This story looks absolutely implausible, but, nevertheless, this is how it really was …
One evening, when the seriously ill writer Mikhail Bulgakov could still speak, he told his wife Elena Sergeevna that he wanted to draw up a will. And this will should contain the following lines: the person who comes to him, Bulgakov, after the novel “The Master and Margarita” is published and puts flowers on the grave - this person should receive a certain percentage of the royalties.
Mikhail Bulgakov with his wife Elena
It was another bitter joke of Mikhail Afanasyevich … But Elena Sergeevna promised her husband to fulfill his will.
Mikhail Bulgakov died on March 10, 1940. The novel "The Master and Margarita", on which he painfully worked in the last years of his life, was published in the magazine "Moscow" in a truncated form in 1966, and in the spring of 1969 a young man appeared at the Novodevichy cemetery. He was alone. And he looked for a grave. He only remembered that she was not far from Chekhov's grave.
And he found what he was looking for. On the grave of Bulgakov lay a black, green, spongy tombstone, which was previously on the grave of Gogol, a writer whom the deceased adored and to whom he once addressed in a dream with the words: "Teacher, cover me with a cast-iron greatcoat!"
The young man was upset: there was not a single flower on the grave. He went back to the gate, bought flowers and returned to the grave again. He stood a little and was about to leave, when suddenly he heard a quiet voice: "Young man, wait." An elderly lady got up from a bench, which stood a little further along the path, and went to meet him: “Excuse me, what's your name? I really need your home address and telephone number. " The young man was embarrassed, but introduced himself: "Vladimir Nevelsky, a journalist from Leningrad." The lady wrote down her last name, first name, patronymic, Leningrad address, telephone and, thanking her, went to the exit.
Promotional video:
Vladimir Nevelsky, journalist of the Leningradskaya Pravda newspaper
And the young man returned to Leningrad. Two weeks later, a postal order came to his home address from Moscow. The money was huge. The young man was again lost in conjecture: who are they from? A day or two later, a phone call rang in the Leningrad apartment: "Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova is talking to you … Have you received the transfer?" Elena Sergeevna asked. And she told Nevelskoy about Bulgakov's unusual will …
After 29 years, Elena Sergeevna fulfilled the last will of Mikhail Afanasyevich.
With this money, the great-great-grandson of the Russian admiral and navigator Gennady Ivanovich Nevelskoy bought himself a boat and named it "Mikhail Bulgakov" …