The Singer

Some people are destined to have many lives, all packed into one. Tanya’s grandmother, Ekaterina (or Katya, as all in the family called her), is a shining example.

Each new life for her was nothing like the previous one, and the transitions between them were always far from ordinary – we already took a glimpse at one in the story: “Ekaterina“. She was not even twenty years old then but was ready for the abrupt changes that life would bring.

Falling in love with Vladimir Moiseevich Ushakov, she jumped into the last train car to always be with him – literally jumped into her new life. Ushakov was a military surgeon and Katya became an operating room nurse to be with him at home and at work for the next twenty plus years. He called her “fire-eyed Katrusya”.

When Ushakov became the Chief Surgeon, responsible for the vast area of Central Siberia in the 1930s, they were on the road together, moving from one hospital to another during his inspection trips.

And when WWII hit Soviet Russia, the hospitals at the front became their new home.

Katya loved to sing since childhood. She learned a lot of Ukrainian folk songs from her mother, and many other songs, in different languages, from her neighbors at a railroad station in Zabaikalye, a small town. That was where she lived her “first” life.  

She loved to sing those songs for the hospital’s patients, and later to wounded soldiers. She always kept several pieces of Russian and Ukrainian folk costumes with her – traditional Russian sarafan and a shawl, and Ukrainian skirt and an embroidered shirt to wear while singing.

“It was a joy to sing after a long day in the surgery room,” she told us. “We often missed the meal time – there was not much food there, anyway – but cooks always saved us rich water in which they cooked pasta or rice for wounded. And if there were something else left – even better. How could one not sing?”

Her voice was deep and powerful. There were tales that on her concert tours, on multiple occasions, the glass in the windows vibrated when she used the full strength of her voice. Those stories were still told in the 1970s when guests came to Katya’s home. There was always a lot of music played by her son, Victor, composer and musician, and by the guests, many of whom remembered her performances.

Katya, no matter how much everybody begged her to sing with them, never participated. “It’s too late,” she would say, “An elderly voice is not for singing. I respect my audience. One has to know when to stop.” It was only our children – her great-grandchildren – who heard her singing in retirement.

But years earlier she didn’t think about her voice – she sang. She never thought about a career as a singer – singing was simply a part of her everyday life.

One summer evening in 1944 happened to be an easy one in the surgery room. Not being too tired, Katya sang with much pleasure. Someone helped her on harmonica and the wounded asked her for more and more songs.

After one song she heard the sound of loud applause behind her. There were several high ranking officers standing at the door. The one who clapped louder came closer. It was General of the Army Rodion Malinovsky, commander of the Front, who came to the hospital that day to award medals to wounded soldiers.

Malinovsky grew up in the rural area of Ukraine, and one of Ekaterina’s songs was a song he heard from his mother in his childhood. He stood at the door for some time, listening to Katya sing, then made his decision and stepped forward.

Malinovsky had a conversation with her and Vladimir Moiseevich later that night. “I understand that you do not consider yourself a singer, ” he said to Katya. “But you are a singer, and a good one. And you are needed for the soldiers at the front no less than for wounded here. I can order you to do this, but it would be better for all if the decision was yours – the decision to sing at the front line.”

That was how Katya’s next life begun. She was 45 years old at her first “official” concert later that month. Whatever her age was, she looked and felt half as young.

“No, I wasn’t nervous then,” she told us, “I have been singing all my life. The setting was different and the audience bigger, that’s all.”

We are sure it was true, and not only the part about the singing. Katya was never afraid of an audience of any kind and was never afraid of doing what she considered to be right.

The war was about to end and Katya’s family came together again. She was transferred to the Novosibirsk Philharmonic, Vladimir Moiseevich took a job at the hospital in Novosibirsk, and Victor already worked there in the Ensemble of the Siberian Military District. It was also the time when Victor met Iskra and established his own family.

