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Annotation Concordia Terentyevna Landau-Drobantseva (1908 -1984), the wife of the brilliant physicist Lev Landau, began writing her memoirs after the death of her husband in 1968 and worked on them for more than ten years... The result was three solid volumes. Bound and supplemented with photographic documents, they circulated in the form of samizdat for some time among physicists, but soon almost all copies were destroyed by academicians and their wives, who were sanctimoniously indignant at this frank text, the shocking details of the personal lives of the great minds of the USSR and impartial assessments " untouchables." But “manuscripts don’t burn,” and the appearance of Cora Landau’s memoirs in the form of a book is further confirmation of this. “I wrote these memoirs only to myself, without the slightest hope of publication. In order to unravel the most complex tangle of my life, I had to delve into the obscene little things of everyday life, into the intimate aspects of human life, strictly hidden from prying eyes, sometimes concealing so much charm, but also abomination. I wrote only the truth, the whole truth..."

Cora Landau-Drobantseva

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Cora Landau-Drobantseva

Academician Landau. How we lived

O. Henry, my favorite writer, said:

“If a person wrote about his adventures not for literature, not for the reader, but if he truthfully confessed to himself!”

So she wrote only to herself, wrote only the truth, the whole truth, without the slightest hope of publication.

Dau was a sunny man; by now he could have been 75 years old. For ten years now I have been writing and writing about my happy and dramatic fate. In order to unravel the most complex tangle of my life, I had to delve into the obscene little things of everyday life, into the intimate aspects of human life, strictly hidden from prying eyes, sometimes concealing so much charm, but also abomination.

Cora Landau 1983

Chapter 1

Almost twenty years have passed since you left for Dubna on that fateful morning, and my thoughts endlessly rush to the past. Was there really youth, happiness, love and you!

On Sunday, January 7, 1962, at ten o'clock in the morning, a new light green Volga left the Institute of Physical Problems. Behind the wheel is Vladimir Sudakov. Sudakov’s wife Verochka was sitting behind her, and Academician Landau was to her right. Dau valued Sudak (as he called Vladimir Sudakov) as a student - a physicist who showed promise. In the past, he spoke highly of the beauty of his wife Verochka.

In the new Volga, the heating system worked perfectly. On Dmitrovskoe Highway it became hot in the car, Dau took off his fur hat and fur coat. (Oh, if only he hadn’t done this!) Dmitrovskoye Highway is narrow. Overtaking or detour is prohibited! There was an intercity bus ahead, its body obscuring the visibility of the oncoming lane. The pike perch was driving closely behind the bus, but there was no oncoming traffic, no, no, no. Approaching the stop, the bus slowed down, and then Sudak blindly jumped out into the left lane, without slowing down, began to overtake, thereby monstrously violating the traffic rules. A dump truck was coming towards us. The experienced driver wanted to pull over to the side of the road, but there were children there. The driver of the dump truck tried to drive along the very edge of the road; passage was open in front of Sudak. There was ice, so you couldn't brake suddenly. A professional would have walked cleanly between the dump truck and the bus. A bad driver would have scratched or dented the fenders. The speed of reaction, seconds, moments decided everything! And this unfortunate driver, out of fear, sharply squeezed the clutch and brake. According to the laws of physics, the Volga spun on the ice like a top under the influence of centrifugal force. By this force Daunka was pressed to the right side. The head, right temple, is pressed against the car door. Evil fate chose to hit the right door of the Volga. Another second, an instant - and the blow would have been on the trunk. But rock was too evil! It was he who took off Dau’s hat and fur coat! The entire impact of the dump truck was borne by a fragile human body, pressed by centrifugal force against the door of the Volga.

The inner left pocket was filled with glass from the Volga window, therefore, the tails of the jacket stood perpendicular to the body. The unlucky dump truck, backing up, carried away the right door of the Sudakov Volga. Unconscious, Daunka fell onto the January ice and lay there for twenty minutes until an ambulance arrived from Hospital No. 50. This is an ordinary Soviet hospital with very good, highly qualified medical staff. Everything was excellent, especially the chief surgeon Valentin Polyakov and the very young doctor Volodya Luchkov (he was the doctor on duty).

There was a bleeding wound on the right temple, a cut from the glass of the Volga, the rest of the skin was intact, and there were no signs of visible trauma to the skull.

Doctor Luchkov began to treat the bleeding wound on his temple. The physicists had already managed to deliver one of the “academicians” (as Dau called medical academicians) to hospital No. 50. With his hands behind his back, he approached the doctor Luchkov, who was providing first aid to the victim, and said: “Aren’t you too brave, young man, that you dared to touch this patient without the instructions of the consultation? Or don’t you know who the victim is?” “I know, this is a patient who was admitted to my ward while on duty,” answered doctor Luchkov.

From January 7, 1962 to February 28, 1962, 52 days, Academician Landau spent in this wonderful Soviet hospital. It was here that, thanks to the hard and selfless work of the entire medical team, the life of the great physicist L.D. Landau was saved.

The news that a famous world-famous physicist had been involved in a car accident spread throughout Moscow.

And at 17.00 on the same day, the BBC informed the world about the misfortune that happened in the Soviet Union.

In London, a major foreign publisher of Landau's works, Maxwell, upon hearing this news, immediately picked up the phone: an urgent call to London International Airport. He asked to delay the departure of the plane to Moscow for one hour: “In Moscow, trouble befell a major physicist, I myself will deliver medicines that will help save Landau’s life.” Maxwell recently had trouble in London: on the night of January 1, 1962, his eldest 17-year-old son was also in a car accident. The boy is still alive and suffered multiple injuries, including a head injury. Maxwell knew what medications were needed at first to save a person. For seven days London doctors have been fighting for the boy’s life. Cerebral edema was prevented by urea injections. At home, Maxwell had boxes of urea in ampoules on hand. The passenger plane took off from London an hour late, heading for Moscow, carrying on board precious ampoules of urea, which were destined to prevent Landau's cerebral edema and repel one of the first terrible attacks of death.

Yes, Dau received a complex of multiple injuries, each of which could have been fatal: seven broken ribs that ruptured his lungs; multiple hemorrhages into soft tissues and, as it turned out much later, into the retroperitoneal space with sweating into the abdominal cavity; extensive fractures of the pelvic bones with separation of the pelvic wing, displacement of the pubic bones; retroperitoneal hematoma - Dau's concave abdomen turned into a huge black blister. But doctors in those days said that all these terrible injuries were just scratches compared to a head injury!

There were a lot of dire predictions from professors of medicine; the most dire predictions were about brain injury. Fortunately, the dire predictions of doctors are mitigated by their mistakes. X-ray showed only a hollow, undisplaced, crack at the base of the skull. An encephalogram showed that the cerebral cortex function was preserved. For some reason, doctors did not trust the encephalogram. The brain is still so little studied - this area of ​​medicine, alas, sleeps in the calm sleep of an infant in the cradle of world medicine. Basically, doctors were afraid of deadly swelling of the part of the brain where vital centers are located: cardiovascular and respiratory. The patient was in a deep unconscious state of shock. In the first, most fatal hours, the doctors of Hospital No. 50 held their defensive positions of life.

When on January 7, 1962, the early winter twilight began to thicken over Moscow, the part of the Timiryazevsky district where Hospital No. 50 was located was crowded with cars. It seemed that all of Moscow had gathered, a sea of ​​cars. The police arrived to regulate traffic to allow access to the hospital. Acquaintances and strangers, the entire student population of Moscow was also here, everyone wanted to help with something, to hear something.

