“Oh! The beautiful, the fond memories of my childhood. My earliest memories took place in the port of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov. When I was just a little boy – 6 years old – I could recognize the ship that would appear far away on the horizon, heading for our port (…). The cab drivers with their horse-drawn carriages on the quays often asked me:
‘Hey! Yossia! Is that the Maria, or is it the Ivan Demiakin coming in?’
‘It’s the Maria!’
I was never wrong (…). I knew all the particularities of ‘my’ ships, having seen them dock before my eyes so many times. We lived at the port (my father was a schoolteacher, and the Tsar’s good rubles never filled our pockets). I loved those roughly cobbled quays, where I spent long and beautiful days playing, facing that southern Russian sea.”
These lines, written in 1970, open a tawny faux-leather notebook that’s now tucked away in the gentle clutter of a drawer near Porte Dauphine, in Paris’s 16th arrondissement. Its cover bears the title Voici déjà l’hiver (“Already, Winter Is Here”) − the winter of a life. The author, Joseph Ginsburg (little Yossia), died a year later. He was the father of Serge Gainsbourg and of his elder sister, Jacqueline, who is approaching her 100th birthday. She welcomed us into her home and let us read roughly 40 or so pages, filled with black and blue ink.
Through faded photographs, 25 years of the life of the man who passed on his passion for music to Serge Gainsbourg unfold – a quarter-century of travels through cities once unknown to the French, but which now resonate differently in their ears: Kharkov (Kharkiv), Mariupol, Lougansk (Luhansk), Ekaterinoslav (Dnipro)…
You have 92.29% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
Fonte: Le Monde
