Yana Troyanova: “To obey men is wonderful!”

Zamoskvorechye, historic houses, Yana wraps herself in a stylish black coat. After a studio photo session, we walk with the snow-white Amy, Troyanova’s West Highland White Terrier, in the area where Yana and her husband, director Vasily Sigarev, have recently settled. “Yes, I remember saying that I would not move to Moscow,” Yana smiles. – But everything worked out here, including the apartment. Yes, and in his native Yekaterinburg does not hold anything. There are only graves left. Sometimes it takes two days to get around your own … “

We sit down with Yana in a cozy cafe. “Come on, ask! Let people look at me and understand: you can endure a lot. Do not commit suicide, do not sleep with grief … But live in the present in spite of everything and be happy.

Psychologies: Yana, you really had to go through a lot. A painful relationship with your mother, a tyrant husband, the loss of a son… How did you cope with all this? Have you consulted a psychotherapist for help?

Yana Troyanova: My psychotherapists are my roles and films by Vasily Sigarev. Our paintings participate in the International Psychoanalytic Festival, where they are viewed and discussed by psychologists. For example, experts believe that “Volchok”, about a girl who dies from indifference and dislike of her mother, is a visual aid for studying the relationship between parents and “unnecessary” children. And the film “To Live” is about how to recover from a tragedy, after the loss of your closest and loved ones. It’s about how to “finish” grief. After the release of this picture, where there are so many deaths, people wrote to me who were going to commit suicide, but watched the film and stopped. Left to live!

But, as scary as it sounds, it was addressed to me. We finished work just before the New Year, and I suddenly felt that I urgently needed to go to Yekaterinburg, to my son Kolya, that we must definitely spend this New Year together. It was impossible to get tickets, but by some miracle Vasya bought them. And here we are all sitting together at the festive table: me, my son, my mother, Vasya. We celebrate, we have fun. Suddenly Kolya says to me: “Mom, it seems to me that I will die soon.” – “I know”. This conversation was not terrible. He was wonderful, calm. Kolya and I said everything to each other that New Year’s Eve. He asked me to tell you more about the time when he was very young.

He seemed to want to remember it and take it with him. I remembered the best, joyful. Although there were many bad things… Kolya was born when I was a child. By and large, he became my living doll. I fed him, dressed him, and that was the end of my care for him.

Only closer to his adolescence, I realized that I was missing out on a lot, and we began to learn how to be friends. I felt like a mother when Kolya turned 18. Then I had a family that never existed in my life. Vasya Sigarev united Kolya and me. We built a house for our son – we made his dream come true, he was going to start a husky …

Vasya and I lived at Kolya’s for a long time. We bought delicious food, cooked barbecue. It was the best period in my life. The thrill of waking up in the morning, when Vasya and Kolya are still sleeping, and catching a feeling of happiness. You sit with a cup of coffee and think: “How good!” Forest all around, pines, as in childhood.

When did you begin to feel that Kolya was leaving?

He died at 20. Two years before that, I began to have dreams in which he was taken away by his late father. I was haunted by thoughts that my son would soon be gone. The feeling of inevitability did not let go, and I tried to live the time allotted to us with him to the fullest. When Kolya had a girlfriend, I asked him to get married quickly and give birth to my grandson. I wanted to continue … If it was not on January 4th. It was his choice. I think it’s a spontaneous decision, an impulse. If at that moment someone called him and he was distracted by a conversation, everything would have passed … Seven years have passed since the death of my son, I realized this only recently – on September 25, on his birthday.

She even asked Vasya: “Vasya, is it really seven years old?” “No, three years.” And then I counted and was very surprised. We realized that we simply do not remember the first terrible years. I was a zombie, crying, drinking, not being aware of myself and not wanting to live, I felt like I was alone in a dark room. Apparently, she went deep into herself. And then it was time to get out. And my son helped me take the first steps.

This is not mysticism, not a dream. I know it was a meeting. The son came and spoke to me sternly: “Stop it. It’s too early to think about death. You must live.” And I, in fact, destroyed myself… In order to jump out of my personal hell, I had to withdraw into myself, into sensations, into contact with the Universe, with God. I came back to life only through faith. Of course, many people saved me: both friends and Vasya, who was there all the time. Sigarev took care of me like a child, gave me water, fed me, put me to bed. True, there was a moment when, in a drunken stupor, I dispersed everyone who supported me and helped me. Even Vasya…

It was a wild moment, ugly and shameful – I was lying on the street with a broken head. My bottom. No bottom! But I pushed him away. She said to herself: “I will live!” Today I live to the fullest. I go ahead. And not alone – with Vasily. Meeting him is fate. We do not have common children, but our films are like children … I stop all talk about what could still be born. I’m not looking for a replacement for Kolya.

You can consider that this is a kind of self-punishment, such asceticism. Although I have the need to take care of someone else. Now this is Amy – a daughter, a family member. I named her after Amy Winehouse. A dog of this breed starred with me in the Land of Oz, I became very attached to her and suffered when her mistress took her away. I wanted to get drunk. And then Vasily brought me a puppy. I took her in my arms and thought: “She does not need a drunken mistress.” I quit quickly. I gave up alcohol forever without the help of specialists.

You have a strong character. At the same time, in the first marriage, and now you have to obey men. Is it difficult?

Submissive to men is great! I am convinced that women should follow men. But this does not mean that we have to carry pots of soups after them … Vasya realized long ago that I am not a housewife, not a mother, and not just a woman. He always reminds me of my inner strength. Sometimes it turns me on so much that it seems to me that I will get up and turn the world upside down.

