autobiography

(Originally published in: Joyce Nakamura, Editor, Something About the Author Autobiography Series, Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Inc., 1989.The text was updated by Slobodkina in 1999. Slobodkina's unabridged, three-volume autobiography, Notes for a Biographer, is available for purchase through our online store. )
 

I was born in a small Siberian town called Chelyabinsk, at about seven o'clock on the evening of September 22 (the ninth, by the old Russian calendar), in the year 1908.

Having spent the subsequent seven years of my life in the same locale, and having had nothing but rainy birthdays, I feel pretty safe in assuming that it must have rained, or at least drizzled, on the evening of my first appearance.

With much greater certainty, I can say that I was the youngest of the five children born to Itta L'vovna and Solomon Aronovich Slobodkin. Another fact seems to be quite certain: when my mother began to feel that the hour was approaching, she tried to remain her usual calm self but warned my father that, indeed, the time was getting short. Being that they lived somewhat away from town, and that the labor pains were coming on more and more frequently, she began to hurry my father who (of all things!) was busy eating a bowl of brown kasha. "All right, all right!" he is supposed to have answered. "Just let me finish my kasha, can't you?"

It isn't much of an anecdote but I tell it because it is still very much alive in our family. Also, if I am to believe in prenatal influence, I'm willing to bet that this incident is totally responsible for my inordinate aversion to waiting – waiting for things to happen, waiting for people to do things, waiting to do things for others. Allow me to coin a proverb: Waiting Is the Root of All Evil. I firmly believe that if you wait long enough, any desire, any wish or inspiration, will go away. I must admit, waiting also has its value. If you must go on living, any sorrow, any disappointment or unrealized dream will, sooner or later, disappear, or at least be forgotten.

However it may be, I was duly born and brought home. Undoubtedly, I was pronounced a beautiful baby, and joined, with whatever enthusiasm a small baby shows, the happy life of the family.

I must mention at this point that, although my mother had five children, the oldest one (and she was a beautiful baby) died at the age of five of scarlet fever, and neither my sister nor I ever knew her.

So there we were in the year 1908: Father, Mother, my brother Yasha, my brother Ronya, my sister Tamara, and little me, named after Queen Esther, only pronounced in Russian "Esphyr," which, of course, was promptly abbreviated into  Phyra, and converted into such diminutives as Phyrochka, Phyrusha, Phyrok, Phyrushka, etc.

Much has been said and written as to how far back a person can remember and about reliability of such early recollections-if, indeed, they are recollections and not the results of stories heard from older people. These arguments seem of no importance to me. Perhaps some of the memories I have are the results of stories told by others. It is certain, though, that nobody can make you remember the smell of the (dusty yard after a brief but violent thunderstorm, the aroma of the heavy branches of wet lilacs, or the taste of the first store-bought mocha-cream birthday cake.

Here is one of such very early recollections: It is a hot summer morning but the house, with its painted wooden floors and standing in the shade of a few poplar trees, is still cool and unusually quiet. I wake up with a sense of imminent disaster and hastily climb over the guard of the wrought-iron bed. I pad in my short little cotton sleeping shift and walk bare feet from the nursery, through the empty dining room, down the ever dusky corridor, across the particularly cool squares of the drawing room parquet floor, to the door leading onto the open veranda. The sense of' imminent disaster recedes. I can hear Mother's voice among others. Instead, a deep sense of injury arises, and by the time I reach the outdoors I am quite ready to burst into bitter tears. It is particularly understandable since all seated around the breakfast table cannot help laughing at the sight of my disheveled little figure. I am terribly indignant: I overslept, a thing which hardly ever happened to me before, and, I must add, hardly ever happens to me now.

I must have been not more than three or four at that time. The very air was filled with the serene happiness of a successful marriage, with the solid simplicity of a household headed by a young, confidently competent man.

And my father was. In a brief period of some ten years, he managed to traverse the distance which separated a penniless, passport-less, radical student from Minsk, and a highly respected manager of an internationally known oil concern. I'm sure the transition did not seem so quick or easy to him. But it couldn't have been too hard-at least on his psyche – for all my memories of him during that period are of an extremely cheerful, hardworking, and kindly man.

He was equally at ease with his superiors, his workers, local police, Greek Orthodox clergy, the tiny Jewish community, grown ladies and gentlemen, servants, and us children. Never familiar with anybody, he was always friendly, understanding, and helpful. It never ceased to amaze me as I watched my father's entire physiognomy and demeanor change to suit the needs of each new visitor to his office. It was a treat to see the slyly debonair twinkle of his eye, and hear the language liberally interlarded with borderline cusswords give place to mock-humble but respectful language, as the local constable left and a nun in search of alms entered.

But Father's conversations with the peasants were the best. They would enter shuffling their bastshoe-clad (or felt-boot-clad, in the winter) feet, nervously kneading a dilapidated fur cap in their hands. They came to see a barin – the master. The fact that he was in no way their master did not seem to matter in those days. The fact that they paid for their kerosene and the crude lubricants with their hard-earned money did not seem to matter. They were in the presence of a superior being who had the power to let them, or refuse to let them, have what they needed – kerosene for their lamps, lubricants for the wheels of their wagons. My father knew their mentality, and by the time they crossed the threshold, looked over to the right-hand corner where the Holy Image hung, crossed themselves decorously, and began to clear their throats, he was ready for them. A few words from a peasant were sufficient for my father to establish his locale. From then on it was simple. He could imitate their speech, their manner, and, above all, their tempo. You could see the burden of their anxiety drop away. There was laughter and shoulder slapping. They went away happy, loyal customers.

I never saw Father among his rather boisterous drinking and card-playing companions, but from what I observed at relatively restrained holiday receptions in our house, he was pretty good at imitating them, too.

Unlike my father, who was born in Minsk, in the heart of one of the Russian westernmost provinces, with a heavy Jewish population, my mother was born in the town of Simbirsk, the provincial capital of a region situated around the upper middle of the Volga River.

It was a delightful little town with many parks and squares, always well and tastefully planted with decorative grasses and flowers. Its wide streets were lined with beautiful old town houses, surrounded by lovely gardens and apple orchards. The center of the town was immaculately clean since the governor himself resided there, along with wealthy though somewhat undistinguished local nobility whenever they were not away abroad or spending time in their country estates.

And then, of course, there was Volga! By American standards, or in comparison with mighty Siberian rivers I was later to see, Volga is nothing much. Volga is shifting; Volga is winding; Volga has to be dredged constantly to be kept navigable. But Volga has charm. It is a legend. A walk along its banks, an outing in a rowboat, or an excursion up and down Volga on a trim little steamer is an emotional as well as physical experience for a Russian, comparable only to a visit to the Grand Canyon or a Mississippi River boat trip for an American. Maybe twice as enjoyable, or at least it used to be.

Incidentally, Simbirsk happens to be the birthplace of many celebrated people, among them Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerensky and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – Lenin, to you. That's why, after the Revolution, the town was renamed Ulyanovsk.

My grandfather, my mother's father, although a fanatically religious Jew, managed to attain a highly respectable position as chief municipal accountant, and to retire with the title of an honorable. Two reasons were accountable for this obvious anomaly: one, he was a Nikolayevsky Soldat; and two, brilliant, diligent, and sober (at least on the job) administrators who could also untangle the mess the local bookkeeping happened to be in at the time were hard to find. And Lev Isakovich Agranovich was all that, and more.

Now, to explain what a Nikolayevsky Soldat was, one must remember that Russian governments never could understand what makes a Jew Jewish. In their simplistic reasoning, converting Jews to Christianity or depriving them of the means for practicing their religion would solve the whole problem. So, Tsar Nikolai the First came up with a brilliant solution. They would abduct Jewish boys, press them into the army, and naturally, deprived of the evil influences and baptized into the proper church, the boys would shape up into reasonably good, normal citizens.

Well, sometimes it worked that way, but mostly it turned out exactly the opposite, as in the case of my grandfather Agranovich who came out of the army with a particularly orthodox interpretation of Jewish culture, a fondness for his glass of vodka, and the title of a Nikolayevsky Soldat, which gave him the right to live wherever he felt like living, anywhere in Russia.

I shall not go into lengthy explanations of how my father happened to land in Simbirsk. If you are curious enough, you can read all about it in my Notes for a Biographer. It is sufficient to say that he did, and when he did, he met the Agranovich family and landed a job with a subsidiary of Rothschild oil interests in Russia, the Aktsionernoye Obshchestvo MAZUT, or MAZUT, Ltd.

It did not take Father long to fall in love with my grandfather's favorite daughter, Itta. And with a small but secure job, it did not take the young people long to decide to get married.

Step by step, one small promotion after another, Father reached the respectable position of manager of the Chelyabinsk oil yard. And that's how it happened that I was born in a small Siberian town at the foot of the Ural Mountains.

Chelyabinsk is the first sizable stop on the Asiatic side of the Trans-Siberian Railway. They tell me that it is no longer a small town, having grown in population to something like two million people, and having become a very important mining and industrial center.

However it may be, when I was a child it was a small town with a population of about thirty-five thousand.

Besides, the town itself did not play a very large part in our lives. The railroad did; we lived within a few hundred yards of the station, and a spur track for the tanker cars of crude oil, kerosene, and benzene passed only a few feet away from our lilac-covered garden fence.

