Greeting set for the soldier – it is a large package of sweets, sausage, cheese, eggs. Heavy – pounds seven. The girl in the warehouse helps me to load in the car sixteen of these packages and gives a list of forty addresses: “All is still not found. And Yes, fair warning – will be difficult.”
Starts easy. Stanislav Ivanovich at home, but contacts with the outside world wisely avoids. So my partner Julia just leave the package under the door of his apartment and down a couple of stairs down, call back and make sure that the gift he took.
Nadezhda, too, is home. She walks with difficulty, with both hands leaning on a cane, but communicating with us, all the while laughing – very young and infectious.
for a gift for Tamara to the door down the front of her daughter: “Oh, sorry,that is not a little early. Mom on 7 may, the birthday was. We knew that to congratulate started sixth, was hoping to be in the forefront. But thanks anyway, of course. Mum will be very happy”.
In the column with the name Galina marking “afraid to open.” I prepared a speech – well, us doesn’t even have to meet, we will leave the gift at the door and get out… But picking up a young woman – the granddaughter just came in to visit. “Sleeping Granny – takes a package of a young woman with a baby in a sling. – Won’t Wake up, okay?”
– You Nina Mikhailovna? the voice on the telephone for a couple of seconds freezes. – She died.
I mutter condolences, and desperately ashamed of the inappropriate celebratory tone which the beginning of the conversation. Hoping that I’ll never get to hear this, but what to do – the participants of war for ninety years, and every year them becomes less. That’s why it is important to find and congratulate each.
“I’m at the cottage – meets-phone Vsevolod Mikhailovich. – Please leave a gift to my daughter, she will bring”. Named address, is a spacious art Studio on the top floor of a luxury pre-revolutionary house.
Yes, I am a traditional artist – smiling daughter of Vsevolod Mikhailovich. – Dad’s a pretty famous painter, member of artists ‘ Union. He is a native Leningrader, spent the entire siege, a teenager, helped in the defense of the city. By the way, recently the Pope has celebrated the 90th anniversary in honor of what his personal exhibition, and now we took him out of town, away from the virus.
at Home, I enter the name of Vsevolod Mikhailovich in the Internet and understand that familiar with his work. Bright genre scenes and landscapes (the artist traveled extensively in remote regions of Russia) and the individual subject of the war and the blockade – as they can write only one who has experienced himself.
Elizabeth S. lives in an old house on Ligovsky. With cosy flowered courtyard behind latticed gates. This means that we need p��to Edalet two code lock on the gate and on the front. Elizabeth S. lost. Her long time no one comes, so she doesn’t know the code on the gate. It confuses the phone with intercom, and the intercom system can’t find the only button that should be pressed. Forget a room of his own apartment and in the end I almost cried from the fact that we cannot be admit. Comes to the aid of a neighbor, and we finally get to Elizabeth Semenovna. Honorary veteran is a small, korotkostrizhenih old like a teenager.
Between each address – a long pause, filled with the calls on the list. “If he lives here”, “you Must have the wrong number,” “They moved where I don’t know”, “the Number is not in service” and beeps, the beeps, the phone rings incessantly… in front of the names of the growing pile of sad dashes.
the Last number in the list unexpectedly meets. Mariya is very happy to our call: “Come, of course! No wonder you could not find, I at the time of the coronavirus to daughter moved”. Old house near the Palace square, high ceilings, moldings, intelligent neighbors, strict security guard. “You just don’t go right, mom you were waiting for,” meets us daughter. From the depths of the apartment, leaning on a Walker, goes Mariya – beautiful, bright-eyed, in Turgenev’s shawls and with St. George ribbon on the chest, on the occasion of our visit.
the List is over. Only seven veterans were congratulated and lots of dashes on to someone not to call. We decide to bypass at least a few of them. In the center of St. Petersburg is a quest of high complexity: the closed gate, beyond any explanation, the numbering, the maze of courtyards, and as the last barrier – code locks on the front, where the lives of two hundred as in apartment buildings, and ten. And no intercoms. That is, wait, when someone will be released or will come in half a day. It is sometimes possible to get with the neighbors to the porch and ring the doorbell but no one opens. Then, we’ll leave notes asking me to call and make an appointment.
We are lucky with only one address in a confused building on Bolshaya Konyushennaya. In fact, it’s the place between the second and third floors call shabby call and hear shuffling footsteps. Tatyana Pavlovna, which for a long time had no guests, squints at us from the darkness of the hallway and could not understand why the two unfamiliar girls in masks so laugh and rejoice. Looking at us, too, begins to laugh, but groans and sinks to the chair: “I’m Old, girl, lonely, sick.” On a package of food first, she looks puzzled. Then blooms and even a little younger. At least some of the time you don’t have to go to the store, going down and getting up naughty feet down the steep stairs. But most importantly – about her recalled.
– Even if we all day have found only one Tatyana Pavlovna, it would be worth it, says Julia. – Right?
the Remaining packages to the base until return. Tomorrow I will try once again to pass on the address with dashes.
In the framework of “You dear!” the Petersburg volunteers brought the participants of the great Patriotic war, about six thousand holiday food packages.
– For us it is a matter of honor – to fulfill the entire list, say the staff of food Bank “Rus” in the northwestern Federal district. Sometimes you just have to conduct a whole investigation. One grandmother-a veteran we found already in Pskov. Brought her a gift there. Our goal is to find and congratulate each.
