The lion ate the owners. In the arms of a lion or the tragedy of the Berberovs: how it happened

The story of the Berberovs - a family from Baku who kept a lion in an ordinary Soviet apartment in the 70s of the last century - is capable of both touching and terrifying at the same time. Because they had two lions. And if the first - King - was grateful to Lev and Nina Berberov for saving him and had an easy-going character, then the other - King II - turned out to be a murderer. He sent the owner to the hospital and killed her first-born, a 14-year-old boy. The entire USSR discussed what had happened. Everyone knew the Berberovs and their lions who starred in films (including the film “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia”). People argued about the causes of the tragedy. Almost 40 years have passed since then. Let's remember this story again and try to figure out why the Disney fairy tale turned into a nightmare.

“Mommy, look, the dog is dying there”

The Berberovs were not professional trainers. Lev Lvovich worked as an architect in Baku. But the family loved animals very much. Who was not in the home zoo!

“My husband Lev Lvovich adored all living creatures,” recalls Nina Berberova. “That’s why in our hundred-meter apartment, in addition to me, my daughter Eva and my son Roma, there lived cats, dogs, parrots, hedgehogs, raccoons, and snakes. Besides, they were always throwing someone at our door. One day they brought a she-wolf. We named her Tomka. When she grew up, she began to behave inappropriately: she let everyone into the apartment, but did not let anyone out. My husband and I decided, before anything happened, to place her in the zoo. We visited our pet every Sunday: we climbed into the cage with the children and fed Tomka her favorite apricot pies. One day my daughter and I decided to take a little walk around the zoo. In one of the cages, Eva saw a small, pitiful gray lump and said to me: “Mommy, look, the dog is dying there.” I answered: “Daughter, this is not a dog, this is a little lion cub, the king of animals. He must have gotten sick." I begged the director of the zoo to give us this unfortunate baby.”

At first, the lion cub, which was abandoned by its mother, was fed from a nipple with milk and all kinds of mixtures. Then, when the lion cub grew up, they switched to meat... At first, the lion cub’s front paws did not work at all. So the Berberovs took turns massaging them all day long. Gradually the lion began to walk, but the defect remained for life. For example, if you look closely, in “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia” you can see: when King runs down the street, his front paws paddle like flippers. Nevertheless, King grew up big and beautiful, beautiful. And a good guy! King acted like an ordinary guy domestic cat. He loved to lick guests. True, his tongue was like sandpaper. But if he was annoying, you could point at him and push him away. The lion resignedly went into a corner or climbed onto the mezzanine, where his rightful place was.

About an amazing experiment - a lion living in ordinary apartment with an ordinary family,” they wrote in the newspapers, and not only in the USSR. The publications were mainly based on positive attitude, although some scientists warned that such an undertaking could end sadly. The neighbors weren't happy either. A terrible smell was coming from a spacious apartment on the second floor in a prestigious area of ​​Baku. In addition, King from time to time, often in the middle of the night, growled loudly. And when King was walked on a leash early in the morning, the neighbors tried not to go into the yard. If you meet a two-hundred-kilogram lion on a flight of stairs, you won’t want to leave.

Lion and dog

“We named our king of animals, naturally, King (that is, King), says Nina Berberova. - When the lion cub got a little stronger, grew up and turned into a beautiful lion, we wanted to return him to the zoo. But when they tried to take him there, he caused a real scandal and almost overturned the car. We were told that he would no longer be able to live either in the zoo or in the wild. We had to leave our pet.

The balcony of our apartment overlooked the roof, we put a net on it so that King could not climb out into the street, and we calmly let him walk throughout the living space. Sometimes, when he got bored alone, he would come into my husband’s and my bedroom, climb onto the bed, push me or Leva off it, lie down on his back with his stomach up and fall asleep soundly. In the morning I woke up with everyone else, had breakfast, and played with the children. They dragged him by the mustache, rode him like a horse: they could do anything with him, he was not offended by anything and never snapped.

King adored Lev Lvovich and treated me tenderly, apparently understanding that I was a woman! Either the male's jealousy awoke in him, or there was another reason for this, but as soon as he felt his adolescence, King began to spend the night in our marital bed between me and Lev Lvovich. And very often on such nights I woke up from a roar and found my husband on the floor next to the bed. It was King who pushed his master out of bed, since he did not understand that in such a situation the third wheel... So the late Lev Lvovich, by the grace of his pupil, got himself more than one bump.

King was friendly not only to all two-legged animals, but also to four-legged ones: he respected all the animals that were in our house. I especially became friends with Chap, a small black dog that weighed less than four kilograms. Chap was already six years old when King appeared, so he considered himself a kind of “grandfather”, and King as a youth. King shared the same opinion. If the “youth” tried to play pranks, tiny Chap would run after him around the apartment and bark. The huge King crawled under the table (the table was placed on top of him like a shell) and tucked his tail between his legs. They also slept together: first King lay down, and then Chap settled on his huge “plush” paws. They ate from the same bowl: Chap tried the “dish” first, then King came up. Chap was tiny and ate very little, while King needed a whole refrigerator of food for lunch: several kilograms of meat, eggs, fish fat. Our salary was small, and it was very difficult to feed a huge adult lion. So we had to do a side hustle: accept filming offers. Working in “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia” became our King’s finest and last hour.”