It may not seem very exciting to have been born a daughter of an oil-yard manager, but it was. Perhaps it was so because of the kind of parents we happened to be blessed with, their attitude towards the workers, the servants, and the great variety of people my father's job and his gregarious disposition brought into our lives.

There were the Russian peasants, and the Tatars-remnants of the conquering hordes of Genghis Khan. There were Kirghiz nomads suddenly appearing at our gate, mounted on real, live, very dusty camels. And there were Chinese traveling peddlers, with huge bundles of showy goods, who were not above entertaining their customers with an occasional game using three lacquered bowls under which they hid tiny white mice.

Once, a very wealthy client gave us a real thrill by driving into our yard in a fancy touring car, scattering chickens, ducks, and children, and raising clouds of acrid dust in his wake.

Visitors from other towns, and even other countries, were no rarity. A Palestinian Jew with the unforgettable name of Karabajak came by to sell religious relics from the Holy Land to the Christians, and pretty trinkets from the land of their forefathers to the Jews. He came to trade, to gossip, and perhaps to cadge a few free meals. He stayed to help nurse me through a very severe case of scarlet fever, while my oldest brother was dying of rheumatic heart. I'll never forget his dark, kindly face bending over my little wrought-iron bed, talking cheerful nonsense, and attempting to entertain me by stringing Christmas decorations from one corner of the room to another. It was early spring, and the bright afternoon sun shed harsh light on the tinsel glamour. The house was unnaturally quiet, and the two of us knew that things had gone dreadfully wrong, even though I was not even five years old.

The yard itself was a constant beehive of activity. There was the cooper's shop, where they made the barrels for oil. There was the pungent smelling razlivnaya where they filled the barrels. There were the workers with their families, who lived in the brand-new quarters Father insisted on building for them.

My special friend, Vera, was the daughter of the chief cooper, Ivan Ivanovich. Ivan Ivanovich was a tall, silent man with the face of a sentimentally painted Christ, a wonderfully even disposition, and a brood of nine children of which Vera was the seventh. Her sister, Grania, two years older, was Tamara's best friend and bosom pal.

There were the horses, the cows, the geese, and the chicks. Then, one day, Rosalia – complete with a stack of papers and a trained groom-arrived. She was a thoroughbred mare, all black with only a small white star on her forehead. She was a gift from a wealthy Tatar friend. In the spring, she foaled, and the colt became the object of our special adoration.

The house was a different matter: simple, genteel, and rather elegant.

Besides sweet aunts, entertaining uncles, a dear grandmother, and numerous cousins, our parents had many interesting friends.

Good food, plenty of music, light discreet flirtations, and much serious talk were the order of the day. And if the parents, the aunts, and the German governess happened to be out for the evening at the same time, there were always the maids with their ignorant, fascinating, and forever hair-raising stories and folktales. Things went on very pleasantly, and with the exception of a few sour notes occasioned by Father's overenthusiastic participation in the lighthearted affairs of his male friends, there did not seem to be a cloud in our blue skies.

All this came up to a stop with the sudden illness of Yasha, my oldest brother. He was a beautiful,clever, and talented boy. His death at eleven affected Mother deeply. She was ill for many months, and was sent off to Crimea to recuperate. In spite of the tender care Aunt Leeda and Father gave us, we felt like orphans.

Early in the summer of 1914, my father decided to take a long-dreamt-of journey to Palestine. Mother was still quite unwell, so the two older children were packed off to Simbirsk for a stay with Aunt Sonia and her five children in their dacha (country house) on the banks of the Volga. Mother, Aunt Leeda, and I were to enjoy a luxurious vacation at an Odessa resort.

The first part of the plan successfully completed, we went off to Odessa. And then our troubles began. I shall not go into the gruesome details of the hideous accommodations, Father's unhappy leave-taking with nothing settled, and Aunt Leeda's bout with pleurisy. In spite of all that, I managed to have sort of a good time, and to bring back enthusiastic descriptions of new things I had seen in my travels with Mother. I always did. Being the youngest isn't always easy, and having something new to tell about helped a lot to improve my self-esteem.

But the worst was still to come. While Father was in Palestine-traveling with Karabajak, buying a piece of land, and generally planning an idyllic future-World War I was declared, and all male Russians of a certain age were ordered to appear immediately before their local authorities.

When the Russian authority issued an order to appear immediately, it meant immediately. The rush to return from abroad was unimaginable. We saw Father briefly, unshaven and exhausted from a dreadful journey on a filthy Turkish freighter, only to watch him disappear on the oil tire uppermost bunk of it fourth-class railway car. He was lucky; people rode on the roofs and between the cars.

Sadly we went back to our deplorable hotel "room," collected our belongings and our barely recovering Aunt Leeda, and went home.

Fortunately, one of my father's beautiful hazel eyes was practically blind, so he was definitely disqualified from military service. But life, from then on, was never the same.

In 1915 Father received another promotion, and we moved to the city of Ufa in Russia proper. It was a bigger town, Father had a more elegant position, and we lived in an eleven-room apartment on the main street. Rosalia and her colt were still with us, my brother was enrolled in the local school for boys, and we girls were provided with excellent tutors. In spite of the war, things began to look up for us.

But not for long. In 1917 the Revolution broke out. Then the Russian Civil War began in earnest, and hordes of refugees came to our remote provinces. There was hardly a room in our apartment in which somebody did not sleep either on a couch, on a folding cot, or on some other ingeniously constructed contraption.

The refugees were an interesting lot. Some were simply rich or politically prominent; some knew that their liberalism, egalitarianism, nihilism, or what have you, simply did not have a chance in the life-and-death class struggle of a full-scale social revolution. There were conscientious objectors, and there were those who would have fought willingly for their cause but refused to be drafted on the wrong side. There were the empty-headed young "White" officers, and the Talmud-learned believers in the Revolution as the only answer to the Jewish question in Russia. We children had a grand, and, I suspect, highly educational time listening to the endless, heated political and philosophical arguments.

In the meantime life went on as usual, only more so. Pelmeni (a Russian variant of kreplakh – small pasta filled with spiced, chopped raw meat, boiled in and served with clear bullion or condiments such as vinegar and mustard, and consumed by the dozen.) or blini (a Russian variant of – usually – buckwheat pancakes, slightly heavier than French crepes, and served with melted butter and sour cream topped with caviar, smoked salmon, etc., and consumed in unbelievable quantities) parties, moonlight rides in troika-driven sleighs, charity balls, and endless fleeting flirtations…

My people were always interested in the arts. Mother had a magnificent mezzo-soprano voice, and sang at home and for worthy causes. Her youngest brother, Abrasha, was a talented artist, a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Another brother was a clever writer of popular skits and a producer of amusing theatricals. So, many an evening gathering turned into an improvised concert or a poetry reading. Others were given over to well-organized children's theater performances.

Perhaps the high standards set in those days account for my complete lack of tolerance for amateurism in any shape or form. I am so glad that, most of the time, I can illustrate my own stories. I research endlessly, and unless it is an obviously fantastic adventure or a folktale without specific time and place, I try to give children authentic knowledge of the way the animals, people, and their surroundings did or should have looked.

Our favorite uncle, Abrasha, was drafted into the White Army. He was the kindest, gentlest person I ever knew. All he said was: “They can put me in uniform, but they cannot make me shoot.” He was shot and killed in the first battle.

This brought to an end the lighthearted, devil-may-care mood. The impromptu concerts and children's theatricals stopped, and only all-night card games and nearly all-night political arguments continued.

When several of our close friends had been arrested, some of whom barely escaped being shot, the mood became grim. And after our town had been taken back and forth four times, each time being burned by the retreating army, Father decided it was time to leave. It wasn't as if he was particularly afraid for himself-he happened to enjoy an exceptionally good relationship with his workers and servants, and also was a sort of universal favorite among the well-to do and highly placed. But Russia, even Siberia, was no joyous place to be at that time. And then there was his dream of emigrating to Palestine…

There were no procrastinators in my immediate family. In retrospect, it seems that hardly any time elapsed between decision making and things being carried out. In reality, organizing a means of leaving the war-torn area, selling or giving away our worldly goods, and saying good-by to our friends and relatives in faraway but still accessible places must have taken at least six to nine months.

In the summer of 1918, Father arranged for Mother and us girls to go on one of the MAZUT oil tankers from the Ufa oil yard to Simbirsk. It was a delightfully miniature oil tanker by modern standards, a perfect child-size tanker, and we fully appreciated the fact. To this day, I only enjoy traveling on water if and when I actually can feel the spray on my face and smell the water.

Babushka (Granny) was again living with Aunt Sonia at that time, and so we went to see them, and whoever else of the family was still living in the hometown of Simbirsk.

The journey itself was perfectly delightful-over the clear white waters of the Belaya River, into the menacingly dark waters of the Kama, and into the cheerfully unreliable waters of the Volga. The captain and his fat wife gallantly gave over their stuffy cabin to the boss' family and tried to feed us their food, which seemed – to us – nearly inedible. We did not mind-we had good food every day, but eating in the captain's cabin was an adventure. And so was talking to the plain muzhiks (peasants) who worked as sailors on these ships, listening to them sing their cheerful songs and solemn prayers.

The stay at Aunt Sonia's house, although still rich with delicious food and warm with genuine welcome, was tinged with sadness as we realized the finality of the step our family was about to take. Grandmother, although only in her early sixties, was exhausted from bearing fourteen children, twelve of whom she had brought up into adulthood. She was a frail little woman who had no illusions about the future.

