Greetings from Jerusalem, buddy!?

Remember when you stayed with me during the summer and I have a few days immersed you in a fantastic atmosphere Erushalaima then admitted once that with all my love to him for more than three years pozasidelsya I place. After all, before, as you remember, a lot happened to me wander through the huge ancestral home, and the profile of my flight attendants become familiar Semitic long flights. And I told you that dream from childhood dream to visit Paris. And now, having returned from there and nap after a night flight, immediately, not relying on my failing memory, I write until hot impressions, though now feel that the last of them began to suppress the first and most vivid ...?

day before yesterday morning, my wife and I were standing on the observation platform of Montmartre and admired be covered March bluish haze a great city, the capital of the world lay at our feet.?

I remembered her aunt Lelia. She died at the age of hope, a 87-m, before reaching the retirement of several months. And shalt thou her fate still c a dozen years, then, look, and would have realized the dream of her life - to see firsthand such a familiar Paris ... Always and for almost all it was just Leley - so called her and relatives, regardless of age, and my friends and colleagues, and even, sometimes, her students. Her father, Haskell, after the pogrom Petlura high school dropouts went into civilian with the Reds, and after the war, ending workers' school, he began teaching the history of the party. In the workers' school he met Itku, teacher kindergarten, and a year later they had a daughter. Commies Haskell, who in the world of obscure now galutno a revolutionary algorithm Tolia, wanted to name her daughter in the style of the era - Lenin, but a boring official in the registrar's office pereupryamila his girl written simply Lena, Lena A.. A year later, Toll-Haskell, leaving the family drove off to further his studies in Odessa, and Jitka, suffered a break, moved to Tashkent - grain city, where by that time settled the family of her sisters. In the 49-meter, finishing school with a gold medal, gave way was Lola in Leningrad to learn from the director, but it did not take, citing near-sightedness, and then she became a student of the French language in our inoyaze. The course Lel became friends with light or at home - Claire Zavadovsky, Count's blood, born in Paris in the emigrant family of the descendants of Catherine's great, vpuschennyh after the war by Stalin in the USSR, far from the Russian provincial capital. Visiting the home of a girlfriend, Lola has learned to not only Paris pronunciation and table etiquette, but also to get a former emigrants indestructible French spirit, absorbed in Zavadovsky over thirty years of Parisian life, as well as interest and love for France. Small, downtrodden books sale, which took Lola to her mother, was also a miniature, on the outside view, the chaotic, fully understood only the owner, the Museum of French and general Western culture. And my, how she wanted to visit in France! All of the following decade, working as a school teacher, translator, having studied several languages, graduated from the still Theater Institute, it is true, theater, many be tired out, but defended constantly stumbles on foreign policy drifting icebergs thesis on Vietnamese puppet theater and teaching students, she did not leave their dream. But how it was implemented in those years? .. "See Paris and Die! .." She died without seeing Paris ...?

I accidentally fell into a class where French was taught - a foreign language is not selected, trained, remember he was simple and not a non-binding, and messing around, thanks to a good memory I had a solid five . Then there was the university - three more years of good evaluations at a minimum cost - avralny translate to offset 10-20 "thousands" of "L'Humanite", "Drapeau Rouge" or "Liberation", which always subscribed to an aunt or spetsteksta of the Course of Mathematical Analysis "Sorbonne Professor Goursat, whose facilitate student life Russian analogue was present in the faculty library, and all things - put offset! Lelia taught me the correct pronunciation, and it kind of happened, but by passing a 65-year state exam, I have not wanted the French subsequently lost its small vocabulary. And then the Hebrew, something musically similar to the French, we finally finish off its rudiments in my memory.?

Once Lel took me 13 years young ignoramus, on holiday with, and more than a month we spent in Moscow and Leningrad. Teaching the blood of her parents called Lelia culturally enlighten ignoramus-nephew. Half of our hikes took the Hermitage and the Museum. Pushkin, who had just opened a new generation has its own "Shukinskaya" reservists, eaten in secret during the years of Stalinism, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum. Our tastes do not coincide completely, and she was very annoyed. I admired the brutal Snyders still life and Russian classics - Bryullov Ivanov, Surikov, and she tried unsuccessfully to open my eyes to the Impressionists, Picasso, Leger, Van Gogh or Korovin, Saryan, Chagall and Tischler ...?

Two years later, I caught "The French Notebook Ehrenburg, and only then opened a little world of unknown forms of art, and longed to see again those mysterious Impressionists, who once appeared before the eyes, but passed my consciousness. Dream was realized only six years old when you remember the first time we were on a business trip in Moscow. I then cut out a few hours and rushed to the Museum. Pushkin, where, finally met with the Impressionists. I already had read the entire issued Ehrenburg, who is probably half, however, is Paris, the life of this city and country that he is crowned, Dumas, Balzac, Stendhal, Delacroix's diaries, letters, van Gogh, the history of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, memories of General Ignatieff and other available in those years of emigrants.?

And then every time visiting in Moscow or Leningrad, but as you know, it happens quite often, I have loved for a while to run on Volkhonka or the Hermitage, to sit in the quiet rooms, with private views Claude Monet and Van Gogh. My wife first saw their pictures, before she knew only from reproductions, in the 68 th, when we first had a holiday in Leningrad. And she, visiting the capitals, be sure to run "for the French."?

... When we first life on their own have chosen the city to stay, but it turned out, as you know, Jerusalem, we have found it a wonderful National Museum, with a large exposure loved us Impressionists and easy availability of Monet, Degas and Pissarro, a relatively frequent visits to their rooms brightened us stark prose of the first years of life olimovskoy ...?

Classic standard literature on which we were brought up from childhood - Russian Literature of XIX century - was ofrantsuzhen very much. Turgenev and Tolstoy allow themselves to write in French, many pages of his novels, and it was not some vypendrezhnym literary reception, and household drudgery. Educated people of that time just so and talked. Pushkin recalled that he previously spoke in French than in Russian. And the closest connection of Russian culture with the French contributed to the fact that in Russia and the Soviet Union actively translating French literature and French editions of the classics, we had such a huge, about some at home, these writers could not dream. Therefore, we were aware of the great majority of cases of France, French people and the dark dealings of individual citizens, as told to us by Fran