But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, in order I will tell you about it and about our acquaintance.
It began, we can say, by chance, although Elizaveta Nikolaevna not only knew for a long time about my works, but even copied some of them. One day, on her way home late at night, she hurt her leg, kicked her leg open, and, as it turned out the next day, torn her ligaments in her ankle. Helpless, barely got to the bench in Alexander Square, and then I literally stumbled upon it in the dark. I ran to the cabbage market, and two cab men carried it to my apartment. I asked her to stay with me until she got well, though she was worried that she had already caused a lot of trouble.
She helped me with the painting of the Armenian church, but maybe she worked too hard herself. You know Elizabeth Nikolaevna better than I do, and it is not for me to write to you about her turbulent, turbulent character, about instant changes of her moods, about confusion, which often covered her and for whom the only way out was painting, work. Her soulful elegance, straightforwardness known to you, without a doubt, is better than mine. These traits were reflected, by the way, in her passion for Byzantine art, which I consciously supported in her, because it was to a certain extent a salvation for her. She needed the thought of the eternal in art, of the springs of the Spirit. She felt like she was here on the edge of the world, she was exhausted, losing hope of returning to her family and friends every day. That's why maybe she got attached to me, that I, an old man, hadn't seen anything in my life that I hadn't changed my mind about! It seems to me that she was not looking for a painting teacher in me, but a teacher of life.
Elizaveta Nikolaevna told me that you are almost unfamiliar with her works, and all regretted that she could not show them to you now, when she began to write differently and better. So, I can confidently say that she is very talented, unusually persistent and hardworking, and, so to speak, "sentenced" to painting by the warehouse of her freedom-loving soul. Her color memory is amazing. She remembers every canvas, every drawing. It is not worth it for her to see anything in her mind that once affected her painting. Maybe that's why her marine studies resemble Claude Monet and her landscapes resemble Matisse. However, I managed to teach her to be calm about her imitation. Every canvas she makes to the end, trying to achieve the integrity - and lately she has started to succeed.
I now turn to the accident that pushed her to leave Yalta. There was no way to escape to Moscow or Petrograd. She didn't have a penny or any decent clothes. In these particularly hopeless days, a certain Francesco appeared in Yalta, who asked to call himself that, despite his advanced age (years fifty-five - sixty). He came to his relatives (many Greeks in Yalta) and recommended himself as a lover and connoisseur of painting. And indeed, judging by his manner of holding on, by his subtle judgments, he seemed to be close to the artistic environment not only in Constantinople, where he said he sometimes went, but also in Paris. As he said - and it is quite possible - he owned a small salon in Paris, where, according to him, until recently, were exhibited such significant masters as Marriage and Sutin. There was no reason not to trust him, although the manner in which he called these names was some sort of exaggerated negligence.
In short, it is no surprise that this confident, still interesting man, perhaps even beautiful, with his gray temples and healthy tan, impressed Elizabeth Nikolaevna, especially since he was clever and praised for her work.
He came - as I was soon convinced - in order to buy art objects from the starving Yalta intelligentsia, but apparently, all this was done by his numerous relatives, of course, at his instructions.
He chartered a small steamer to Constantinople, from where he intended to go immediately to Paris.
I don't know how it happened that he offered Elizabeth Nikolaevna to go with him. It began with what he had bought from her, paying generously, a few paintings, and then she suddenly came to me and reported with excitement about this unexpected offer. I immediately began to talk her out of it, and in the eyes of this man I easily read his suspicious, probably low intentions. It is not enough to say that I persuaded him, I begged Elizaveta Nikolaevna to stay. But my helplessness was obvious. In fact, on the one hand - beggarly life in the captured Yalta, the impossibility to drink a cup of coffee on the waterfront, because she was robbed and she walked in a dress, remodeled somehow, with someone else's shoulder, instability, insecurity, hunger, and on the other - Constantinople, Paris. I convinced her that our humiliating life would soon end, that she should not look at her future through the eyes of day and month, which is still ahead. Nothing helped! I still had hope that while this gentleman was going to travel, a letter would come from you - and then Elizaveta Nikolaevna would have stayed, broke herself, although she barely gave up her decisions. The miracle did not happen. I walked her out, we both cried, she left, and I haven't heard from her since...
To be continued...