“God, with what passion I am tormented! the poet exclaimed. In 1897, a year before his memorable meeting with Lyubov Mendeleeva, his future wife, Blok experienced first love, a strong feeling, passion that captured his entire being and gave divine poetic inspiration. As a result of this feeling, wonderful love poems were born. It must be said that throughout his life the poet kept returning to his former poems, by what literary critics call "early heritage", rewriting them, and rules. And before his death, seriously ill, he confessed to his mother: maybe only those first rhymed lines are what should be presented to the descendants?

Here is one of the poems. K. M. S. The moon is awake. The noisy city Thunders in the distance and pours fires, Everything is so quiet, there is madness, Everything is ringing there - and we are alone ... But if the flame of this meeting Was an eternal and holy flame, Our speeches would not flow like this, It would not sound like that your voice! .. Is it possible that suffering still lives, And happiness can carry away? In the hour of an indifferent meeting We will remember the sad forgiveness December 1898

At that time in her life, she was an experienced socialite, wife and mother of a family, rich, pampered. Gorgeous. Her "bottomless blue eyes" struck the boy outright. Ksenia Mikhailovna Sadovskaya, before marriage Ostrovskaya, was born in 1859, in the family of a minor excise official in the Kherson province. The family barely made ends meet: debts, poverty, endless humiliation. Nevertheless, Ksenia received a pretty decent education - in a private female gymnasium in Odessa, then in Moscow and St. Petersburg. I was preparing for the stage - Xenia showed a good voice, but a sudden sore throat did not allow her to graduate from the conservatory. And a girl from an impoverished family was forced to go to serve in the Statistical Committee in order to earn a living herself. And at one of the performances at the Mariinsky, she met her future husband, a very wealthy man. He served as a comrade (deputy) minister. And when he proposed to her, she did not hesitate: she was tired of poverty. A real state councilor came to a resort in southern Germany with the children to improve her health after the third, not very simple birth.

Blok's aunt, writer Maria Andreevna Beketova recalled: “She was the first to speak to a modest boy who did not dare to look up at her, but was immediately seized with love. The beauty tried in every possible way to lure the inexperienced boy. " In fact, probably, this was the case and ... not quite so. The young man was hot, clumsy courting, perhaps annoying: every morning he brought roses, silently accompanied the lady, hiding in the bushes, sighed and tried to catch her eye. Ksenia Mikhailovna tried to turn this document into a joke - she ordered him to be bolder, then she forbade him to appear, then she hit her hand with an umbrella, then she returned the flowers and ridiculed him. But at some point I got carried away. In a word, the whisper of an ardent youth during a lonely boat ride had an effect ... She left him for the night. The heart is busy with dreams, The heart remembers a long time, Late evening over the ponds, Your smothered handkerchief ...

Mamma was alarmed in earnest. History has preserved evidence of how she paid a morning visit to her son's mistress, screamed, clutched at her heart, threatened the "vile seducer of young talent" with sulfuric acid and even hard labor. Sadovskaya smiled and silently opened the door for the hysterical woman. Sadovskaya was a year older (!) Than the mother of her beloved ... Alexandra Andreevna wrote home (not without malice): “Sashura courted us here with great success, captivated a lady, a mother of three children ... It's funny to look at Sasha in this role. I don’t know if this courting will make sense for Sashura in the sense of his adulthood, and if after that he will become more like young man... Hardly". And to her son, she cynically declared: "Where to go, Sashurochka, age physics, and maybe this is better than a brothel, where disgrace and disease?" On the same day the boy was taken home. He ran to Sadovskaya to say goodbye. And gave her a half-withered rose. For a long time - almost eight months - they did not see each other. One can only assume why: the hysterics of Alexandra Andreevna, who constantly looks into her son's diary, are in Blok's family; family routine and everyday life - in the Sadovskys' house.

Let's forget the terrible life, friend, Your chest is passionately shaking with love, Oh, calm down in the arms of a friend, Passion kindles cold blood. Our lips in kisses will merge, I will breathe your kiss. God, how soon the clock will fly by ... God, with what passion I languish! .. So there were still several secret meetings in Petersburg. “If You, my dear, knew how I was striving all the time to see You, You would not reproach me ... All the time I was held back by a sense of prudence, which, You know, for some time now, is too developed in me, and extends even to those cases when it is completely inopportune. " In these and other lines, Blok refers to her as to all his subsequent lovers, as to the Beautiful Lady - to You, and with a capital letter. (All Petersburg “strangers” of Blok, fleeting girls for carnal pleasures, will “breathe spirits and mists” for a long time and outwardly resemble that first one - a blue eye, ostrich feathers, a veil veil, a mystery ...)

And again the alarmed mother went to Sadovskaya: this time Alexandra Andreevna kept within the bounds of decency, and only begged not to keep her son, to let her go. The feeling was, of course, doomed. Alexander cools down to Sadovskaya and moves away. Moreover, Lyubochka Mendeleev appeared on the horizon, a woman with whom he - either constantly falling in love and exalting to heaven, now constantly cheating on her and torturing her, then patiently enduring her betrayals - will remain until his death. Mamma (in the photo taken several decades later - Alexander Blok with an aged mother) will welcome this marriage in every possible way: after all, they are the same age ... and not this wild, terrible misalliance ...

In 1900, a final, decisive written explanation took place between Blok and Ksenia Sadovskaya. This time she humiliated herself, and in the end, calling the young man a "broken man," she would curse her fate for meeting him. And it was all over. Blok will once again return to Bad Nauheim, to the place of his former love. Twelve years later, almost nothing has changed there - only he has changed: The same surface of the lake, Still dripping salt from the cooling towers. Now that you're old and peaceful, what are you worrying about again? Or the young genius of the first passion Is not yet parted from the soul, And you are forever betrothed, That old, unforgettable shadow?

After the revolution, Sadovskaya will bury her husband and suffer from poverty in hungry Petrograd. He will go to his son in Odessa, and on the way he will pick up spikelets and chew them so as not to die of hunger. Ksenia Mikhailovna Sadovskaya will finish her days in Odessa, sixty-five years old, in a clinic for the mentally ill, having outlived the poet, whose muse she was for some one and a half years, for four years. To the attending physician-psychiatrist, a great lover and connoisseur of poetry, she will reveal the secret of Blok's first love. He won't quite believe her. And after her death, twelve letters from Blok, tied with a pink ribbon, and a dried rose, from the petals of which it was completely impossible to recognize its previous color, will be sewn up in the hem of the skirt.

"A blue-eyed shadow at the icy throne of Poetry

or the sad truth about Prince Kai's life. "

1859 -1925 - Odessa?

(The exact dates of the life and death of the heroine of the essay - the articles are unknown.)

From the author.

