Writer Tokareva celebrated her 85th birthday: about Ukraine and boredom

“They won’t give me a Nobel Prize”

“I was published on Tuesday, and on Friday the whole country knew about me,” the writer recalls. Tokareva woke up famous after the release of her first book in 1964, A Day Without Lies. In the 70s, she was better known as a screenwriter than as a prose writer, then she became a co-author of three absolute movie hits – “Gentlemen of Fortune”, their joint work with Danelia, “Mimino” and “The dog walked along the piano”. About 30 films were shot according to Tokareva’s scripts. And every year she publishes a collection of short stories.

– 85. How do you look at this figure?

With delight, because my father died at the age of 37. Imagine? Mom lived longer, she died at 81. I jumped them all and at the same time I feel good, – the writer admits. – I’ll tell you something. I never advertised myself, I didn’t push myself, I didn’t run somewhere, I didn’t ask for any titles, I didn’t receive it, and yet here I find out that my anniversary is being celebrated in Simferopol!

– Starting with Yeltsin, the presidents sent telegrams to you. A couple of years ago, Putin wrote to you in a telegram that “you turned women’s literature upside down”… Do you expect congratulations from Putin this year?

— I don’t wait, because they are written not by presidents, but by their assistants. And the presidents know nothing about it. Do you think Putin exclaimed: “Oh! It’s Tokareva’s birthday, should I send her a telegram!”? He has a service that keeps track of dates and sends telegrams.

What are you looking forward to for your anniversary?

– I want to win the Nobel Prize. After all, the Belarusian writer Svetlana Aleksievich received it. But they won’t let me. The wording “ironic intonation” began with me. And in this I am an absolute innovator. When my first story “A Day Without Lies” came out, no one could understand what it was, what it was attributed to. It’s funny, but it’s too long to be funny – 42 pages instead of 7 pages. And then the philosopher Yevgeny Bogat came up with the definition of “ironic intonation” for me. And it went. Alexander Volodin worked in this genre. I really love his book Notes of a Drunk Man, in which he tells his life in the way only he can.

“All reasons are just words”

Do you notice the doomed faces in the crowds of passers-by today?

– I recently watched the film “The Cranes Are Flying”. Merkuriev, whose hero says: “Do you think you want to give your son to the war?” Every morning I wake up with the hope that there will be negotiations. When I hear Putin on TV, I am amazed at how well he speaks. None of us spoke so well. Gorbachev spoke 60% of the extra text, he spoke terribly, spoke some crap and admired himself. Yeltsin spoke very primitively, like a digger with a shovel. And Putin speaks well, brightly, competently. I listen to him and think: this is a smart person. It is impossible for an intelligent person not to understand what he is saying. I’m waiting for negotiations.

– Zelensky promised that he would not have “negotiations with Putin.”

– I’m not a fan of Zelensky. I am a physiognomist and, looking at his face, it seems to me that he is part Khlestakov.

— What connects you with Ukraine?

– My mother is from there, and just Gorlovka and Makeevka are my land. I went there every summer as a child. That’s why I’m waiting for all this to end, because all bad things come to an end someday. All wars end, and all diseases pass, and every person dies or recovers. Of course it’s hard right now. This pandemic went on for two years, these covid vaccinations, which I regretted having done.

– Why did you regret the vaccination?

– I regretted it, because after it I really couldn’t walk for a whole year – my leg hurt, I was terrified, I thought that this would be the case, but then the pain slowly disappeared.

First there was a pandemic: everyone was horrified, they built some incredible clinics near my village in Kommunarka. But I must say, when the pandemic began, I felt the country under me. Remember, in Mandelstam: “We live without feeling the country under us”? And then I saw how everything was mobilized, how clinics began to be built. But a lot of my loved ones, people close to me in spirit, have died, and those who have not died can barely drag their legs.

A terrible thing: as soon as the pandemic ended, the war began. And war is a massacre, it is the murder of young men on the one hand and on the other. The gene pool is being destroyed. Young men are killed. Many of them do not have offspring and will never have them. All reasons are just words. The bottom line is that the Lord God gave life to a person and it is impossible to repeat it, therefore I am against war – no matter how it is explained.

There have always been wars. As long as humanity has existed, so many of these wars have been waged. And I have an assumption that it is nature that cleans the planet. Overpopulation. There are a lot of people on earth. There may not be enough water, food, meat, oxygen for everyone. Here they will kill a huge number of people and will live on. It might be a planetary thing. But I am against it.

On YouTube, I saw a picture of my father leaving for the front; when they took him away, the child grabbed his father’s pants and yelled. It’s hard, it’s a tragedy. I don’t like young people going into the trenches. Here Prigozhin pulled criminals out of prison – the fewer of them, the better for people – so let them go and fight.

