The Beautiful Face

to A.T.

The winter of 1942. The greatest bloody World War II. Russia. Ural. Magnitogorsk City. Imagine the eight-year boy, in thin jacket, going to a circus through unfamiliar city in winter frosty but a sunny day. Dad is not present. He is on war. Mum is not present too. She is on work on construction of a huge metallurgic plant at the edge of city. Mum puts on the son's head a fur cap with earlaps. And the boy all time screws up the face from a smell of a dog's fur of the cap. Here, in the center of snowed square, is a building of circus, round with a big dome. On arena, there is a Russian clown and trainer Durov the Greatest with his pupils of the dogs, and the horses. The hungry and freezing boy peers to face of the actor, white, unearthly, fine. He yet does not understand, that he is capable easily to respond on beauty. For decades, this almost faded image is with him.
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