this is the fate…”
“The fate either leads or not. It’s as if someone from above watches you.”
Seven years from 1948 to 1955 were spent by Ivan Nikiforovich at “Mayk”. His service was acknowledged as excellent. The department he headed did not have a single major accident, not a single case of death.
By the closed Decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the head of the transport fleet of the “Mayak” plant, I. N. Medyanik was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
Life is full of changes. They touched my hero, too.
After the birth of his daughter Lida, his wife's health was shaken. Lyubov began to feel worse, and the doctors again recommended the southern territories, especially Mineralnye Vody, where they successfully treated heart diseases.
There was no choice. He had to leave the Urals and move to Mineralnye Vody. To his good fortune they needed a car fleet manager in Lermontov, a new miners' town under construction, marked as “mailbox No. 1”.
“And a star speaks to a star…"
The reader's question is quite natural: how will the author justify these famous Lermontov lines in connection with the fate of his hero?
The answer is not difficult. We can recall the list of Ivan Nikiforovich, given at the beginning of the narration: each scientist’s name written by him is a star in the “atomic calendar" of science – I. V. Kurchatov, A. I. Alikhanov, N. A. Dollezhal, A. D. Sakharov, Y. B. Hariton, L. P. Alexandrov, space expert S. P. Korolev, in the management and construction of the nuclear site E. P. Slavsky, B. G. Muzrukov.
Thisallegory easilyappliesto theaward “iconostasis” of our great contemporaries: Golden Stars of Heroes seem to make the quiet chiming of orders and medals recalling the glorious achievements of national science.
And, finally, I confess the well-known Lermontov stanza was chosen by me almost as a true documentary, it was in Pyatigorsk that this poetry of tremendous power was composed by the poet. Aren’t his lines linked with the Mashuk mountain, which paths Lermontov walked along?
"I go out on the road alone,
Through the mist the stony path shines,
The night is dark, the wilderness responses to God,
And a star speaks to a star…"
The team of the motor depot, led by Medyanik, was transferred to the construction of a huge television tower on top of Mashuk, it was the construction of the first television center in the region of Pyatigorsk. The height of the tower, or, as the communicators say, the repeater, was so huge that the top of it literally caught the clouds. More over, it went off scale for the height of 1160 meters!
And at night in clear weather, when the stars shine in the sky, one hears how a star speaks to a star.
The sixties in the life of Medyanik were not quit easy. His health started to shake. Heartbreaks began and one hospital was changed for another. And then a huge grief sorrow happened to the family – the wife Lyubov Alekseevna died in a car-crash.
It was necessary to survive, it was necessary to survive the disaster and it was necessary to work!
And then came humiliating and false denunciation. Ivan Nikiforovich refused point blank to return to the Lermontov car fleet. Friends came to help. He had a lot of them, both in the Ministry of Medium Machine Building, where Efim Slavsky worked, and at “Mayak”. Pyotr Ivanovich Butenko offered him a place as the chief of the detachment in the Kislovodsk car fleet, and at the same time he could undergo treatment at a cardiology clinic. The radiation let know. He was treated also with folk remedies, in particular honey. During vacation he even went with beekeepers to Elbrus.
But without a well-organized life, without a female care for children who were not yet fully grown up, it was difficult. So Vera Nikolaevna became his second wife. Their acquaintance was blessed by “Mayak”.
How much inner tact, cordial motherly tenderness she had displaid! She managed to turn the house into a real family hearth. By the way, she was like that until the end of life. The favourite of the family Lida (Lyalya) married and left for Poland to her husband’s homeland. She was a chemist by profession.
He did not notice how his own children became grandparents.
His son, Yevgeniy, has long been called Yevgeniy Ivanovich, an extremely busy man, he is the designer of submarines.
And Mikhail, Vera Nikolaevna’s son from her first marriage, has become an honored irrigator of Russia, and works in Sevkavgiprovkhoz.
Whenever the family gathered together, the holiday would come in the house of Ivan Nikiforovich.
The company is amused by ringing voices of six grandchildren and now great-grandchildren.
“And we are getting old,” Ivan Nikiforovich grieves, stretching his legs. “They hurt, probably, to bad weather.”
“Well, so, have you finished your interview with me?” he turns to me, squinting slyly. “I'm tired, do not blame me, my friend. Old age, nevertheless,” he says in a cheerful voice, but sadness flashes in his eyes, It is quite understandable and explainable.
I felt sorry that our evenings with him were over, although I know that I can come to his house any time.
“No, let me ask you one more question. Is it true that Kurchatov did not like smokers?”
“Ha, ha, ha!” roars Medyanik, laughing at me. And he immediately interjects a familiar Kurchatov phrase: “It strongly smells with violation of the regime.”
“And another question, Ivan Nikiforovich. Recently, the life of the hero of my story, Vyacheslav Yevgenyevich Vasadze Game to an end. May he rest in peace. It turns out that he drove your car on a trip in Georgia.”
“Yes, there was such a thing. Slavik was a good man, reliable. I had known him as a boy. Here it is. He insisted once on a trip to Georgia. Moreover, I allowed him to use my company car. I always treated him in a fatherly way, I wanted to help a guy with something, and then a trip to the Black Sea coast turned up. I took him with me and gave him an extra week to search for relatives.”
I will allow myself another passage from my story about Vasadze.
“Today Vyacheslav Yevgenyevich Vasadze is over sixty. But when he was young, he passionately wanted to learn something about his father, to find relatives, to find his father’s colleagues, to hear first-hand how his father fought, how and where he died. Having taken a vacation, he went to Georgia. The first on the way were the villages where the whole Vasadze clans lived. But no one knew about his father. Addresses in the villages of Nakalakevi and Ben also did not give results: they did not find any relatives of the father or the mother. They sympathized with him, expressed readiness to help in the search. The vacation was already coming to an end, it was time to go back home, and Slavik was keenly aware that he was losing his father for the second time, he was also missing in peace life. When he was almost desperate, someone advised him, “You know, the actor Akakiy Vasadze lives in Tbilisi, go to him, maybe he will help somehow. He is known man, no one will refuse him.”
Slavik hesitated. More than twenty years had passed after the war, there is little hope of finding his father’s colleagues, and he was ashamed to disturb a famous person. A sense of delicacy, or perhaps innate tact, stopped him. And yet he decided to use any chance. He arrived in Tbilisi,