So little is known for certain about this woman that everything I have told here to many of the readers will seem vague, vague, like some kind of fiction, a ghost, light and airy, a dream, old and flown away. A dream about the poet's first love.

The dream is slightly incomprehensible, slightly funny. Perhaps not deserving of close attention. Dreams are generally better - to forget, you never know what will evoke with light wings a memory, especially a ruthless one in the declining years? The poet tried to - to forget, but almost before his death in 1918, again and again devoted to the long-gone bonfire of feelings and the ghostly obscure appearance of the first beloved, the lines in the diary and poems ... Who became immortal.

1.

Who has the right to talk about first love? In what colors, what colors, what words? The poet once said his word. Poems have become classics. But the ruthless critics also said.

They forever and caustically nailed the ardent, awkward dreams of youth to pillory ridicule, the surviving letters were declared "a fictionalized example of artificially invented feelings." The throwing and painful doubts of an aging, in love woman were called a whim at all, and the end of her path was designated only by one mean date: 1925 ...

In a word, they skillfully created their own version, the legend of the biography. Where, it turns out, there were no painful twists of Fate, there were absolutely no rushes, doubts, melancholy, carefully hidden, disguised mental pain.

There was no biography in this varnished biography, in every possible way retouched by venerable literary minds, and crazy jealousy on both sides, and the obligatory shadow of another Woman, inevitable for such an intensity of passions. (What is most tragic, hurtful, incomprehensible, that woman was - not a wife, but ... ..the Poet's mother!)

In the blissful legend, there were no passionate letters, confessions that burn the fingers and soul of the Poet with the heat of late, last love.

There were no secret, slightly imposed, long meetings in a half-dark carriage. Tears, reproaches, suffering, promises and deaf, tense silence.

There was not even the usual in such cases a deaf hatred for the once adored image - a stately, blue-eyed woman with a deep, magical voice. There was no despair because this hatred is almost useless, because it does not give the right to forget anything!

In this long - mournfully written legend by meticulous researchers - there was nothing at all, even remotely similar to the tragically broken life of Alexander Blok, still incomprehensible to many, even those who know by heart his poems and, it would seem, every moment of his life !

I do not pretend to be a true biographer. And this was not in my thoughts. I am just writing a familiar watercolor portrait. Light strokes. Through the pain slowly creeping into my heart The pain is that one more biography is incomplete, another fate is not written accurately and clearly, and all the earthly charm of the details of human existence inevitably disappears with death .. How many times will I comprehend this truth, cry over it, and refute her - the outline of another portrait, sketch, another biography? Do not know. In the meantime, my reader, look carefully at him, the portrait, hold your gaze on the pages telling about the fate of the Woman who loves the Poet. Fate, strange, and bitter in its terrible ordinariness.

Yes, one more thing! Perhaps it is worth reading more attentively into the lines of poems that have become almost classics. Almost. The lines dedicated to another Beautiful Lady of Alexander Blok are better known, of course. But Inspiration, which stood at the source of "divine rhymes and accords," also had its beginning. This beginning was named after Ksenia Mikhailovna Sadovskaya. So….

2.

Ksenia Ostrovskaya was born in 1859, in the family of a petty excise official. She grew up in a small run-down estate in the Kherson region, where a large family could barely make ends meet. Nervous, stinging for a warm affection, wrung out by endless debts, mother, faceless father, pulling the strap of an inconspicuous official, with an eternal, slightly guilty half-smile on his rumpled face. He loved the blue-eyed beauty Oksana, it seemed, more than other children, he strove to stroke everything on the head, imperceptibly stick a candy or gingerbread into his hand ... .. He liked it when his daughter played in the evenings on an old upset piano, almost inaudibly humming Ukrainian songs or mannered French romances ...

Despite the obvious lack of funds and the eternal dissatisfaction of his powerful wife, Mikhail Ostrovsky somehow managed to insist that his darling Ksenia receive a good education, first in a private female gymnasium in Odessa, then in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

She was already graduating from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the singing class when she was struck by severe laryngitis, a sore throat, common to many in the damp climate of the capital. There was no money at all for treatment in Italy and special lessons on preserving and staging the voice. Brothers and sisters were growing up, now it was necessary to teach them. The dream of a singer's career had to be abandoned forever. Ksenia very hard experienced the sudden collapse of all her ambitious hopes.

The girl has always passionately dreamed of breaking free from the oppression of poverty and everyday life.

It didn’t work, it wasn’t given, alas! Ksenia adored music, especially - Wagner, - despite all the prohibitions of doctors, she continued to sing in a narrow circle of friends, but she did not serve on the theater, opera stage, as she dreamed, but in the boring Statistical Committee. With pleasure she took part in home musical evenings and performances to which her friends were invited. She often went to the opera, especially in autumn, when at the Mariinsky, at the request of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, they invariably gave a series of Wagner's operas. At one of such long opera performances, Ksenia's "guide - page" was Vladimir Stepanovich Sadovsky - a lawyer, an expert in international trade law, once an associate professor at Novorossiysk University, a man with a position and a wealthy person; comrade -

that is, a deputy, in the modern sense of the word. - S. M. - Minister of Trade and Industry. He was madly carried away by Ksenia Mikhailovna, and this meeting decided everything in her fate, but did not bring her happiness.

3.

Having a luxurious apartment in St. Petersburg and a cozy estate near Novorossiysk, as well as two daughters and a son; - the actual state councilor, Mrs. Ksenia Sadovskaya, arrived in May 1897 at the famous German resort of Bad Nauheim, to treat the heart that was undermined by the third, difficult, childbirth and the nerves that were naughty in a calm but boring marriage. And she never expected to meet love at a brilliant, fashionable secular resort ... .. At her age ?! Thirty-eight years old? Enough! In these years, only an easy, non-binding adventure is possible, which will slightly dispel the boredom that is inevitable in such places….

She knew her worth well, an experienced socialite, a coquette and a talker, in a cloud of golden lush hair, in the shade of the invariable wide-brimmed hats with feathers, and the pool of huge eyes, summed up by languid, "heart-shaped shadows"!