The atmosphere was also heavy with constant changes of local government, depending on whose side was winning. Constant predawn searches for Red or White partisans and for valuables did not add to anybody's peace of mind, particularly as Sonia's eldest son managed to become a White Army officer, and her husband ran a fancy tailoring establishment catering to the military elite.

After about two weeks we sadly said our goodbyes. Mother's sister Cilia lived in Kazan –where she ran an elegant millinery store – and we couldn't leave without saying goodbye to her and her family as well.

By prearrangement we met with Mother's other sister, Susanna, in Kazan. Kazan is a fascinating city, historically interesting, having been for some three hundred years the capital of the Tatar Empire. It is still heavily populated by Tatars and boasts many delightfully oriental leather and pottery folk-craft bazaars. However, I wouldn't have gone into all these details if meeting Susanna in Kazan had not proved of such great importance later. In fact, if we had not met Susanna in Kazan, I probably would not be here to tell this tale.

You see, while Father could arrange our passage to Simbirsk, he had no way of arranging our way back. I don't know if Mother knew what great risk she was taking by going on that voyage. But knowing her, I wouldn't be surprised if she had a pretty good idea, and still took it. The country was in the midst of a horrible civil war, with all forms of transportation completely disorganized. Russia is no Holland or Liechtenstein; the distances are enormous, and though people used to travel by horses in the really olden times, in my time we went either by train or by steamer.

After a short, sadly pleasant stay with Aunt Cilia, the four of us left (for Susanna had more or less made her permanent home with us in Ufa), loaded down with lovely Tatar boots and decorative pots. I have no clear recollection of the early stages of the return journey. One later recollection springs back with vengeful clarity: We are at a small riverside stop called Birsk. It is a hot midsummer afternoon, and a detachment of Red partisan soldiers is herding us, among other nonessential passengers, off the little steamer we arrived on. We sit on our luggage, among the bewildered peasant women with their crying babies and unwieldy bundles, among the helpless old people, looking longingly at the now entirely empty, incongruously cheerful, bright pink little steamer bobbing gently at the dusty wooden wharf. A troop of raggedy children, guided by some exhausted-looking adults, is marched over the loading planks and onto the decks of the little steamer. The steamer is far from overloaded, but no other passengers are invited on board, though all signs of departure are evident. The captain, a youngish man, is standing at the railing of the passenger deck, moodily surveying the scene. Suddenly, Mother has an idea.

“Susanna,” says she, “what do you say, ha? What can you lose? Go talk to the captain! Make eyes at him?”

Young Susanna, not particularly beautiful but terribly fetching, flirtatious, and attractive, immediately gets the idea. Not losing a moment, she streaks up the planks, and presently we see her slender form beside the captain in an obviously animated conversation. Next we hear her excited but cautious command to follow her without delay. The captain takes a quick, stealthy look to see if the military are around, and gives a signal to depart. We are off. The nightmare is over.

The rest of the journey is anticlimactic, but pleasant. Susanna flirts with the captain, Mother relaxes, and we are hugely entertained by the raggedy bunch of towheaded children who turn out to be from an orphanage that is being evacuated to a safer zone. They are underfed and mostly barefoot, but. terribly cheerful, and full of folk songs and popular jingles; some are quite adept at the Russian variation of tap dancing.

The next few months were unbelievably crammed with events. More and more refugees arrived. Relatives of all sorts and degrees camped in our house, made other arrangements, moved to other quarters, or disappeared altogether. More and more alarming rumors of shortages and outright hunger to war-torn provinces reached us. Abram Aronovich, Sonia'selegant husband, arrived to stay with us, and by the middle of winter somebody brought us the sad news that Babushka had died.

Somewhere in the beginning of the new year, 1919, my brother suffered a severe attack of appendicitis and nearly died after an emergency operation. But he recovered, and, pale and wobbly on his feet, he was able to travel by the time the plan for our departure was completed.

It was an intricate and rather unusual plan. It consisted of an old hospital railway car being cleaned, painted, and equipped to transport, in relative comfort, four or five sizeable families. It was then to be attached to a troop train and, eventually, pulled out of the war zone. It must have cost Father and his friends a pretty penny and a great deal of diplomacy to find the right person to bribe. But they did, and we moved out, attached to the tail end of General Dootov's military transport.

When people take it for granted that we "ran away" from the Bolsheviks, I'm always slightly irritated, and answer briefly, to the point: "We did not run away, we left in style, having said good-by to our friends and relatives, and having sold or given away our worldly goods. We left because war is a hideous thing, anti any sane person, given a chance, will avoid it. We did not run away specifically from the Reds because the Whites were not any better. After all, they were responsible for the death of my Uncle Abrasha, and they 'drafted' our thoroughbred, Rosalia, and her colt into the army."

As for the Russian Revolution itself, it was no more avoidable than the American Revolution was. Had the Russian tsars the tiniest bit of sense, and had they granted in time some sort of a constitution to the Russian people, the Americans of today could perhaps enjoy the sight of some lovely tsarina on the arm of the Tsar Nikolai the Third, Fourth, or Fifth…

Russians, on the whole, are a deeply conservative and religious people. They are also apt to be blindly obedient to authority, and terribly bigoted. The saddest sight to me today is the sight of a fat general with a chest full of medals; and the saddest knowledge is the knowledge that the lot of minorities in Russia is still not a happy one.

Moving slowly, with frequent interruptions for mysterious "circumstances," often within hearing distance of a battle, we finally reached my old hometown of Chelyabinsk, where we stopped for a week to visit with my mother's brother, Iosif, who had taken over Father's old job.

It was not a particularly happy stay. Times were different, and my uncle was a different sort of a boss from my father. The yard appeared neatly and efficiently run, but the workers looked sullen and glum. The house had lost its simple charm and after the life in the big town, it seemed small and provincial to me. Old pals had grown up and become strangers. My favorite dog, the huge spotted black-and-white bitch on whose back I used to ride as a very little girl, had died of old age.

On the whole, I don't know if you really "can't go home again", but I don't think it is advisable.

We must have traveled by some sort of a train to the city of Omsk, because that is where we picked up the then famous Trans-Siberian Express. I have no idea what traveling across Siberia is like nowadays, but traveling first-class in 1919 on a Trans-Siberian Express train was really traveling first-class. The food in the wagon-restaurant was delicious, and the people you met (not many, it's true!) – delightful.

Mr. Floode, who took pictures of my sister and me in the corridor of our car, was a fine American gentleman – some kind of a high officer in the YMCA. He couldn't speak a word of Russian; we couldn't speak a word of English; and all of us forgot all of the German we ever knew. But we got along fine. He showed me a picture of his daughter and told me her name was Dorothea. I chattered away, completely disregarding the fact that he could not understand me. He did not seem to mind at all. He just smiled his kindly smile and treated us to our first canned pineapple and to condensed milk. He took our future address in Vladisvastok, promised to send us the snapshots when they were ready, and, believe it or not, actually did!

It took us a full week to reach Vladisvastok, and the journey-particularly around Lake Baikal, which we happened to reach on a clear, brilliantly moonlit night-was positively spectacular. I am so glad somebody had the good sense to wake me up. I'll never forget the sight of that huge, serene body of water, with the perfect reflection of the full moon and its silvery "road to nowhere" lying perfectly still, surrounded by snowcapped mountains.

The first hint that things were not as simply arranged as my father hoped came as soon as we reached Vladisvastok. The beautiful harbor which my father expected to find teeming with allied ships was completely empty. There were no French corvettes waiting to offer us passage to Algiers; no British battleships anchored in the hazy distance promised reluctant but courteous invitation to transport us to Cairo. Not even a Turkish freighter to take us to Port Said or to Constantinople… I suppose we could have found means of going to Japan. But who thought of Japan? We were going to Palestine!

Still in a pretty cheerful mood, my parents went about looking for a place to live, buying pretty summer outfits, and gathering information. The longer that lasted, the grimmer the picture became. The city was swamped with refugees. Living accommodations were at a premium. The news from the front was catastrophic. Foreign intervention was a complete failure…

Fortunately, Mother knew that she had an uncle in Vladisvastok. A visit to him revealed an odd but delightful and kind little man who, in the long run, had to serve as our Guardian Angel and Protector Saint.

Uncle Moisey Yakovlich, Babushka's younger brother, was sort of a black sheep of their family. He left home early and, wandering all over Russia, finally landed in Vladisvastok. He married young, a gentile girl, and had a son. By the time we knew him, he lived in a snug little house presided over by a roly-poly, mean little "housekeeper." There was nothing snug about the spot he chose for his little house: it stood on one of the highest points of' the city, and a rickety staircase – about twice as long as the Spanish Steps of Rome – led up to it. A breathtaking view of the city of Vladisvastok and of its harbor was the reward.

Black sheep or not, Uncle Moisey must have been a pretty clever and hardworking fellow for, by the time we met him, he was the chief office manager of the Nikolsko-Ussuriyskaya Railroad. And a good thing it was for us, too! For the next three years turned us from a well-to-do upper middle-class family into virtual paupers. Without Uncle Moisey's help in providing a small but steady job for Father, as well its a ramshackle but charming dacha as our shelter of last resort, I doubt that we would have survived.