Singing was what Katya always liked and, apparently, wanted to do. She did not consider going back to the hospital. Vladimir Moiseevich knew that singing was her passion, but he was not happy missing her next to him at home and in the surgery room. Unfortunately, his health deteriorated rapidly after the war and the constant fear of becoming an another GULAG prisoner did not help – we told that story in “The man in the round spectacles”. He was not even fifty years old when he passed away from a stroke.

Iskra did not know Vladimir Moiseevich for long but remembered him as the most gentle and kind person she met in her life. She definitely was not alone in this opinion. His funeral was attended by hundreds and, despite the cold Siberian December and the post-war shortage of everything, live flowers were everywhere.

Iskra also told us about that strange group of people at his funeral, dressed in a “KGB” style, who brought a huge wreath, which looked great and very expensive. She did not know who they were, but the rumor was that they were not KGB, but bandits from an infamous gang. Not long before Vladimir Moiseevich saved the life of their leader, wounded in the stomach during a police raid. The surgery took a long time and the result was uncertain, but the man survived. The next day he disappeared. The gangsters, dressed as policemen, took him away from the hospital and he was never found. “I’m telling you, it was them,” insisted Iskra.

That year was not the best in Katya’s life. She lost her husband with whom she was inseparable for a quarter of a century, and soon Victor dropped from Moscow Conservatory when Tanya was born. Katya felt lonely and betrayed and blamed Iskra that she was moving her son away from her and from his future in the music world. She had a painful transition to her next life.

It was the stage that kept her afloat. Katya was born for it. Always in control, always the center of attention, always feeling the pulse of the audience. She accepted the idea that she was to be a diva (Soviet-style) and she behaved like one. She was dressed in her best garments for her folk songs on stage, with carefully selected accessories, and liked to be fashionably dressed off stage. She chose Russian shawls as the signature element of her performances, and she changed them several times a night, matching their color to her songs.

She not only looked younger, she felt younger than her age. Very few around knew or could even guess her real age. She wanted to be young forever. One of the first agreements she made with small Tanya, her granddaughter, was that Tanya would call her Mama-Katya when they walked outside, to hide from everybody that she already became a grandmother. She even changed her date of birth, shifting it a year later – not an easy task, especially in Soviet Russia. “I couldn’t be born in 1899,” she laughed, “It was not possible for me to be from the last century.”

Rodion Malinovsky, who became the commander of the Far-East Military District after the War, did not forget his “discovery”. By his invitation, one of Ekaterina’s first major tours was performed at military bases and installations on the Far-East, earning her excellent reviews.

Katya performed all over the country, from Moscow to Sakhalin, and the theaters had no empty seats. She was not only recognized by excellent press and box office sales. In her honor, Palekh, the legendary center for Russian folk art and iconography, created a series of lacquer boxes with Ekaterina’s portrait on them.

Katya told us that at the beginning there were some tensions with her musicians when she, already on the stage, suddenly decided to change the order of songs. “I knew what people wanted to hear at each and every moment” she explained. “I felt what their mood was – when the audience was ready to jump and dance, and when they were ready to burst in tears. It took some time for the musicians to trust my intuition and follow my lead.”

One of her accordion accompaniers was Alexander Zatsepin, then a very young and talented musician and composer, known later for his soundtracks to many popular Soviet movies, such as Leonid Gaidai’s comedies.  

Another, Nikolay Sizov, became her close friend. A musician, actor, and artist, Sizov was about seventeen years younger than Katya, but that suited them both perfectly. He was more mature than most his age, and Katya was still young. They married and moved to another Siberian city, Kemerovo, to become a happy artistic family for the next seventeen years.

Sizov – everybody in the family called him by his last name – was a person with a wide area of interests and knowledge. When not on the tours with Katya, he performed in drama theaters. One of his most awarded works was the role of Lenin, for which he developed his own makeup.