– Suddenly. But PMCs imprisoned as mercenaries are recruited under the pretext of blood atonement for guilt before the state…

“These are people with defective DNA. At the cellular level, they have a need for crimes, and they are dangerous for society. I don’t know, frankly, how they will behave, how they will fight, whether they want it – maybe it’s better in prison, conditions are bad there, but at least you will live, but here … well, I don’t know. You ask me purely masculine questions.

“The World Through the Eyes of Christ”

— What childhood memories do you have about Ukraine?

— Summer apples are pink. The smell of apples. This is the most beautiful smell of all that exist in the world.

– Who are you talking to now?

– I have a housekeeper, a Tajik woman, she hardly knows the language, she wraps her Muslim headscarf and flows into my house with a new culture. I also communicate with my granddaughter, whom I love more than life, she is smart and beautiful. I raised her, I got used to her. She is very capable, she wrote a script in 11 episodes, it has already been accepted, she is interested. It can be said that the little girl is already sitting, working.

– How old is the girl?

– 26 years. Then she looks like her grandfather Pyotr Efimovich Todorovsky. She has grey-green eyes, and her teeth are like Grandmother Mira’s, as white as crushed sugar and large as a young wolf cub’s. And when she sparkles with her smile, looks with her gray eyes, then I admire. My great-grandson is already 14 years old, and the girls call him on the phone. He enjoys great success with them. If he gives birth to me at the age of 18, then I will be a great-great-grandmother.

– Have you read the book “Summer in a Pioneer Tie”?

– Not. I prefer not to talk about what I don’t understand.

– Do you watch TV?

– Of course, almost every day – the program of Vladimir Solovyov. Well, I only look at two guests there: they are Shakhnazarov and Kedmi. I understand everything they say. I skip the rest of the experts. When my friends find out that I am watching Solovyov’s program, they laugh at me and say that this is something that should not be watched. But I still know how to pull a fish out of a pond.

— Do you like Solovyov himself?

– At one of the festivals, he once approached me with a proposal: do you want me to give you a plot? I say yes, I do. He says: “They took the shroud in which Jesus Christ was wrapped, and cloned Christ using advanced methods. And here is Christ in the modern world. Think of it yourself…” I thought: this is the most difficult thing – to see the modern world through the eyes of Christ. Solovyov gives away the plot because he himself does not know how to deal with it … But in general, Solovyov is certainly talented.

– Do you have any regrets?

I can’t say I’m sorry. In my life there is such compensation as creativity. I monetize all my successes and failures. When there is a favorite job, then a person is happy. He does what he wants, and they give him money for it. When a person has something to do in life, when he has found the right profession for himself, this is happiness. Because the biggest misfortune is boredom. Boredom. Boredom. And I would say poverty, because poverty is also a kind of boredom – that is impossible, that is impossible.

When did you feel bored?

Boredom comes in two forms. The first is when there is no health, and the second is when there is no love. One doctor said this: “The main thing is that when you wake up in the morning, a person does not think about his health. And everything else that he has in life is happiness.

“Plus a golden toilet”

For her anniversary, the writer published a new book, “The Inner Voice” – a collection of nine stories about people, their passions and feelings – about what Victoria Tokareva understands and carries the reader along with her. Each time her heroes face a choice, at a crossroads. “If you go to the right, you will find death, if you go to the left, you will meet love, and if you go straight, you will find a kingdom with chests full of gold. Plus a golden toilet. What to choose: death, love or wealth?

— What is your new book “Inner Voice” about?

“I came up with an interesting, plot-driven, exciting story. I have all the books the same, you can read one and not read any more …

– And what is the secret of the inner voice?

— The writer is characterized by intuition. Here I have developed with age just a cosmic intuition. For example, I feel a person and see everything that he thought. He can say one thing, think another, and I see it.

Do you publish only one book every year?

– I have books of 125 pages, these are 5 sheets. Some people write 125 pages in a weekend – Saturday and Sunday. (Laughs.) And I’ve been writing them for a whole year. I am a sprinter. According to my books, foreigners are taught the Russian language. My sentences are short. They come from three words, they come from one – it is so convenient for foreigners. And Leo Tolstoy has one sentence of 17 lines, he finished and forgot where he started.

How do you feel about your success?

– When I go out into the street, all the people walking towards me say to me: hello! And I also answer them: hello! Everyone greets like in the village. That’s the whole harvest of success. He suits me.

BLITZ POLL:

If I got two tickets to heaven, I would… took her mom, she had a hard life. Let him rest in paradise.

The last time I felt embarrassed was when… I’m never ashamed. I have no conscience.

I was greatly influenced… Chekhov Anton Pavlovich

I would not want my loved ones to know that as a child I … I have no secrets from loved ones.

The first time life disappointed me was when… when I was at fault.

If I wasn’t “me”, I would certainly become… doctor.

I still feel bad for… your gullibility.

I can’t do without… tasty food.

I was absolutely happy that day when… my first story came out.

The biggest challenge I’ve had to overcome in my life is… disappointment in a person.

People are wrong when they say… about eternal love. “Do not promise a virgin young love eternal on earth.”