This unwelcome metamorphosis – from riches to rags – was not our particular misfortune. In revolutions, civil wars, and financial crashes, whole classes of people are impoverished, and very few are either so farseeing or clever as to avoid ruin. It was a particularly bitter experience for my father, as Mother saw it coming and kept insisting that he exchange his money for "hard currency". But he was stubborn; how could he part with all those lovely imperial rubles in exchange for only a few unfamiliar yen or American dollars? It left a permanent scar on their relationship, and though Mother never mentioned it, Father would throw it up to her whenever irritated by her superior logic: "Of course, you are the clever one!"

But the Russian Empire was falling apart, and so was its money, as demonstrated by the variety of currencies collected by my brother.
 

After the ready cash, the furs, and the diamonds were gone, and it became apparent that Father's small salary could not support us, Mother began to think of some way to help make a living. The obvious way, of course, was to use the trade in which she had been trained as a young girl. All Grandfather Agranovich's older children had received thorough training in some trade, his philosophy being that first you secure a solid means for making it living, and then, if you can afford it and if life is good to you, you may indulge in the luxury of higher education. She was an expert and talented dressmaker.

Using first her closest friends to assure herself that her "hands had not lost their cunning", she gradually built up a small but useful and admiring clientele. It was her hope that her clientele would grow, but times were getting harder and the few wealthy people we knew were steadily departing to safer places such as Harbin, Manchuria, or Shanghai, China.

It was, therefore, decided that while Father would remain in Vladisvastok, holding on to his small job in order to give my brother a chance to complete his high-school education, Mother and we girls would move to Harbin where she would try to establish herself as a dressmaker.

There followed years of hard work, close family devotion, and hilarious laughter through tears of fatigue, hunger, and despair. But they, too, passed, and our father finally joined us.

By that time, Mother had established herself as an excellent couturiere of refined taste and charming, obliging personality. An unofficial poll placed her second only to the oldest, fanciest establishment in town.

Relieved of immediate anxiety about food and shelter, Father began to look for work in his own line. The first offer came from a Shell Oil representative. It was not a bad offer, and Father took it. An old Russian proverb says: "Good fame by the road lies; bad fame down the road flies." Not necessarily so. Sometimes good fame down the road flies, too. It wasn't long before Shell's competitor, Standard Oil Company of New York (SOCONY), heard of the new man in town. Competent men were not easy to find. They made Father a better offer, and he took the job which he held for over eight years.

While our brother worked very hard to complete the remaining three years of high school in two, we girls did our best to keep up with our education. Schools those days in Russia, and certainly in Harbin, were not free. In fact, they were quite expensive and cost Mother many an extra late-night's working hour.

Our standards were high, and no girls' school in town met with our approval. We chose a coed school in the new section of the city that prepared students for architectural and engineering careers. With the help of two charming but only semi-qualified sisters, we prepared for our entrance exams. However, even our ambitious tutors could not claim to be able to teach us how to draw. And drawing was one of the "must" subjects in our chosen school. It was no problem for Tamara: she could draw – as well as sing, dance, act, and rhyme – since she was a tiny tot. But I was the quiet, dreamy type. A bit backward by our family standards, since I had not learned to read until I was eight, and then (oh, horrors!) with a regular ABC book. I certainly could not draw.

So an art teacher was found. He turned out to be a charming young artist of impressionist persuasion, and an excellent, talented teacher. We enjoyed our lessons and made rapid progress. As a matter of fact, we made such good progress that we continued our lessons long after we had passed our entrance exams. The joke in the story, though, was that Tamara's passing mark was B+ and mine A-. We laughed a lot about it, and Tamara made up a funny poem promising me a glowing future as a great artist.

In the meantime, my brother's future had to be decided. There was only one institution of higher learning in Harbin – a polytechnic which prepared young men for service with the Chinese/Eastern Railway, jointly owned at that time by the Soviet Union and China. Jobs on the railway – a closed and highly anti-Semitic institution – had always been hard to get but became completely unavailable after the Soviet takeover, as the party sent their own reliable people to these strategically important posts. A young man from Harbin had two choices: he could leave for the Soviet Union or he could emigrate abroad.

My brother, a perfect charmer at seventeen, though superficially imbued with the fashionable socialist ideas, was a thoroughly conservative, upper-middle-class person. After working an entire summer as a conductor on a local bus line, and having stolen the hearts of all the young and old lady passengers, he departed for America. The year was 1923; he managed to leave just before the Russian Immigration Quota was closed, and passed through Yokohama Port just before it was devastated by the great earthquake.

We missed him a lot as he was a cheerful, bubbly youth, but were soon consoled by his lengthy, interesting letters, and generous gifts of American motion picture magazines and sheet music to popular songs. He must have landed in San Francisco, because the next pictures of him were from Seattle where he worked as a lumberjack. Five years passed before I saw him again.

The first quarter of the twentieth century was, in many ways, remarkably like its last. The "civilized world" was seemingly done with the death and destruction of World War I, and wanted to forget it. On the other hand, the promises of the Russian Revolution, the fall of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, the emancipation of women in the United States all seemed to point the way to a happier life in a more or less classless society, with justice for all. But above everything, there was this wild prosperity brought on by the war profits and stock market speculations in big commercial centers, with a great open resurgence of fur trade and illicit opium traffic in out-of-the-way places like Harbin.

The world went wild celebrating the good times. Up went the hemlines and down went the lights. The music became loudly experimental or sensually seductive, the hairdos suggestively unisex or wildly exotic. The Roaring Twenties were exciting times; don't let anybody deceive you into thinking that your grandmother wore a bustle and rode in a surrey with a fringe on the top. It was your great-great-grandmother who did.

Stimulated by the exotic movies and the glamorous pictures in American magazines, my mind was constantly preoccupied with fancy hairdos, intricate outfits, and hopes of someday, maybe, going to a costume ball. Ever since I was about fourteen years old, I spent all the time left over from homework in front of a mirror whipping up my hair to make it look like Pola Negri's extravagant coiffure, wearing a wig I made out of cotton that presumably made me look like Bebe Daniels in Monsieur Beaucaire, or donning an artificial seed-pearl headdress and pursing my lips to imitate Mae Murray.

I must mention in passing that, ever since I was about fourteen years old, I also did all the designs for the then very fashionable embroidery used liberally and very successfully in my mother's dressmaking salon; served as a stand-in for slimmer customers; tied all the more intricate decorative knots and bows for the deceptively simple evening gowns of the day; and acted as a final authority in disputes of esthetic nature.

Also at the age of fourteen, the one childhood disease I had not yet had – measles – finally caught up with me. Six weeks in bed, quarantined from the rest of the world, gave me plenty of time to think things over. Was it really necessary to get up extra early in the morning, spend considerable fare for a bus, and stand like an idiot while the solidly gentile class knelt and the fishy-eyed teacher vindictively enjoyed the privilege of refusing to excuse me from the morning prayers? Was all this really necessary and worthwhile for the pleasure of attending, after all, a not quite outstanding school run by a bunch of anti-Semitic martinets? I did not think so.

As luck would have it, just then a new coed school opened in our part of the town. It was also run by a conservative gentleman of high moral principles, but since more than half of the students were Jewish, there was no question of official anti-Semitism. What the principal and the teachers thought and felt at home was their own business. I talked it over with Mother, and she agreed that my reasoning made sense. We also regretfully agreed that, since Tamara had only one more year to go, we had better let her finish at the old school.

I limped through the rest of the year, lived through a boring family summer vacation on the banks of the Sungari River, and eagerly looked forward to joining my new school. For some reason I cannot now remember or rationalize, I was to join my class after the Christmas holidays. It left me with several months of pleasant, dreamy leisure, only slightly occupied with preparations for the exams in subjects new to me but required by the business slant of the kommercheskoye uchilishche I was about to enter. I read, designed Mother's embroidery patterns, fussed with my looks, and dreamt about going to a real costume ball. I must have driven my mother crazy, as in a moment of weakness she agreed to take me to an affair given in our one big hotel ballrooms. I shall not describe her costume. Not having any time – nor any particular interest – she produced a total flop for herself. Mine was different; I must have looked mighty cute in my oriental outfit. After all, I was all of fifteen and a half, eager to see and to be seen, and I spent days making my pants, my turban, and the rest of the outfit. Only the tight little bayadere jacket was cut by Mother and made in her shop.

This mild little caper had an amusing, if not a particularly pleasant, sequel to it. Although we did not enjoy our venture into "society" too much, Mother thought I looked too delightful in my oriental splendor to let it disappear forever. She wanted to have a photograph taken, which we did. The photographer was so pleased with his handiwork that he exhibited my picture in his street vitrine. Next day Mother received an urgent summons to appear before the director of my new-school-to-be.

Mr. Bartashov, an earnest little roly-poly man, gave Mother a severe though polite tongue-lashing in the true old-fashioned style of pre-World War I, reminding her that it was totally unbecoming for a young lady of my tender years to appear at a public ball, and (oh, horrors!) in the costume of a bayadere. "Do you know, Mme. Slobodkina, what a bayadere is?" I don't know if Mother knew, but I definitely know that she had a hard time trying not to laugh at the seriousness with which Mr. Director regarded our transgression. Promising never to have such a thing happen again as long as her little girl was connected with his establishment, she left. Later, there were other costume balls to which we went. There was even a ball at which Tamara looked gorgeous in a Spanish dancer's costume and I won second prize for my American Indian princess costume.