Death of the King

King became a movie star after starring in several films: The Lion Left Home, A Girl, a Boy and a Lion. Lev Lvovich Berberov quit his job as an architect and became the “producer” of the King of Beasts, because King listened to few people on the set. Training and home education are not the same thing. The Beast didn't care about the tight shooting schedule or the budget. He ignored the script and only did what he wanted. The scene where the lion jumps through the window of the nesting doll warehouse took four whole days to film! It is not surprising that after “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia,” Eldar Ryazanov swore off filming animals.

During filming in the summer of 1973, the Berberov family was given an entire school as temporary living space. Every day a car drove around Moscow with a loudspeaker, which announced that a lion lived in such and such a school and you shouldn’t go there. But, alas, tragedy happened. It all came together very unfortunately. The lion was left unattended in the school gym for several minutes - the assistant went out to drink some water. At that moment, a student of the Bauman Institute, a first-year student, Vladimir Markov, appeared in the school garden. He was walking with a girl and a dog, by the way, very similar to the pet lion Chap. Either the dog for some reason crawled through a hole in the fence enclosing the school garden, or the student went to get apples for his friend...

Further evidence varies. Nina Berberova assures that the student teased the lion, made faces, turned his back to him, and the predator took this as a signal to play. Others claim that nothing of the kind happened, the student was running after his dog. One way or another, King crushed the huge window of the gym with his paws and forehead, jumped out into the garden and knocked the freshman to the ground. He screamed heart-rendingly. Nina Berberova says that King was just playing and did not want to cause harm. However, he didn’t let the guy out for about fifteen minutes. Vladimir Markov’s friend ran for help and came across a policeman returning from his lunch break.

Police lieutenant Alexander Gurov, climbing onto the roof of the transformer booth, shot at the lion. King immediately stepped aside broken window, the student jumped up and ran to the fence. Then Gurov unloaded a whole clip from a Makarov pistol into the lion. One of the bullets hit the heart.

“Dad jumped out the window and ran towards the clap,” recalls Eva Berberova. - King was lying on his side, not far from the fence, with his eyes wide open in surprise. Not realizing what was happening, dad rushed to King and hugged him, but King was no longer breathing. At that moment my mother ran up. From the small crowd near the fence I heard female voice: “Your lion tore a man apart”... (In fact, the student escaped with scratches and was soon discharged from the hospital - editor's note). By the way, police lieutenant Gurov, who shot the lion, subsequently made a dizzying career. He became a general and was repeatedly elected to the State Duma from the United Russia party).

The lion was buried at the dacha of the writer Yakovlev, where the family had recently vacationed. The grave was dug near a young oak tree, near which King loved to lie. The Berberovs grieved as if they had lost their son.

When the family returned to Baku, boxes with King’s things were left in the hallway: collars, leashes, bowls. Chap first ran around, wagging his tail, looking for King, and then climbed into one of the boxes, lay there and sighed. And one day the dog simply fell on his side, his pulse suddenly faltered. He was given an injection of cordiamine, but a few hours later Chap was gone. He died of a massive heart attack on the twentieth day after King's death.

King II

The death of the lion caused serious psychological trauma to all family members. At night, the children Eva and Roma screamed hysterically in their sleep: “Kika! Kika! Let's go home! Kika, don't go!"

“I was against getting a second lion, I foresaw trouble,” recalls Nina Berberova. - But the Moscow intelligentsia was very excited about this idea. Sergei Obraztsov, Yuri Yakovlev, Vladimir Vysotsky, Marina Vladi collected money and began to look all over for a new lion cub Soviet Union. Found in the Kazan Zoo. He spent a month in quarantine in Moscow, then he was solemnly presented to us. The second King was not at all like our first favorite: we saved him from death, and he thanked us for this with respect and good attitude, this one demanded that they respect him.”

In 1975, based on real facts from the life of the Berberov family, director Konstantin Bromberg and screenwriter Yuri Yakovlev made the film “I Have a Lion.” The main roles were played by King II, Roma and Eva Berberov. King II became very attached to Roma and obeyed him unquestioningly. The boy rode a lion like a horse. But what was allowed to Roma was not allowed to the other members of the film group. Thus, director Bromberg's attempt to make a lion jump into a cold river ended in failure. King bit Bromberg's leg. The lion's fang left a wound eight centimeters deep in the director's thigh... Another time, the lion chopped off half the finger of the camera assistant when he, with a sharp movement, brought a tape measure to his mouth - measuring the distance from the lion's nose to the movie camera. In the end, somehow the film starring King II was made.

