Together with writer Mariam Petrosyan and her four-year son, Misha, we go around Yerevan. "It's good that you go so fast" - throws me Miriam. For herself, she travels around the city with great speed, cutting corners on the run and rushing under the car. Given that in Armenia everything go as they please, this is a risky business, but the only way to defeat local car entropy.
Miriam showed me the city: that is the main area, that's bookshop, that's a museum, now a music school, where her eldest son Sergei tomorrow will take exams. Neither the House nor the Forest is not observed. With the trees in the Yerevan generally bad.
- Well, you want, I'll show you the tunnels? - Miriam and asked at last turns with one undistinguished street lined with traditional urban high-rises, the other the exact same.
Suddenly, in front of us right in the middle of the city there is a hole in the wall. It's a long, unpleasant, poorly-lit tunnel, at the end of which is white light, it resembles an abandoned subway from computer hodilok. The walls sagged and vspuchilis, top snake crawling lights - dim lights, half of which is not lit. All the walls in graffiti, mostly in Armenian, but there are Latin: Kond. This is the name of the district, once famous for its hooligans. It is located exactly above us, so at twenty meters.
- Here is a close second tunnel. Physical education teacher at the school we were forced to run, - says Mariam. - Return one tunnel, back in the second. And through the dark tunnel to escape almost impossible, you lose focus. It was terrible.
By mid-tunnel light bulbs becoming more and more dim, the walls - all the more blasted, and inscriptions - all the more puzzling. Suddenly come across an inscription in Russian: "I was in my life everything is clear as day, and there is no shadow of doubt for a lady love - is a member. At the light end. It's getting cold.
Suddenly in the distance there is a bright spot - out of the tunnel. He is getting closer and closer. On top again erupt bulbs, and no longer afraid and not cold. We crawled out on the high bank of the ravine: the bottom of the river flows around the green slopes, near an abandoned amusement park. Below us the river runs track children's railway, not far seen the spire of the little station.
From the river breathes moisture and river scents - green and nature. Even in the industrial Moscow sometimes from some of the park the wind blows and carries with it the smell of the forest, in Yerevan, no matter how Bodi nose, the wind did not bring. To feel the smell of nature, it is necessary to climb into the tunnel.
Is this the forest, with whom Miriam twenty years, until she wrote the novel "The house in which ..." sketch their own parallel world? Or is it just a cozy valley with an abandoned park, it is customary for the location in the hills of Yerevan?
She never said. Well, it does not matter.
about your childhood
40-year-old Mariam Petrosian - Yerevan artist. Previously, she worked first at the "Armenfilm", then on "Soyuzmultfilm", but after ten years of sitting at home with children. Twenty Years - most of her life - she wrote a novel.
Write by hand, gave her husband read Artashes and friends are also sent
snippets of text friends and relatives in other cities, she drew pictures to the text, but it absolutely did not think that anyone ever would want to publish it. Later Moscow friends advised her to give the text to the publisher Livebook, which published a book entitled "The house in which ..." in autumn 2009.
In a manuscript book came in a short list of award "Big Book". Under the terms of the award finalists books spread out on the Internet, and everybody can vote for their favorite piece. House, where ... "became one of the three winners based on the popular vote. In the spring of "House ..." got "Russian prize" - an award which is awarded the best Russian-language works, the authors of whom live outside the Russian Federation.
Actually, the house - a boarding school for children with disabilities. Live here, here being treated and taught. There is a wheelchair user, is blind, is armless, there are painful incurable disease. Understand who has what kind of disability is not easy: it is never directly mentioned. But each character in the House is the nickname, and its assignment turns into a ritual. The real names of the characters we do not know, nor are they needed. A nickname usually animal or bird, and the characters behave at times so that the reader is not completely understood, about whom exactly speech - about the animals or is it about people.
The book begins with two parallel plot lines. In one, primary, wheelchair named Smoker passes from the group, where he is being prosecuted in the new one. The old one was a bunch of pariahs, new group is to steep. In the push-chapters - short - tells the story of another boy, named Grasshopper. He has no hands, he just got into the house, and making fun of him a gang of local hooligans.
