For 16 years, Nikolay Alekseevich Golovkin a poet, novelist, publicist, member of the Union of Writers of Russia worked on the “House in China town”, dedicated to the author’s ancestors. Since Nikolay was born in November 1954 in Ashgabat, many pages of his novella are devoted to the capital of Turkmenistan.
The writer’s father, Alexey Vladimirovich Golovkin, a well-known historian and archivist, author of a number of books and editor of collections of documents on the history of the October Revolution and the Civil War in Transcaspian and Turkestan, was detached for service to Ashgabat in the terrible year of 1948, to save the archive fund after the disastrous earthquakes.
The business trip for Alexey Vladimirovich stretched for a lifetime. For many years, he headed the Main Archive Department under the Council of Ministers of the Turkmen SSR, and also taught at the History Department of the Turkmen State University.
After the earthquake, as the writer’s father recalled, “the walls of the archive crumbled, but the documents lay on stable wooden shelves. That’s what saved them. The majority of archivists were women. They would not have been able to cope if not for the help of the border guards.
With the help of the same border guards, two large barracks were built on the site of the destroyed building, one of which became an archive repository, and the other, something like an administrative building. Despite the complexity of the situation, the main work issuing certificates to workers continued on a daily basis.
The mother of Nikolay Alekseevich Yevgeniya Nikolayevna Yershova was born in 1924 in Tashkent in the family of a hereditary Muscovite, nobleman, lawyer, participant of the First World War Nikolay Yershov, detached for service to Central Asia in the 1920s, and a native of Turkestan, a noblewoman, graduate of the Kiev Institute of Noble Maidens, teacher, granddaughter of the Governor-General of Tashkent, then Samarkand V.
Yu.Medinsky Olga Konstantinovna Medinskaya.
Since 1925, when her father was detached for service to Turkmenistan, Yevgeniya Nikolayevna lived in Ashgabat. She has spent almost six decades teaching and research at the Faculty of Russian Philology of the Makhtumkuli Turkmen State University.
Here is how Evgeniya Nikolayevna herself described her son the acquaintance with her future husband, “We met at the Ashgabat Pedagogical Institute, where we taught at the historical and philological faculties.
I, the daughter of a native Muscovite, whom fate had thrown into Central Asia a quarter of a century earlier, was pleased to meet a fellow countryman.However, we were brought together by an error in the schedule of classes: we both came to give a lecture at the same time.
When I came for a class it was supposed to be the “second pair”, 3-4 hours.It was quite difficult to get there then: the sidewalks were still littered with collapsed walls, so I had to buy rubber boots.
But it turned out that I was in a hurry in vain: they combined the hours of philologists and historians.”
Then Ms. Yershova told me, “Our teachers importuned Alexey Vladimirovich with requests to get them tickets to the club of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (he led the cultural mass sector) then it was the only place in Ashgabat where films were shown. And he invited me to the movies, but I proudly refused, “maintained my reputation”.”
And at the end of the summer of 1949, when the graduation party of part-time students ended, Alexey Vladimirovich decided to accompany Ms.Yevgeniya home, because the pedagogical institute was in Keshi, and the buses no longer ran.
After the young people approached the former gate of Yevgenia’s house, which fell to the ground during the earthquake, Alexey Vladimirovich wanted to stay, but he heard, “My grandmother taught me that it is indecent to stand with a young man at the gate”, and he reasonably remarked to that, “After all, there is no gate!”.
After the walk, the young people began to exchange books, both brought by Alexey from Moscow, and partially unearthed from the destroyed libraries of Ashgabat.
The wedding of the writer’s parents took place on September 10, 1949.To this day, Ms.Yevgenia received from Moscow a white transparent synthetic fabric, from which a familiar dressmaker sewed her a wedding dress, and from Tashkent patent leather shoes.
When the future couple went to contract a marriage at the wattle-and-daub hut in the morning, the shoes still weren’t seen: their feet were buried up to their ankles in dust.
For more than 40 years, Alexey and Evgeniya lived together, and all friends and acquaintances called them “a remarkably happy couple”.They had three children.Alexey Vladimirovich passed away unexpectedly on March 11, 1992, a few days before his 74th birthday, but his invisible presence next to Evgeniya Nikolayevna was still felt many years later.
Whatever she remembered, he was present in her stories, her soul was with him.Or rather, he was with her.Still there, still offering his shoulder.
In 2008, while preparing to meet his mother in Ashgabat, Nikolay wrote a poem about the city of childhood:
I will bow to Ashgabat. And I will pray for my loved ones. Flies away like a bird, A sudden surge of sadness.
Hello, ancient earth! Hello, my Fatherland! I remember about Ashgabat. They still remember me here.
This is the earth’s limit. Among little things of life notice to father’s lessons. How many things he managed in his life!
I can embrace my mother again. I have so much to tell her! Who invented breakups? It’s very difficult to leave.
On October 30, 2017, Evgeniya Nikolayevna died at the age of 94, leaving the kindest and brightest memory for all the people who knew her.