The book “Trolleybus No. 22 and Other Sketches”

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Alla Bossart:

It’s impossible to tear yourself away from this book — from its cover, from the exceptional, dense watercolor paper, from the typography.
From Viktor Shenderovich’s texts and Ira Litmanovich’s illustrations — though it feels wrong to call them that, as each image is a standalone work of art.

Each spread — text on the left, watercolor on the right — resembles that very little stage box Bulgakov wrote about in Theatrical Novel. A lamp is glowing, music plays — or snow falls in letters, or a silk rain drizzles down, and inside, strange and wonderful characters move through the wind, fly, walk, ride trams… funny, sad, important, stern, magical, irresistible. And they speak words that feel as though they were whispered to the author by the characters themselves.

Together, the two of them staged this theater — and not a single false note was struck. Not a single insincere word, not a single imprecise movement.

Ira Litmanovich is a watercolorist of breathtaking skill — I know no one better.
She also works in animated film, where humor and poetry walk side by side, like love and separation. And she is, no less, a student of Norstein — and in dramaturgy, of Petrushevskaya…

Yuri Norstein:

It’s always a kind of magic — when you wet the paper and then drop in those watercolor stains.

And suddenly, it all begins to flow, to turn into clouds, into otherworldly shapes… and in those shapes, you start to see something extraordinarily beautiful.
All of that lives in the watercolors of Irina Litmanovich.

She never stops surprising me — with each new work, she matures.
And it even feels like she grows taller.
I always measure her height against the height of a guitar.
There’s a string in her watercolors — and it rings.

You can hear the hiss of the trolleybus there.
You can smell the snow.

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya:

The drawings are genius.
I’ve never seen anything like it — and I’m a watercolor fanatic. You’ve invented an entirely new style.I would love to ask for lessons from you.Your masterpiece, Trolleybus No. 22, I show to everyone — and oh, if only you could hear how amazed people are!

If you ever opened your own watercolor school — I’d be the first to enroll as a student.

Viktor Shenderovich:

I first saw Ira Litmanovich’s drawings in her film Domestic Romance, and it was immediately clear: this is the work of a precise hand and a one-of-a-kind soul. The idea of a joint book came to my cunning mind after she sent me a couple of friendly caricatures. There was an uncanny accuracy in how she captured the personalities — Gorin, Akhmadulina… All the more surprising, given that Ira and they never even crossed paths in time.

At first, the plan was a simple one: she would create watercolor illustrations for my memoir collection Raisins from the Bun. But Ira insisted we take another route — and convinced me to embark on a very different journey… toward a half-forgotten lyrical place. Over the past few decades — it just turned out that way — I’ve been writing (and voicing, on air) a big book of hatred and contempt. Hundreds of thousands of people must now believe that I live for the chance to talk about Putin. The work of a political columnist and chronicler of daily filth has worn my soul raw. And so, the book of love remained unwritten.

But with a gentle nudge from Ira Litmanovich, I began to recall a different kind of story from my life — not punchlines, not politics, but human stories. People who made me who I am. Faithful friends. Teachers. Favorite quotes. Beloved thoughts. Moments in time. Situations where the sky seemed to open, or the river made a shining turn… I began remembering my life — not as a collection of punchlines (though I’ll admit, I see nothing wrong with occasionally amusing or annoying the audience for medicinal purposes). The subjects of Ira’s watercolors bounce off my stories like springboards — and often land in completely unexpected places. More than once, in the process, I insisted: no! And then realized: well… maybe yes. But more often, I just laughed — or gasped — at how perfectly she hit the mark, the tone, the soul of it.

Now it’s your turn — to laugh, to gasp.

And read my stories too. They’re good stories. About something that matters.

Irina Litmanovich:

This way of working was new to me — immersing myself in someone else’s emotional world, different every time, getting so charged up that entire mise-en-scènes would suddenly appear on my inner screen, complete with gestures and facial expressions…

When I created the first few drawings, Shenderovich protested. He had intended to remain the narrator of these stories — not become a character in them. But I kept multiplying the Shenderoviches. Not to be contrary — not at all. It’s just that — here it is, the moment! He captures it through storytelling, and I — through drawing. It was through Viktor Anatolyevich’s voice, his intonation, that I was able to reach those people, those fragments of a bygone time…

Gorin, Volodin, Gerdt…

His memories of them, his way of seeing them — are valuable in and of themselves. But he, too, is a character! An interesting, distinctive, vivid one! And — a person. Intelligent. Expansive. Lyrical. Charming and completely genuine. In his stories, the era comes alive. The people come alive. People whose universe you’d want to live in. And that — that is a concentrate of happiness.