At just about that time, the city of Harbin had a particular bit of luck come its way: because of an agreement between the Soviet Union and China which stipulated that any moneys earned by the Russians through their joint ownership of the Chinese Eastern Railway were to be spent in Manchuria, we ended up with several seasons of magnificent entertainment. To be sure, the Russians did not send us their Bolshoi Theater, but their second-string artists were quite extraordinary enough. With the practically unlimited funds available from the government for stage sets and costumes, the city of Harbin went to town…

We had grand opera, operetta, drama, Theater of Minor Forms (a cross between cabaret and vaudeville), classical ballet, and a folk-arts troupe – all this, besides the concerts of visiting celebrities, including Mischa Elman and Jascha Heifetz. The tickets were inexpensive, the escort available. So, between the dances, theater, and costume and graduation balls, I had a couple of pretty exciting and glamorous seasons.

Being by nature a “late bloomer”, I was not graduated from high school until the spring of 1927, a full-blown and confident young lady of nineteen. Gone was the delicate, diffident youngest child of the family, I did well in school, my teacher was pleased with my accomplishments in art, and even my millinery teacher thought me “absolutely, positively too clever”.

Although I was pretty good at dressmaking, too, watching my mother at work and with her customers convinced me very early in life that, if at all possible, I'd avoid that profession like the plague. Oh, I loved designing extravagant, elegant, and striking clothes. But being a levelheaded lot, we knew darn well that no fancy job waited for me in America, and if I was to work in a factory, I'd rather work on hats. Yes, I was hoping to join my brother who, in the meantime, had moved to New York.

The problem was that, by this time, the Russian quota was closed, and the only way I could enter the country was as a student. My brother, having become an American citizen, could bring his parents in but not his sisters. In due time, however, proper documents were secured, enrollment into the Greater New York Academy arranged, a United States visa applied for, and passage money borrowed; we then settled down for a lengthy wait.

The general plan was for me to join my brother first. Mother, as the one most likely to secure a well paying job without knowledge of English, was to follow next. Father was to remain in Harbin, holding on to his SOCONY agency job until Tamara safely followed me, and then he was to be the last one to join the family.

Being thoroughly inexperienced in ocean travel, and having had plenty of bad advice, my family sent me off across the Pacific Ocean in the middle of winter, in a second-class cabin, in the company of a very middle-class, middle-aged woman and her nine-year-old daughter. Still, it might have been all right if the weather had been at least reasonably good. An awful winter storm blew up, and out of the eleven clays of the journey I was seasick nine. My traveling companion was no help at all. I would have been totally miserable if not for a kindly fur-trading gentleman who provided me with fresh apples, champagne, and sympathy. It is true, he also tried to sweet talk me into something with promises of generous fur gifts, but I couldn't care less. He was not obnoxious about it, and apples and champagne were all I could face at that time without throwing up.

We landed in Vancouver, where two high-school pals and a HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) agent met me. The boys treated me to fresh strawberries with heavy cream, and the HIAS agent saw me safely through the immigration barriers. I don't know why the officials were so suspicious of me. Perhaps they simply enjoyed talking to a fresh kid of twenty with a terrific Russian accent. But I finally convinced them that I was really going to the United States to study English. The need for this should have been obvious.

There was no doubt whatsoever that my brother was delighted to see his baby sister again. However, after the first few hours of pure, unbounded joy, I noticed that he had something on his mind. Something that he had to tell me, but hated to.

Like the true daughter of my family that I was, I did not procrastinate. I got him into a quiet corner and asked the question. “What is it? What's bothering you?”

Looking sheepishly guilty, he confessed, “Well, I’m afraid I made a mess of your school registration.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “You did not enroll me in the academy?”

“No, no…” said he, “I did… only it is the wrong academy…”
 

Further explanations made clear the following: because of his imperfect knowledge of English, he took it for granted that any school with the word “academy” in its name would, like in Russia, be connected with the arts or, possibly, with the sciences. Finding a free school practically within walking distance from his new neighborhood with the name of Greater New York Academy seemed to be a particularly wonderful bit of' good luck. The fact that its letterhead also bore a subtitle in small script, “A Pathway to Higher Calling”, did not seem to be peculiar either. Everybody knows that being an artist is a higher calling. So, he enrolled me without the slightest hesitation and applied for my visa on the basis of that enrollment. Only months later, when he went to pay the small entrance fee did he find out that the Greater New York Academy was a school for missionaries.

We laughed a lot about it, and decided that three months in missionary school wouldn't kill me; I could study English there as well as anywhere else. In the meantime, I could go to the National Academy of Design for evening classes. It was the first time that I actually noticed a peculiar thing about myself: it did not pay for me to lie or, for that matter, to make any unguarded remarks, for the lies were apt to come true. Hadn't I lied to the immigration officials when I said that I was going to the United States to study English? So now I was sentenced to study English.

I was never sorry about having gone to that school. It gave me an intimate look at a bunch of normal American youngsters, and the pleasant, relaxed way a small private school could be conducted. They did not push their religious convictions at me and were in slight awe of me because I had actually lived in China, and could make beautiful posters for them. Also, I was at least four years older than their oldest student.

As soon as it was possible, I submitted my application to the National Academy of Design, together with the required samples of my work. They accepted me with high praise for my work, and from then on proceeded to ruin my talent for the next five years.

When my stint with the missionaries was over, I transferred to daytime classes as required by thestudent visa. Students were supposed to be fully occupied with their studies. But there is no homework for art students, and no one ever explained what a poor student is supposed to do with his or her vacation if he or she is not allowed to work.

Anyway, being a highly ethical bunch, we first tried not to infringe on the regulations. I tried all the usual stints – answered ads for work to be done at home, paid for the sample making kits, etc. I even went out selling my lovely handmade boudoir cushions to department stores, an experience I shall never forget. I had great success: I sold six.

Finally, as nobody seemed to care, and as it was an awfully long time between May when the NAD classes closed and September when school reopened, I began to look for a temporary job. To my great surprise, there were jobs for artists. They were not what I'd call very "creative" jobs, but you could make fifteen to eighteen dollars a week decorating lampshades, trays, wastepaper baskets, etc. Considering that my brother's job as a soda jerk paid not much more, it did not seem to be such a bad deal.

As we were paying one hundred dollars a month for room and board to a lady we knew from Harbin, there did not seem to be any doubt that I simply had to earn my keep. I had good jobs, and I had awful jobs; I had nice bosses, and I had nasty bosses. But I never minded the work itself. It was something that had to be done, and I did it if and when I could get it.

As for painting in my spare time, I tried at first to go out sketching in Central Park, which was half a block away from the apartment house where we lived at the time, but lost interest after I got hauled into court for disregarding a "keep off the grass" sign. The antiquated methods of teaching art at the academy were so contrary to all my natural inclinations, so ridiculous in comparison with what I had already accomplished with my teacher in Harbin, and yet I could not escape them. This was the only free art school; I had to stay in it to stay in the country. My development, in a word, was arrested.

The first year wasn't too bad. I had not yet lost hope, and there were a few bright, amusing incidents, among them the annual NAD students' ball at which I won first prize for my "Pearl in a Shell" costume. It was an elaborate affair based on a Chinese pearl fisher's dance I once saw in a New Year's parade in Harbin. I arrived in a huge, very realistic shell and, after my brother set me down in the entrance hall (hastily departing, I must add), I minced into the ballroom with just a tiny crack to see my way. When I was sure that all attention was centered on me, I slowly opened the shell and stepped out of it to a very satisfying round of applause.

This, and the move to our own small but charming apartment (after I figured out that the two of us could live cheaper and far better on our own) were the last truly carefree, happy episodes of my early youth.

Mother arrived in New York in late September, and on October 29th the stock market crashed. The Second Descent into Hell began.

Even with her superior skills and elegant appearance, Mother had a hard time finding a job. What was worse still, those very assets made it well nigh impossible for her to hold on to a decent job. The competition, and the jealousy, among those vying for second-string jobs in reasonably well-established dressmaking salons was unbelievable. The moment the forelady, the manageress, or who have you, found out how talented Mother was – and how totally unprotected by highly placed connections – out she went.

After this process repeated itself several times, and having met some reasonably well-to-do, kindly inclined, prospective clients on the way, Mother decided that the only thing to do was to open her own establishment. Unfamiliar with the cyclical nature of the American economy, and somewhat deceived by the prosperous appearance of the city and its population, I'm sure Mother thought us – my brother and me – terrible cowards. Later on, she learned that we were right, for we were on the brink of one of the worst Depressions the world has ever known.

Our personal depression, however, did not stem from economics alone. The summer before, I had convinced Ronya that he did not really have to marry a girl he did not love just because, in a moment of weakness, he had asked her to. He backed out of the engagement but, though greatly relieved, did not feel very happy about it. His education, too, was moving at a painfully slow pace. After some five years of going to City College at night, he was still very far from receiving a degree in chemical engineering (just for the record, it took him nine years to get it).

By the time Mother joined us, I was at the end of my first really serious, heartbreaking love affair. Proud and reserved, I never said a word to her about it. But, of course, she knew that something was terribly wrong, as I went from a hefty 145 pounds down to a slender (for a Russian build) 128. I felt as if I were dying, and if not for my stubborn refusal to give my life for the love of a man – or rather lack of it – I probably would have. I escaped to the sculpture class at the academy, and wrote enormously long letters to my sister in Harbin.