- Still alive, still alive, not regaining consciousness.

Without occupying the elevator, the physicists arranged a live telephone from the sixth floor to the physicists' duty car.

A council of medical scientists gathered at the hospital. The lung specialist said: “The patient is doomed, the lungs are ruptured, pieces of the pleura are torn off, a traumatic fire will break out in the lungs, and he will suffocate, because there is no breathing machine!” The live wireless telephone of the physicists started working, several cars of doctors and physicists took off and rushed around Moscow. Medical students found out that breathing machines were only available at the Children's Polio Medical Institute in those years. The medical council was still meeting when physicists and medical students brought two breathing machines and oxygen cylinders into Landau’s room. The mechanic on duty arrived with the cars. The members of the council threw up their hands in surprise: “Tell me, young people, if we need a high-rise building to save Landau’s life, will you bring it here too?”

- Yes, we’ll bring it!

Cerebral edema developed and threatened. Despite the day off, on Sunday night all pharmacy warehouses in Moscow and Leningrad were opened, where they searched in vain for urea in ampoules. The plane from London delivered the urea ampoules on time. Cerebral edema was prevented.

Only after this incident the Ministry of Health took action, and now all hospitals in our country have urea ampoules. This is a very cheap drug.

Chapter 2

On January 7, 1962, at 1 p.m., the phone rang. I pick up the phone. They say from hospital No. 50. As a result of a car accident, Academician Landau ended up in our hospital in a hopeless state of shock. The accident occurred at 10:30 a.m. on Dmitrovskoye Highway on the road to Dubna. One of your husbands was injured; your companions escaped with fear.

– How did your husband suffer? What's broken? Hand? Leg?

I had a lot of stupid questions; it didn’t immediately dawn on me that the word “hopeless” exhausted all the questions. I screamed: “No, no, this can’t be!” Everything was spinning around, I couldn’t find the door. I should have run and screamed! Suddenly someone’s words came to consciousness: “Garik feels bad!” And then the mother defeated the wife! I began to incoherently reassure my son, he lay motionless, his face without blood and wide open, unblinking childish glass eyes.

And the phone rang and rang and rang. There were many questions to me: “Is it true that...”.

- Yes, yes, yes, true, true.

The hours passed, the phone rang, and in response to the next question I began to shout into the phone, but addressing my son: “Thank you, thank you, he regained consciousness. Thanks, broken collarbone and arm! How happy I am! It's over! Thank you, thank you, how grateful I am to you! Garik, Garik, you heard, dad has already regained consciousness.” Another curious person hung up, deciding that he was talking to a crazy woman.

The January twilight was gathering ominously. Garik managed to calm down. She gave him a sleeping pill, closed the door to his room tightly, and he fell asleep. The phone went silent. All of Moscow already knew about the tragic traffic accident that happened on the Dmitrovskoe highway on the Dubna road.

Alexander Vasilyevich Topchiev called, he said: “All medical forces in Moscow have been assembled, my husband’s condition is serious.” This call brought some relief. Heavy means alive. With despair and hope, I began to wait for the physicists from the hospital to come and tell the truth. I remembered that for two weeks now physicists from Dubna had been calling all the time and asking me to come. He obviously didn’t want to go, he worked very hard and a lot, slept little, and ate poorly. With a height of 182 cm, he weighed only 59 kg. About himself, in his early years, he said: “But I don’t have a physique, I have a body subtraction!” These words of his later entered literature.

- Dow, yesterday you went to bed again at three in the morning. I heard the switch flip. Is it possible to work so much? It has become completely yellow-green, look, the girls will stop loving you!

Smiling cheerfully, he said: “But what a job I’m finishing. Korusha, everything I’ve done in physics is nothing compared to this work of mine, but we have to hurry, especially at the end, in case the Americans overtake us at the very last moment, I don’t know what Oppenheimer is working on. Don't bother me, I'm so interested. Come on, scurry, scurry!”

He always worked lying on an ottoman. Friends joked: “Dow, your head weighs much more than your body. To balance, you work lying down!” In the morning, the entire floor near the bed was strewn with sheets of scribbled paper - all formulas, formulas, formulas. Picking it up and putting it in a pile, I asked: “Do you yourself understand what is scribbled here?”

- I understand. Be careful not to throw it away.

He always repeated this and was always looking for the seemingly disappeared sheets of paper covered in writing. A shout from above: “I cleaned it up again, where was that crumpled piece of paper lying here?” (his office was on the second floor). We run upstairs: “Oh, I swear, I didn’t throw anything away, don’t be angry, all your papers are always there.”

- But now it’s nowhere!

And when the missing sheet is not under the ottoman, or under the table, or under the carpet, then I find this sheet in his pocket.

He always asked for forgiveness very touchingly.

On January 6, 1962, in the evening, after dinner, I was looking for another “disappearing piece of paper” in his office. The phone rang. It was again a call from Dubna. Suddenly he agreed: “Well, okay, I’ll come tomorrow. Yes, I'll come, meet me. I’ll leave by 10 o’clock train from Moscow.”

“You agreed to go to Dubna, but you yourself said that this is Bogolyubov’s territory, and you have nothing to do there.”

- Yes, I did. It is so indeed. But the physicists have been asking me for a long time and are waiting for me, and now they informed me that my arrival is necessary, Semyon must be saved.

- Which Semyon?

- Ellochka's ex-husband. She took her son and went to another, in the same house, also an employee of Dubna.

- How did Elka leave Semyon? But Semyon is handsome compared to your Elka, he is smart, and you said that he is one of your galaxy of best students.

– Korusha, in the sense of science, Ellochka’s new lover is not even worth a trace of Semyon. But remember, popular wisdom says: “Love is evil, you will love a goat!” When Ella came to visit us, I repeatedly told her: “It doesn’t happen to anyone. Well, I fell in love, well, they became lovers. And Semyon is a wonderful husband, a wonderful father.” He, poor thing, tried so hard not to notice this romance, he, as a cultured person, did not interfere with them. Semyon is my student, he had no right to be jealous. I always try to instill in my students cultural views on love and life. But the wife of the one to whom Ellochka went, finding her in her bed, did not realize that jealousy is one of the wildest prejudices! She, with the baby in her arms, went to her relatives in Leningrad. Ellochka immediately went to live in her new husband’s apartment. Semyon lives nearby, and he couldn’t bear to see his wife and son with someone else. They just told me that he went crazy. Physicists are afraid of suicide. We need to go and straighten Semyon’s mind. It’s decided, I’m going to Dubna tomorrow. Bogolyubov is a talented physicist, and it’s always interesting to talk about science with young physicists.

- Yes, but our driver has already left, and tomorrow is a day off.

– You’re right, on the weekend it’s difficult to get a taxi by a certain hour, but I’m sure that Zhenya will give me a ride to the station in his new Volga for the ten o’clock train.

Zhenya - easy to remember - appeared in Dau's office. He came to see Dau twenty times a day - I was forced to give him the key to our apartment.

– Zhenya, I gave my word to go to Dubna tomorrow. I’ve already made an agreement with the Sudaks, we’ll meet at the station near the ten o’clock train to Dubna. Can you give me a lift to the station tomorrow morning?

- Yes, yes, of course I can. Moreover, tomorrow morning I’m going to the swimming pool. My belly has started to appear, I need to lose excess fat.

I went to my room, in the lower half of the apartment, and Dau began dictating to Zhenya the next paragraph of the eighth volume of his books, about which they now say: “Created by them together.”

