The bare black branches of a tree and a starling box against a bright spring sky. There is nothing else in the picture but I look at it for a long time, and somewhere inside me rises a warm wave of joy and hope. This is not just a drawing of a tree, the sky and a starling box—it has that without which painting is impossible: mood, thought, the ability to see and understand Nature.
And here is another picture: horses galloping, swords raised threateningly in the hands of fierce cavalrymen. There is real movement here…And another landscape the familiar overgrown pool in Timiryazev Park. And here is Aspen Woods—the high lush grass and the silvery ripple of our merry little brook.
I am alone in the house, and on my knees lies a bulky folder of Shura's drawings.
Shura draws better and better with each year. We often go to the Tretyakov Picture Gallery. I not only want him to learn to draw, I want him to know and understand painting. I
I remember well our first visit to the Tretyakov Gallery. We went slowly from room to room. I told the children about the historical subjects and myths which had inspired the artists. The children kept asking endless questions. Everything delighted and surprised them. Zoya was astounded that Vrubel's "Fortuneteller" kept looking at her from all angles. The huge black eyes, joyless and all-knowing, followed us about unwaveringly.
Then we came into the Serov room. Shura went up to "The Girl with the Peaches"—and froze to the spot. The dark-haired girl with softly glowing cheeks looked at us thoughtfully. Her hands lay so peacefully on the white tablecloth. Through the window behind her one could visualize a large shady garden with century-old lime trees, overgrown paths leading away into the back of beyond…We stood for a long time looking in silence at the picture. At last I touched Shura lightly on the shoulder.
"Come," I said quietly.
"Just a bit longer," he begged in the same hushed voice'!
It was like that sometimes with him: a strong, deep sensation would almost petrify him. It had been like that once in Siberia when four-year-old Shura had entered a real forest for the first time. And it was like that now. I stood beside my son looking at the peaceful, thoughtful girl in pink and tried to guess what had struck him so much. His drawings were always full of movement and noise—if one can say that a brush or pencil can communicate noise: galloping horses, rushing trains, and zooming airplanes. And Shura himself was a young scamp who loved to shout and play football. What had charmed him in Serov's girl, in this picture which breathed such undisturbed and tranquil stillness? Why had he suddenly become so subdued, so unlike his usual self?
That day we did not look at anything else. We went home, and all the way Shura kept asking: When did Serov live? Did he begin to draw early? Who taught him? Repin, the one who painted "Zaporozhye Cossacks Writing Their Reply to the Turkish Sultan"?
That was a long time ago. Shura was barely ten years old then. Since then we often visited the Tretyakov Gallery, saw oilier pictures by Serov, and Surikov's paintings—gloomy Menshikov in exile in Beryozovo Village. the inspired Suvorov, Boyarina Morozova, the sad, moving landscapes of Levitan, and everything the gallery contained. But it was after his first meeting with Serov, work that a landscape appeared for the first time in Shura's drawings, and it was then that he made his first attempt to draw Zoya.
"Sit down, please," he asked his sister with unusual gentleness "I'll try to draw you."
Zoya would sit for a long time, patiently, with hardly a movement. And even in those first unskilled portraits there was a likeness—a barely perceptible one, but it was undoubtedly Zoya's eyes which looked out from the paper: steady, serious, thoughtful eyes.
And now I am looking through Shura's drawings. What will he become, what kind of a man will he grow up?
Shura unquestionably has a turn for mathematics. He has inherited from his father a love of technique, and he has hands of gold; he can do everything with them— anything he puts his hands to turns out well. I am not surprised that lie wants to be an engineer. He spends all his pocket money on the magazine Science and Technique, and he not only reads every number from cover to cover, but is always constructing something on the advice given in the magazine.
Shura always puts his heart into his work. I happened once to call in at the children's school to take a look at the garden. The work was in full swing; they were digging, planting bushes and young trees. The air was ringing with the sound of voices. Zoya, flushed and disheveled, put down her shovel for a second and waved to me. Shura with another lad a little older than himself went by carrying a stretcher. It was hard to imagine how the stretcher could hold such a heap of earth!
"Careful there, Kosmodemyansky, you'll strain yourself!" a tall, fair-haired, athletic-looking girl shouted alter him.
And I heard Shura pause and answer cheerfully, "Don't you believe it! It can't happen if you put your heart into your work. That's what my grandad told me. Work only breaks you if you are afraid of it, but if you don't spare your strength you get all the stronger!"
The same day at supper he said, half in jest and hall in earnest, "Mum, perhaps I could go to the Timiryazev Acadmy when I leave school. I'm good at digging gardens. What do you think?"
Apart from this, Shura wants to be a sportsman. In winter Zoya and he skate and ski, in summer they bathe in Timiryazev pool. Shura is a real athlete; at thirteen years old he looks a good fifteen. In winter he rubs himself down with snow, starts bathing in spring sooner than anybody else and finishes late in autumn when even the most intrepid bathers shiver at the mere sight of water. And for a game of football Shura is ready to forget both food and lessons.
And yet . . . in spite of all this it seems Shura's fondest dream is to become an artist. Recently he has been devoting every spare minute to drawing. From the library he brings, and asks me to bring, the biographies of Repin, Serov, Surikov, Levitan.
"Listen to this," he says in an awed voice. "From the age of nine Repin used to draw every day, not missing a single day of his life! Just think! And when he hurt his left arm and couldn't hold the pallet, he tied it onto himself and went on working just the same. What grit!"
I look through Shura's drawings, and recognize now our favourite bench in the park, now the hawthorn bush growing near our house—Shura loves to lie under it in the hot summer evenings. Here is our porch where he sits till late at night with his comrades after a game, and here is a meadow—their football field.
Nowadays Shura is always drawing Spain: skies of an incredible blue, silvery olive groves, reddish mountains the sun-scorched earth furrowed with trenches, pitted with shell holes, stained with the hot blood of the Republican fighters…It seems to me that when the Surikov exhibition opened in the Tretyakov Gallery last winter Shura went there a few extra times just for the sake of the Spanish water colours; it was as if Surikov had become ever dearer to him because he had travelled in Spain, seen and painted that far-off land.
But what is this…? The façade of a high building with many windows looks familiar to me. Yes, it is School No. 201! And round it is the future garden: birch trees maples, oaks and…palms.
Next: The Bet