The Boy from Chistaki

I am a Muscovite. Of course, I am also many other things — a brunette, for example, a Jew, an atheist, a citizen of the Russian Federation, a humanities person, a junior sergeant in the reserves, a liberal, a fan of Spartak…
But my warmest self-identification is precisely this: a Muscovite. With an essential clarification: from Chistye Prudy…
From “Chistaki,” as we affectionately and familiarly called our neighborhood.

At that time, Makarenko Street was called Labkovsky Lane; the communal apartment where five of us lived in one room now houses the Tender Committee of the Moscow Government, and I can’t even begin to imagine how much money is being funneled there now…
Though, really, there’s no need to imagine. I have my own stockpile of memories, mostly nostalgic.

In the current building of the “Sovremennik” Theater — just around the corner from my home — there used to be the “Coliseum” cinema, where I watched the premiere of Kidnapping, Caucasian Style. Yes, that’s right! The metro was called “Kirovskaya,” and the boulevard was lined with poplars, drowning in fluff during the summer; the fluff also covered the pond, where two black swans with red beaks swam, and on the shore stood a glass café, immortalized in the film Belorussky Station: that’s where the heroes come after the funeral, and the music is booming…

For filmmakers, it was, of course, a favorite place: a real, warm, instantly recognizable Moscow!
Chistye Prudy flashed in the movie Mimino for a joyful five seconds — seemingly just by chance: Georgiy Daneliya lived a hundred meters from the spot where he slipped and fell on the ice — his pilot-endocrinologist, with flowers for Larisa Ivanovna tucked under his arm…

And one scene with the legendary winter skating rink on the ponds holds a special place in my grateful memory and has long seemed part of my own life. It’s a scene from Pokrovsky Gates.
The play is set in 1958 — which means that somewhere behind Kostik, skating circles in search of his beloved, and poor Lev Evgenievich, my young mother is strolling with a stroller, and in the stroller lies me.

You can’t actually see either my mother or me in the stroller in the film, but believe me — we are there…

Grigory Gorin, My Rebbe

He said:
— I will be your Rebbe.
And I was happy.

…In the spring of 1989, I packed a white shirt and a few typed sheets into my suitcase and flew to Odessa to participate in a young writers’ competition.
It was inevitably dreadful — like any creative contest, really.
It’s not like long jump where there are clear criteria! It was more like a bride-show: if they like you — they like you… But who? That one? Do you really want to please him?
I was young and reckless, but I was lucky: Grigory Gorin was the chairman of the jury.
Later he claimed that I was mumbling my text looking at him almost defiantly, like “You have a lisp and no stage presence, yet you’re sitting on the jury…” I don’t remember that — I don’t remember anything; it seems I was unconscious. The only thing I do remember is that Gorin was smiling.
The rest of the jury was firmly convinced I was dead meat, and as a compromise, I took the rotten fifth place. I was terribly upset about it; it felt like a defeat and only added to my growing list of frustrations…
At the reception, Grigory Israelovich came up to me. He saw how uncomfortable I was. He said: Forget about it. He said: Write, you’re good at it. He assured me: In five or six years…
And he predicted, down to the year, when my popularity would come.
But the most important thing he said was:
— I will be your Rebbe.

I returned to Moscow. And after a while, I started getting calls from editorial offices asking if I had anything for them. It was something new… Suddenly I was invited to perform at good venues…
I followed the trail and time after time discovered that my name was mentioned and recommended by Grigory Gorin himself!
Only then did I realize I had won a real “grand prize” in Odessa.
He was my Rebbe: open to communication, calling me himself. Rejoicing at my successes. Gently reproaching me. Warning me against walking other people’s paths. We would walk his spaniel Patrick in the backyards of Tverskaya Street and compare our feelings about life.
When, in the year he predicted (and partly thanks to him), I became the author of the show Kukly, and the sword of Russian justice first flashed over my head — the first thing I saw arriving at the press conference was Gorin. He was giving an interview in my defense.
Gratitude for this reached my soul later, but at the time I was not even surprised: he could not have missed that day, my Rebbe.

There’s no need to tell what kind of playwright Gorin was. Time has shown that his texts are forever, as long as there are readers! The brilliance of his dialogues is the brilliance of intellect; his level was the level of a divine gift, and you cannot learn that.
But the spirit blows where it will, and how many talented people disappoint in personal acquaintance! How often our soul is crushed by the mismatch between a divine gift and the person pointed to by God’s finger!
Gorin, one of the very few, was equal to his gift.
The author of Munchausen, he was worthy of his hero.
And his early unjust death — damn those doctors of that “emergency room”! — still aches inside me as it did then.

Gerdt and Volodin, or Music in the Ice

The book was printed at EGF Printing House: first edition — Moscow, 2016, print run — 1,000 copies; second edition — Moscow, 2017, print run — 1,000 copies.