And, perhaps, the domestic secular songstress very, very soberly hoped to have fun and catch in the net of coquetry one of the bored nearby Petersburg and Moscow secular acquaintances. But certainly not a boy in a gymnasium jacket, with the submissive air of a page, diligently dragging behind his mother and aunt their invariable books, umbrellas, rugs and shawls. The mother of a light-eyed, curly-haired schoolboy, a thin and toned, fidgety, overly exalted lady, attracted the attention of the resort audience with excessive theatricality, pomp not only of all her gestures and movements, but even of simple silence. Alexandra Andreevna Kublitskaya, the wife of St. Petersburg Colonel Franz Piotukh-Kublitsky, also came to the water, accompanied by her son and devoted sister Maria, to treat her upset nerves and heart. She was the same age as Mrs. Sadovskaya and in some ways imperceptibly resembled her. Either with an excessively ardent adoration of her only child - Ksenia Mikhailovna was also running around with her three children, always sickly, - or - carefully, even from herself, a need for no less ardent adoration of her own person, even from herself! However, here Alexandra Andreevna was much more fortunate. Her little page - the prince - Sashura from early infancy was with her, as with the reigning queen - mother and, possessing it so completely, Alexandra Andreevna was not going to share such a treasure with anyone at all. Too expensive: at the cost of broken illusions of youth, which failed at the very beginning of family life with her husband - a professor - neurotic, the death of her first child, a difficult, shameful divorce, a scandal in a respectable family, she got it, this is an insanely beloved treasure! How could she give it to someone? Is this even conceivable for an overly loving heart?

So, Ksenia Mikhailovna turned out to be a double rival. A rival, doomed to defeat in advance, for who can fight a jealous mother?

4.

Blok's aunt, the writer Maria Andreevna Beketova, in the most innocent phrases in her nephew's lacquered biography portrays an experienced secular predator in the face of Ksenia Mikhailovna: “She was the first to speak to a modest boy who did not dare to look up at her, but was immediately seized with love. The beauty tried in every possible way to lure the inexperienced boy. "

Everything, everything should look very decent in the official life of the great Poet!

But in her personal diary, Maria Andreevna Beketova will express with all the ardent rage of the old maid about the first beloved of the idol's nephew: “He, courting for the first time, disappeared, abandoned us, was relentless and selfish. She pushed them around, flirted, behaved trashy, soulless and unworthy. "

(Diary of M. A. Beketova is quoted from V. Orlov's book "Alexander Blok. Gamayun." Vol. 1., p. 63. Publishing Center "Terra". M. 1997. Further, all excerpts from letters and diaries of Blok and other documents are cited specifically for this two-volume edition. - S. M.)

Yes, the handsome man - a young man with antique facial features and the original of Shakespeare's tragedies and sonnets under his arm, almost instantly threw aside the annoying rugs and moralizing of his lean aunt and mother - the colonel. Despotic, arrogant, uncontrollable, seasoned with Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and the gypsy chorus, suddenly abandoned by a faithful adorer mother (and faithful ma tante * - aunt, French - paired with her!), Rolled daily epileptic tantrums, broke her fingers, drank lily of the valley bubbles drops, but for the first time the son was indifferent to everything in the world, except for the blue-eyed counselor!

He did not look very skillfully, and that is why it looked especially touching in the eyes of Ksenia Mikhailovna: the morning roses on the porch, the shadow convoy, the rustle and crunch in the alder thickets behind the bedroom frames in the hotel. At first, she was confused, and from this confusion, she must have behaved somewhat funny and ridiculous: she was capricious, tyrannized, beat the desperately in love page publicly with an umbrella on her hand, returned flowers, tore tickets for a concert, in a word, stunned by the sudden “whirling of her heart ”, And in vain struggling with this with the last bit of strength, it repulsed, then attracted. But all this only further inflamed the ardor of the awkward troubadour, still unhardened in the battles for the heart of a beautiful lady. He, almost skipping, ran on dates on the outskirts of the town, near the salt cooling towers, or near the misty willow lake, obediently rolling the blue-eyed "heart thief" in the boat ... ..

But it was not only that. One of these evenings turned very gently and smoothly into the night. Dating is no longer just romantic. The schoolboy was now returning home in the morning, pale, agitated, and wrote something diligently in his book - album, not allowing anyone to touch her. With these lines he opened his first lyric cycle, entitled with three letters: “K. M. S. ":

Heart is busy with dreams

The heart remembers for a long time

Late evening over the ponds

Your smothered handkerchief ... ..

And more, more definitely:

On such a night I managed to find out

With the sounds of night and spring

Lovely woman embrace

In the rays of the lifeless moon.

Alexandra Andreevna, her dear Sashura, these, and all the other, desperately loving, feverish lines - did not read. This was the first time! The rejected "home queen" in powerlessness tore a cambric handkerchief to shreds, broke off the cane - the handle of the umbrella and, after spending a couple of sleepless nights, during which she watched the steps of her son - the page along the deserted corridor, decided to take an extreme, desperate step. She paid the "overripe coquette" a morning visit, by no means a secular one, desperately promising the "vile seducer of young talent" anything, including sulfuric acid and Siberian penal servitude, since the position of her second husband - a guards colonel - quite allowed these threats!

Ksenia Mikhailovna silently listened to the hysterical cries of the jealous woman, smiled thoughtfully at something, and ... opened the front door.

Stunned by such a cold reception, Mrs. Piotukh-Kublitskaya that same evening decided to take her son to the Shakhmatovo family estate. Outwardly, he did not resist.

5.

To the great joy of the loving mother, the banal holiday romance of the carefully cherished offspring ended in a month with almost nothing. What could mean some quivering promises “not to forget, write”, and a half-withered rose presented at the door of the compartment ?! Alexandra Andreevna, inwardly triumphant, wrote home in her usual ironic style: “Sashura courted us here with great success, captivated a lady, a mother of three children and a real state councilor. It's funny to look at Sashura in this role…. I don’t know if this courting will make sense for Sashura in the sense of his adulthood, and if after that he will become more like a young man. Hardly".

In a conversation with her confused son, the mother allowed herself even more harsh remarks, on the verge of sophisticated cynicism, pouring over his hot, quivering feelings with a stormy stream of cold contempt:

"Where to go, Sashurochka, age-related physics, and maybe this is better than a brothel, where are the ugliness and disease?" The faithful page was taken aback by what was said. And from that time on, a tiny ice needle has quietly and firmly entered his heart, gradually growing into an iceberg, which bound his soul with a dense shell. Break the cold carapace snow prince Kaya will be tried by all subsequent Beautiful Ladies of the Blok, headed by Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva. All in vain, alas!

Simplification and mockery, really, the best medicine for a young love fever! Rooks, swans, the moon, romantic sighs of misty willows, through the efforts of a desperately jealous maman, turned into a flat lithograph on the peeling wall of a resort hotel. But Alexandra Andreevna did not know her own son well. Upon his return to Russia, secret enthusiastic correspondence with the "blue-eyed singer" continued.

Here are the surviving lines from the very first letter from Blok - Sadovskaya, sent from Shakhmatovo to Bad Nauheim on July 13, 1897:

“I leave everyone and think about how to get to Petersburg as soon as possible, I do not pay attention to anything and remember those blissful minutes that I spent with You, my Deity ..