The new Chamber of smokers initially as difficult as in the past, but in the end he finds a common language with the new neighbors for Grasshopper is the only protection from terrorizing his band - a boy named Blind. Sooner or later the reader understands that the interludes with the grasshopper belong to an earlier period of history at home rather than a story about smoking, especially Savvy can not even think of whom to become the mature grasshopper.
This is not the story about the horrors of a hospital-orphanage in difficult times for the country. In The House ... "no hint of Chernukha on squeezing tears from the reader a description of the horrors and misery of children with disabilities. Although the ad, which boarding suit neighbors and itself, is impressive, it may well be resisted. Mir, who invented and described Mariam Petrosyan, a huge and complicated, with an internal hierarchy and a very fine line between real and fantastic. In general, it would be our world if we agreed to assume the existence of magic in it.
"In a world which will be referred, Death comes to people in the guise of boys or girls.
The girl was pale and dark-haired. Red-haired boy. She was sad, a young man the oars. It became the custom in that world for a long time.
They were afraid or were waiting with impatience. They are remembered in prayer, asking him to delay or expedite an end. Their images have met on the Fortune predicting maps and antique prints. Few people thought about how many of them actually. It was believed that the death of one in two guises. Night and day, light and shadow. In fact, there were many. They were almost gods, has many wonderful talents and were unbearably lonely. Sometimes they ran into other worlds, there to meet his death. Sometimes they were born in other worlds. Born always dead and revived after some time. If they succeeded. These fugitives were no longer the true messengers of death. The ability to blunt. They became harmless or death suffered only a dream.
Learn among other things they can be this way: they have beautiful voices, they are good dancers and they know a lot of other people's secrets. They are too lazy, no case had not been given a whole, girls do not know how to laugh, cry and boys. They hide their eyes, long sleep and not eat eggs, because in his world hatch from them. "
(The house in which ... ")
- I was about ten or eleven, we are in the garden, a vineyard, played in all sorts of games - recalls Miriam. - For example, after a shipwreck throws us on a desert island. More men go hunting, women make fires and cook food. The history was always the same, but different options for continuing. We were able to find a submarine of Captain Nemo, to search for a secret underground city with its population, which of us wants something. When I watched the TV series Lost, he reminded me a lot of these games. But in those days, our stories with each time becoming more fantastic, and at some point I started to record them. Painted that some drawings with arrows and have great fun.
- This card was lost treasure?
- Maps were also. But basically preserved the genealogical tree: I'm on them then was obsessed. Usually, we composed a story about two families, among them a vendetta, and certainly a villainous-diabolical character, which all terribly afraid. And at some point I realized that when your history, lest we forget, the next time an idea comes to you much more interesting.
One story - both in the ocean something like "Titanic" sailed with a bunch of characters on board - I started to tell my classmates. I'm going to circle - four trainees. So tell me, and the most interesting place I understand that the detective line comes to an end - is there someone who had killed - and what all has to end, I can not even imagine. The boys asked: "What is this book?" They think that I told them a novel retold. And I lied, that is from an old issue of "Foreign Literature". I still remember, said that the author's name was Irving something there.
- Irving lot.
- Or, Irving Stone, and Irving Shaw ... classmates, incidentally, went to the library and asked for this book, and the librarian had so affected the name "Irving", that it confers upon them with a clever kind of said: Yes, they say, there was a book, but its people something hogged. But it was only then. And then I did not know what finish the story. A sleepless night, thinking someone was there someone killed ... And then once he started a "House ...". Just kind of school history: Well, a boy finds himself in strange surroundings, strange place. Hence all went.
about his and others'
- You write in Russian, and speak Armenian. Not hard to switch from one language to another?
- Oh, okay. I read, for example, in Russian. Sometimes, suddenly realize that it is very difficult to say something in Armenian and I can express it only in Russian. And sometimes the opposite. "Eprst" - think in Russian. "What a freak!" - In Armenian.
In 1992, when a graduate art school Mariam Petrosyan has worked on "Armenfilm" in Armenia was not to cartoons. In Yerevan electricity included an hour a day, and young people were taken directly from the city center and sent to the Karabakh front.