Mother's plans to open her own dressmaking salon, and the approaching arrival of my sister, made it absolutely necessary for us to find a bigger apartment in a respectable section of the town. Making a tremendous effort, I pulled myself together and went apartment hunting. One delightful side effect of the horrible Depression was that apartment hunting was actually a pleasant, entertaining occupation. The variety of the available quarters is hard to imagine now. The prices, the "concessions" offered – open to endless negotiations.

I ended up with an apartment on the sixth floor of an older but still respectable building on the corner of 135th Street and Riverside Drive. It was sort of on the wrong side of the tracks, but it was well kept, had a nice foyer, an elevator, and a delightfully pleasant elevator doorman. Besides, the letterhead and the telephone number did not show on which side of the tracks we were, and if you craned your head really hard to the right, you could see the river from the fire escape.

I can't really remember how many and what kind of rooms it had. I just know that there were enough of them to house us all in reasonable comfort, plus one to rent. That is the formula for all bad times: you must take in boarders, or at least rent out a room. And so we did. We did so for many a year.

While Mother's business was reasonably successful, I, and later my sister, both worked with her. Neither of us loved it or were as good as she at it, but it was the only way we could help her make a living and still go to the art school which enabled us to stay in the country. Tamara's real aim was to study music and singing. She did so for a number of years in Harbin, and a bit in New York. Because her voice was not of a spectacular kind, her tastes demanding, and her morals high, she did not get very far in the professional world. She did sing for a couple of seasons with a band – mostly Russian gypsy songs. Neither the bands nor she became famous.

However, this was strictly a summertime occupation – mostly a chance to get out of the city for a couple of months, have a free vacation, and perhaps meet some nice young people. All of that she did, and met a nice guy whom she later married.

In winter, we worked on dresses and went to art school. Both of us heartily detested classes, and we even invented a system by means of which we cut our attendance in half: one day she went in and signed for both of us; the next day I went in and did the same. Nobody really cared, the teachers certainly didn't miss us, and if the office checked, our handwriting was sufficiently similar to fool greater experts. Anyway, we were never caught at it.

One class we never missed: composition. We both loved the man who taught it. He was no great master muralist himself, but he understood the principles of good composition, loved his subject, and gave his students attention in accordance with their deserts. We learned a lot in his class. To this day we talk about him and remember him fondly. Oh, I almost forgot: by the end of' the second year, my composition skills improved so much I received an honorable mention for my Autumnal Procession.

It was also in composition class that I first noticed Ilya Bolotowsky. He was then a short young man with a full head of beautiful ash-blond curls, bulging blue eyes, and a sharp tongue. He usually sat somewhere close behind me with his friend Volodia, making funny, rude remarks in Russian. Our compositions for the previous assignment were displayed on the wall, and I noticed the name of Bolotowsky several times, mostly on works of superior quality, if not of overwhelming originality. The name was familiar, and I asked Myrrah – a girl I had met in class – if the fellow in my composition course was a relative of hers. “Of course,” she said, “he is my brother.”

And that is how our acquaintance with the Bolotowskys began. I do not say “friendship” because they were, in our eyes, an odd bunch: a handsome, tall, educated, haughty father; a tall, aristocratic, haughty younger sister; a tiny, very well educated, prematurely elderly, very nervous mother, with traces of beauty still visible in her fine face; and the very short, very brilliant, and very peculiar Ilya.

Pretty soon, the relationship narrowed down to Ilya's regular weekly visits to our house. He came, he drank tea, and we talked. Rather – he talked and I listened. Everybody else said that he mumbled. Of course he did. But if you have sharp ears – such as I had, keen interest in what the other fellow has to say – such as I usually have,  and an interesting, informative, opinionated, and articulate person to listen to – such as I never had before or after Ilya – you listen, and you learn.

Ilya had many peculiar and not particularly endearing traits. However, one could not deny one grand and rare trait of his character: he was gloriously generous in sharing his vast knowledge of art, of history, of literature, of politics… Also, he was so completely sure of the superiority of his mind and talents that I never knew him to be jealous or envious of his fellow artists. I always had a feeling that he considered it only a matter of time before he joined the ranks of the modern masters.

He was an excellent teacher for those who knew how to listen and how to interpret some of his cryptic remarks. In the brief period between our meeting and his trip abroad, he managed to completely revive my interest in painting, restore my confidence in myself, and plant my feet firmly on the way to becoming a competent painter.
 

Saying, impertinently as usual, that upon his return he intended to marry one of the Slobodkina sisters, he departed for Europe. He was away a whole year and returned even more full of knowledge and ideas. The year being 1932 and the Great Depression at its worst, every right-thinking artist's idea was to marry a good-looking, capable, young woman – preferably a teacher – thus acquiring in one fell swoop a model for his work and an economic anchor in what was usually a miserable bohemian existence.

Ilya set about achieving this goal with his usual determination. Tamara said "no" in no uncertain terms; much as she admired his talents and his work, personally she couldn't stand him. I was a different story. In the deep gloom of “after the love affair is over” depression, he was the only bright, hopeful prospect. I wasn't in love with him either but he was so persistent, seemingly so sincerely in love, so full of admiration for my better qualities that I finally gave in. After about a year or so of constant nagging, he finally proved to me that it was thoroughly idiotic for me to keep going to the academy just to stay in the country when, by marrying him, I could get my American citizenship and art education in one neatly wrapped package. We were married in 1933 – and divorced in 1936.

We were divorced but remained close, loyal friends for many years to come. He saw to it that I wasn't left out of any important developments in art circles. I listened to his endless amorous adventures and misadventures, and gave advice and sympathy during the subsequent marital troubles. When he was drafted and went off to Alaska in 1942, I was left in charge of his affairs. However, when he was discharged for medical reasons and decided to marry for the third time, feeling apparently that friendship with me and a happy marriage with somebody else was not likely to work, he abruptly ended our relationship.

To say that I was dismayed at this sudden ending would be highly inaccurate. We had been steadily drifting apart for many years, both in personal attitude towards life in general and towards art in particular. He had been a magnificent source of information and interpreter of political and economic news, as well as a retailer of petty gossip and local scandal. But he had long ago ceased to be my artistic mentor. In fact, way back in 1933 while on our honeymoon, he had walked in on me standing before a still life I had just finished. “Not bad, not bad at all! Now you can call yourself an Artist!” he had said, and ever since then paid not the slightest attention to what I was doing. Pygmalion was through with his Galatea.

In 1931 my father came to America. Unlike the rest of us, he did not like it much, missed his respectable position, and couldn't learn “this crazy mongrel of a language”. He tried hard to study and to find a decent job. For a long time he was not successful.

After Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union in 1933, things began to change. Russian trade missions began to arrive, and in due time Father began to work as a translator for Russian engineers buying American machinery. As usual, on a person-to-person basis he proved quite effective, his English, if a little pedantic, quite sufficient for the job he had to do. He began to be called in pretty regularly.

His self-respect considerably revived, Father was almost happy. I say "almost" because, unexpectedly, the stumbling block to his complete happiness proved to be his employers themselves. Since he was an old fashioned idealist, I suppose he expected the Soviet officials to be “new men”. To his great disappointment, they proved to be the same crude, dirty minded, vodka-swilling muzhiks (peasants) as the czarist officials had been, just as rude to employees and just as keen on material acquisitions. It was a bitter pill to swallow. But it was a job, and he bore his disappointment as silently as he possibly could.

Then, around 1937, just as he was preparing to go on another buying trip with his jolly Russian engineers, he was hit by a taxi. It was a pretty bad accident, but he recovered. In less than a year, he died suddenly, when a blood clot reached his heart. He was sixty years old, with hardly a gray hair on his head or a wrinkle on his face.

My deepest regret, was that he did not live long enough to see his dream of a Jewish state realized. On the other hand, he did not see the infamous Hitler-Stalin Pact come into being, either. He did see his daughter's name in print, though, as I began to show my work and my first published book – illustrations in Margaret Wise Brown's Little Fireman – was out before he died.

During the worst of the Depression, a friend of mine suggested that I might be able to augment my miserable earnings by doing some children's book illustrations. He even promised to introduce me to a well-known children's book writer, Margaret Wise Brown. But I knew nothing about children's books. I had no story to illustrate. And I had nobody to teach me. I cast about for somebody to write me a story. Nobody could or would. So, I decided to do it myself. I wrote MARY & THE POODIES.

For inspiration I went to the only child I knew at the time – my friend's little niece, Mary. Mary was a real child, she did like to say strange things – and she did invent the Poodies.

I tried dozens of different ways to illustrate the story. None of them looked sufficiently interesting, exciting, or truly mine. So, I sat down and gave it calm, analytical thought. What was it that I enjoyed doing most as a child, got greatest approval for, and still thought I was really good at?

I got the answer. As a child I loved to cut out paper dolls and doilies. As a teenager I did lovely, decorative things. As a voting adult I received a prize for a highly stylized composition. And as a slightly older adult I definitely tended towards strongly organized, abstract works.

And that is how my first illustrations were born.

The original Poody Book is a collection of nineteen 6¾" x 9" collages made of various kinds of construction and wrapping papers, and mounted on a solid base of illustration board.

Blissfully ignorant of the stifling limitations of commercial printing available to children's book illustrators of the late 1930s, I just let my imagination go, using any color and any shade my little heart desired.

