What wonderful women!

© Elena Rai, 2024

ISBN 978-5-4496-1974-7

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

PEOPLE and FATES

by Elena Rai

(True stories)

The author dedicates this book to

Introduction

People are often disappointed with their lives. Some of them believe that they were just unlucky and were born in the wrong countries, states and families. In hard times, people ask themselves: « Why do some people get everything and others get nothing?”. However, the birth of man is already a true sign of faith, that we should rejoice and thank every day for the honour given to us – to live on this earth. The quality of life is improved noticeably when people enjoy every day, when gratitude is born in their souls for everything that happens to them, instead of grievances and complaints. A character of the famous movie said: “For a person with intelligence, nothing is impossible. You can teach a hare to smoke (this Russian expression means everything can be achieved)”. We can always change the scenario of our life and rewrite it, as we just want. Changing the country, city, family, profession is not a problem for some people at all, and they can do it even several times in their lives. Although there are people who quail at the thought of leaving somewhere or refusing something. Problem of most people is that they are always waiting and hoping for something and someone. Nevertheless, you understand that life can be changed if a person begins to change it himself; it means he has to do certain actions; it is not enough just to desire to change your life. I propose to improve the quality of your life to be responsible for yourself and start to live here and now.

As the years passed, you begin to appreciate every hour, every minute and realize that life is fleeting, and you want to have time to do a lot, that is good for yourself and for people. When you realize that the life hourglass cannot be stopped, you think that there is very little time to love. You have no desire to respond to insults or anger in the same way, you do not want to swear and argue, you just mentally press on the foot lever, and a man fell down in a stream of his own slippery and hot blood. You just want to be surrounded by fragile things, quiet sounds and gentle people. In the winter, it is good to walk to the theatre, then to sit in a cosy cafe near the window and watch snowflakes falling on the other side of the glass, while drinking hot mulled wine, eating cake and licking the cream off your lips. Then you walk around the city in the evening, after return to your cosy apartment, cuddle up to your favourite pillow and feel his hugging from behind with his hot hand and his gentle voice whispers in your ear: “Everything will be fine babe!” It is not necessary to look for it here, with you, your happiness.

Hurry up to live, act, do what you like, where you get inspiration and joy from the work you have done.

Read books, listen to music, draw, write, embroider, just do anything. Study, learn, be interested. Get knowledge at any age. Do not be afraid to start living from the beginning. Feel free to start doing what you have never done before; try it! So you will find what was hidden from you in the depths of your huge soul, and you say immediately: « How lucky I am in life!” You will want to run home and to do your hobby.

Then there will be your unique and true story, the birth of a new happy life in your beloved country, city and family.

Everyone can do everything in life! There is nothing impossible for him, and this statement is proved by the stories of many heroes of this book.

The described events from the life of people seem fantastic, unreal, incredible and implausible. You know many of the characters, they are world-famous people, some of them are little known, and there are those people who you will know. A selection of stories, that are collected in the book, gives you the opportunity to learn a lot of new and interesting things; to hear about people who were in the sidelines and few people knew about them. However, all of them are extraordinary personalities. Many of them should be our example to follow.

All stories have real events, and each of them is unique. When I heard about them firstly, they shook me to the marrow of my bones, and I decided to combine them into one book. The events described in the narratives are taken from official sources and personal experience. The purpose of this book is to arouse readers ' interest in reading, knowledge, learning, love for everything beautiful, for yourself and for life. The author of this book did not work in vain, if after reading, at least one reader say: “Wow, I’ve never heard about it!” Perhaps someone will want to study someone’s biography or creativity after reading the book, and someone will be interested in specific historical facts. It doesn’t matter what the reason you have, in any case, reading this book you will get interest and pleasure, as well as be able to enrich your knowledge.

Well, enjoy good reading!

CHAPTER I

What wonderful women!

You noticed that there are women of an unsightly appearance, they are not beauties, their appearance is not unique, about such women you would say “a mediocre person.” However, they always have many admirers and suitors. People look and wonder – “What does he see in her?”

Sometimes an intelligent, beautiful, girl with a model appearance is single. She has no live. She has no a man who would love her. Everyone’s surprised – “What is going on? Why is such a beautiful girl single? Why is she so unlucky?”. Generally, men are unpredictable. They can take their hats off to some women, but for another they can put just their underwear. Poor ladies are trying to figure out which one of them is luckier?

The explanation for this paradox is quite simple. The point is energy! Do you have a lot of it? What light does it have? In other words, what is your soul? The soul is something like a bundle of energy. The more light this energy radiates inside you, the more people are attracted to your light. The point is not in appearance, but in the content, which contributes to the accumulation of your positive, bright energy. These are your thoughts, words and emotions. If you express it in a positive way, you’ll receive light energy, in a negative way – dark energy.