Then Miriam and her husband Artashes, with whom she met at the studio, moved to Moscow, "Soyuzmultfilm", where six months working with the great animator Robert Saakyants and another year with Elena Prorokova. Then they returned to Armenia, and in 2000, Miriam was a homemaker. At first glance, learn from this biography that something associated with the novel is impossible. But when Mariam herself is telling about his life, there is a feeling deja vu: I already read it. In the novel "The house in which ...".
- Life in Moscow, we had an interesting. We rented an apartment here and there, periodically stayed in the street without money. We have nine of Kuntsevo friends lived in a two-room apartment. Nine boys, squinting from the army, and all in the same confused and restless condition. They found some work
and then it lost. Guarding the stalls, something somewhere to sell, but it was absolutely not their profession: they had all been students, mostly biologists. We Artashes them come when once again proved to be on the street. Awful do not want to call them - them and so were many, and the apartment has generated suspicion among neighbors: they have happening there? What's the point of collection of young Armenians? And yet they had persistent problems with the girls, - laughs suddenly Mariam.
- Why?
- Simply Armenian guys are accustomed to some specifics. So if you have a girl - then she is your girl. If she told you that loves you - it means that you only go with her, only took care of her, proud of what you're her boyfriend. And Russian girls mentality is different. She now tells him: "I love you very much - you are the only joy in my life, and the next day is:" You know, I think I still do not love you, but someone else ".
Besides, Russian girls terribly sophisticated, far more than our own. And always give the impression that they are older than you. And then it turns out that in fact it is a child who plays in some games: today love to the grave, and tomorrow is all forgotten.
- And you lived there with them in Kuntsevo?
- Yes, it is true for long. They're all sleeping in one big room, steles on the floor mats ... and come up with a rule. First: do not drink. Second: do not drive at night and girls. Because where they bring, anyway? Not common as a mattress. In general they have been there some kind of a body of laws they hanged him on the wall and tried to comply.
"The fourth [House] no TV, starched napkins, white towels, cups with the numbers, hours, calendars, posters with the appeals and clean walls. The walls, floor to ceiling painted and packed with shelves and lockers, backpacks and bags, hung with paintings, collages, posters, clothes, pans, lamps, bundles of garlic, pepper, dried mushrooms and berries. From the side it is most like a huge landfill, climbing to the ceiling. Some of its pieces have already arrived there and were fixed, and now swing in a draft, rustling and clinking, or just hang motionless.
At the bottom of landfill continues central bed, composed of four conventional and laid by common giant plaid. This bed and living room, and just sex, if someone likes to cut off the path directly. On it I have allocated land. In my sleep here Lord, tobacco, and the Sphinx, so that a very small area. To sleep on it, requires special skills that I have not yet worked out. "
("The house in which ...")
- Girls are finally brought, but they and their friends, the Russian guys, who came to visit with her friends and stayed overnight. There has always been a lot of people: hippies, whom they picked up somewhere in the street beside ourselves girls who were going to cut my wrists, and they promptly rescued from suicide. There was a 16-year-old girl, mother and stepfather emigrated to America. She also lived there with them until they went into some kind of a gang of Hispanics. Then it was sent back to Moscow to his father. But the father was no longer alive, and the girl was in the custody of an aunt. In short, our guys have found it and got drunk with some homeless people. And it became their common child. And they even do something else were children. They sent her to school, forced to do his homework. Forbidden her to drink, and almost smoking. They taught to speak Armenian. It is then more Armenians in the street frightened: this is a girl, rosy, blue-eyed, a typical Russian, and suddenly say something in Armenian! Sometimes Kuntsevo apartment like a lot of fun. Especially when the parents came from Yerevan someone from the boys. And then usually they sit, and then someone says: "How I longed for my mom!" And begins: "And my mother, I have not seen her for two years." And now is howling.
Yerevan - a small, family-run city. Prior to the farthest border - six hours by bus, to the Turkish border, guarded by Russian soldiers - hour by car. And at the center of Yerevan people walk on foot, constantly shaking hands with relatives and friends.