The basic idea is quite uncomplicated: COLOR CREATES MOOD. So I used paper of various solid colors to create appropriate moods, be it a Victorian interior, spring or fall landscape, or any particular time of day.

The spring landscape, for instance (when nothing unusual happens), is on an apple-green background. When fall comes, we have pale gray to create the sad, rainy mood. Sunny, sandy beige is for the beach scene, and deep blue is for the night outside of Mary's window.

I used Lord and Taylor's little bags of charcoal gray with tiny white polka dots for the decorative front panel, furniture upholstery, and the wallpaper of the interior scenes. Mary's dress is deep dusty pink.

The characters, whether they are real like Mary and her family or imaginary like the Poodies, are in stark white. All details, such as hair, clothes, furnishings, etc., are extremely simplified but colorful, with a touch of cutout paper doily in white here and there.

The result is unexpectedly charming, and highly sophisticated in its simplicity.

I packed my collages in an elegantly ribbon-tied portfolio and went to see Margaret Wise Brown. At that time, she was connected with Lucy Sprague Mitchell and the Bank Street Writer's Laboratory which, by the way, in those days was actually on Bank Street in New York's Greenwich Village.

The story is primitive but to Margaret, with her childlike appreciation of the direct, the simple and honest in art, my work had great appeal.

Although for various reasons William R. Scott (the publisher whose Editor-in-Chief Margaret happened to be at that time) couldn't accept The Poody Book for publication, the job of illustrating three of Margaret's highly successful “Big and Little” books was my reward professionally, and, personally, her sincere and caring friendship.

It was also in that style – highly refined and elaborated – that I did her Sleepy ABC, shortly before her untimely death.

As I said, The Poody Book is very simple but it rang true enough to catch Margaret's attention and to hand me the key to the world of children's books. That's why, unpublished as it is to this day, next to The Wonderful Feast, it is my favorite story.

After my father's death in late summer of 1938, Mother and I moved in together. With an unerring talent for uncovering unexpected possibilities in the great city of New York, I found a charming apartment on the third floor of a brownstone building on East Sixtieth Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues. By winning the confidence of my future landlady, and by assuring her that I would treat her property with all care due the old, elegant building, I gained her permission to partition one of the great rooms. That gave us the extra room we needed to rent out in order to be able to afford living in this exclusive neighborhood.

It was an extraordinarily pleasant apartment consisting of two enormous rooms connected by a small one, plus a tiny kitchenette, obviously cut out of what used to be a full-size bathroom. The landlady told me that the entire floor used to be her personal bedroom and sitting room, and that the little connecting room with the full-length mirror and capacious closets used to be her dressing room. The whole apartment had hardwood parquet floors throughout, three tall windows in the front room facing noisy Sixtieth Street, and a huge French window looking into a charming little backyard where an old acanthus tree gave home to a bunch of twittering birds. The ceilings were extremely high, and one of the two wood-burning fireplaces actually worked. When the French doors into the dressing room were open, the whole place became an uninterrupted vista about sixty feet long.

I go into such great detail describing the Sixtieth Street place because it was destined to play such an important role in my life. In the first place, we actually lived there for some ten years, and the pleasures of living in a good part of New York City are hard to forget. Of course, I always managed to live either near Central Park, Riverside Drive, Sutton Place, or some obscure, picturesque spot in Greenwich Village. But this was central, and it was respectable.

With Mother as a willing victim of my fancies, we began to entertain, not lavishly, but intimately and tastefully, if I do say so myself. Mother was a superb cook and a delightfully unaffected, tactful hostess. She soon became a great favorite of my friends and acquaintances. At first, our guests were our personal and business friends – Margaret, Charles Show, Suzy and George [L. K.] Morris, Gallatin, and my editors of the moment were all among our visitors.

When in the late thirties and early forties the first waves of intellectual refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria began to reach New York, American Abstract Artists (the group to which I now belonged and with which I regularly exhibited) decided to welcome them into the artists' community. I was unanimously elected as chairman of the entertainment committee (in those days we did not have all this nonsense about the “chairperson”, “chairlady”, etc.; it was automatically understood that in its broader sense, “man” meant “person”; nobody talked about “womankind" as opposed to “mankind”; what next? Are we going to talk about “child kind”? Well, never mind… I'm getting off the subject).

In my Sixtieth Street apartment I gave parties: for as many as one hundred people with a lavish buffet supper and an abstract movie by Man Ray for entertainment; a more intimate reception and an afternoon tea for Mondrian; and a few little dinners for visiting celebrities and their wives. It was fun, it was exciting, and I suppose it did no harm to my career.

In 1942, while acting as an attendant at a huge Abstract Artists show, which included the entire American Abstract Artists membership as well as many European celebrities, I met William. It was a dismal, rainy day, the war was going badly for the Allies, and our respective personal affairs were in an equally dismal mess. It was a good day to make new friends. And so we did.

This relatively brief autobiographical sketch is no place to go into a detailed account of subsequent events. It is sufficient to mention that in due time, after many and various adventures, and after learning to type, take dictation, file, do books, etc., I ended up with the post of Office Manager in the firm of William L. Urquhart, Inc., which I held for some twelve years.

Having achieved a modest but secure position with its correspondingly modest but secure income, I settled down for a relatively long period of steady work – five days in the office, two days at home. It had its advantages, and it certainly produced results. During the first decade of my life in the Sixtieth Street place, I illustrated another three books for William R. Scott, wrote and illustrated Caps for Sale, redid illustrations for Caps for Sale and for The Little Fireman, painted, did wood and wood-and-metal constructions, and took part in every annual exhibition of the two artists' groups I belonged to. I also had several one-man exhibitions, one of which I named "Tangents". It included all the things I did: my abstract paintings, still lifes, textiles, dolls, wood sculpture, illustrations, and even examples of my creative style of interior decorating. It was fun, and it was slowly getting me some recognition.
 

One thing it did not provide was fresh air, and it also did not provide any recreation. Slowly but surely I was beginning to feel isolated from the world of nature. The pigeons on the windowsill and the sparrows in the acanthus tree were no longer enough. I felt cooped up and began to dream of a shack, a hovel to paint in – in other words, a studio in the country where I, too, could escape when the rest of the world left the city for holidays and weekends.

As is usual with me, the thought was almost immediately followed by deed. I realized that what was beginning to steadily sour my disposition was the feeling of unjust isolation. I felt victimized, even if only by circumstances and my own ambition. Darn it! I hate “injustice collectors”! I would allow nobody, not even myself, to turn me into a “victim.”So I began to think over the possibilities, make tentative sorties into the suburbs, and marshal together whatever financial means I could.

Mother and I had been always extremely careful in spending our earnings, so we did have a few dollars saved. But with such an ambitious goal as a studio in the country, our economies became fanatical concerns. For about two years we did not buy as much as a pair of stockings for ourselves. We sublet our elegant apartment, moving Mother into the little room we used to rent out, while I lived in my downtown loft studio, which William and I were using at that time in an attempt to develop a textile-printing business. It was dirty and mouse infested. But I survived, with the help of my faithful cat, Christopher Nubbins – Kit for short – named after the sturdy character in one of Dickens's novels.

Gradually growing security and income finally culminated in building a house in Great Neck into which Mama and I moved in the fall of 1948. Those interested in the detailed description of that rather harrowing experience can see Vol. II of my Notes For A Biographer. For this condensed autobiographical sketch, it is enough to mention that it turned out to be a very satisfactory home for us, a great studio for me and a superb proof of my talents for my intellectual friends. Mother and I lived in it happily from 1948 to 1977, or almost 30 years.

When my sister’s husband died, both of us went to Florida to be with her and to be of whatever help we could to her. The intended few days in Tamara’s little condo turned into a few weeks and a few weeks turned into a few months. The stay in the tiny apartment turned into a stay in a nearby rented small but compact apartment.

At first we kept hoping to keep our Great Neck House running by subletting it to a nice family who promised to take good care of it, as well as our currently ruling tabby, Scaramouch. In the beginning, the arrangement seemed to work out pretty well. But little by little, the house and the cat began to look sad and neglected. Grave thoughts of having to give up the much-loved home and having to take the much-loved pet to live with us began to come into my head with particular regularity now that mother – now in her late 80s – became too elderly to make the annual trek north and back to Florida. As usual, there was a very short delay between the thought and the actual action.

Selling an odd house, such as mine, was not a simple matter. But by advertising, "unusual house for unusual people" and by offering "unorthodox financial arrangements", I finally found a person who liked the house, liked my ideas and went along with my plan. They had the house – all but Studio #2 – and I took a mortgage in exchange for a five-year lease on my studio. It was a pretty wild idea, but it worked well for some three years or until we got tired of traveling back and forth to Florida.

To back up a little, William and I were formally married in 1960, and lived in his Long Island home and in my Great Neck House, a quiet married life for some three years when, after a prolonged illness, he died in 1963. It took me some six years to just recover from the grief. And life in general was never the same. Thoughts of my own impending demise began to enter my mind; of what would become of my worldly goods, of my other house (which I built to accommodate my sister and her husband) and particularly of my artworks.

With the publication of Caps for Sale, a story suitable for slightly older children and having a much more individualized hero, I relaxed my severely abstract style of illustrating a little. I also established myself as a writer. Remembering all the tears I shed over school compositions, and all the hours my sister spent trying to teach me the basic principles of writing, this was a great surprise to both of us. However, when the story of Billie was accepted but the illustrations rejected, we had to believe it.