I once asked Dau:

– Why do you write all your volumes only with Zhenya, why not with Alyosha?

- Korusha, I tried not only with Alyosha, I tried with others, but nothing worked!

- Why?

– You see, when I dictate my books on physics to Zhenya, he writes everything down without question. His brain is that of a competent clerk; he is not capable of independent creative thinking. As a student he gave the impression of being capable, but later time showed that he was a barren! He did not turn out to be a creative worker, but he is educated, neat, precise and hardworking, and he turned out to be a co-author. Instead of a salary, I give him my ideas; he needs to have his own face in society. Thanks to his help, I was able to create good books on physics for posterity. I tried to write my books with talented students, but their minds are inquisitive, they are not able to unquestioningly write down my thoughts. What I decide instantly is not yet a law for them, they object, argue, and when they comprehend, they come and say: “Duh, you were right.” A lot of valuable time has passed, but time waits! Our temporary stay on earth is too short, and there is still so much to do! I can’t spend my creative time writing books. When I get tired of thinking, I call Zhenya and dictate the next paragraphs to him. I cannot dictate for a long time, boredom overcomes me, and you, Korusha, know well, I have repeated this to you many times: the worst sin is to be bored! Don’t laugh, the terrible judgment will come, the Lord God will call and ask: “Why didn’t you enjoy all the benefits of life? Why were you bored?

Chapter 3

As the years passed, Landau's popularity grew. Everyone has long understood that Zhenya is simply a member of Landau. In front of me, physicists said at our house: “Dow, for the work that Zhenya does for you, you should only express your gratitude to him in the preface of the next volume - this is what all our academicians do - and not make him your co-author. After all, he receives a very generous payment for his work - your ideas! And such that, look at it, they will soon end up as a member of the core.” This is what physicists said during Landau’s lifetime.

No, don’t exaggerate, he will never be a member! He has a thin gut, and slave labor was destroyed by capitalism as unproductive. I am in a hurry to create a complete course of theoretical physics; these books are very necessary for students and young physicists. My books on physics will help young physicists “gnaw the granite of science.” Zhenya, of course, doesn’t care about his offspring, but, receiving half of the fee as a co-author, he works for himself, and this is where the dog is buried! At any time of the day or night, he lies in wait for my free moments. His natural tenaciousness is amazing - he won’t let go until he gets a few paragraphs out of me.

Students of the physics department of Moscow State University in those years said about the course of theoretical physics by Landau-Livshits: “In these books there is not a single word written by Landau’s hand, and there is not a single thought of Livshits.” Everyone knew this.

But that's all in the past. And now it is the night of January 7, 1962. A tragic surprise invaded my life. Grief entered the house. At about 12 o'clock at night, physicists from the hospital came and said: “Dau has not regained consciousness yet.” Zhenya’s wife Lelya says: “Zhenya almost strangled Sudak, he shouted at him: “Murderer!”

Then I remembered: “Zhenya, yesterday in front of me you gave your word to Dau to take him only to the station. How dare you trust Sudak to take Dau to Dubna in icy conditions? His old Moskvich is all damaged from his “ability” to drive a car. You, Zhenya, are a first-class driver, I was always calm if you were driving a Dau. You betrayed Dau! You, you are a killer, a cold-blooded killer! It was you who allowed Sudak to kill Dau. Sudak is a fool, he and his wife were impressed to appear in their new Volga with Landau in Dubna!”

The physicists took Livshits away.

In reality it was like this. On the morning of January 7, when it was time to take Dau to the station, Zhenya, leaving the apartment, discovered ice, ran upstairs to Dau: (Landau himself later said this):

- Dow, I don’t want to take my new Volga out of the garage into the ice. I'm confident in my driving, but what if some idiot driver scratches my new car. You can’t travel in icy conditions, you should postpone your trip to Dubna.

Livshits didn’t tell me about the ice, or that Dau decided to go with the Sudaki. Of course, in Zhenya’s skull, which had been bald since childhood, the gray matter was seething only with greed; the basis of all his actions was only self-interest. Suffering a loss is tantamount to death! Yesterday he gave his word (it was beneficial for him to sometimes serve Landau), and today his property was threatened with a scratch! When he bought the car, he burst into our room with the words: “Cora, Dau, listen, what a brilliant deal I made: I sold the old Pobeda, which cost me 16 thousand rubles, for 35 thousand, and bought a new Volga for foreign currency.” , for £450 at Beryozka. Cora, you can do the same by receiving this information free of charge from me. Old Pobeda cars are very expensive, and there are many people who want to buy them. We are paid in foreign currency for the publication of our books in England and other countries, and you, Dau, have not yet even realized the “Fritz of London” award, which was so solemnly presented to you by the Canadian embassy!”

Dau and I went out to look at the new Volga. She shone bald and new. He drove off.

- Korusha, if you want, buy yourself a new Volga, and you can use the currency.

- Why, Dau, our Pobeda is almost new. And Zhenya, it turns out, is in love with his bald head. - Why did you decide so? I think he's jealous of my hair. “He’s actually jealous of you.” Why did he buy a self-portrait car? The roof and bald head are flesh-colored. So, if Livshits had not been under Landau, he would not have had legal pounds sterling and would not have had a new Volga.

Dau had a different nature. If he said: “Meet me on the ten o’clock train from Moscow,” then he could no longer be late! “Precision is the politeness of kings,” he always repeated, adding: “I have never been late anywhere for a single minute in my life.” Dau was very proud of this. Allowing himself to be late when expected was like an antibody for Dau! Never be late! It is impossible to break your word!

Chapter 4

Sunday.

On this day, year after year, I had the responsibility to put my son in the bath in the morning. This was always achieved with great difficulty.

At 9 o'clock in the morning, Dau had already had breakfast, and I was still taking care of my son. Looking into Garik’s room, Dau said: “Don’t go out when the doorbell rings, I’ll open it myself.” It was a stop signal, a red light.

In our marriage “Non-Aggression Pact” there was a point of complete freedom of personal life, complete freedom of a person’s intimate life.

“Okay,” I said, thinking that Zhenya would arrive with the girls in the car. In this case, Dau always gave a stop signal. The doorbell rang when Garik and I were having breakfast in the kitchen. A few seconds later, Dau is already below. Kissing me goodbye, he said: “I’ll be home on Thursday evening.” It's hard to believe that all this happened this morning. It seems like an eternity has passed.

Suddenly the doorbell rang late. A stranger enters:

– Are you Landau’s wife?

- Yes I. Come in, undress, sit down.

“I will sit down and not leave until you get the doctor Sergei Nikolaevich Fedorov, his coordinates are written on this piece of paper, to take night duty at your husband’s bedside.” Otherwise, Landau will not live to see the morning. Go to college and take action. They say that Kapitsa returned from the dacha, despite the ice.

I ran to the institute, begged, begged, cried. I was connected by telephone to the chairman of the council, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences N.I. Grashchenkov.

– Doctor Fedorov, Sergei Nikolaevich Fedorov? This is the first time I've heard this name. Everyone wants to save Landau, but there is no longer room in the ward for a single doctor: the entire cream of Moscow medicine has been assembled to save Landau.

I returned home around two o'clock in the morning. The unknown guest was sitting, Garik was sleeping. After the noise of the institute, there was an ominous silence in the house. Slipping heavily into a chair, I burst into tears. Guest said:

– Were you convinced that the entire council consists of professors?

- Yes, that's exactly what they told me.

