Ella Vengerova remembers Fyodor Dus-Chotimirsky

Source in Russian: http://screenstage.ru/?p=1885

Dus

Fyodor Ivanovich Dus-Chotimirsky with his wife and son lived in our kitchen. Not exactly in kitchen though - beside the kitchen, in the former servant room. The area of that room was 8 or 10 square meters at most. They had exactly three items of furniture: a bed, a table and a sofa. I don't remember them having a wardrobe. Perhaps they did have one, but it was so small that I didn't notice it. Over the table, there was Dus's personal phone; a guitar with red ribbon hung over the sofa, and over the double bed, there was a portrait of a beautiful woman looking up, with her hair undone. The woman's name was Mary Magdalene, Dus's wife was named Sofia Ivanovna (Auntie Sonia for me), and his son's name was Vladimir. Volodya Khotimirsky was my first love. He was about sixteen years old then, and I was three. He would hoist me onto his shoulders and go walking with me to the Sretensky boulevard. During the war, he was declared missing in action. Only his red-ribboned guitar and his fiancee Ksenia remained, a beautiful, tall and very slender girl. She remained a spinster and would visit Dus for a long time after the war.

Mary Magdalene wasn't a random choice. This meant that Auntie Sonia and Dus weren't married. Auntie Sonia was a devout Catholic, and Dus was a staunch anarchist. Of all philosophers, he respected only Kropotkin and Bakunin, and he didn't recognize the state's power over a free individual. During the Russian Civil War, the Whites sentenced him for execution as an anarchist, but a duty officer, an amateur chess player and a big fan of Dus, recognized him and helped to escape.

He met Auntie Sonia way back when he still lived in Poland. She loved him so dearly that she lived with him, unmarried, until her death, and she blamed herself for Volodya's disappearance. For the same reason, Auntie Sonia worked as an ironer in the laundry for her whole life. Due to Dus's stubborn anarchism, this pretty, kind, unselfish, gentle, loyal woman stood in a smoky, humid, hot basement for thirty years, working the heavy irons. She couldn't allow herself to live off the money of a man who legally wasn't her husband. She accepted the life of a sinner, but not of a kept woman. She fed him, gave him drinks, washed his clothes, tolerated him, understood and forgave him. At nights, Dus would read her his favourite books aloud. Judging by what I heard through the wall, he had two favourite books: Three Musketeers and Twenty Years Later. (After Dus's death, I stole those books, rebound them, and I still read them to this day.

Also, I've almost forgotten another dweller of that room: a huge Siberian cat named Malenkiy ("Little"). He would roam the whole apartment, never disturbing anyone. During the war, Dus entertained himself by chasing him along the corridor, clapping his hands and screaming, "Stalin, Stalin, Stalin, Stalin, Stalin!"

Dus was a genius player, one of Alekhine's early teachers. Before the revolution, he traveled across Europe, playing for money in chess cafes. He could win any game if it was interesting to him, and lose any game if he lost interest. He was also the only player in the world awarded with a strange title, "Distinguished Master of Sports in chess". It was invented for some reason under Lunacharsky, Dus got awarded with it, and right after that, it was immediately abolished. Dus worked as a coach for the Lokomotiv sports society chess team. The Lokomotiv society was sponsored by railways, and so Dus could ride trains for free. He would travel the whole country, giving consultations (the term "master class" appeared later) and simultaneous display. Besides chess, Dus could play a number of card games: piquet, whist, poker, boston and, of course, preferans. My mom was afraid that he'd influence my dad in a bad way. Dus's behaviour was indeed bizarre. He would lie in bed in his underwear for days, consult his fellow Lokomotiv chess players on the phone for hours, cover heaps of paper with writing while discovering "related numbers", forget to close the toilet door... He could wear someone other's railroad overcoat by mistake and not return it for a week. And then policemen came to our flat and said that Dus stole the overcoat. We explained that he was an honest, but absent-minded man, and they said, "Absent-minded, huh? He took a new overcoat and left his old one hanging on the rack!"

