wolf-shooting, duck-shooting, fishing. He loved to take part in performances, in amateur concerts, to lecture, to see films, and to participate in competitions, etc. When we lived in Pretoria, a former middle-school director of studies Kliver Yakov Yakovlevich lived just across the street. He was a pensioner. Father often visited him, they played chess over tea. Father was friends with Yakov Shmidt. He was a miller, his son studied at father’s school. Father distinguished him from the rest and said that he was a genuine man. Father had one close friend – the chairman of the “Karl Marx” kolkhoz Konstantinov. He also associated with A.A. Makarov, an old man who later moved to the village of Sud’bodarovka. During World War II, he was in captivity in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He had two sons: Sasha and a younger one, Kostia. There was a thrown-away lorry in our yard. We would often sit in it, giving ourselves out to be drivers, as if we were travelling. I remember this because father with Makarov and the chairman would go either to the chairman’s house or to the Board, and we were left all by ourselves. Makarov worked as a supply manager in our new, brick-built school. Once F father told me that this Makarov was captured during the beginning of the war, but before the war he had worked in the NKVD and that he was an untrustworthy man. Later on, when his elder son finished the middle school, they moved to Orenburg. They had left before our departure from Pretoria (the Makarovs lived near the club-house, opposite the Klivers)

      In the years, shortly before retiring on his pension, which father longed for and “bore the burden” as he said, father was already elderly and experienced, and we had already grown up. He could already talk with us about important things. We saw how he was changing

      He had become more approachable for us. He would often talk about his wanderings after the Civil war. His stories sounded as if everything happened only yesterday. As soon as he got his pension, father decided to move away, somewhere different. He had gotten tired of living in the steppes

      At that time people, really, started leaving our village in search for a better life – in the city, to other provinces where their relatives lived. The people father associated with had left, too. So, for instance, the family of the director of studies Shagit Abdulgakovich Kel’metyev left, too. We were friends with his son Renat. Father often talked with Shagit Abdulgakovich either at school or at his house over tea. Shagit Abdulgakovich was from Bashkiria, River Belaya, and the town of Ufa. And, of course, Father would say to me: “Oleg, there, in the Bashkir forests, is the most delicious honey, gathered in a special way, and koumiss. It is a very good drink.” Later, quite unexpectedly, they began to sell koumiss in our village, and I tasted it. I also remember the Van’kovs who lived across the road, obliquely from our new house. Van’kov was the manual teacher in our school. He had a son, Sashka. I associated with him. But father did not like it. He would say looking at their house: “Where does he get everything from? After all, his salary is equal to mine, and maybe even less.” Van’kov was an unsociable man with a stammer. Father associated with him only if he had to, something like talks about fishing, not more. He spoke with him neither about literature nor about the international situation. But, like any other boy, I would run with Sashka over the puddles, to the river, etc. We built a wooden model of Gagarin’s rocket. Somebody took our rocket one night and put it onto the bridge, just in the middle. Early in the morning, at about 5 o’clock, Sashka came and woke me. I did not understand what had happened but went with him. We rolled the rocket to its old place. Of course, we were upset, though the rocket remained safe. Later we learned who had done it. We told our parents about it, and they, of course, sympathized with us. It turned out that the pupils of the senior forms had played a joke on us. Having read about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, once, during the spring run-off, we built a plank raft, put a box on it which we had taken from back yard of the shop, tied a rope to it and dragged it along to the ravines. The ravines were about 4 m deep and about 5 m wide. Snow on the fields had melted already and the water flowed down to these ravines. There we launched our raft. Sasha Litvinov sat down on the box, took the oar (a plank) and started rowing. Sasha Van’kov and I were holding the raft. It was a thrilling scene. The raft was bouncing on the surges of dirty-grey water. It lasted for about ten minutes. But we could not go on with this amusement and we pulled the raft on to the ground. There were other amusements and experiences. All this we had done in the 5^th