– There are many professors there, but there is not a single doctor there! Call, ask, demand, insist! You have the legal right as a wife to entrust your husband's life to your doctor. Only Fedorov can save Landau's life. Call, call!

I called Topchiev. He immediately picked up the phone, listened very carefully, wrote down all Fedorov’s coordinates, promised to help and call. We silently stared at the telephone. Alexander Vasilyevich said that the hospital did not agree, no one knows this doctor. I again began to ask Topchiev, sobbing desperately, saying that I had the legal right to insist. They don’t know Fedorov, and I don’t know Grashchenkov!

Topchiev was a kind person - this is the most valuable thing in a person, especially when he occupies a high position. He replied that he would try to bypass the hospital.

They stared at the device again. Dead night. My ears are ringing. Time has fallen asleep too!

Call. Topchiev said: “There is an oral order from the Minister of Health, Comrade Kurashov, to include doctor Fedorov in the consultation at your request. I gave the order, and the car left behind him. Our head of the medical department will call you when doctor Fedorov enters your husband’s room.”

- Thank you thank you thank you!

My mysterious guest of the night stood up, thanked me and disappeared. Doctor Sergei Nikolaevich Fedorov was a neurosurgeon without ranks or titles, but he had great medical talent. He knew how to heal dying patients. From the celebrities of the consultation, he received an almost lifeless body, the pulse was barely palpable in the carotid artery, only she also said that life was not completely gone.

Professor I.A. Kassirsky, a member of the council, wrote in the magazine “Health” No. 1 for 1963: “Over the forty years of my medical work there were many wonderful healings of seemingly hopeless patients, but the resurrection from the dead of the world-famous physicist L.D. Landau, as reported in our and foreign press, is a particularly exciting moment. Each of the injuries he received could have been fatal. Consiliums were held several times a day. Day and night the necessary measures for the next few hours were discussed. Every hour, every minute, we all asked ourselves the painful question: “Is something missing?” Pirogov’s iron law of skillful organization of the struggle for human life came into effect. Cerebral edema was prevented by an injection of urea, and the formidable danger of damage to the medulla oblongata was averted. But from the excess of administered urea a serious complication arose - the kidneys could not cope with its excretion, and poisoning occurred - uremia. Residual nitrogen grew catastrophically.”

The kidneys stopped working - this is one of the first legends about clinical death! But, fortunately, neurosurgeon Zdenek Kunz, Europe’s leading specialist in this field, flew in from Czechoslovakia. He immediately asked:

– How much water was introduced? I see your patient is on drip intravenous nutrition. Drip infusion cannot remove excess urea from the body. The patient's jaws are reduced by shock paralysis, and the swallowing reflex is absent. It is urgent to insert a feeding tube through the nose into the stomach and immediately introduce water there. How many hours have you had him on your IV?

“It’s already passed one hundred hours.”

– There is a very high risk of vein blockage. Immediately remove the IVs, sew up the veins, and administer food and water through a nasal tube. I will write the food recipe; Grind everything to the consistency of liquid sour cream, passing it through a food processor, and pump it into a thin rubber nasal probe with a syringe.

Upon closer examination of the patient, Professor Kunz said: “The patient’s life is incompatible with the injuries received. He will die, he is doomed, he will last another day, no more. It makes no sense for me to linger, I left my patients who need me more.” The next day, Zdenek Kunc flew away, but he made his short visit to Moscow, to Landau, at such a critical moment and gave very valuable advice!

Immediately after introducing water into the stomach, the kidneys began to work, urine flowed and carried away nitrogen waste, which threatened to extinguish Dau’s barely glimmering life. “The urine has gone,” - this is how the physicists on duty answered on the phone from hospital No. 50. And outside the walls of the hospital, in Moscow, in student dormitories, where young life was in full swing, a young guy on a date with his beloved also reported: “You know, Landau’s has already gone urine".

I met the dawn of a new day, sitting by the phone, hoping that Dau would regain consciousness, and this black device would tell me the good news. In the morning I fed my son breakfast, he went to work, he was 15 years old. The year my son finished eighth grade, the school entered the eleventh year of education. I immediately decided that this was unacceptable for my son; he stopped studying homework from the 6th grade, leaving his briefcase outside the door in the front room, changing books according to the schedule in the morning.

- Garik, you don’t study your homework, but why do you have excellent grades?

- Mom, why teach what the teacher says in class?

Only according to literature - a stable three, but this three was preceded by a phone call. Dau picked up the phone.

– Am I talking to Igor Landau’s father?

“I want to inform you that you need to pay attention to your son’s terrible handwriting.”

- Well, I saw how he writes, and I don’t find anything. You should see how I write!

- And then, your son writes essays poorly. If the average student writes essays on two pages, then your son writes only half a page on any topic.

– Why do you need to spill excess water over the pages of your notebook? What about my son’s literacy?

- He writes competently.

- Thank you for your call. I am pleased with my son's progress. I advise you, do not attach much importance to calligraphy, in our age it is not so important.

Dau himself, in the last grade of school, wrote an essay on the topic “The Image of Tatyana in Pushkin’s poem “Eugene Onegin”: “Tatyana Larina was a very boring person.” There were only six words in the essay, and, of course, he received a one, but this did not stop him as a physicist!

In his last year at school, he wrote an essay on the topic “The Image of Tatyana in Pushkin’s novel Eugene Onegin.” The essay consisted of six words: “Tatyana Larina was a very boring person.”

At the age of 19 he graduated from Leningrad University, at the age of 22 he wrote a work that put him on a par with the most outstanding physicists on the planet. At the age of 26 he became a doctor of science (without defense) and a professor.

He received the gold star of Hero of Social Labor for the theoretical calculation of our atomic bomb, and the Nobel Prize for the theory of superfluidity (individually, which became a rarity in his time).

I studied science exclusively while lying on an ottoman. I refused to have a personal office at the institute: “I don’t know how to sit, and there’s nowhere to lie.” I did all the calculations in my head; there was not a single scientific book, table or slide rule at home.

Favorite saying: “But I’m not like that, I’m different, I’m all sparkles and minutes.” One day I was funny hiding from a certain academician Leontovich for the whole evening, and in response to his wife’s reproach he replied: “I always remember the Last Judgment. God will call and ask: “Why were you bored? Why did you talk to boring Leontovich?”

The wife is a recognized beauty. He married her, stipulating complete sexual freedom for himself (despite the fact that he married a virgin at 28 years old). Here is a typical episode from the wife’s frank memories: (1946, the spouses are 36 years old)
“Dunka flew into my room, hugged me tightly, kissed me loudly on the nose, and announced: “Korochka, I come to you with very pleasant news, tonight at twenty-one o’clock I will not return alone, a girl will come to give herself to me. I told her that you are at the dacha, sit quietly, like a mouse in a hole, or leave. You shouldn't meet. This might scare her away. Please put fresh bed linen in my closet."

On January 7, 1962, he was in a terrible car accident (I was going to settle some kind of sexual scandal with a friend). Long coma, loss of “proximal memory” (did not remember the events of the next two or three days). Debilitating gas formation in the intestines and constant false urge to go to the toilet (10-20 minute breaks in the urge were regarded as a great relief). But he was also bedridden, having just come out of a coma, and started an affair with a nurse, which ended in her pregnancy.

His students and friends abandoned him (obviously, so as not to see him like this), and he spent the rest of his days before his death in the company of his wife, who clearly suffered from a severe form of neurasthenia. He died on March 24, 1968 from pulmonary thrombosis. Before his death he said to his wife: Still, I lived my life well. I’ve always succeeded in everything.”