It seems to me that, on the whole, publishers prefer stories illustrated by the author. When Margaret died, I was left without a writer, and since she always insisted that she liked the way I told my stories, I took a deep breath and began to send them to my agent. Sixteen of them were published by various prestigious houses. They earned me solidly favorable, and occasionally enthusiastic, response from the critics and the public, several appearances on radio and TV programs, translations into foreign languages, and an uneven but useful addition to my income.

The best part of becoming “a well-known author” is the chance you get to meet your public. It is Fun to see a child's face light up as he suddenly realizes that the person before him actually made the book so dear to his little heart. I must say, it is twice as much fun to hear from a parent, and three times as much to hear from a grandparent: “Why, of course! I remember it from my kindergarten days!”

A very clever Southern lady wrote me a sweet longhand letter asking me for a contribution of an original illustration for her library's collection. I answered that because of the peculiar manner in which I did most of my illustrations, I had hardly any "visuals" left. I also mentioned that if they really wanted some sort of a contribution to their children's library, I'd be willing to come out and make them a mural. They could hardly believe that I meant it. This little episode ended by my producing for them a huge 14' X 60' mural on the theme of the three stories I have written about the peddler who sold caps. It is a multimedia collage, and when I last saw it – fourteen years after its completion – it looked as fresh as if it had been made yesterday.

Naturally, I hadn’t been idle. Paintings, sculptures, murals for children’s library rooms, spectacular dolls, and hand-made jewelry came into being in a steady stream. All these had to be moved to the new locale and, though I sold quite a few to some very prestigious collectors and great museums, the number in my possession and care, constantly increased. Finally, when the Children’s Reading Room was finished and we were being urged by Tamara’s son to move back to Great Neck, I began to think of giving some of my work away. And so I did, some forty pieces to Long Island University and about the same number to the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY.

In the meantime, among other things we did, Tamara and I produced a musical play for children based on Caps For Sale and its sequel. I wrote the play and Tamara wrote the music and lyrics. The University Players produced it and it was quite a success. So much so, that when the Wadsworth Athenaeum presented it in their theater, droves of people  had to be turned away. Encouraged by its success, I decided to turn another one of my children’s stories –The Flame, The Breeze, and The Shadow -  into a musical play for children.

I wrote the play, but to my dismay my sister flatly refused even to think about writing the songs. “I’m 90, and I’m retired,”said she. The only other person I knew – the fellow who arranged the music for Caps was much too "Broadway" for my taste; I did not feel like working with him again.

So, after scratching my head for a while, I decided to call the University of Hartford’s Music Department and ask them to send me a student capable of doing the job. They sent me three. That is three called, two men and one woman. Three called, but only one, the woman, came for an interview. A strikingly tall—6’ 3½" well built, good looking, dark-red haired  young lady appeared. She listened carefully, seemed not to be surprised at anything, liked my ideas enormously and was willing to go to work immediately. She told me about the musical storybooks on cassette and CD. Using this medium, we could reach audiences outside of the “live” theater forum. I liked the idea.
 I don’t remember if we discussed the practical side of the arrangements on the spot. It did not seem to be of the utmost importance to either one of us.

The next thing I remember is our driving together and talking a mile a minute about our work, our philosophy of life, our plans for the future. Ann Marie Mulhearn still had a year or two of school to go and I did not have my plans so firmly formulated. I do remember though that at one point I said, “I wish I could afford to hire you. I do so basically need a secretary, a driver, and above all, a composer/ arranger, and if possible, a performer.” We continued to work on the musical together, and little-by-little our association expanded to include numerous other activities.

Ann Marie was intent on moving to New York upon graduation to seek work in recording studios and the theater. She had a 20-year history in the music business, which included commercial studio recording and thousands of "live" concerts including a performance of her own music at the United Nations. I wanted to continue my independent living, but knew I would need a companion to assist me down the line. This set my wheels in motion again, and I hit on a plan that suited both our needs. During Ann Marie’s senior year, we began shopping for a house near Great Neck that would accommodate us and become a mini-museum for display of my works. My sister, who was planning to move to a senior center, decided to join us and after an eleven-month search, we found the right place in a quiet pleasant neighborhood Glen Head, NY.

So, after some six years of working together, after some substantial sacrifices of time and material benefits on both sides, we managed to work out a plan, which involved both of us in numerous projects. Harper Collins Publishing released a musical version of Caps For Sale in May of 2000. A second Caps book, Circus Caps For Sale, will be released on early 2001, with a musical cassette version following close behind it. The Flame, The Breeze and The Shadow, which had been put on hold to release Caps first, is again in the foreground of our workload.

The house at 32 William Street in Glen Head has been redesigned, and the lower and first floor display over 100 pieces of artwork (my own and some favorite artist friends) not presently on exhibition elsewhere. Housed in the mini-museum are also some of my hand-made dolls, jewelry and a collection of vintage clothing, china and artifacts of the Slobodkina and Schildkraut families.

In May 2000, I formed the “Slobodkina Foundation” promoting free programs which include visits to the house (by reservation only), readings and performances of my children’s books, with an eye to the future for scholarships for students as the Foundation grows.

Best of all, Tamara, Ann Marie and I live in harmony – all three of us – in a shared house, each one of us having a separate quarters of her own, more or less. So far, it has been pretty ideal. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed…

In conclusion, I believe that the formative years of childhood are relatively brief but very important segments of a person's life. The parents, the teachers, the librarians, and, yes, the writers and illustrators of children's books must take their responsibility most seriously, for the images, the verbal patterns, and the patterns of behavior they present to children in these lighthearted confections are likely to influence them for the rest of their lives. These esthetic impressions, just like the moral teachings of early childhood, remain indelible. They will, most likely, be the bedrock upon which (or in opposition to which) a person's spiritual existence, consciously or unconsciously, will be based.

Good taste, like good speech and high moral principles, is the hardest thing to define. Besides, it is highly individual and extremely controversial. But I can, and I do, urge parents to be as determined as possible in limiting the amount of the "amusing" trash in their children's intellectual diet. Do leave a little room for contact with objects of serene beauty and ideas of true worth! Don't forget these may stand them in good stead in the future, forming peaceful oases in times of extreme stress and anxiety.

Not only many a dull hour, many a dull job or sleepless night can be lightened considerably by remembering the lovely, rhythmic prose of some folk tale or a children's poem but the early contact with vivid, worthwhile art makes it as pleasant to remember in later years as to look at in childhood. It also, incidentally, trains the eye to look for the harmonious instead of bizarre and absurd, and thus pick out among the surrounding everyday scenes and combination of objects those that soothe and satisfy rather than jar and irritate.

All these are very useful, protective devices for the progressively complicated, disquieting world our children are condemned to meet.

Even though I had given up my first love, architecture – except, of course, for the two houses I built and several that I remodeled – I did manage to become a rather well-known painter, with works in some of the most important museums and famous art collections.

In my "spare time" I also make interesting wall hangings, multimedia constructions, attend to the needs of my sister's and my wardrobes, and design anything from an addition to my Florida house to a Couple of funny toys for my little step-great-grandsons to jewelry for discriminating ladies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Books Written and Illustrated:

Caps for Sale. New York: W. R. Scott, 1940; Tadworth, England: World’s Work, 1959.

The Wonderful Feast. New York: Lothrop, 1955.

The Clock. New York: Abelard, 1956.

Little Dog Lost, Little Dog Found. New York: Abelard, 1956.

Behind the Dark Window Shade. New York: Lothrop, 1958.

The Little Dinghy. New York and London: Abelard, 1958.

Pinky and the Petunias. New York and London: Abelard, 1959.

Moving Day for the Middlemans. New York and London: Abelard, 1960.

Jack and Jim. New York and London: Abelard, 1961.

The Long Island Ducklings. New York: Latern, 1961.

Pezzo the Peddler and the Circus Elephant. New York and London: Abelard, 1967. Revised as Circus Caps For Sale, Harper Collins, 2002

The Flame, the Breeze, and the Shadow. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969.

Pezzo the Peddler and the Thirteen Silly Thieves. New York and London: Abelard, 1970.

Billy, the Condominium Cat. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1980.

A Portable Library of Slobodkina Children’s Books (a limited Edition collection of twenty titles, some previously unpublished). Hallandale, Fla.: Urquhart-Slobodkina, 1988.

Books Written:

Billie (Illustrated by Meg Wohlberg). New York: Lothrop, 1959.

Boris and His Balalaika (Illustrated by Bobri). New York and London: Abelard, 1964.

Books Illustrated:

Hiding Places, by Louise Woodcock. New York: W. R. Scott, 1943.

The Little Cowboy, by Margaret Wise Brown. New York: W. R. Scott, 1948.

The Little Farmer, by M. W. Brown. New York: W. R. Scott, 1948.

The Little Fireman, by M. W. Brown. New York: W. R. Scott, 1952.

Sleepy ABC, by M. W. Brown. New York: Lothrop, 1953.

FOR ADULTS

Books Written:

American Abstract Artists (editing). Great Neck, N.Y.: Urquhart-Slobodkina, 1976.

Notes for a Biographer (autobiography). Great Neck. N.Y.: Urquhart-Slobodkina, 1976.

Ilya Bolotowsky: Letter and Drawings, 1930-1947. Hallandale, Fla.: Urquhart-Slobodkina, 1987.

The Story of ABC (Under pen name of "Dina").