We noticed that it says about some women: “The eyes light up, as if the whole inside is glowing.”

That is why it glows that inside the Golden energy lit up, mixed with positive emotions, words and thoughts. Only love and kindness can ignite the sun in a person, and envy, hatred and anger can extinguish it. Love and be kind to each other. In this case you don’t need to look for anyone, everyone will come running to you like moths at the light.

There are women who left a unique and bright trace in history, and glorified themselves for centuries unconsciously. For many years, they have continued to arouse interest. They are all united by one thing; they are faithfully able to love. They were able to devote themselves to their beloved work, and to accept life in all its manifestations, while maintaining in his soul all the best human qualities. I would like to tell you about some of them, which cause me the most admiration, by telling the stories of their life.

1. Parisienne

“The life in which there is Bach is blessed”

Vera Lothar-Shevchenko

In the camp, the prisoners cut a piano keyboard for her on the plank beds with a kitchen knife. At night, she played this so-cold instrument, that couldn’t make a sound, Bach’s, Beethoven’s, Chopin’s compositions. Her fingers, twisted by her work on the felling, ran along the fake keyboard, and the women from the barracks admitted that they heard the sounds of music, watching the hands and face of the performer.

The daughter of a French man and Spanish woman, who are teachers at the Sorbonne University of Paris, Vera Lothar studied in Paris from Alfred Corto, then she studied at the Vienna Academy of music. At the age of 12 she made her debut with the orchestra under the direction of the great Arturo Toscanini.

Being already a well-known pianist, who gave solo concerts in many countries of the world, she got married to the Soviet acoustic engineer Vladimir Shevchenko, the famous Creator of stringed instruments. In 1937, Vera Lothar-Shevchenko came to the USSR with her husband and his two children from his first marriage. In 1941 before the war, Vladimir Shevchenko was arrested. Vera rushed to the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) and started to shout, using Russian and French words at the same time, that her husband is a wonderful honest man, a patriot, and why don’t they understand it? She was indignant, saying that they are fools, idiots, Nazis, and that they must take her as well… They took. So, Vera Lothar-Shevchenko will fell trees for thirteen years. In the camp Vera know about the death of her husband and two children in the Nazi siege of Leningrad.

Thirteen years later, Vera Lothar got out of that camp in Nizhny Tagil. She was 53 years old. Straight from the station wearing camp’s padded jacket, she was running to the music school on the last leg in the late evening. She knocked on the door wildly, begging for permission to come to the piano “to make a concert”. She was afraid she would never be able to play again.

She was allowed. The teachers cried uncontrollably near the closed door, not daring to come in. It was clear where she ran in padded jacket. She was playing almost all night. After she fell asleep at the instrument. Then, laughing Vera said, “I woke up and became already a teacher of that school”. On the first salary, she rented a baby grand piano. On the second, she made a concert floor-length dress. A few years later she really started to give a concerts. Her relatives called her back home, but she refused, explaining that it would be a betrayal of those Russian women, who supported her in the most difficult years in Stalin’s camps.

Vera Lothar – Shevchenko gave concerts in Tagil, in Barnaul. It was written about her in “Komsomolskaya Pravda” newspaper and Vera’s popularity grew. Academician Lavrentiev, the head of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, offered Vera to live and work in an academic city in Novosibirsk. She became a soloist of the Novosibirsk State Philharmonic, and at the end of her life she gave concerts even in Moscow and Leningrad. The last sixteen years of her life, Vera Lothar-Shevchenko lived in an academic city near Novosibirsk.

She will not only became after the camp as a musician, but she will also start active touring. At her concerts, the front-row tickets couldn’t be sold because they were for those, who she shared the terrible camp years with. If you come – it means you are alive. Vera’s fingers, until the end of life, were red, gnarled, bent, mutilated by arthritis. In addition, they were broken and accreted incorrectly because a senior investigator, captain Altukhov broke them during interrogations (“slowly, enjoying each hit with the handle of a pistol”). That last name she remembered the whole her life, and never forgave him. Vera Lotar-Shevchenko died in 1982 in an academic city in Novosibirsk. She was 81 years old. Her own phrase is engraved on her grave: “The Life in which there is Bach is blessed.”

This strong woman had an amazing magical effect on people. Once, when she lived in Nizhny Tagil, she used the saved money to buy a doodle coat and returned home late night. On the street, a crowd of criminals surrounded her. They tried to take the coat. Vera looked one of them into the eyes and said: “This is my first clothes after the Gulag. After these words, they release her and promised nobody will touch her anymore in this city.