In other many-page letters, he compared Sadovskaya with “the rose of the south, whose lips are full of secrets, whose eyes are full of a mysterious brilliance, like a sphinx, which in an instant outburst of passion will take away the whole soul from a person with whom he cannot fight, who burns him with his caresses, then it pours cold, and no one can figure it out ... ”He exaggerated, of course, a romantic young man, but he already managed to discern something with the prophetic, always adult, gaze of a true Poet.

Something real in her, unfeigned, tragic. From which the drama of her own, abandoned, cooled, torn heart will later arise:

Let's forget the terrible life, friend,

Your chest is passionately quivering with love.

O. calm down in the arms of a friend,

Passion kindles cold blood.

Our lips will merge in kisses

I will breathe your kiss.

God, how soon the clock will fly by ...

God, with what passion I languish! ...

They saw each other only eight months after Sadovskaya returned to the capital. It is useless to guess what interfered with their earlier meeting and what was behind the words: "terrible life" for the Poet. Whether it was the mother's ongoing tantrums, or letters and diaries secretly read by others' eyes, stinging ridicule and injections, petty tyranny and threats, the usual, killing poetry of the soul, the routine of life - is unknown. We know only the lines of a note by A. Blok - Sadovskaya, soon after their meeting, on March 10, 1898. Here they are:

“If you, my dear, knew how I was striving all the time to see you, you would not reproach me” ... And further, with disarming naivety: “I was kept all the time by a sense of prudence, which, you know, with for some time, it is too developed in me, and extends even to those cases when it is completely inappropriate. "

(A piece of ice grew, grew, carelessly, cynically dropped by the mother in the heart of her beloved golden-haired page - the prince. It grew imperceptibly, but - without stopping). At times he wanted to close his eyes tightly and be carried away with his beloved to unattainable heights, but the sharp jolt of memories in his heart, in the midst of the most ardent dreams, was sobering to the soul. He heard his mother's mocking voice.

“Age physics, dear friend, what to do? Or maybe it is better than a brothel? "

However, at times he sent his own prudence to hell, and waited for hours for Ksenia Mikhailovna in a closed dark carriage at the agreed place or at the gates of her house. There were quiet, secluded walks along the delicate bridges of Elagin Island, in the dark thickets of the park, there were rapidly running hours in uncomfortable hotel rooms ...

There was everything. And even - the second visit of maman, excited by the revealed secret of the protracted madness, to Mrs. Sadovskaya. This time, the "queen - mother" left the arrogant, threatening tone and already simply begged "the seducer - the siren" to be prudent and remove the young man who had completely lost his head!

But as soon as Ksenia Mikhailovna timidly spoke to Alexander about this very prudence, marital duty, and other boring things, as the heir of a neurotic mother, who had gone mad with passion, fell into the ecstasy of a moralist. Here are the lines of his letter:

“I don’t understand what you can be afraid of when you and I are alone in the middle of a huge city, where no one can even suspect who is passing by in a closed carriage .. Why should you waste your whole life in doubts when you are given beauty and heart? If you are worried about the thought of children, forget them at least for a while, and You have every right to do so, since you have devoted your whole life to them…. "

Ksenia Mikhailovna tried to devoutly follow the selfish advice of a rapidly maturing schoolboy - a lover, but soon her blind devotion and endless, jealous scenes, reproaches and pleas for forgiveness (on the basis of suppressed mental remorse, perhaps!) Began to seriously weigh on the hot-tempered, nervous young man! He had enough care, tears and reproaches at home and in a love relationship, all this excessive exalted nervousness and "romantic sweetness of reconciliation and tears" was absolutely unnecessary for him!

His soul froze more and more. And meetings were increasingly interrupted by quarrels. The correspondence, which lasted intermittently until 1901, gradually boiled down to a showdown and the question of returning photographs and letters from both sides ... .. The sad and completely banal ending of the resort romance was approaching.

6.

The aging beloved of the Poet was also burdened by the fact that on the threshold of his Fate there was already a silhouette of another Of the lovely lady- Lyuba Mendeleeva.

The mother unconditionally approved the choice of her son: still, they have known each other since childhood, played together, neighbors on the estate, educated, educated, serious beyond her years!

Well, what then, what then, after "Lyubushka", a jealous, cold snake will forever crawl onto the threshold of Blok's dignified house - hatred and tenaciously squeeze their souls into a suffocating ring, the souls of those close to him - mother and wife - so what, that Sashura, beloved by both of them, will be torn into two parts, into two halves, trying to please both, and irritating immensely - both ?! All life. It will all be. Then.

In the meantime, this hour, the main goal is to protect, distract, save, make you forget the blue-eyed sorceress from Bad Nauheim. It becomes a convulsive obsession with the mother.

Alexandra Andreevna applauds louder than anyone at amateur theatrical performances, where her adored son and the charming "professor" Lyuba play the main and not the main roles, tirelessly invites Lyubushka to tea, she herself appears everywhere where the Mendeleevs are - hand in hand with her son, of course!

The loving maman very diligently escorts Sashura to the annual ball of the students in the Noble Assembly, where Lyuba is so good either in pink or in white!

He hesitates, hesitates, does not make an offer, which makes him angry and mystically minded, exalted, alarmed by the persistent ghost of Sadovskaya, mother, and even Lyuba, a completely earthy, real girl who cannot pretend that Blok is indifferent to her and play cold indifference. (He was equally brilliant and in the role of coldly - the courteous Prince Kai and the dreamily - philosophizing Prince Hamlet!) Alas, she does not succeed! The earthly girl Gerda, who loves flowers, a skating rink, Turgenev and serious books on theatrical art, offers the poet who is flying away to empyrean quite earthly and warm relations. He himself, it seems, is already desperately in love with a girl with roses, who warmed his heart with the living breath of full, laughing lips, but fearfully shies away from everything too tangible and earthly. The stinging lessons of youth are still alive! Alexander desperately wants to hide dear Lyuba from the next encroachments of the jealously - cold heart of his mother, her cynical grins, which will not hesitate to follow, he already feels it. How to protect the chosen one? Very simple. It is necessary to turn marriage into an icy foot of the royal throne of poetry…. He will do just that. Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva - Blok will be worshiped by all poetically writing and reading Russia, led by a faithful knight - her husband, but even a year after the wedding, the marriage bed will remain intact. The famous poet will assign marital duties to the rather shabby inhabitants of St. Petersburg brothels and taverns of the metropolitan suburbs….

7.

Lyubov Dmitrievna will fight for the marriage to acquire warm, earthly features as much as she can, despising conventions, morality, the mocking sarcasm of Alexandra Andreevna and the dry pursed lips of the old maid - Aunt Maria - and then, disappointed, she will rush headlong into the pool of rapidly passing loves , casual and funny novels with actors and poets .. It can be understood ...