We Mariam sit in a music school. The teacher called her eldest son, Sergei, and a few guys on the plays: they soon examinations. We are sitting in coats, Thiru Karapetovna a coat: in school does not drown. S. and Vaaag turns sawing his cello. Thiru Karapetovna run around the class, begins to scream in Armenian, passes to the Italian: "Piano, piano!" -
then on Russian music:
- Cheerful! Come on, come on! So-ra-ri-ra, play! Ta-ra-ri-ri-ra, carefully! Forte!
Then follows a tirade on the Armenian and again:
- Ta-da ladies, ta-da ladies! Good for you, remember that the shoulder should be put above! Ta-da-dam, ta-da ladies! Sergei, go!
It takes me for who came from afar specialist music:
- How do you like our boys? Well, tell me!
From another angle class looks at me closely grandmother Vaaaga: he tipped a great musical future, and grandmother clearly unaware of my audit, which can either help or harm a potential genius.
After the exam Serge says:
- Mama, let's ride the subway!
Metro - a local child's holiday. It opened in 1981, when the capitals of union republics relied subways. From living in the heart of very few uses. Only on special occasions.
of fear
Mariam Petrosyan had never worked in a boarding school. It is almost his whole life living on the street named in honor of her great-grandfather, Saryan, chief of the Armenian artist of the twentieth century. В магазинах она расплачивается купюрами, на которых изображен ее прадедушка: это 20 тысяч драмов, вторая по номиналу банкнота. Окна дома Мариам выходят на картинную галерею и музей — опять-таки ее прадедушки. За галереей имеется сад, где 30 лет назад все и началось.
— Ты пишешь либо про то, что хорошо знаешь, либо про что-то, о чем понятия не имеешь, но пытаешься это замаскировать. Легче взять что-то не существующее вообще. У меня нет привязки ни ко времени, ни к стране, ни к национальности.
Зато в романе Мариам есть привязка к страху, а страх интернационален. Его испытывают все — армяне, азербайджанцы, русские, подростки и взрослые, инвалиды и здоровые, писатели и читатели.
Безрукий попадает в класс, где он всем чужой и его регулярно избивают. Врачи потворствуют безнадежно больному ребенку, потому что боятся, что ему станет хуже. Один мальчик бьет другого, а тот не знает, что делать.
«— Брось, Сфинкс, — сказал я. — Это просто смешно. Что я, по-твоему, должен успеть сделать? Оцарапать ему колено?
— Да что угодно. Даже Толстый может укусить, когда его обижают. А у тебя в руках была чашка с горячим кофе. Ты, кажется, даже обжегся им, когда падал.
— Я должен был облить его своим кофе?
Сфинкс прикрыл глаза.
— Лучше так, чем обжигаться самому».
(«Дом, в котором…»)
— В любом замкнутом обществе всегда есть иерархическая лестница; она может быть явной или неявной, но она всегда есть. Например, в любом учебном заведении. То есть в классе, например, всегда бывает лидер и второй человек, через которого лидер общается с народом.
— А вы в школе или в училище какое место занимали в этой… цепочке?
— На периферии. Но не там, где шестерки, а просто немного вне системы. Я не очень вписывалась в иерархию: мне книжки мешали. Я в школе читала книжки все время, не только на переменах, но и на уроках. Поэтому у меня был имидж слегка тронутой. В классе я была вместо сказителя, рассказывала им придуманные книги. Началось все с того, что мои одноклассники мучились, когда пошли у нас большие романы по литературе. И тут выяснилось, что я за три перемены могу от начала до конца пересказать довольно толстую книжку.
Я тогда еще вот что придумала. В любой книге есть проходные сцены, которые не заносятся в краткие изложения, их пересказ всегда убедит учителя, что ученик книгу действительно читал. Я вычисляла, кто из одноклассников что мог запомнить, и пересказывала ему или ей именно эту сцену. А дальше он ее рассказывал учителю, будто бы его на ней зациклило. У меня были пять человек, которые за меня держались. Помню, мне самой в какой-то момент стало ужасно неинтересно: ну сколько можно Тургенева пересказывать, вот бы пересказать «Королеву Марго»! Но на внепрограммных произведениях у меня количество слушателей уменьшалось. Правда, один раз я собрала большую аудиторию, когда пересказывала фильм «Омен».