The life of Vera Lothar-Shevchenko is a vivid example of courage and devotion to her art. Since 2005, the international competition of pianists named after Lothar-Shevchenko has been held in Novosibirsk.

After the camps, this heroic woman recovered and in her 53 years old started to live anew, making her life, next to the great music, truly blessed.

It is a pity that I knew about this woman quite recently, when I am 53 years old. I didn’t know she lived near me, and I could go to one of her concerts, see and hear a living legend.

You know, in the bustle of life, we do not notice and see that there are so many talented and brilliant people around us. Sometimes the man does not know anything about himself, he does not assume that he has a lot of abilities. Because he lives by those principles and conventions imposed on him by society. The person is afraid to retreat, and has such thoughts as “What will they think about me?” and “How will they react and will they? The dreams come true of only those people who live in according their own rules, desires and goals, and their lives are full of meaning and joy.

Once I was visiting my classmate, we were already 100 years old for two of us. Over a Cup of tea, Irina told me that she would like to do music and learn to play the piano. I thought it was not serious, just words, a ghostly dream. After all, I understood that Irina had no musical education at all, she did not go even to a music school, and suddenly at the age of 50 there was a desire to learn to play the piano. This idea seemed to me absolutely unreal. I, as no one else understood, to learn to play the piano well, a person needs to learn a lot. Because I graduated from a music school, and then a music school in the piano class. I understood that learning takes years of daily work. Therefore, the words of my friend, I did not accept seriously, even laughed over her idea. I thought that she was joking. As it turned out later, my classmate was not joking.

About a year later I was visited Irina again. I saw an old German piano in the hall, on which the notes laid. Ira asked me to play something. I have not played music for many years, so I wanted to try the instrument and remember my youth. I sat down at the piano and began to play long-forgotten works, then played the notes. Ira, standing next to me, admired, praised me, and then said: “Do you want to listen to my play?” I agreed, but thought that she will play something with one finger. I thought, she really bought an instrument. However, I was shocked when the divine music of Beethoven-“moonlight Sonata” began to sound, and Ira played it with both hands from memory. Then, in a conversation over a cup of tea, I learned that she is studying at a music College successfully, going to classes on a par with young girls and boys who are 16—20 years old. My friend was not not embarrassing at all, because she had a goal to learn to play the piano.

So dear readers, a passionate desire leads to the realization of a dream. The main thing is a monumental desire. In General, my classmate is a very talented person. She paints beautifully. Her paintings are admirable. Irina learned to draw at an art school when she was a schoolchild. In adulthood, she began to write poetry. She released a collection of poems. This collection of poems is keeping at my home, courtesy of Irina. I cherish them very much. It is called “On a subtle rise” by author Irina Nayada. I recommend reading to those who love poetry.

2

Lilya

“…On the exhausted face arrogant eyes”

Anna Akhmatova about Lilya Brick

Lily Brick makes into history as a Muse, inspirer, colleague, and the greatest love of Vladimir Mayakovskiy. She also was for the poet his real evil genius. All her life she kept him near her on a long leash, and he, like a faithful dog, obeyed her in everything. Mayakovskiy even signed in his letters to Lilya – “Your Schen.”(from Russian – puppy) Not every woman can get such power over man, and Lilya is easily managed, because since 13 years she has artfully mastered the secrets of seduction.

Lilya Brick lived a very bright and long life, kept literary salons, was married three times, had countless relationships, and was an icon of style. Mayakovskiy’s beloved woman knew a lot about fragrances, adored “Guerlain”. When she was escorted to the last journey, she had an intoxicating fragrance “Opium” from “Yves Saint Laurent”. When she was 84, the muse of the poet could seduce the master of French fashion, who later showed her great sympathy. With the famous French fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent, Lilya met when she was 84, in Sheremetyevo. Waiting for boarding on a Paris flight, Laurent paid attention to a stylish stranger in a green coat from Dior in a crowd of unsightly women. Acquaintance became a close friendship. Outfits created by the master of high fashion special for her appeared in Lilya’s wardrobe. In honour of the 85th anniversary of his Russian friend, he arranged a dinner in a Parisian restaurant and sewed for her a gorgeous dress of velvet and taffeta especially for this occasion. Lilya followed fashion and updated her wardrobe, not afraid of experimenting with clothes and looks. She dressed in Parisian outfits at that time when the whole country wore “Bolshevik” factory clothes. She drove her own car, being the second female driver after the French Ambassador’s wife in Moscow. The walls of her room was painted in blue to set off her white skin and Golden hair.

Such women are born rarely. They leave behind a deep trace, going far into history. She had something that no one woman had. All her life, even in old ages, Lilya Brick remained the center of attraction for men. A beautician, who knew Lilya Brick at the age of fifty, said, “Her skin was glowing like a light bulb inside

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