In fact, what could she do if even the Petersburg “strangers” of Blok for one night, “breathing silks and mists,” stubbornly resembled the ghost of Bad Nauheim's “singing Lorelei”: the same bottomless pools of blue eyes, ostrich feathers on a hat, rustling silk and veil fleur ?!

This was noticed not by me, but by the professional researchers of Blok's style and vocabulary. Constantly in his poetry, both early and late, there will be these epithets, definitions: "blue, blue, bottomless, foggy" ...

8.

In 1900, even before the marriage with Lyubov Dmitrievna, between Blok and Ksenia Sadovskaya there was a last, decisive written explanation, during which she furiously cursed her fate for meeting Alexander.

In this letter, Sadovskaya makes a timid attempt from the valleys of southern France to call Blok to Bad Nauheim, where she again takes a course of treatment, but ex-lover resolutely opposes the imperious ghosts of memory. Sadovskaya, in a letter in her hearts, calls him "a broken man."

He parries sluggishly and politely, calling the once "dear Oksana" to "you" and "Ksenia Mikhailovna".

Blok arrived in Bad Nauheim nine years later, in 1909, together with his wife, at the most difficult, troubled period of his life, after everything he had experienced - the tragedies of mutual betrayal, forgiveness, breakups and returns, after a small grave at the Volkov cemetery - the son of Lyubov Dmitrievna from another "beloved for an hour." And then, in places that had almost not changed in nine years, memories again flooded over him with such force that he could only clothe them in a poetic form so that they would not tear his almost worn out, corroded heart with pain:

All the same lake surface,

Salt is still dripping from the cooling towers.

Now that you're old and peaceful

What are you worried about again?

Or the young genius of the first passion

Still not separated from the soul,

And you're forever betrothed

That old, unforgettable shadow? ..

This is how the cycle "In Twelve Years" was written - one of the treasures love lyrics Block. He again, as if in reality, heard the guttural sounds of the voice of his old friend, remembered the taste of her lips, the hasty tenderness of a kiss ..

The poet sends something from his mother's lines, as it always was, and soon he suddenly receives a false rumor about the death of Ksenia Mikhailovna. The subtle intrigue was almost a success. How else could indomitable jealousy fight the eternity of love? Only under the wing of death, alas!

The aged Kai, having received the news, curls his lips in an icy grin: “However, who died? The old woman died. What's left? Nothing. Rest in peace to her. " But the next morning, after an unexpected message, lines are born - the final, the pearl of the cycle:

Life has long been burned and told

Only the first dream is love

Bandaged like a priceless chest

Crosswise with a scarlet ribbon, like blood.

And when in the silence of my room

I am languishing under the lamp,

The blue ghost of a deceased mistress

Above the censer of dreams shines through.

Truly, only the Poet has the right to speak of first love. He said. Forever and ever. The gray-haired, jealous, domineering mother could only be suppressed in silence. Whether there was humility in this silence is unknown. Unlikely…

If only in front of the power of Talent. More about Ms. Sadovskaya was never mentioned either in family conversations or in correspondence.

And meanwhile, she lived next to Blok, in Petersburg, never bumping into him, not in a crowd, or in a theater, and without really knowing anything about the literary glory of her former admirer! She revolved in a completely different environment, but with poetry, after the novel that burned his soul. - was not interested. In addition, due to the health of children, she spent a lot of time abroad, sometimes in France, then in Italy, wandering around the resorts. Relations with the aging husband did not work out, coldness and alienation grew.

In 1916, Privy Councilor Vladimir Sadovsky retired for health reasons. The family's financial situation was severely shaken. Adult children scattered in different directions.

Having buried her husband in 1919, during the devastation and horrors of the civil war, Ksenia Mikhailovna, barely alive from hunger, dragged herself to Kiev, where her married daughter lived, then moved to her son in Odessa. On the way - she became beggar, gathered ears of unripe wheat in the field in order to somehow satisfy her hunger. Ksenia Mikhailovna arrived in Odessa with obvious signs of a serious, incurable, mental illness, and almost immediately ended up in a hospital.

A young, attentive doctor who used the patient, a great admirer of the poetry of Alexander Blok, immediately noticed that her initials: "K. M. S." - completely coincide with the name sung by the legendary Poet. He began to question carefully.

It turned out that the old, terminally ill woman crushed by life, and the beauty lifted up by the ringing of rhymes in the skies of Poetry are one and the same person.

For the first time she heard about the immortal poems dedicated to her. When they were read to her, she burst into tears uncontrollably.

In 1925, Ksenia Mikhailovna Ostrovskaya - Sadovskaya died. At the Odessa cemetery, a lonely one was added - a rough stone cross.

When they began to take apart the beggarly rags of the deceased, the remnants of things to return to their relatives, they found at the bottom of a skinny bundle a thin bundle of letters tied with a scarlet ribbon, from a schoolboy and student in love with a lady a quarter of a century ago. It was all that she wanted to keep from the segment of Life, Destiny, sixty-six years long…. That was all she needed to keep.

* In the preparation of this article, materials from books by E. Parnov “Eros and Thanatos”, two-volume book by V. Orlov “Alexander Blok. Gamayun. , as well as - the author's personal web archive .. The author notifies readers that his point of view on what is stated in the article may not coincide at all with the generally accepted one!

This is how the fatal beauty looked at the time of meeting with the young Blok.

“God, with what passion I am tormented! the poet exclaimed.

In 1897, a year before his memorable meeting with Lyubov Mendeleeva, his future wife, Blok experienced first love, a strong feeling, passion that captured his entire being and gave divine poetic inspiration.

As a result of this feeling, wonderful love poems were born. It must be said that throughout his life the poet kept returning to his former poems, by what literary critics call "early heritage", rewriting them, and rules. And before his death, seriously ill, he confessed to his mother: maybe only those first rhymed lines are what should be presented to the descendants?

Here is one of the poems.

K. M. S.
The moon is awake. The city is noisy
Thunders in the distance and pours fires
Everything is so quiet here, it's crazy there
Everything is ringing there - and we are alone ...
But if the flame of this meeting
There was an eternal and holy flame,
Our speeches would not flow like this
Your voice would not sound like that! ..
Can it be that suffering still lives,
And happiness can carry away?
In the hour of an indifferent meeting
We will remember the sad, sorry ...
December 14, 1898

Blok's first love overtook in the summer of 1897 at the Bad Nauheim resort, where he traveled with his mother and aunt. Blok is sixteen, his beloved is thirty-seven.

The streets of this quiet German town witnessed the fateful love of the Russian poet.

At that time in her life, she was an experienced socialite, wife and mother of a family, rich, pampered. Gorgeous. Her "bottomless blue eyes" struck the boy outright.