Iskra remembered that every conversation with Sizov was full of theatrical gossips and fresh epigrams, poems of his own, new book reviews and cynical sarcastic stories about fellow actors and celebrities. Those stories made people laugh non-stop while looking around to make sure there were no strangers who can overhear them.

And it was Sizov who arranged and scheduled Ekaterina’s tours and managed artistic alliances. There was a number of extraordinary artists with whom Ekaterina performed together on the tours, such as Faina Ranevskaya, with whom she worked more than once. Ranevskaya was famous for her ultra-sharp tongue, and, as Katya laughs, always won over Sizov in their improvised competitions.

There were two non-negotiable rules concerning tour schedules. The first was a mid-summer vacation on the Black Sea. Katya was an absolute believer in the Soviet Russian proverb: “Sun, fresh air and cold water are our friends, and that’s our motto.” (This is an attempt to translate “Солнце, воздух, и вода – наши лучшие друзья”). She always stayed in the best resorts that were exclusively dedicated to writers, musicians, and actors. Her tailors were busy preparing a new collection of dresses for those vacations.

Another annual vacation was reserved for celebrations with Victor’s family in Novosibirsk – Tanya’s birthday on December 25th, followed by New Year.

Tanya said that Katya’s and Sizov’s visits to the small one-bedroom apartment on Sovetskaya Street, where Tanya lived with Iskra, Viktor, Iskra’s mother Maria, and cat Puffic, were simply unforgettable.

Katya and Sizov came there with such a big pile of boxes, chests, bags, and suitcases that it seemed like a permanent move every time. Maria, who had good relations with her in-law, but was diametrically opposed in temper and lifestyle, started crying “Oh, no! Here comes that gypsy again!”, long before they even got near the apartment.

It took a good part of the day to set things up, but by the evening everything was put in its place. The luggage was taken away from the passages, Victor’s bulky antique musical instruments, like the pipe organ or harpsichord, were shifted away to clear space around the table, and sleeping places had been arranged.

Sizov prepared his sleep headquarters in the large old-fashioned bathtub (!!) filled with an old mattress and isolated from the rest of the bathroom by a curtain – he was a really late-late sleeper. Katya used to sleep on the long padded chest in the lobby next to the entrance door. Unlike Sizov, she was an early bird, and at the time the door was needed in the morning, she was already up and drinking tea with Maria in the kitchen. “Not a big deal,” she used to say. “Compared to what we, sometimes, had on our tours – that chest was a luxury.” At that point, if Iskra was present, they would immediately start to reminisce about the worst hotels and guest houses that they had stayed at.

Tanya remembered how a decorated New Year’s tree magically appeared in the middle of their overcrowded apartment the morning of December 25, her birthday, surrounded by painted cardboard castles, made by Sizov, while her dolls and stuffed animals were dressed in new outfits made by Katya overnight.

Victor liked to tell stories about the notice board they used to have, where everyone leaving the house, wrote about their plans for the day: “Rehearsal, working in the afternoon. – Iskra” or “Have late lessons. – Victor”. Difficult to imagine now, but there were times before smartphones. Sizov, woking up around lunchtime, when nobody was home, except maybe, Maria, always added at the end of that list something like: “And I don’t give a sh** about work. – Cat Puffik.”

For many years those visits marked their celebrations until fate turned its gears again. Iskra and Victor separated and Tanya got a new family that was created by Iskra and Kostya Chernyadev, the artistic director of a drama theater – but that will be another story.

Was it related or not we cannot say, but some time after that, in the mid-1960s, Victor became seriously ill, and that was when Katya abruptly changed her life one more time. She retired from her career as a singer, took a small suitcase and left Kemerovo and Sizov for Novosibirsk and Victor. Sizov was devastated, but Katya was determined. “It is over for me. The time comes to leave what I loved, you and the stage,” she said to him. “I know that my son needs me now. And I finally feel my age.”

That was how another of Katya’s lives began, the life of a caring mother, grandmother, and eventually, great grandmother.

But that will be another story.