L. Kosmodemyanskaya

The Story of Zoya and Shura


Aspen Woods

In the north of Tambov Region there is a village called Osinoviye Gai, which means Aspen Woods. Old folks used to say that long, long ago dense forests grew here. But when I was a child there was not a sign of forest for miles and miles around. Instead, as far as the eye could see, there stretched fields of rye, oats and millet. The land close to the village itself was rutted with gullies. Every year the gullies increased in width and number, and it seemed that the cottages on the edge of the village would soon slide down to the foot of their steep uneven slopes. In winter hungry wolves of the steppe lurked in the gullies. I was afraid to leave the house on winter evenings: everything cold and still, and snow, snow all round, and the distant howl of wolves, either real or imaginary … But how wondrously the country changed in spring! The flowering meadows, wrapped in a tender, almost luminous green, and everywhere the gleaming sparks of field flowers, scarlet, blue and gold. You could bring home whole armfuls of daisies, cornflowers and bluebells! Our village was a big one, with about five thousand inhabitants. A scrap of earth could not feed a poor peasant family, and from nearly every cottage somebody went away to earn a living in Tambov, Penza or even in Moscow.

I grew up in a large and loving family. My father, Timofei Semyonovich Churikov, was a rural clerk, a man with no formal education to speak of, but he could write and was quite well read. He loved books, and would always quote what he had read in an argument.

"And yet," he would observe, "a book I read dealt with the heavenly bodies in quite a different way …

For three years I went to the local school, and in the autumn of 1910 Father took me to the girls' high school in the small town of Kirsanov. Nearly forty years have passed since then, but I remember everything down to the last detail, as if it all happened yesterday.

I marvelled at the two-storied building of the school — there was nothing to stand tip to it back home in Aspen Woods. Holding tightly onto Father's hand I walked into the entrance hail and stopped in confusion. Everything was so unexpected and strange: the wide entrance, the stone floor, the broad staircase with its iron banisters. There were many girls who had come with their parents. It was they who confused me most of all, more even than the surroundings which seemed so luxurious to me. Kirsanov was a provincial merchant town, and there were hardly any peasant children among the girls, who had come, as I had, to take the examinations. I remember one girl, who looked a real merchant's daughter, plump, rosy, with bright-blue ribbons in her long pigtails. She looked me over scornfully, pursed her lips and turned away. I pressed close to Father, and he stroked my head, as much as to say, "Don't be shy, dear, everything will be all right."

Then we went up the staircase, and they began to call us into a big room, where there were three examiners sitting behind a table. I remember that I answered all the questions, and then, forgetting my fears. I recited some lines from Pushkin's poem The Bronze Horseman

 


 

Father was waiting for me downstairs. I ran out to him, wild with joy. As he sprang up to meet me, his face shone with happiness.

And so began my days in high school. I look back on them now with a feeling of heartfelt gratitude. Mathematics — we learnt from Arkadi Anisimovich Belousov, who made his subject vivid and interesting. his wife, Elizaveta Afanasyevna, taught Russian Language and Literature.

She always came into the classroom smiling, and there was no resisting that smile — it was so alive and young anti attractive. Elizaveta Afanasyevna would sit down at her table, cast a thoughtful glance at us, and begin without any introduction:

 

The forest sheds its purple garment…

 

We could have listened to her forever. She bad a way of telling stories, losing herself and delighting in the beauty of her words. She knew how to reveal to us the stirring power of Russian literature, its profound humanheartedness and the thoughts and feelings which inspire it.

As I listened to Elizaveta Afanasyevna I realized that the work of a teacher is a great art. To become a really good teacher one must have a warm heart, a clear mind, and, of course, love children. Elizaveta Afanasyevna loved us dearly. She never said so, but we knew it without her saying — we felt it in the way she looked at us, in the fond restraint with which she would sometimes put her hand on a pupil's shoulder, in the way she sorrowed whenever any one of us met with failure. And we liked everything about her: her youth, her beautiful, pensive face, her kind, straightforward character and her love for her work. Long afterwards when I was bringing up my own children, I would often recall my favourite teacher and try to guess what she would have said to me, how she would have advised me in a difficult moment.

I remember Kirsanov high school for yet another reason. The art teacher discovered that I could draw. I loved drawing very much but was afraid to admit even to myself that I should like to become an artist. Sergei Semyonovich Pomazov once said to me:

"You must study … you absolutely must study … you have considerable ability."

Like Elizaveta Afanasyevna, he was very fond of his subject, and at his lessons we learnt not only about colours, lines and proportions, but about what makes the soul of art: about how one must love life, how one must learn to see it everywhere, in all its manifestations. Sergei Semyonovich was first to acquaint us with the works of the wonderful realist artists Repin, Surikov, Levitan. He had a big album with lovely reproductions in it. It was then that another ambition was born in my heart: to travel to Moscow and visit the Tretyakov Picture Gallery. But although I longed to go on studying after high school, I realized that it could not be. The family could hardly make ends meet. I had to help my parents. And so, after graduating from high school, I returned to Aspen Woods.


Next: A New Life