Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Oct 16 2012
Faces of betrayal
16 October 2012 – 1:27pm
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?
From: Baghdasarian
http://vestnikkavkaza.net/articles/society/32631.html