The wife died in 1984. She left her extremely frank memoirs in Samizdat, which were published. Her description of the people surrounding Landau cannot be trusted in any case: she is extremely biased, and the “truth” about them cannot be learned from her memories. About Landau's treatment too.

But the book is an excellent testimony to the sex lives of the scientific elite. Apparently, academicians were one of the favorite targets of husband hunters during the Soviet era. In the setting of this safari, Landau’s wife, Cora, chose what seems to be the best tactic: non-interference in her husband’s antics with these predatory adventurers. Other academic wives fought – and Artsimovich, Abrikosov, and a host of other academicians fell into the clutches of the hunters, but Landau’s wife held on (however, she described, rather dully, that a certain constant mistress of her husband, even his friends, were everywhere presented as “Landau’s real wife” ).

Here is an article in TSB about Landau:
LANDAU Lev Davydovich, Soviet physicist, academician. USSR Academy of Sciences (1946), Hero of the Socialist. Labor (1954). Genus. in the family of an oil engineer. After graduating from Leningrad. University (1927) postgraduate student Leningrad. Phys.-Techn. in-ta. In 1927 he was sent to Denmark to N. Bor, to England and Switzerland. In 1932 he headed the theoretical department of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Phys.-Techn. Institute in Kharkov. Since 1937|In-those
physical problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences. S1947 prof. Moscow State University. In 1926 he published his first work on the intensity of the spectra of diatomic molecules. In 1927 he first introduced the concept of a density matrix. In 1930 he created the theory of electron diamagnetism of metals (Landau diamagnetism), where he calculated discrete levels of electrons in a magnetic field (Landau levels) and predicted periodicity. changes in susceptibility depending on the field in strong fields (De Haas - van Alphen effect). In 1933 he first proposed the theory of antiferromagnetism. In 1935 jointly with E.M. Lifshitz, he developed the theory of the domain structure of ferromagnets and ferromagnetic resonance. In 1936, L.'s work on kinetics was published. equation for electron plasma. In 1937 he developed a general theory of second-order phase transitions. In the same year he published the theory of the intermediate state of superconductors and statistical data. nuclear theory. In 1938 jointly
with Yu. B. Rumer developed the cascade theory of electron showers in space. rays In 1941 he created the theory of superfluidity of liquid helium. In 1945 he proposed the theory of shock waves at a large distance from the source, and in 1946 the theory of electron plasma oscillations and, in particular, determined their damping (Landau damping). In 1950 jointly with V.L. Ginzburg built a semi-phenomenological. theory of superconductivity. In 1953 he published the theory of multiple particle production in collisions
high energy particles. In 1954-55 jointly. with A. A. Abrikosov, I. M. Khalatnikov and I. Ya. Pomeranchuk, he conducted research into the foundations of quantum electrodynamics, which led to the proof of its intrinsic properties. inconsistencies in the consistent implementation of the concept of point charges. In 1956 he introduced the concept of combined parity. He built the theory of the two-component neutrino (1957), and in 1956-58 - the theory of the Fermi liquid (see Quantum liquid). In 1940-65 he published jointly. with E. M. Lifschitz
fundamental course in theoretical physics (Leninskaya Ave., 1962). L. created numerous. school of theoretical physicists. Among his students are I. Ya. Pomeranchuk, A. B. Migdal, I. M. Lifgiits, A. A. Abrikosov, E. M. Lifshits, I. M. Khalatnikov and others. In - Theoretical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. State USSR Ave. (1946, 1949, 1953), Nobel Ave. (1962). Member many Academy of Sciences around the world (USA, Denmark, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands). Awarded 3 Orders of Lenin, 2 other orders, as well as
medals.
(by the way, E.M. Lifshitz, listed in the TSB article as a comrade-in-arms, is the main object of attacks by Cora Landau. Her book can safely be called not “How We Lived” but “Anti-Lifshitz)

Here is Maya Bessarab's book "Thus Spoke Landau"

The editors would like to thank Valery Gende-Rota and Evgeniy Pavlovich Kassin for the photographs provided.

(there are no photos in this version of the file)

O. Henry, my favorite writer, said:

“If only a man wrote about his adventures not for literature, not for the reader, but if he truthfully confessed to himself!”

So she wrote only to herself, wrote only the truth, the whole truth, without the slightest hope of publication.

Dau was a sunny man; by now he could have been 75 years old. For ten years now I have been writing and writing about my happy and dramatic fate. In order to unravel the most complex tangle of my life, I had to delve into the obscene little things of everyday life, into the intimate aspects of human life, strictly hidden from prying eyes, sometimes concealing so much charm, but also abomination.

Cora Landau, 1983

Almost twenty years have passed since you left for Dubna on that fateful morning, and my thoughts endlessly rush to the past. Was there really youth, happiness, love and you!

On Sunday, January 7, 1962, at ten o'clock in the morning, a new light green Volga left the Institute of Physical Problems. At the wheel is Vladimir Sudakov. Sudakov’s wife Verochka was sitting behind her, and Academician Landau was to her right. Dau valued Sudak (as he called Vladimir Sudakov) as a student - a physicist who showed promise. In the past, he spoke highly of the beauty of his wife Verochka.

In the new Volga, the heating system worked perfectly. On Dmitrovskoe Highway it became hot in the car, Dau took off his fur hat and fur coat. (Oh, if only he didn't do this!)

Dmitrovskoe highway is narrow. Overtaking or detour is prohibited! There was an intercity bus ahead, its body obscuring the visibility of the oncoming lane. The pike perch was driving closely behind the bus, but there was no oncoming traffic, no, no, no. Approaching the stop, the bus slowed down, and then Sudak blindly jumped out into the left lane, without slowing down, began to overtake, thereby monstrously violating the traffic rules. A dump truck was coming towards us. The experienced driver wanted to pull over to the side of the road, but there were children there. The driver of the dump truck tried to drive along the very edge of the road; passage was open in front of Sudak. There was ice, so you couldn't brake suddenly. A professional would have walked cleanly between the dump truck and the bus. A bad driver would have scratched or dented the fenders. The speed of reaction, seconds, moments decided everything! And this unfortunate driver, out of fear, sharply squeezed the clutch and brake. According to the laws of physics, the Volga spun on the ice like a top under the influence of centrifugal force. By this force Daunka was pressed to the right side. The head, right temple, is pressed against the car door. Evil fate chose to hit the right door of the Volga. Another second, an instant, and the blow would have been on the trunk. But rock was too evil! It was he who took off Dau’s hat and fur coat! The entire impact of the dump truck was borne by a fragile human body, pressed by centrifugal force against the door of the Volga.

The inner left pocket was filled with glass from the Volga window, therefore, the tails of the jacket stood perpendicular to the body. The unlucky dump truck, backing up, carried away the right door of the Sudakov Volga. Unconscious, Daunka fell onto the January ice and lay there for twenty minutes until an ambulance arrived from Hospital No. 50. This is an ordinary Soviet hospital with very good, highly qualified medical staff. Everything was excellent, especially the chief surgeon Valentin Polyakov and the very young doctor Volodya Luchkov (he was the doctor on duty).

There was a bleeding wound on the right temple, a cut from the glass of the Volga, the rest of the skin was intact, and there were no signs of visible trauma to the skull.