Ksenia Mikhailovna Sadovskaya, before marriage Ostrovskaya, was born in 1859, in the family of a minor excise official in the Kherson province. The family barely made ends meet: debts, poverty, endless humiliation. Nevertheless, Ksenia received a pretty decent education - in a private female gymnasium in Odessa, then in Moscow and St. Petersburg. I was preparing for the stage - Ksenia showed a good voice, but a sudden sore throat did not allow her to graduate from the conservatory. And a girl from an impoverished family was forced to go to serve in the Statistical Committee in order to earn a living herself.
And at one of the performances at the Mariinsky, she met her future husband, a very wealthy man. He served as a comrade (deputy) minister. And when he proposed to her, she did not hesitate: she was tired of poverty.

A real state councilor came to a resort in southern Germany with the children to improve her health after the third, not very simple birth.

Blok's aunt, writer Maria Andreevna Beketova recalled: “She was the first to speak to a modest boy who did not dare to look up at her, but was immediately seized with love. The beauty tried in every possible way to lure the inexperienced boy. "

In fact, probably, this was the case and ... not quite so. The young man was hot, clumsy courting, perhaps annoying: every morning he brought roses, silently accompanied the lady, hiding in the bushes, sighed and tried to catch her eye. Ksenia Mikhailovna tried to turn this document into a joke - she ordered him to be bolder, then she forbade him to appear, then she hit her hand with an umbrella, then she returned the flowers and ridiculed him. But at some point I got carried away. In a word, the whisper of an ardent youth during a lonely boat ride had an effect ... She left him for the night.

Heart is busy with dreams
The heart remembers for a long time
Late evening over the ponds
Your smothered handkerchief ...

... On such a night I managed to find out
At the sounds of night and spring,
Lovely woman embrace
In the rays of the lifeless moon

Mamma was alarmed in earnest. History has preserved evidence of how she paid a morning visit to her son's mistress, screamed, clutched at her heart, threatened the "vile seducer of young talent" with sulfuric acid and even hard labor. Sadovskaya smiled and silently opened the door for the hysterical woman.

Sadovskaya was a year older (!) Than the mother of her beloved ...

Alexandra Andreevna wrote home (not without malice): “Sashura courted here with great success, captivated a lady, a mother of three children ... It's funny to look at Sasha in this role. I don’t know if this courting will make sense for Sashura in the sense of his adulthood, and if after that he will become more like a young man. Hardly". And to her son, she cynically declared: "Where to go, Sashurochka, age physics, and maybe this is better than a brothel, where disgrace and disease?"

On the same day the boy was taken home. He ran to Sadovskaya to say goodbye. And gave her a half-withered rose.

For a long time - almost eight months - they did not see each other. One can only assume why: the hysterics of Alexandra Andreevna, who constantly looks into her son's diary, are in Blok's family; family routine and everyday life - in the Sadovskys' house.

Let's forget the terrible life, friend,
Your chest is passionately quivering with love,
Oh, take it easy in the arms of a friend
Passion kindles cold blood.
Our lips will merge in kisses
I will breathe your kiss.
God, how soon the clock will fly by ...
God, what I am tormented by passion! ..

So there were still several secret meetings in St. Petersburg. “If You, my dear, knew how I was striving all the time to see You, You would not reproach me ... All the time I was held back by a sense of prudence, which, You know, for some time now, is too developed in me, and extends even to those cases when it is completely inopportune. "

In these and other lines, Blok refers to her as to all his subsequent lovers, as to the Beautiful Lady - to You, and with a capital letter. (All Petersburg “strangers” of Blok, fleeting girls for carnal pleasures, will “breathe spirits and mists” for a long time and outwardly resemble that first one - a blue eye, ostrich feathers, a veil veil, a mystery ...)

And again the alarmed mother went to Sadovskaya: this time Alexandra Andreevna kept within the bounds of decency, and only begged not to keep her son, to let her go.

The feeling was, of course, doomed. Alexander cools down to Sadovskaya and moves away. Moreover, Lyubochka Mendeleev appeared on the horizon, a woman with whom he - either constantly falling in love and exalting to heaven, now constantly cheating on her and torturing her, then patiently enduring her betrayals - will remain until his death. Mamma (in the photo taken several decades later - Alexander Blok with an aged mother) will welcome this marriage in every possible way: after all, they are the same age ... and not this wild, terrible misalliance ...

In 1900, a final, decisive written explanation took place between Blok and Ksenia Sadovskaya. This time she humiliated herself, and in the end, calling the young man a "broken man," she would curse her fate for meeting him.

And it was all over.

Blok will once again return to Bad Nauheim, to the place of his former love. Twelve years later, almost nothing has changed there - only he has changed:

All the same lake surface,
Salt is still dripping from the cooling towers.
Now that you're old and peaceful
What are you worried about again?
Or the young genius of the first passion
Still not separated from the soul,
And you're forever betrothed
That old, unforgettable shadow?

After the revolution, Sadovskaya will bury her husband and suffer from poverty in hungry Petrograd. He will go to his son in Odessa, and on the way he will pick up spikelets and chew them so as not to die of hunger.

Ksenia Mikhailovna Sadovskaya will finish her days in Odessa, sixty-five years old, in a clinic for the mentally ill, having outlived the poet, whose muse she was for some one and a half years, for four years. To the attending psychiatrist, a great lover and connoisseur of poetry, she will reveal the secret of Blok's first love. He won't quite believe her. And after her death, twelve letters from Blok, tied with a pink ribbon, and a dried rose, from the petals of which it was completely impossible to recognize its previous color, will be sewn up in the hem of the skirt.

In the summer of 1897, while staying with mother and aunt Maria
Andreevna in the German resort of Bad Nauheim, Blok met Xenia
Mikhailovna Sadovskaya.
"It was a tall, stately, dark-haired lady with a thin profile and
gorgeous blue eyes, - recalls M. A. Beketova. - She was
Little Russian woman, and her beauty, dandy toilets and bold, enticing
coquetry had a strong effect on the youthful imagination. "
Blok was not even 17 years old, she was 32. K.M.Sadovskaya was almost the same age
his mother. To everyone around, including her, the schoolboy's love
seems very funny.
"He looks after her diligently, accompanies her decisively everywhere, -
Aleksandra Andreevna cheerfully informs her in a letter to her parents (July 22, 1897). -
She flirts with him and treats him graciously. Funny to look at
Sashuru in this role. With a rose in his buttonhole, carefully dressed, he goes for
her, takes a blanket or a cape in her hand, but his conversations often
are limited to nods of the head ... I don't know if there will be any sense from this courtship
for Sashura in the sense of his adulthood and whether he will become more like
on a young man. Hardly".
All this is like the beginning of a banal resort romance. The denouement of it sometimes
sometimes dramatic, as in Chekhov's story "Volodya", where the young man, not in
forces to survive collisions with everyday vulgarity, commits suicide. But
sometimes ordinary, "peaceful", when everything that happened is perceived as
a normal example of the "science of tender passion" in its everyday expression.
"Sashura courted us here with great success, captivated a 32-year-old lady,
mother of three children and a real state councilor ", - writes to parents
Alexandra Andreevna (July 30, 1897).
It is not surprising that this "great success", unwittingly encouraged by such
attitude, reflected in the external behavior of a handsome schoolboy.
The rivalry in "experience" and imaginary "adulthood" flourished in the gymnasium,
where he studied.
"I was a dandy, I spoke a fair amount of vulgarity," - Blok later wrote about
this time.
Her Majesty's vulgarity extended its arms to him from everywhere. Included in
the sad routine of entertainment of the "young man" did not escape him either:

Red damask of faded sofas,
Dusty curtain brushes ...
In this room, in the clink of glasses,
A merchant, a sharpie, a student, an officer ...
... Chu! the soft carpets rang
Spurs, laughter muffled by doors ...
Is this house really a house?
Is it so destined among people?

These poems, written many years later, are called "Humiliation".
Humiliation isn't just about women. The humiliation of the healthy youthful impulse to
love, death of purity, desecration of "real young happiness", as he called
Block after a few years, his first feeling in a letter to the one who
called.
True, the words about this happiness are interspersed in the letter of a 20-year-old boy with
melancholic imagination and mannerisms: he still seemed to himself "irresistible
and Don Juan, who saw many views. "But the years passed and carried away everything superficial,
casual, feigned, leaving pure gold of grateful memory:

Or the young genius of the first passion
Still not separated from the soul,
And you're forever engaged
That old, unforgettable shadow?

The true "great success" of Alexander Blok is that he did not betray
forgotten in the midst of the vulgar setting of a secular resort beautiful
feeling, did not grin at him, at a woman who seemed to others simply
flirtatious lady, but who became for him "Oksana", "khokhlushka" with "blue,
blue captivity of the eyes. "

Everything that my memory tries to preserve
Lost in crazy years
But it rises like a burning zigzag
This tale is in the night skies.

Life has long been burned and told
Only the first dream is love
Bandaged like a priceless chest
Crosswise with a scarlet ribbon, like blood.

("Twelve years later")

The poems of the cycle "In Twelve Years" were written by a mature poet. But the image
first love, which was soon replaced by another, perennial, disturbed Blok for a long time,
singing to him sometimes heartfelt, wise, compassionate lines,
related to his later lyrics:

I walked in the darkness of a rainy night
And in the old house, by the window,
Recognized pensive eyes
My longing. - In tears, alone
She looked damp into the distance ...
I admired endlessly
As if the youth of the past
Recognized in the features of her face.
She looked up. My heart sank
The fire went out - and it was dawn.
The damp morning was knocking
Into her forgotten glass

("I walked in the darkness of a rainy night ...")

On such a night I managed to find out
With the sounds of night and spring
Lovely woman embrace
In the rays of the lifeless moon.

And the author of the lines is the young Alexander Blok, an angelic schoolboy with huge transparent eyes. He is sixteen, his beloved is almost twenty years older. But can age be a hindrance to true love ?! She has blue eyes, golden hair; an invariable attribute is a wide-brimmed hat decorated with ostrich feathers. Ksenia Mikhailovna is the wife of the actual state councilor Vladimir Stepanovich Sadovsky, a socialite, the owner of a luxurious apartment in St. Petersburg and an estate near Novorossiysk.

Ksenia Mikhailovna has three children, and she came to the German resort of Bad Nauheim to heal her naughty nerves. And what heals a bored heart better than bright love? But, of course, Ksenia Mikhailovna did not even imagine that this very love would turn out to be a romantic youth. Alexander Blok also came to Bad Nauheim with his mother, Alexandra Andreevna.

Alexandra Andreevna Blok had a very trusting relationship with Sasha, the only and adored child. And, of course, she was horrified by the fact that her son got involved with an "overripe coquette."

And Sashura's passion was serious. Real! Presumably, Ksenia Mikhailovna too. Although it all began as a game of an experienced cat with a small innocent mouse.

But the young man with the sculpted face was in love so sincerely, so honestly, so absurdly and therefore beautiful.

He became the silent shadow of Sadovskaya; he wrote poetry to her and left roses on the porch. And she again felt like a girl, a flirt. She hit him with an umbrella and made scandals, then brought him closer, then drove away from herself. And then she gave in.

1897, BUD-NAUGHEIM

The day was just wonderful: quiet, sunny. After evening tea, the whole company went to the lake. Alexander carried a large basket of food. Flexible, thin - looks like an ancient Greek young god. He looked at Ksenia Mikhailovna with adoration. On the shore, timidly handed her a bunch of blue forget-me-nots:

Promise that you will not forget me, Ksenia Mikhailovna. These forget-me-nots are like your eyes.

Sadovskaya laughed a low, deep laugh. She knew she was really good now in this white silk dress. A large hat hid her face from the setting sun. Everyone had told her in the last week how young and fresh she was. She sighed languidly: "The resort climate is good for me."

And she herself knew that this returned youth - and shining eyes, and always a good mood, not because of the salty air. And because of a young page in love, a funny boy who does not take his burning gaze from her.

You are like a nightingale too. The same melodious, the same magic bird.

But really: she is a singer, although she did not take place. Quietly, Ksenia Mikhailovna begins to hum an old romance.

Hear, hear me, my dear baby! And it really comes out from behind the dark linden tree. Alexander's eyes are huge, and his face is very pale.

What are you doing to me, Ksenia Mikhailovna! This song of yours ... I'm going crazy with love.

Sadovskaya held out her hands to him.

Come to me! My golden boy! ..

The next morning she found a bright scarlet rose on the porch.

Block took her on a boat on a lake with dark water. And ... I adored. He said that her eyes were cornflower blue. And that she is a Beautiful Lady.

The days seemed endless and filled with happiness to the brim. Blok did not yet know that later all his life he would be looking for “blue, bottomless eyes” in the crowd. Ksenia Mikhailovna, in the splendor of her luxury, could not even imagine that she would die in 1925 in Nepman's Odessa. A tattered half-mad beggar woman, until the end of her days she will keep only one wealth left to her - a bunch of letters from the schoolboy Blok, tied with a silk ribbon ... But all this will come later. And then, in that memorable May, their romance lasted a month and ended in a scandal. Blok's mother, a tough woman for reprisal, paid a visit to Sadovskaya; and the scandal was monstrous.

Ivan Filimonov

The venerable Alexandra Andreevna promised the seducer Siberian hard labor and sulfuric acid. The offended Fair Lady packed her luggage and left the resort; her young, tear-stained admirer was taken from the platform by a stern mother and a tearful aunt. Blok tormented a withered rose in his hands - a symbol of his first bitter love.

