Chingiz Huseinov, Kultura.Az
My essay is about the widow of Egishe Charents, Izabella Movsesovna. I had to deal with her businesses more than 40 years ago and want to tell about her.
In 1967 the USSR marked the 70th anniversary of Charents. Everybody headed for Yerevan for celebrations and soon they had to go to Moscow, where the festivities would be continued. One day an old lady came to the Writers’ Union of the USSR:
“Please tell me, where should I go for a pension? I am Charents’s wife…”
I was surprised by the word “wife”, but I thought perhaps she knew the Russian language poorly.
“Have the anniversary arrangements ended in the republic already?” I decided she was the first to return.
“I wasn’t invited to the anniversary.”
“Are you the real widow of Charents?”
She burst into tears… Then she told me about herself: she was born in the Azerbaijani city of Shemakh and came to me because I had an Azerbaijani surname. She was 18 when she moved to Yerevan to stay with her aunt. There he saw Charents and fell in love with him. He also fell in love with her, but her relatives were shocked when she accepted his proposal. Charents had recently lost his beloved wife and had left his home because he couldn’t cope with the grief. Thus, Izabella and Charents got married. Soon the young wife gave birth to two daughters - Arpenil and Anait – in 1932 and 1934.
In the summer of 1937 Charents was arrested. Soon she was called to the NKVD too. She hoped she would return soon and left the children at home. At the Armenian NKVD she saw the wives of other arrested poets and writers. They were officially told: “Your husbands are the enemies of the people! You should divorce them and only those who reject their husbands will be let go…” Izabella refused to do so and supported her husband. She was arrested. “Children? We will raise your children in our interests!”
Then the war came and in 1942 the deportation was prolonged. After the war in 1947 she suddenly heard the name of her husband, Charents, voiced by Mikoyan. She was brave enough to go to Yerevan. She saw a 12-year-old girl – her little daughter whom she had left with relatives. Izabella’s aunt icily explained to her that she had nothing to do there; her daughters had been told that she was dead and the elder daughter had been sent to an orphanage. Izabella went to a friend, but the neighbors didn’t like a new resident living without a certificate, and she had to leave and return home.
A decade later, in 1957, the country celebrated the 60th anniversary of the birth of Charents, and she wrote to the Interior Ministry of Armenia, explaining who she was and how she had suffered because of her husband, whose birth anniversary was being marked in the country. She asked for permission to return to Yerevan and live in the city “where she had spent happy years with my husband Charents, and please, publish letters devoted to me, I don’t ask much.” The answer was: “… you can return to Yerevan, but the City Council cannot provide you with an apartment.”
… The Writers’ Union of the USSR was shocked: why wasn’t Charents’ widow invited to the anniversary? I called Yerevan. When I told them about Izabella, they said: “The daughters are taking part in the arrangements as legatees. The so-called widow is fake; we don’t want to hear about her. She betrayed her husband!..” The “betrayal” is the following: in 1946 she almost died of hard work and some Bashkir doctor saved her. He fell in love with her and took her to his house, married her despite the protests of his parents: “she is the widow of an enemy of the people; moreover, she is an adherent of a different faith.” The marriage broke up soon, and she left with her son for Kyrgyzstan where he lived.
I decided to help her. I promised to make her stay in Moscow, gain benefits from the Literature Fund and participate in the anniversary evening of Charents. Moreover, I wanted to ask the prominent Armenian poet Gevork Emin to say a few words about her in his report. She said that Emin often visited Charents and Izabella was very kind to the young talented poet. He couldn’t forget this! I promised to organize a meeting with her daughters.
Everything happened as I planned. Gevork Emin was generous and included a big paragraph about her in his report; a meeting with her daughters was organized, they talked and cried and understood each other… Izabella Movsesovna was seated among officials, the hall burst into applause; she was presented to Mikoyan, who ordered the chairman of the Supreme Council of Armenia to help her to return to Armenia and get an apartment.
In the end of 1967 Izabella Movsesovna came to Moscow from Kyrgyzstan and visited me. She showed me her new passport with the surname Charents. Everything was great! She could go to Yerevan, where an apartment and pension waited for her… Then, she told me that she was insulted in the Armenian plenipotentiary office: she was called a “betrayer.” “Please, help me to meet Mikoyan!”
But how? Izabella saw my hesitation and burst into tears. She told me about another sad page of her life: her son from her former husband Sirazayev had been arrested. How could she leave for Yerevan and abandon her son in a Kyrgyz jail?
Her son was accused of gang rape. He was not one of the rapists, he had been keeping an eye out. So, I had to look through the materials of the case and go to Mikoyan with her. When we came to Mikoyan in the Kremlin, I found him lively and sound, rather friendly… He forgot about Charents, his widow and her son and began to tell me about Karabakh, where “Azerbaijanis and Armenians live peacefully.”
At last I interrupted him: “Very well, but the problem is…” and I told him “the son’s case” in short. He understood me and predicted my thoughts in one moment and proposed a simple way out: he would talk to the chairman of the Supreme Council of Armenia, Arutyunyan, who would talk to his colleague Kulatov in Kyrgyzia where the son was condemned, and he would be shifted to a prison in Armenia where his mother now lived. Then, probably the case would be settled.
A happy Izabella left for Yerevan. When I said good-bye to her, I predicted that she would be visited by young writers who would like to hear about Charents from her. Newspapers and magazines would take interviews. Unfortunately, a few years later she died. Her son came to me two years after her death. I was so happy to see the son whom she loved so much. He asked me to help him to get a Volga car. I was shocked and indignant. I asked him not to come to me ever again. Such an unexpected finale: a simple request was quite natural in times of deals, bargains, and business.
I thought: what are the components of the life of a poet’s wife? Of her image? What influences a person’s behavior? What makes a person betray simple human principles?
