SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: January 13, 2022] The Genius Under the Table
Why would anyone read an autobiography of someone they’d never heard of?
Well, in part because it’s a children’s biography, and therefore a fairly easy read. But mostly because Eugene Yelchin grew up in the Soviet Union under the watchful eyes of Lenin and his KGB informants. And it’s a fascinating look at a world that is as bizarre as it is unsettling.
And it’s a well-written and interesting story, too!
Yelchin was the youngest of two sons. His older brother was on track to become a national figure skater. His mother worked in the ballet, assisting the ballerinas and having a close up view of the amazing Mikhail Baryshnikov. His father was a working man as well–they needed all the money they could get (which wasn’t much). And what of Eugene (Yevgeny)? He had no talent.
He couldn’t play sports (not even chess). He couldn’t dance. He wasn’t super smart. He wasn’t exactly a disappointment to his parents (although he was, kind of), but they knew that the only way to get out of the squalor they lived in was to be great at something.
And he wasn’t great at anything.
But he talks a lot about Leningrad and Moscow. He describes Red Square:
The square may be called Red, but it is black and white in the winter. Most citizens in line were also dressed in black and white. Other colors were brown, army green, navy blue, and the red of our county’s banner.
They were in Moscow for his brother’s skating competition, but they had to stop in and see Grandfather Lenin preserved in his glass box. This creeped Eugene out big time!
The book is full of wonderful illustrations and a few chapters in, you realize that Eugene is the illustrator (in fact Yelchin has won awards for his illustrations). That was his talent–drawing.
But his school teacher shut him down–in drawing and everything else.
So in addition to watching him learn his craft, we also learn about what it was like to grow up in such a repressive land.
There was a man who lived in their apartment (everyone shared a bathroom and a kitchen) named Blinov and he was a known spy for the KGB. He listened carefully to hear if anyone said anything bad about Russia, or the KGB or anything else.
Their apartment was so small that they had one room–a room that worked as a bedroom at night and a living room during the day–with a daily activity of moving furniture around as needed. His parents had a bed. His brother slept on chairs (to help with his balance (!)) and Eugene slept under their big table (!).
And so, at night, before bed, he would draw on the underside of the table. His parents would have been furious if they knew–that was their only “nice” piece of furniture–but they never looked under there.
One day his mother took him to the ballet to watch “Misha” perform. His mother was so clearly in love with Misha, that Eugene was convinced that she loved Misha more than anyone else in the family.
In fact, she was proud of Misha and was secretly afraid that he might try to defect.
Eugene’s brother told him to tell their mom that he wanted to be a ballet dancer. Of course he didn’t want to, but he did say it to her. And she was thrilled. She got him a tryout with one of the best ballet schools in the county. And he was terrible.
But the teacher said, given what happened to her, he would allow Eugene to take some lessons.
Eugene had no idea what happened to her. Through the course of the book we learn that people who were considered enemies of the state were removed. And typically the families of these people cut the offending faces out of their photo albums to avoid any connection with them. It seems likely that his grandfather had done something bad to prevent his mother from dancing (he could never bring himself to ask).
There is a lot of unspokenness in the country. Artists and poets disappear if they don’t follow the rules (there’s a subplot about Oleg Mandelstam, his father’s favorite poet).
And then comes the most horrific thing. The state media started broadcasting that Jews (Yids) were the enemy of the people. They were the reason for the troubles in the country.
Eugene and his family came home one day to find a swastika scribbled on their door with the words Beat yids, save mother Russia. They lived is fear of being sent to camps in Siberia.
But the news isn’t al bad. His brother became a successful figure skater who traveled the world. There’s a great picture of Eugene in flared trousers and big shoes that his brother had sent from abroad. And one day, a woman named Tatiana Georgievna Bruni (part of the legendary Bruni family) was in their house. She was an amazing artist who worked with the ballet–that’s how his mother knew her.
He says that the painting The Brazen Serpent by T.G. Bruni was legendary and gave him nightmares it was so real.
She learned of his artistic skill and agrees to teach him how to become a better artist.
The story ends soon after–we don’t lean anything about when he came to America or what his life was like after that. Because that’s not the scope of the book. It’s a short, sweet and satisfying autobiography.
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