“Sashura courted us here with great success, captivated a lady, a mother of three children and a real state councilor. It's funny to look at Sashura in this role. I don’t know if this courting will make sense for Sashura in the sense of his adulthood, and if after that he will become more like a young man. Hardly ... "- acrimoniously commented on the novel of her son Alexander Andreevna.

And Alexander Blok wrote letters and poems dedicated to "dear Oksana".

You are always and everywhere strange
You charm the eyes.
I love your hazy look
I love your reproaches ...
Your voice sounds like a rush

Now mockingly, then loudly,
That is a magical overflow
Like a child's laughter of a child.
And when you drop your eyes
Feeling the closeness of the heart with my heart,
I'm ready in the dark of the night
Die by a kiss ...

And she wrote to him - the boy - too. And their romance, no longer epistolary, but real, with secret dates, hotel rooms and evening walks around the city on the Neva, was resumed. Later, in March 1898.

And even there was a second visit of Alexandra Andreevna, inconsolable and confused, to the "seducer." But it was all in vain - both the visit and the tears. Because a strong passion burns out just as quickly. And the matured Blok was no longer so fascinated by his first love.

Poetic rhymes, spirits and mists circled him; and the red-haired Lyubochka Mendeleeva looked with her intent innocent eyes. Sadovskaya was jealous, arranged ugly tantrums for the maturing page. He was weighed down by her devotion and irrepressible, already annoying passion. The protracted resort romance was supposed to end in chilling nothing, in accordance with the law of the genre.

In a letter from 1900, the final explanation takes place; Sadovskaya curses the day and hour when she met Alexander, and calls him "a broken man."

Blok arrives in Bad Nauheim after nine years with Lyubov Dmitrievna.

Devastated - wounded by losses and mutual betrayal. And here nothing has changed. The same surface of the lake, and the willows are reflected in the water. Couples in love float in boats. Alexander still thinks that somewhere out there, in the fog, the silhouette of the Beautiful Lady is melting; she gazes at him with her huge blue eyes and waves a graceful silk-gloved hand.

All the same lake surface,
Salt is still dripping from the cooling towers.
Now that you're old and peaceful
What are you worried about again?
Or the young genius of the first passion
Still not separated from the soul,
And you're forever engaged
That old, unforgettable shadow?
You call - she will come:
An important profile will flash, as before,
And a voice, smoothly drawn out,
Experienced words whisper.

1909, SHAKHMATOVO

They ate breakfast, as always, closer to noon. On the table were fresh cottage cheese, and coffee, and heavy country cream, and fresh rolls. Alexander went down to the table; light eyes are anxious. Lyubonka was still asleep.

First I kissed my mama's hand, Alexandra Andreevna. Then - to my aunt, Maria Andreevna Beketova.

And you know, Sashura, this ... your teacher has died, - said Alexandra Andreevna with a bored look, putting a spoonful of cherry jam.

This ... Madame Sadovskaya. Tatochka wrote to me. Ah, this jam is good!

Sadovskaya died? What are you doing! gasped Maria Andreevna. A small silver spoon fell to the floor with a clang.

Alexander was pale, but calm.

Wow! The old woman is dead! What's left? Nothing! Earth rest in peace, - said indifferently.

Alexandra Andreevna rejoiced in her heart. Now she knows for sure that Sashura is only her boy! She will not have to share it with her peer, with this upstart ... Alexander got up from the table without finishing his coffee. He ran into the garden.

This is true? Maria Andreevna asked. - Why did you die?

Yes, that's what I said so that he would stop thinking about the old witch! - Alexandra Andreevna laughed. - He has Lyubochka, but what about this witch, I don't know. Who cares. For us, she died a long time ago. And I see that Sashura has been ill. And I was not upset at all. Give me some butter.

Photo by ITAR-TASS

Alexander wandered, wandered through the overgrown Shakhmatov's garden. There were no thoughts, no tears either. Died means she died; there and the road! That story has already gone away. He's not a stupid boy anymore. He is a poet, and he will be great, now he knows it for sure ... Oh, what a pity that she will never know that he has become a great poet ... In the depths of the garden, in the dense grass, he saw forget-me-nots. Unusually blue, dark.

Like her eyes - the one who truly loved. Did it really end this way, simply, mediocre, so ... went it? Wonderful lines were born by themselves:

Life has long been burned and told
Only the first dream is love
Bandaged like a priceless chest
Crosswise with a scarlet ribbon, like blood.
And when in the silence of my room
I am languishing under the lamp,
The blue ghost of a deceased mistress
Above the censer of dreams shines through.

Blocks never spoke about Sadovskaya again. Strange, but Ksenia Mikhailovna did not know that Alexander Blok had become a famous poet.

In general, her life after that memorable May 1897 began to decline. Troubles, worries, worries ... Most the Sadovskys spent time abroad. And in 1916, Vladimir Sadovsky retired. Relations with him did not work out - in fact, they were always strangers ... The children grew up and lived their own incomprehensible life.

The revolution burned with ashes, destroyed the entire established way of life. There was only smoke from the wealth, from the past - memories. Ksenia Mikhailovna could not believe that once she was a Beautiful Lady, that pure diamonds sparkled on her fingers, and the look from under a wide-brimmed hat was called magical. In 1919, the husband died. Sadovskaya was left all alone. Poor, wounded bird.

With difficulty, Ksenia Mikhailovna got from Kiev, where her daughter lived, to Odessa. There was a son in Odessa. Through horror Civil War Sadovskaya made her way, starving and slowly losing her mind from a completely new and terrible life. Sadovskaya arrived in Odessa with clear signs of insanity - ragged, talking. Almost immediately I got to the clinic for the mentally ill. She died in 1925.

1920, ODESSA

The doctor was young and slightly enthusiastic. He treated the elderly patient with attention. Yes, the woman is unhappy and lost and clearly insane. But individual phrases and become betrayed traces of her former greatness in her. She was like a rose. Withered, but beautiful all the same.

The doctor was a romantic and, of course, loved poetry.

He admired the poetry of Alexander Blok. He also loved his early poetry, addressed to the Stranger, whose name is encrypted in three letters: "KMS" And I also adored the lyric cycle titled "In Twelve Years". He immediately noticed that the initials of his strange patient and the Beautiful Lady were the same. The riddle was haunted. I was worried. And at one of the receptions, he carefully asked:

Ksenia Mikhailovna, do you know Alexander Blok by chance? The old woman's blue eyes flashed with surprise, which was replaced by confusion.

Yes, of course I do ... Bad Nauheim, May. It was ... in a past life, I guess. Was there anyway?

Strange, she had never heard these poems, did not know that her name was immortalized by a short novel, which became the main one in her life.