О, этот вьюноша летучий! Аксенов Василий

CASTLE COOMBE

WARREN CUTTING, KINGSTON HILL,

SURREY KT2 7HS, ENGLAND

01-942 2727

29 July 1985

Mr Vassily Aksyonov,

c/0 Vladimir Maximov,

11 Bis Rue Lauriston,

Paris 75016

Dear Vassily and Mayichka,

Thank you for sending the notes re alterations: I was expecting something longer, «but what I expect is one thing, what I get is another.

I feel that we are both becoming tired of the script: you want it your way, and I want it my way, and since I approached you and commissioned you to write it, and told you in Washington exactly what kind of a script I wanted, you should have produced something which would «be acceptable to me (please see my letters when you go back to Washington), I am right and it was wrong of you to tell me on the telephone that I should have described what I wanted from the start. Neither the first nor the second scripts were acceptable to me or to various directors. Andre also told you his opinion: he was expecting something much better from you. It is not possible that you should be in the right and everyone else is wrong.

You are a lovely person, and I am very fond of you, but you are very stubborn, and you rushed the work. You know how much I respect your name, but as I said on the telephone, your name is valuable on a screen-play only when the work is good.

We must restructure the script now, it is our only opportunity. To the present you are known in the west as a novelist, but not as a screen writer and here is the chance. I have honoured my side of the bargain, and you must do likewise and produce a finished script as soon as possible. Please Vassily, try to make it good.

Each addition, alteration or ommission, from the English or Russian script must be marked and listed on a separate sheet of paper so that we can find the place easily.

I am convinced that you should open the film in 1939 with the original frontier scene identifying Garri. When he falls wounded a guard picks up the hat, looks at the holes made by dum dum bullets, and shows it to an officer who says ‘You were just born, but you will be spending at least ten years in Siberia for this’.

Something private and personal which I must tell you and Mayichka, is that I am very happy and privileged to have met you both, and that goes for Josie too. We love you both and hope that our friendship will be a long one, and will become stronger in time. We hope you feel the same. We have both fought against the Soviet system to be able to live free and to speak the truth.

We would like to see you in the South of France, and I look forward to receiving the finished work before you leave Europe. We shall be in Monte Carlo from 1st to 15th August, at the Hermitage Hotel, telephone:

(Code: 93) 50 67 31. After our holiday we shall be here for two months.

We kiss you both