Армения могла бы стать хорошей съемочной площадкой для фильма ужасов, боевика или постиндустриальной стрелялки. В нескольких шагах от центра Еревана начинаются следы запустения. На выезде из города уже настоящая разруха — полуразваленные дома, ископаемые тракторы, заржавевшие автозаправки. И все это на выжженном солнцем плоскогорье.
Тяжелая жизнь и ужасы блокады в первой половине 90−х здесь предмет культа.
— В очереди за хлебом стояли по три часа! — чуть ли не сладострастно вспоминает очевидец тех событий; тогда ему было лет тринадцать. — Так было здорово!
— Мы все учились при свечах, поэтому у нашего поколения не очень хорошо со зрением, — гордо заявляет другой.
— Ночью все выбегали на улицу и искали, что бы такое спилить на дрова, — говорит третий.
— Арташес так хорошо наловчился рубить мебель! — с гордостью рассказывает Мариам.
Про писательство
— У вас есть карта Еревана? — спрашиваю я продавщицу в книжном магазине. Она смотрит на меня бездонными черными глазами и переводит их на другую продавщицу. Та — на следующую. And so on.
С книгами в Ереване плохо. Самый большой книжный магазин здесь уступает в размерах маленькой продуктовой лавочке.
В миллионном Ереване книжных магазинов меньше десятка. Читают здесь мало, больше ходят в кино. У Мариам дома хорошая библиотека — несколько шкафов; часть книг роздана друзьям.
— У меня есть специальная тетрадка, куда я записываю, кому какие книги дала почитать. Мне же очень хочется с кем-нибудь книгу обсудить, а в Ереване с этим трудно.
— А вас тут вообще знают как писательницу? На улицах люди узнают?
— Нет, конечно. Хотя недавно меня позвали на армянское телевидение. Но я отказалась. Я не очень хорошо могу излагать по-армянски свои мысли перед камерой.
— А как писался роман? Сколько лет в общей сложности — десять или двадцать?
— Бывали моменты, когда я просто долго не писала. Был семилетний период, когда у меня ничего не получалось. Я задумывалась над тем, как это написано, и даже если что-то и придумывала, мне мешало мое техническое несовершенство. У художников так бывает: когда долго не рисуешь, говорят, что «рука закрылась». Я думала, у писателей ничего не закрывается. А оказывается, очень даже.
— А Москва 1992–1994 годов повлияла на сюжет?
— Когда я приехала в Москву в 1992−м, у меня уже много было написано. Но потом я решила поменять почти все. В первом варианте у меня героем был мальчик, который попадал в Дом сразу из собственного дома, свеженький. Мне не нравилось, что ему все приходится разжевывать. Вся первая часть книги — сплошные объяснения. Поэтому я подумала, что он должен быть все-таки оттуда, но, например, «из другой стаи».
— А сам процесс написания? Трудно было?
— Я очень много раз переделывала книгу. Полгодика ковыряла, потом бросала на два года. Потом опять доставала, перечитывала, у меня просыпалось вдохновение, я еще немножко продвигалась вперед. Я Арташесу вечно давала прочесть, мучила его с самого первого варианта. Он вообще уже перестал понимать, о чем там речь идет. Читает отрывок и говорит: «Что-то такое я припоминаю». А я ему: «Да нет, того куска давно уже нет». Он говорил: «Все, я запутался, я уже ничего не понимаю, что ты мне даешь».
Обычно, когда я начинаю писать, я начинаю писать с завязки. У меня все на самом деле очень непрофессионально: что-то придумать, а потом посмотреть, что из этого выйдет… Поэтому, может быть, у меня работа заняла столько лет. Потому что я все время пыталась дать тексту возможность писаться самому. И только через много лет, просматривая черновики, понимала: герой вел себя не так, как он бы себя повел скорей всего. И начинала придумывать что-то, что мне самой казалось логичным и правильным. Кстати, вначале герои были более брутальные, более жесткие. Может, это с молодостью было связано.
http://www.rusrep.ru/2010/24/mariam_petrosyan/2