Doctor Luchkov began to treat the bleeding wound on his temple. The physicists had already managed to deliver one of the “academicians” (as Dau called medical academicians) to hospital No. 50. With his hands behind his back, he approached the doctor Luchkov, who was providing first aid to the victim, and said: “Aren’t you too brave, young man, that you dared to touch this patient without the instructions of the consultation? Or don’t you know who the victim is?” “I know, this is a patient who was admitted to my ward while on duty,” answered doctor Luchkov.

From January 7, 1962 to February 28, 1962, 52 days, Academician Landau spent in this wonderful Soviet hospital. It was here that, thanks to the hard and selfless work of the entire medical team, the life of the great physicist L.D. Landau was saved.

The news that a famous world-famous physicist had been involved in a car accident spread throughout Moscow.

And at 17.00 on the same day, the BBC informed the world about the misfortune that happened in the Soviet Union.

In London, a major foreign publisher of Landau's works, Maxwell, upon hearing this news, immediately picked up the phone: an urgent call to London International Airport. He asked to delay the departure of the plane to Moscow for one hour: “In Moscow, trouble befell a major physicist, I myself will deliver medicines that will help save Landau’s life.” Maxwell recently had trouble in London: on the night of January 1, 1962, his eldest 17-year-old son was also in a car accident. The boy is still alive and suffered multiple injuries, including a head injury. Maxwell knew what medications were needed at first to save a person. For seven days London doctors have been fighting for the boy’s life. Cerebral edema was prevented by urea injections. At home, Maxwell had boxes of urea in ampoules on hand. The passenger plane took off from London an hour late, heading for Moscow, carrying on board precious ampoules of urea, which were destined to prevent Landau's cerebral edema and repel one of the first terrible attacks of death.

Yes, Dau received a complex of multiple injuries, each of which could have been fatal: seven broken ribs that ruptured his lungs; multiple hemorrhages in the soft tissues and, as it turned out much later, in the retroperitoneal space with sweating into the abdominal cavity; extensive fractures of the pelvic bones with separation of the pelvic wing, displacement of the pubic bones; retroperitoneal hematoma - Dau's concave abdomen turned into a huge black blister. But doctors in those days said that all these terrible injuries were just scratches compared to a head injury!

There were a lot of dire predictions from professors of medicine; the most dire predictions were about brain injury. Fortunately, the dire predictions of doctors are mitigated by their mistakes. X-ray showed only a hollow, undisplaced, crack at the base of the skull. An encephalogram showed that the cerebral cortex function was preserved. For some reason, doctors did not trust the encephalogram. The brain is still so little studied - this area of ​​medicine, alas, sleeps in the calm sleep of an infant in the cradle of world medicine. Basically, doctors were afraid of deadly swelling of the part of the brain where vital centers are located: cardiovascular and respiratory. The patient was in a deep unconscious state of shock. In the first, most fatal hours, the doctors of Hospital No. 50 held their defensive positions of life.

Landau-Drobantseva K. Academician Landau. How we lived. Memories. - M.: Zakharov, 2016. - 480 p. - (Series: Biographies and Memoirs). ISBN: 978-5-8159-1391-2

New edition of the book. Concordia Terentyevna Landau-Drobantseva (1908-1984), the wife of the brilliant physicist Lev Landau, began writing her memoirs after the death of her husband in 1968 and worked on them for more than ten years... The result was three solid volumes. Bound and supplemented with photographic documents, they circulated in the form of samizdat for some time among physicists, but soon almost all copies were destroyed by academicians and their wives, who were sanctimoniously indignant at this frank text, the shocking details of the personal lives of the great minds of the USSR and impartial assessments " untouchables." But “manuscripts don’t burn,” and the appearance of Cora Landau’s memoirs in the form of a book is further confirmation of this.

Here is a unique document of history and human relations. Cora Landau wrote that the report of her husband’s autopsy forced her to sit down at the typewriter: “There was a thirst to tell everyone how imperfect medical science is...” But the book turned out to be about something else - about the imperfection of human relationships, about betrayal and indifference, about envy and greed, but and about love too. About love - first of all. Above all the human vices described in this book, rises the figure of its main character - Academician Landau, who survived the disaster, but was killed by the indifference of the people around him. “There was a miracle between us,” someone said after Landau’s death. So this book is also about a miracle.

Cora Landau-Drobantseva: “I wrote these memoirs only to myself, without the slightest hope of publication. In order to unravel the most complex tangle of my life, I had to delve into the obscene little things of everyday life, into the intimate aspects of human life, strictly hidden from prying eyes, sometimes concealing so much charm, but also abomination. I wrote only the truth, the whole truth..."

Excerpt from a book

On January 7, 1962, at 1 p.m., the phone rang. I pick up the phone. Are they talking from the hospital? 50. As a result of a car accident, Academician Landau ended up in our hospital in a hopeless state of shock. The accident occurred at 10:30 a.m. on Dmitrovskoye Highway on the road to Dubna. One of your husbands was injured; your companions escaped with fear.
— How did your husband suffer? What's broken? Hand? Leg?
I had a lot of stupid questions; it didn’t immediately dawn on me that the word “hopeless” exhausted all the questions. I screamed: “No, no, this can’t be!” Everything was spinning around, I couldn’t find the door. I should have run and screamed! Suddenly someone’s words came to consciousness: “Garik feels bad!” And then the mother defeated the wife! I began to incoherently reassure my son, he lay motionless, his face without blood and wide open, unblinking childish glass eyes.
And the phone rang and rang and rang. There were many questions to me: “Is it true that...”
- Yes, yes, yes, true, true.
The hours passed, the phone rang, and in response to the next question I began shouting into the phone, but addressing my son: “Thank you, thank you, he regained consciousness. Thanks, broken collarbone and arm! How happy I am! It's over! Thank you, thank you, how grateful I am to you! Garik, Garik, you heard, dad has already regained consciousness.” Another curious person hung up, deciding that he was talking to a crazy woman.
The January twilight was gathering ominously. Garik managed to calm down. She gave him a sleeping pill, closed the door to his room tightly, and he fell asleep. The phone went silent. All of Moscow already knew about the tragic traffic accident that happened on the Dmitrovskoe highway on the Dubna road.
Alexander Vasilyevich Topchiev called, he said: “All medical forces in Moscow have been assembled, my husband’s condition is serious.” This call brought some relief. Heavy means alive. With despair and hope, I began to wait for the physicists from the hospital to come and tell the truth. I remembered that for two weeks now physicists from Dubna had been calling all the time and asking me to come. He obviously didn’t want to go, he worked very hard and a lot, slept little, and ate poorly. With a height of 182 cm, he weighed only 59 kg. About himself, in his early years, he said: “But I don’t have a physique, I have a body subtraction!” These words of his later entered literature.

- Dow, yesterday you went to bed again at three in the morning. I heard the switch flip. Is it possible to work so much? It has become completely yellow-green, look, the girls will stop loving you!
Smiling cheerfully, he said: “But what a job I’m finishing. Korusha, everything I’ve done in physics is nothing compared to this work of mine, but we have to hurry, especially at the end, in case the Americans overtake us at the very last moment, I don’t know what Oppenheimer is working on. Don't bother me, I'm so interested. Well, shoot, shoot!”
He always worked lying on an ottoman. Friends joked: “Dow, your head weighs much more than your body. To balance, you work lying down!” In the morning, the entire floor near the bed was strewn with sheets of scribbled paper - all formulas, formulas, formulas. Picking it up and putting it in a pile, I asked: “Do you yourself understand what is scribbled here?”
- I understand. Be careful not to throw it away.
He always repeated this and was always looking for the seemingly disappeared sheets of paper covered in writing. A shout from above: “I cleaned it up again, where was that crumpled piece of paper lying here?” (his office was on the second floor). We run upstairs: “Oh, I swear, I didn’t throw anything away, don’t be angry, all your papers are always there.”
- But now it’s nowhere!
And when the missing sheet is not under the ottoman, or under the table, or under the carpet, then I find this sheet in his pocket.
He always asked for forgiveness very touchingly.

