ФАИНА КОСС (1942 – 2024)
Вот и Фаина ушла. Хотя, на самом деле, она – Ольга Устинова (все ее книги подписаны так. «Фаина Косс» – это для периодики). Родителей не стало во время блокады, и ее удочерили папа-мама Косс. Фаина закончила Питерский университет, потом стала диссиденткой, в Америку уехала с дочкой в начале 80-х. Дружила с ККК (Кузьминским), Шемякиным и др. С журналом сотрудничала чуть ли не со дня основания. И если как Фаина Косс она писала иногда нечто автобиографическое, то как Ольга Устинова она улетала в миры чистых фантазий и иллюзорных реальностей («лирико-философско-религиозные фэнтези», если по-научному). Вот. Улетела. Привет, Фай.
А подробнее – расскажет дочь, Маргарита. (Редакция)
The Mythology of My Mother
Faina Koss was born in 1942 in Perm, nee Molotov, in the Soviet Union, in the middle of World War II. Her biological father was killed in combat and her biological mother disappeared. She was adopted at three years of age from an orphanage located next door to the German POW camp and brought to Leningrad. Mom remembered that the orphans would point at the POWs and shout, “Fritzie! Fritzie!” Her adoptive parents were older and Jewish. I suspect they had lost their biological child in the war, but most of my mother’s childhood is mythology created by her own lack of desire to have reasonable conversations with reasonable people. She preferred mystery to fact. Vagueness, to information. Denial to truth. Sadly, I think the rest of the family did as well. For this reason, my mother had a lovely imagination and wrote what I suppose are lovely stories. I wouldn’t know. I have never read them.
After having graduated St. Petersburg State University with a degree in Philology, my mother worked at “Intourist”. Because international tourists weren’t allowed to travel Soviet Russia without a chaperone, my mother got authentic English language practice and was completely fluent by the time she was in her twenties, having never left Russia.
In the 1960s, she was a rock climber. Mountaneers would travel to the Caucasus and Urals climbing mountains and hunting their own food. My mother always had her “Smyena” camera with her and when I look back at those black and white photos, I am in awe of these people who climbed wearing wool sweaters and leather boots in a time before Gore-Tex and Kevlar. They climbed with no oxygen. Off season, mom told me that they would practice climbing on The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, on the Canal Griboyedov. Mom told that me she and a woman named Galyka were especially competitive with one another. They would throw their ropes and tie up, securing them to the copulas, then scale the church going up and rappel down racing one another the whole time.
In the 1970s, my mother was a Nonconformist writer in Leningrad. There is a very sexist moment in a documentary about Konstantine Kuzminsky where he says, “All the boys were writing, and all the girls were typing.” That’s not true though. They worked together on Samizdat and preserved literature not only for their own generation but for the original Nonconformists that had come before. It was a boys’ club, though.
When I became curious about the 1950s era of Nonconformism, mom told me about a time when everyone was working together on assembling Roald Mandelshtam’s poems into a publishable format. He had been the only poet in a group of painters that included Alexander Arefiev, and died tragically very young. When Stalin died, Roald did not remove his hat. My mother and Ricard Vasmey had been tasked with walking the Griboedov Canal and taking photos along the way because Roald’s apartment was at the end of the canal, past New Holland which features in one of his poems. That manuscript is also mythology now, but I have seen it and when I did, I thought to myself, my mother worked on this. Everyone was editing and compiling, but the girls weren’t just typing. The boys just probably didn’t know how to type.
She left Russia because she wanted to become a famous writer, and I suppose the Soviet Union of 1978 didn’t lend itself well to that. She dragged me through Austria, into Italy, to Chicago, to California and finally to New York where she lived and died in Manhattan from 1981-2024. She brought me along with her for the ride. When I think about sounds that I associate with my childhood, it is her typewriter beating rhythm into the night with a bell sounding at the end of the line.
“Did we make a mistake coming here, mom?”
“Well, at least we didn’t have to live through the 90s in Russia, Rita.”
When I think of my mother outside of mythology, I remember traveling with her. My mother visited more countries than anyone I have ever met in my life. Some of them we visited together. In my memory, we are crossing the English Channel on a ferry over overcast-skies and choppy water, leaning on one another back to back, trying not to vomit, keeping a solid eye on the nearest restroom. We are traveling through Granada, Spain returning from Alhambra and walking down a steep incline through Lorca’s white walled houses. I’m lost in thought and mom nudges her elbow into my ribs, “Rita, look!” she whispers.
A tall young man with waist length black hair, dressed in black jeans and t-shirt with a black leather belt and leather boots is walking ahead of us. He has an enormous falcon on his arm. I have an overwhelming urge to know what he smells like. I imagine sweat, leather and bird-of-prey. Two girls in their twenties are in front of him. Thirty-something-year old me and mom are behind. He knows that he’s surrounded by women and a performative moment strikes him to where he gently stirs his arm and the bird’s wings come apart to their full expanse of five or more feet as we continue down the incline in the twilight and every woman on that street exhales a sigh, regardless of age. But mom was the first to notice.
I think of being in Paris with my mother and standing before Notre Dame. To reach the top which overlooks the city and is adorned by gargoyles, one must take the stairs. “Do you want to climb it, mama? Can you?” I ask. “I can do it.” She responds. “There will come a time soon when I won’t be able to. Let’s go.” I had planned on taking my mother to Paris this December. Renovated Notre Dame is slated to reopen in time for the holidays. I remember her watching it in tears on the news as it burned. But we didn’t make it that far. One of the last things that she said to me was, “You go!” So, maybe I will.
There are many other stories that I can tell you, but what I would like to share with you is that there are memories I have of my mother when she was a hero. No one can be a hero one hundred percent of the time. But those memories help us to grow our own mythologies and assuage anger and pain, and grief, and ultimately, they are love. If you have enjoyed reading my mother’s work, then have no doubt that she appreciated this. As for me, please raise a glass and toast to the crazy woman who raised me and climbed mountains and crossed borders. Who wrote and never stopped writing.
Margarita Shalina
