Work and love
After graduating from the institute, Luba worked in the same school where she studied in the tenth grade. She taught literature in the fifth and sixth grade. The children loved her. Her close friend recalled that she had witnessed such an episode: the children of her class were playing in the yard when Lubawas passing by on her way home. One of the boys shouted to his comrades: "What are you talking about - it's Lyubov Mikhailovna coming." And it sounded like: behave yourself decently - the goddess passes.
Luba was sick a lot in her second year of work, and one day the children came to visit her with the whole class. She was very touched and fondly remembered that visit.
But discipline had to be maintained. And there were individuals with whom it was difficult. She recalled that she pulled someone out of the classroom through the door and shook him so that his white collar, which was sewn to the uniform, came off.
I met Luba in 1974. I saw a bright Jewish face in the subway and approached her. But not immediately - I didn't dare. I I got off the train after her at the Belorusskaya station, walked in indecision at some distance. When she entered the escalator, I waited a little and also stood on the moving steps, and when she was in the middle of a long, long staircase, moving from bottom to top, I decided to go up to her and approach.
I remember her red winter coat with a white faux fur collar, white lace Orenburg shawl. And, of course, huge eyes.
She thought that we knew each other and began to say: "I haven't seen you for a hundred years." When she realized that she was mistaken, we already started talking.
After years she told me that she noticed me in the train. I was wearing a sheepskin coat with a canvas top, which my parents bought me, believing that the main thing is not beauty, but warmth. On the head I weared a fur hat with earflaps. I was sitting on the bench of the train when she came in with her friends. Her beauty blinded me like a flash of lightning. Especially her eyes: black, deep - either sink or dissolve, there are no other options. Luba was talking animatedly, her eyes shone, sparkled, which was a rarity in the metro and on Moscow streets. Everyone was serious and silent. If they spoke, then with restraint. Looking at me from the corner of her eye, and noticing that there was an empty seat next to me, Luba, as she told me later, thought that she would never sit next to me.
Who will object after this, against the well-known saying of the sages: "after the Almighty created the world, He sits and picks up pairs." Or against what is said: "in order for a couple to be found, the Almighty must create the same miracle as the splitting of the sea"
For us, He created. And not only then - from that moment we lived a miracle.
A few weeks later I called Luba and invited her to take a walk.
There were lines in the cafe, it was difficult to get tickets to the theater. Therefore, it was customary to walk, even if it was very cold.
Bulat Okudzhava wrote about it:
"Sentinels of love on Smolenskaya stand
The sentries of love at Nikitsky do not sleep
The sentinels of love along Petrovka go invariably
The sentinels are supposed to change"
We walked and wandered the streets, sometimes the parks.
Later - we went out of town by train, went into the forest, admired nature, returned to the station.
There was always something to talk about - sometimes we talked so simply, about nothing. We laughed, composed poems on the go, inventing rhymes.
Somehow Luba took me to the booth of an illuminator, her friend at the Taganka Theater. It was a magical evening. She loved the theater more than V. Belinsky, whom she often quoted: "Do you love the theater the way I love it, that is, with all the strength of your soul ...". And she repeated the words of G. Stanislavsky: "The show begins near the hanger."
From the first year of college I was engaged in mountaineering. Mountains were the main component of my life. Endless training, in May - departure to the Crimea on the rocks. In summer - a month in camps in the Caucasus or the Pamirs. Once I went to the Pamirs for a winter ascent. I was not an outstanding athlete, everything was difficult, but I loved the mountains. Luba was indifferent to this occupation, in her soul, as I understood it later, was a great protest.
Once we went to visit Lyubov Borisovna, where all Luba's friends had gathered. I left her with her friends, and I went with my school friend, Edik Kushnir, to draw. We climbed the bell tower, which was being repaired and drew sketches - a view of Moscow courtyards from above. I brought my paintings to Luba, she really liked it.
