Inlägg 92Irena Bay (Germany) skrev:den 22 juli 2009 kl. 10:34
A TALE ABOUT FISHERMAN AND HIS GOLDEN SONG
PART 2
(translated by Irena)

To be a role model for his little brother, Alexander applied to the Moscow conservatory to become an army orchestra conductor. In the third year of school, he decided to change his last name and to take the maiden name of his mother, remembering how his father had left the family - he stopped being Rybak and became Savitski.

- Funny, how life goes: I was declared as Russian in my birth certificate, so I went to study in Moscow, and thus built up a life on the Russian ground. My brother Igor, according to the papers, was Belorussian. He applied to the Minsk conservatory, later on, while his life had been connected to Belorussia for a long time.

Still a student of the music institute in Vitebsk, Igor married unexpectedly his fellow-student Svetlana Mogutchaya. They were expecting a child. After the wedding, the new-gained family behaved strangely: they counted the bought forks, spoons, plates. Igor was literally suffocating in his mother in law's house. The couple stayed together only for half a year. Not even the new born baby daughter, Julia, could reunite the parents.

In order to sustain his family, Igor used to work in addition in the Vitebsk ensemble - which had been quite popular in those days, where Igor played the repertoire "Pesnyary" [Natalia: A Belorussian ensemble, founded in 1969 and famous in whole USSR] in restaurants. Meanwhile, he was considered as a brilliant violinist. Maria Borisvna, exchanged the two-room apartment in Vitebsk for one room in a communal flat in Minsk to make it possible for Igor to get proper musical education.

After his graduation from the conservatory, Igor began working in the prestige Minsk chamber orchestra. During one of the concerts, he met the sweet-looking, refined pianist, Natalia. The young woman had finished the theoretical study in the conservatory and was working as an editor in the musical department of a TV station. Not long after this, Igor and Natalia got married.

- They were the halves of one and the same apple! They were very compatible. Both musicians, while talented. Their birthdays were even close: 18th and 19th of May. Both have the sign "Taurus". And then, an other Taurus was born: the son Sashka, on the 13th.

During the summers, the boy was sent to the family country-house in Pskovian region. An ancestor used to live there with his family - a priest who had been sentenced to death and shot in '37. This was the place where the whole family gathered: from Moskow, Vitebsk, Vilnyus. These were marvelous landscapes next to the lake "Yazno" and with many mushrooms.

[Irena: Is that the explanation for Alex' obsession with mushrooms: He thinks everything from Russian to be a mushroom - and this makes him soooo adorable: "murashky" (goosebumps/ants), "zemlyaki" (fellow-country-men)!!!] [Natalia: As a Russian-speaking girl, I can easily trace Alex's logic and strange childhood associations, and aren't they funny: murashki=moroshki (cloudberries), and zemlyaki=zemlyaniki(wild strawberries) No mushrooms indeed, sorry, Alex!]

- Sashka was raised mainly by his grandmother, Maria Borisovna. My nephew has always been surrounded by women. [Irena: That explains the other obsession!!! ;) *lol* ] One time, I sat down with my nephew next to the shed to have a smoke. He started to annoy me right away: "I will go and tell babushka about the cigarettes!!! [Irena: hihihi!!!!] He was a huge tattle-tale. He didn't accept me as an adult, just called me "Shuritch", 'cause he couldn't pronouns the letter "k" for a long timing, saying "tch" instead of it. [Irena: Oh, goody, how cute!!!] For us at home, he always has been for some reason Sushka, not Sashka. And still, although he'd grown up, family members call him sometimes this way. [Natalia: Sashka is a much more colloquial short name than Sasha]

When the summers were over, Sasha Rybak returned to communal flat in Minsk.

- This was a solidly-built house 'cause it had been constructed by the German prisoners of war. In the other room, there lived the chief of police, Zhora with his family. At nights, he used to get drunk up to the stage of unconsciousness. When he was hammered, he used to rampage. Quite often, he’d spread around with his loud drinking buddies in the kitchen which they all shared. Igor had to practice. But, every time he started to play violin, his neighbours beat into the wall: “Cut that nerve-racking!”

I remember when my brother went on tour to Kazanj with the chamber orchestra, where I had served in the army in other times. We were backstage, when Igor, nodding with his head into the direction of the audience, said: “Look, [only] 25 people came. Our people are indifferent to art.”