The Soviet Union was huge; a train ride from Moscow to Tashkent would last 3 - 5 days. Uncle Fedya, wearing his old overcoat, would walk through train cars, looking into unlocked coupes. If there was a company playing preferans (and he would always find at least one), he would stand forlornly at the door, attracting condescending pity from the players - usually military men. Sooner or later, they would magnanimously invite the sad old man to play; he would join the naive soldiers and clean them out. No train passenger in the entire Soviet Union could defeat Dus in preferans! The things that happened with numbers in his unkempt head can only be compared with the work of some computer. But back then, there were no computers, and chess geniuses usually travelled first class.

Mathematical geniuses, on the other hand, would sit in the academies, and to one of them, [Ivan] Vinogradov, Uncle Fedya sent his list of "related numbers" he'd discovered in infinity. As far as I understood, the first fourteen such numbers were discovered by Descartes many years ago, and Uncle Fedya discovered 600 more. The academician was, of course, a smart man and published Dus's discovery under his legendary name. Dus was incredibly angry, but didn't sue to prove his authorship. Firstly - because he would probably lose. And, secondly, he didn't want to appeal to the state - he didn't recognize its power in principle.

Dus never drank or smoked, but he was quite a womanizer. In the 8-meter room beside the kitchen, in addition to Dus, Auntie Sonia and the cat, a young, black-braided woman in a skullcap would sometimes appear. She offered everyone juicy, tasty melons from Chardzhou. A young talent from the Central Asia. Or was she? For some reason, all the women in our communal apartment disliked her, scolded Dus and pitied Auntie Sonia.

We and Dus had our share of ideological disagreements.

"We have freedom, don't we?" Dus would ask.

"Yes, we have socialism and freedom", I would answer boldly.

"And they have capitalism and no freedom?"

"No freedom."

"Why then they can board a train and go from Paris to London, and we cannot?"

"But we can board a train and go from Moscow to Novosibirsk or Vladivostok, that's much farther."

"But not to Paris?"

"I don't care."

Or another talk:

"Uncle Fedya, whom do you like more, Botvinnik or Smyslov?"

"Smyslov."

"But Botvinnik is a world champion!"

"What if someone offered you a choice: a sack of gold or a hit to the head, what would you choose?"

"Gold."

"You see. Botvinnik always wins, but his playing isn't interesting. And Smyslov's playing is interesting."

Back then, I must admit, I didn't understand what he wanted to say. Now, I think I do. But it's too long to explain.

Even though Dus would go around in his underwear, even though he forgot to close the toilet door, still,  while Auntie Sonia was alive, he always smelled good because he drank milk with iodine at night. Two drops of iodine per glass of warm milk to improve the memory. I think he knew all the games by the players that interested him most: Chigorin, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Bobby Fischer, Gligoric. He probably knew the entire huge pile of chess magazines on his sofa by heart.

"Uncle Fedya, why you never go by subway?"

"I prefer trams."

"But the subway is so beautiful and fast." (Back then, there were much fewer people in the subway.)

"Because the subway is underground, you can't see anything there. Can't see a thing. And the tram goes on the street, on the boulevard, among houses and people. Do you get it?"

Back then, I didn't get it. But now, I get deeply sad when I remember my transport fatigue that arose after fifty years of taking the subway to work and back.

"What's interesting is in there? You saw a lot of countries. What did you like the most?"

"The Bay of Biscay. Night sky and the stars over the Bay of Biscay."

He got me there. I never had a chance to see that sky, ever.

Or another story. We just got back from an expedition, lively, vigorous, strong, young and happy. We sat there, euphoric, we had a guitar, and we started to sing. Uncle Fedya looked into the door.

"Is that you singing?"

"It's us, Fyodor Ivanovich!"

"It's awful!"

I swear, we had no idea.

After Auntie Sonia died, Dus had several affairs with quite unattractive women. Finally, a new woman, disgusting, vulgar and greedy, became a resident of the room beside kitchen. I don't even remember her name. She had no beauty and no soul, material gain was the only thing concerned her. She would mistreat, humiliate and abuse him. Still, Dus married her - legally and officially. And soon after he made that mistake, she starved him to death.