In the TV series “Molodezhka” of the STS channel, Vladimir Zaitsev and Tatiana Shumova play a love couple, but in real life they have been walking hand in hand for 30 years. We visited the artists’ dacha near Moscow.
November 20 2016
Just a summer residence! This is how our country dwelling was conceived and realized. Old cramped grandfather’s dacha of his wife demanded a flight … And we began to build. By God’s providence, we transformed the unfinished building sent down to us into a family hearth, our own, simple and comfortable. Several items of family heritage: a sideboard, an old sewing machine, a soulful carved dressing table and little things from the past lives of grandfathers and parents – created the uncomplicated life of our family nest. I eat with the spoons my father bought, and my son and grandchildren drink tea in the cup holders I bought. Soul! When my granddaughter Stefan enters my workshop, he sighs touchingly and says: “Damn! Well, how cool you are! ” And granddaughter Katya, running up the stairs with a walkie-talkie, haunts us and chooses where she will sleep today. My childhood home is a 24 square meter room in a barrack. It was a former camp for German prisoners of war in the city of Sverdlovsk. Now I have ten times 24.
And I was born on Khmelev Street. In the next house, once from the studio of Nikolai Khmelev, the Theater was born. MN Ermolova, where Volodya and I have served since our student years to this day. Apparently, it inspired me through the wall, and after years, as if through the wall, I stepped onto the stage of Ermolovsky. The general’s apartment was cramped, but cozy and soulful. There was an antique tapestry over my crib with a picture of a house in the woods; when I was sick, I wove braids from tassels on this rug and dreamed of such a house. Now a tapestry with those same pigtails hangs in our bedroom in a house that looks like my dream. And in the living room there is a sideboard, on the corner of which the general grandfather put me 10 kopecks on a bun.
Probably from those buns, the beautiful Tanya grew up, to whom it was not so easy for me to approach.
We played the play “The Snow Queen” with him, I was the queen, and he was Kai. I said, “Kiss me boy. You are afraid?” To which Zaitsev replied: “Am I afraid? I’m not afraid of anything!” and kissed … When the romance had already begun, all the participants in the children’s play gathered in the wings to contemplate this childish kiss. Once we had a fight. I stand on a pedestal, it fits. I say: “Don’t you dare, don’t touch, pretend theatrical – that’s all.” And he turns to the audience, and I have to kiss for real.
This is how we live in disputes. The fireplace has not yet been tiled, and the dressing table has not been painted, because no one is giving up their positions. I say: “Tiles” … She: “Stone!” Me: “Mirror under the old gold” … She: “Dark wood!” Therefore, a couple of old porcelain men bought in Germany are standing on the pier glass. I, as I saw them behind the glass, yelled: “Tanya, look, it’s us!” These dolls are from my verse, written to Tanya: “Come on like this with you together, we will go through life. Let’s go under an umbrella together We will go into the eternal light. Let no one interfere with us, anywhere and never, to love, forgive and understand always, in all years. Let you be one hundred and one, and I’m barely under a hundred … Yes, one of the two of us will not be left! “
We had a stormy romance, and we have been living stormy for 30 years. When Volodya was once asked in an interview what the secret of our family longevity was, he said: “The fact is that 80 percent of the time my wife and I fight, which means that we are not indifferent to each other.” I came home, I say: “Why did you say that?” Answers: “We lied, not 80, but 90 percent swear!” But still we found our halves.
She conquered me with harmfulness and pedantry. And since I myself am a pedant, but not harmful … Do you want an apartment on Sretenka, where you were born? On the! Do you want a summer cottage where your grandfathers spoiled you, in the same forest? Yes on!
Because we both take pedigree and family equally seriously.
And the family is home. My father is dispossessed. When the grandfather’s house was robbed clean and the last one was taken away, a sewing machine remained in the rain, awaiting its fate. It was a sad memory of my father. Now Tanya’s grandmother’s sewing machine warms my soul.
Grandma was an extraordinary person. A rare wise counselor. Our daughter is named Lydia in her honor. Our son Vanyusha, at the age of five, said in a lusty voice: “Grandma is a drrrug!” Because only this great-grandmother honestly played with him in cars and baked pies for him. Now I bake pies in my kitchen for my grandchildren. Well, the kitchen is, of course, bigger than grandmother’s and lighter. By the way, Volodya collected it himself.
And how long have I been designing the stairs to the second floor … so that it does not turn out to be steep and so as not to bang my head against the lintel. Calculated by the centimeter. And he made the right decision. I am surprised at myself. The son has grown under two meters, passes without bending. My home is my castle! And it should be built with your own hands. The longer you build, the stronger your home and family. It prolongs life. It seems to me.