But when I go into a rage, he asks: “Slow down!” We have a very harmonious relationship. We don’t even fight. And at first there were heavy grindings. In the early years, I could not believe for what such merits I got such a cool man. She ruined the relationship from her own fear of losing him. She even left Sigarev and lived with her son. But Vasya took Kolya and me to his place. Sigarev and I have been together for over 15 years.

I can’t imagine what I would have done without him. But after all, I would not have received this Geoffrey de Peyrac, which I dreamed about in childhood, if I had not divorced my first husband.

How did you get out of those destructive relationships that you got into at a very young age?

I really was friends with my first husband since childhood. We lived in the same yard, we built some kind of headquarters. And then he drew attention to me as a girl. I was still at school, Kostya was at vocational school. Got pregnant. On May 25, the last bell rang for my classmates at school, and Mendelssohn’s march played for me in the registry office. The groom carried me in a wedding dress in his arms from the entrance to hell … On the second day, adult life began. If I didn’t cook the way his mother did, my husband would throw away the food. He went on a spree, humiliated me, cheated on me. I considered myself scary, old and useless. When I decided to find out the relationship, he beat me.

Neighbors managed to call the police and an ambulance – a severe concussion, a broken nose with a displacement. I simply did not have a face and generally a living place. As soon as it got better, I filed for divorce. After leaving the court, I promised myself that no one would offend me anymore … I left my husband nowhere. I had nothing, only a child in my arms … But I was unrealistically lucky. A friend said: “Listen, my mother has just been allocated a hostel for me from work, let’s live there.” And we began to live: she has a daughter, I have a son.

Then we began to think about what to do. Then we went to Moscow to Luzhniki to buy things in order to trade in Yekaterinburg. Then they organized a small business, gradually rose … Mom helped me and my ex-husband exchange an apartment, so Kolya and I got a odnushka in the center of Yekaterinburg. Slowly I straightened my back.

Why did you decide to get a philosophical education? At first glance, this choice did not fit into your life at all …

I wanted to be among the smartest people, so at the age of 23 I entered the university at the Faculty of Philosophy. We had lecturers who taught at Oxford and Harvard. Chic! We practiced in a luxurious building with columns. This was my salvation. The country is in ruins, chaos. And I read Nietzsche, Jung, Hume… I cried when I tried to understand Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. But you sob and keep reading, because tomorrow you have to turn in work on it.

We were drilled in German classical philosophy. We all young people loved Kant. At the university, I was not left with a feeling of happiness, as if I had touched something great. There I discovered that I could be a disciplined responsible person. I started to know myself. I felt that the life for which I was born began.

Then I realized: I won’t give up anymore! I will not save you under any circumstances, men, mother. And later, at the age of 29, I entered the theater institute. After all, I was a creative child, I always said that I wanted to be an artist, but both my grandmother and mother closed my mouth.

Those closest to you did not believe in you, but you went your own way. How important was their support and acceptance to you?

When I did, it’s gone. I was just fulfilling a dream. By that time, I understood everything about my mother and her attitude towards me. When she became pregnant by a married man, the grandmother insisted on an abortion. And the mother decided to give birth out of protest. I knew it was an unwanted child. My mother didn’t care about me, she was interested in men, friends, a fun life.

She never took me seriously, never even spoke normally. There was no such thing that she hugged me, told a bedtime story. In fact, only served the physical needs of the child. In the movie Spinning Top, the mother asks: “What did you do?” The girl replies: “I ate porridge, I was waiting for you.” That is, she behaved well.

The same dialogue happened daily with my mother. I hid that I had behaved badly. She cried a lot, waited for her, refused to sleep. Grandma turned off the light and scared that she would send me to the underground. She never carried out her threat, but fear settled in me for many years, I was wildly afraid of any closed space and darkness. Until recently, I could not sleep without light. I often saw a nightmare, as if I was locked up somewhere. Only when I grew up did I realize that fear was imposed by my grandmother. As soon as she realized this, he left.

You didn’t manage to have normal contact with your mother and grandmother, what was your social circle like in childhood?

Very specific. My fantasy was stormy, and I found interlocutors – I played with pine trees in the forest, talked to them. I had favorite trees – the Bride and Groom, they amused me, and Larisa – she scared, angrily pulled branches towards me … We lived in the village of Lechebny on the outskirts of Sverdlovsk. They called him “Dead”. Tuberculosis patients were sent there, as it were, for aftercare, but in reality, after a while, they left for another world. There was a large cemetery near the village. I was not afraid of him, walked along it, ate sweets from the graves. Anyhow I didn’t take any, only “Metelitsa” and “Squirrel” …

Often unloved and unwanted children believe that, having been born, they made their parents unhappy. Is this familiar to you?

Yes, I lived with this feeling and with a load of resentment for many years. But, fortunately, my mother and I managed to make peace before her departure. She was diagnosed with cancer. A beautiful strong woman suddenly turned into a small bird, she was dying in my arms. We switched places, she became my daughter, and I became her mother. For the first time, they spoke calmly and frankly, I took care of her. And just before her death, she said: “You are a good daughter.” All my childhood resentments, nightmares and pain melted away.

Life is like a computer game. Dealt with childhood grievances – moved to another level, escaped from a terrible marriage – a new level, and so on. And someone cannot take a step and gets stuck, let’s say, in family hell. I understand that I’m great. But if you ask me now how to live, I don’t know. No birth allowance is given.