On January 6, 1962, in the evening, after dinner, I was looking for another “disappearing piece of paper” in his office. The phone rang. It was again a call from Dubna. Suddenly he agreed: “Well, okay, I’ll come tomorrow. Yes, I'll come, meet me. I’ll leave by 10 o’clock train from Moscow.”
“You agreed to go to Dubna, but you yourself said that this is Bogolyubov’s territory, and you have nothing to do there.”
- Yes, I did. It is so indeed. But the physicists have been asking me for a long time and are waiting for me, and now they informed me that my arrival is necessary, Semyon must be saved.
- Which Semyon?
- Ellochka's ex-husband. She took her son and went to another, in the same house, also an employee of Dubna.
- How did Elka leave Semyon? But Semyon is handsome compared to your Elka, he is smart, and you said that he is one of your galaxy of best students.
- Korusha, in the sense of science, Ellochka’s new lover is not even worth a trace of Semyon. But remember, popular wisdom says: “Love is evil, you will love a goat!” When Ella came to visit us, I repeatedly told her: “It doesn’t happen to anyone. Well, I fell in love, well, they became lovers. And Semyon is a wonderful husband, a wonderful father.” He, poor thing, tried so hard not to notice this romance, he, as a cultured person, did not interfere with them. Semyon is my student, he had no right to be jealous. I always try to instill in my students cultural views on love and life. But the wife of the one to whom Ellochka went, finding her in her bed, did not realize that jealousy is one of the wildest prejudices! She, with the baby in her arms, went to her relatives in Leningrad. Ellochka immediately went to live in her new husband’s apartment. Semyon lives nearby, and he couldn’t bear to see his wife and son with someone else. They just told me that he went crazy. Physicists are afraid of suicide. We need to go and straighten Semyon’s brains. It’s decided, I’m going to Dubna tomorrow. Bogolyubov is a talented physicist, and it’s always interesting to talk about science with young physicists.
- Yes, but our driver has already left, and tomorrow is a day off.
“You’re right, on the weekend it’s difficult to get a taxi by a certain hour, but I’m sure that Zhenya will give me a ride to the station in his new Volga for the ten o’clock train.”
Zhenya - easy to remember - appeared in Dau's office. He came to see Dau twenty times a day - I was forced to give him the key to our apartment.
- Zhenya, I gave my word to go to Dubna tomorrow. I’ve already made an agreement with the Sudaks, we’ll meet at the station near the ten o’clock train to Dubna. Can you give me a lift to the station tomorrow morning?
- Yes, yes, of course I can. Moreover, tomorrow morning I’m going to the swimming pool. My belly has started to appear, I need to lose excess fat.
I went to my room, in the lower half of the apartment, and Dau began dictating to Zhenya the next paragraph of the eighth volume of his books, about which they now say: “Created by them together.”
I once asked Dau:
- Why do you write all your volumes only with Zhenya, why not with Alyosha?
- Korusha, I tried not only with Alyosha, I tried with others, but nothing worked!
- Why?
- You see, when I dictate my books on physics to Zhenya, he writes everything down without question. His brain is that of a competent clerk; he is not capable of independent creative thinking. As a student he gave the impression of being capable, but later time showed that he was a barren! He did not turn out to be a creative worker, but he is educated, neat, precise and hardworking, and he turned out to be a co-author. Instead of a salary, I give him my ideas; he needs to have his own face in society. Thanks to his help, I was able to create good books on physics for posterity. I tried to write my books with talented students, but their minds are inquisitive, they are not able to unquestioningly write down my thoughts. What I decide instantly is not a law for them, they object, argue, and when they understand, they come and say: “Duh, you were right.” A lot of valuable time has passed, but time does not wait! Our temporary stay on earth is too short, and we still have so much to do! I can’t spend my creative time writing books. When I get tired of thinking, I call Zhenya and dictate the next paragraphs to him. I cannot dictate for a long time, boredom overcomes me, and you, Korusha, know well, I have repeated this to you many times: the worst sin is to be bored! Don’t laugh, the Last Judgment will come, God will call and ask: “Why didn’t you enjoy all the benefits of life? Why were you bored?

Maya Bessarab

Touches to the portrait of Cora Landau, my aunt

For the first time I saw Dau (this was the unofficial name of Lev Davidovich Landau) in the courtyard of our house in Kharkov. This is a huge courtyard at 16 Darwin Street, where there was such freedom for the children that driving us home was not an easy task. Dau probably stood out outwardly in the crowd; in any case, I recognized him immediately, although before that I had only seen him briefly, when he walked along the corridor, heading to Corin’s room.

We occupied a three-room apartment, no one complained about the cramped space, however, in our family it was not customary to complain. The grandmother set the tone, her authority was great, her daughters, all three, obeyed her unquestioningly. Her name was Tatyana Ivanovna Drobantseva, and she was about fifty years old at that time. In 1934, she was still pretty, her music teacher even proposed to her, but she didn’t want to change anything in her life. Perhaps in another time everything would have been different, however, in those years a terrible misfortune happened in our family, and everything rested on my grandmother.

Kharkov looked like a medieval city engulfed in a plague epidemic: there were tears everywhere for those who had been arrested the day before, their wives had been taken, and children had disappeared.

My father, who went from a soldier to a division commander, realized that he, too, would end up in this meat grinder, and in order to save my mother and me, he filed for divorce from her - then this was done instantly at the request of one of the spouses - and left in an unknown direction. Mom just went crazy, everyone knew that the NKVD was finding fugitives. We had to exchange our large four-room apartment in the center for a smaller one, where I no longer had a separate room, which I was incredibly happy about: living in the same room with my grandmother, whom I loved so much - one can only dream about this. But then Nadya, the youngest of three sisters, was moved in with my grandmother and me. This happened after Cora came running to us late one evening. She was covered in bruises, tear-stained, in a torn dress. What she said horrified everyone. Her husband, his name was Petya, threw an iron at her because she didn’t iron his shirt well. Hit him in the shoulder. When her mother and sisters saw her wounds, they said they would never let Cora see her husband again.

He had beaten her before, but they loved each other and quickly made up. They were an extremely beautiful couple: they said about Petya that he was like two peas in a pod like the famous Hollywood film actor Rudolph Valentina, and Cora would certainly have become a beauty queen if such competitions existed in those days.

I don’t remember Petya, I only remember his photograph, it really testified to his masculinity and beauty. As for his intellectual level, it was not high. They lived on the main street, on Sumskaya, and in the evenings he said to his wife: “Let’s go for a walk.” He was a jack of all trades, and he made good money, although he did not have a higher education. But one day Petya went on a business trip, from which he returned... as an engineer! Laughing, he told his wife that he had bought a genuine diploma.

At the graduation party at Kharkov University, when Cora graduated from the chemistry department, she met Dau. He came to the evening and asked one of his colleagues:

Introduce me to the prettiest girl.

Well, of course, it was Cora Drobantseva.

Cora was brave, it was difficult to discourage her, to take her by surprise. I remember how she managed to restore calm to our family in two minutes. This was connected with Nadya, she was then a fourth-year student, and not long before she broke up with the young man whom she almost married. However, there was no romance, they went to the movies several times, he saw her off and kissed her twice. His name was Philip, Filya. He was thin and gloomy, and Nadya was very sweet, cheerful and studied so well, everyone was happy when she decided not to meet with Phil anymore. But when she told her fan about this, he said that no one dares treat him like that. She allegedly behaved in such a way that he considered her his future wife.

Further - worse. Nadya took a letter from the mailbox, it contained a photograph of her with her eyes gouged out and cuts on her neck; Filya followed on her heels when she went to college and when she returned home; She was accompanied to the institute by her grandmother, and back by a group of students. At home everyone was afraid that Filya would hurt her, it was all terrible.

But one evening, when a crazy ex-fiancé called to show off, Cora answered the phone.

Nadia! - he demanded.

Filya, you are shit.

You have no right! - the offended Don Juan yelled. - I have. My sister doesn't like you anymore, that's all. Dot. The man leaves in such cases. And shit makes snot. Cora hung up. No one heard from Phil again.

Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa is credited with the phrase: “Dau’s trouble is that two women were fighting at his bedside: Cora and Zhenya.” This is when, after a car accident, scandals began between his wife Cora and Dau’s co-author, Evgeniy Mikhailovich Livshits.

But mutual hostility began earlier, from the time when Livshits occupied one room in Dau’s apartment. Well, when Dau died, and someone told Cora that her husband’s co-author had received money from some German publishing house for both himself and his patron, that’s when Cora lost her temper. I learned about everything from her over the phone. Knowing that her number one enemy was very punctual, she waited for him near the garage around ten o'clock in the evening. There's not a soul around. Zhenya drove up, parked the car, and when he was locking his box, she struck the first blow. He dropped the key and started running. “You can’t imagine how fast he runs!” exclaimed my aunt. Cora practiced gymnastics every day; she managed to catch up with the fugitive at his door, but he could not insert the key into the keyhole, and then she began to mercilessly beat him with a long stick for gymnastic exercises. “He squealed strangely, and I kept hitting him on the backside, no longer thinking about anything, I moved the stick so far and hit him with such a swing that I could have broken his spine, so I aimed below his back.”

I started crying. She was indignant:

So you feel sorry for Zhenka! Who will feel sorry for me?!

I reminded her of Mitrofanushkin’s dream - “Poor mother, you are so tired, beating your father!” She objected:

My business is in flux. I barricaded the door and won’t go out for the next few days. Bring me some bread tomorrow, okay? I don’t answer the phone, if there’s something important, call like this: three times in a row and immediately hang up, on the fourth time I’ll pick up the phone, but I’ll be silent. Cora mentioned that she only called Kirill Semenovich Simonyan, and I wanted to know his opinion about everything that happened.

“What an opinion, I was laughing,” the doctor calmly answered, knowing all the characters well. - Calm down, for God's sake, your aunt. Livshits will not complain to any police. The same as going to the clinic. If he had gone into some institution with such a case, everyone there would have been lying on the floor laughing because the woman had beaten him in the ass with a stick.

Kirill Semenovich turned out to be right. Cora sat at home for a week, several times saw from the window a haggard, limping neighbor, he could barely move his legs, leaning on a stick...

They didn't communicate anymore.

After Dau's death, Cora wilted and lost interest in life. Fortunately, her beloved son, Igor, remained, but still she was fading away. And somehow she immediately aged. She often talked about the past years, about whether she should have stayed with Dau when he had mistresses. One day I heard words that shocked me:

The downfall could not be left to these gimmicks. No one would look after him the way I did. He needed constant supervision, forgot to eat, and could catch a cold. No, I wouldn’t find a place for myself away from him. And then, these prostitutes, they don’t really know how to cook.

Cora was one of those mothers who are called crazy. She loved her son madly. My mother said that Cora is kept in this world by her love for Garik. She held it, but didn’t hold it.

It’s hard to explain, it seemed like nothing had changed, but she was moving away, leaving, withdrawing into herself. You come to her - photographs of Dau are laid out on the table, she moves them from place to place, and does not order them to be removed. Rereads letters. Well, most of the talk is about him.

I only now realized how right he was. Of course, jealousy is a barbaric relic. Well, what does it matter to me now that he had a girlfriend named... oh, I don’t even remember the names.

She spoke slowly, and her face became softer, the sad line around her mouth disappeared. She was old, but she was beautiful. No, she was not looking young, she was simply a beautiful old woman, although the word old woman did not suit her at all. Smiling at her thoughts, she continued:

I don’t just have jealousy towards his girls, I don’t even have hostility. Except for one idiot who didn't give it to him.

Here Auntie looked at me sternly.

Why are you jumping up? I didn't say anything obscene. Well, how can I talk to you after this? Oh you! If you weren't such a fool, I would tell you this...

To somehow defuse the situation, I reminded her of an old joke: a grandmother tells her grandchildren where children come from. According to her version, they are found in cabbage. The grandson quietly asks his sister: “Should I tell her, or let her die a fool?”

But what remained unchanged was her love for cleanliness: everything still shone and shone, and she still did it easily, without tension, as if playfully. The rain splashed, my aunt pulled a stool to the kitchen table, climbed onto the windowsill, opened the window, and five minutes later the window was washed, as if there was no glass at all.

And the sense of humor also remained fully until the very end. One morning Cora called and said that she had received an amazing letter, but she didn’t say who it was from. When you come, I'll show you.

After this call, I couldn’t really work anymore, so I went to Vorobyovskoye Highway. It was a letter from Petya, her first husband. Having learned from the newspapers about Landau's death, he wrote to Kora in detail about himself, about his life, and remembered that they were, after all, former classmates.

Pay attention,” Cora noted, looking up from reading the letter, “he didn’t say a word that we loved each other and were husband and wife.” It's probably not that important. But classmates - yes!

This letter has an interesting ending: “Cora, come! We’ll get such pigs!”

No, can you imagine?! What kind of conceit you must have! And don't forget how we parted. When I read it for the first time, I didn’t even understand, I didn’t believe my eyes. And after re-reading it, I laughed until I cried. Besides, he's probably married. The cunning beast, having received my consent, he would have taken the unfortunate woman out into the street and began to brag to everyone that his wife was the widow of a Nobel laureate.

Suddenly she spoke in a different tone:

But the main thing is that I would rather die than allow anyone to touch me. In general, Petya is even stupider than I thought. Wow, a classmate showed up!

She continued to live a strange life - not in the present time, but in the past, in which Dau was. Cora handled the cleaning and shopping herself; she, like her sisters, was not one of the women who forced loved ones to take care of themselves.

I haven't heard any complaints about loneliness. She read a lot and sometimes watched movies on TV. There were no tears, no despondency. And at the same time, Dau was constantly present in her thoughts. That’s why it was so natural for her to start writing about him. I advised her to write her memoirs because she often told me something on the phone and I said that she needed to write it down, otherwise everything would be forgotten. And she gave her advice that she had once heard from Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky: “Write as it is written, and under no circumstances strive for stylistic perfection in the writing process. Write without stopping. You will edit the text later.”

This became a salvation for her: after all, there was constant communication with Dau. She was a hard worker, and this helped her in writing her memoirs: she sat from morning to night. Maybe that's what kept her going. I finished writing and immediately fell ill...

Shortly before her death she said:

My greatest luck is that I met Dau. Moscow January 1999