All-Union fame helped the Berberovs. Heydar Aliyev, who then headed the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, ordered the allocation of meat for their animals. The family was even given a minibus, which in those days was truly a royal act. Sets of postcards with King came out. But then everything started to fall apart. In 1978, Lev Berberov died of a heart attack. His wife and children found it difficult to handle the lion, and they planned to transfer him to the Berlin Zoo. But it didn't work out. Moreover, in addition to the lion, the puma Lyalya now lived in the family (plus all sorts of smaller animals).

And something happened that skeptics who did not believe in the success of the experiment of amateur trainers had repeatedly warned about.

Tragedy

“The Second King still considered Lev Lvovich to be the “leader of the pack” and obeyed him, but in 1978 my husband died of a heart attack, and I was left alone with two children, a lion and a house full of animals,” says Nina Berberova. - First, the Second King looked for his owner, called him when he found Leva’s things, lay down on them and hugged them with his paws. He also obeyed me and never showed aggressiveness, so no one even thought about the danger.

That day (November 24, 1980 - editor's note) became for me nightmare. In the morning I went to the publishing house: a book was being prepared for printing that my husband and I wrote about all our pets. Then she hurried home to feed the children and animals. When I entered the apartment, I smelled the acrid smell of smoke. The second King behaved very strangely, growled and rushed towards the balcony net. Puma Lyalya jumped onto the sofa and hid in the corner. I went up to the balcony and saw that our neighbor, a complete alcoholic, was setting fire and throwing pieces of a plastic comb at the lion. I exploded: “What are you doing?!” I’ll call the police now!” At this time, Roma’s son returned from school. First I sat him down to eat, then I started working on Second King. She chopped the meat and took the bowl to him. At that time, the lion climbed onto the mezzanine, hung from it, fell off and fell with all his strength on his back, jumped up and rushed at me. He tore my head with his paw and threw me on my back."

The woman lost consciousness. 14-year-old Roman tried to pull King II by the collar, but the 250-kilogram lion, drunk with blood, broke his neck and tore him to pieces.

Nina Berberova: “I woke up only when the shots started. The police, who were called by the neighbors, climbed onto the roof from all sides and began shooting. They finished off the Second King when the door had already been broken down. At that time, the frightened puma jumped out into the street and immediately received a bullet in the heart. Although she didn’t intend to attack anyone, she was also scared by everything that was happening.”

There are, however, other versions of what happened. According to one of them, a conflict occurred between the lion and the puma Lyalya (in heat, as some sources indicate). Lev chased Puma, and Roma Berberov intervened, trying to stop the fight, which provoked the attack.

From Nina Petrovna for a long time hid the death of their son. She found out about this only after leaving the hospital, after which she fell ill again. I didn’t want to live, I thought about suicide.

“The doctors miraculously saved my life, but I lost my son, whom I loved madly,” says Nina Berberova. “After what happened, I didn’t want to live at all, I thought about suicide. My daughter and friend Kazim (Kazim Abdullayev, actor of the Azerbaijan National Drama Theater, Honored Artist - editor's note) came out to see me.”

Subsequently, Nina Berberova married Kazim Abdullayev and gave birth to a son, Farhad, and a daughter, Rachel. They still live in Baku, with dogs, cats and a parrot. But no predators. Only in the most prominent place are photographs of King Sr. and King II. “I don’t hold a grudge against the Second King, he’s an animal, not a man, and he didn’t understand what he was doing. The only thing I can’t forgive myself is that I didn’t protect my first-born son Roma,” says Nina Berberova.

In the 70s of the last century, almost all residents of the Land of the Soviets knew Lev King. Newspapers wrote about him and films were made. Lev King was a domestic animal - he lived in the family of the Baku architect Berberov, who became famous throughout the country for his apartment menagerie. Unfortunately, this story has a sad ending. A wild animal will always remain wild, even if it is raised in a house...

Home Menagerie

Once Nina Berberova and her children were at the zoo. They saw a sick lion cub who was sentenced to be euthanized. We decided to save him. And when the baby grew up, they could not part. Loved it. In the 70s, the whole world learned about the unique experiment. The family of the architect Berberov was called a pride. This is usually the name of a family of lions. In the Berberov pride there lived a father, a mother, a son Roma, a daughter Eva, a lion King, a puma Lyalya, King’s friend the dog Chap and two parrots. Journalists and scientists wrote about them. With their participation, the films “The Lion and the Girl”, “The Lion Left Home” and “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia” were shot. An idyll reigned in this family, which gave fantastic hopes for the possibility of different relationships between people and animals. Nina Berberova wrote about this, summing up her ten years of experience. And suddenly everything collapsed.

Finest hour

Working in “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia” became King’s finest and last hour. The filming relationship with an actor named King did not work out. Training and home education are not the same thing. The wayward beast didn’t care about the tight shooting schedule, the budget, or Soviet-Italian relations - he ignored the script and did only what he wanted.

The family was given an entire school as temporary living space during filming in Leningrad. At one point, the lion was left unattended in the school gymnasium for several minutes. King became interested in an onlooker in the school garden.

According to eyewitnesses, the guy began to make faces and jump, turning first his face and then his back to the lion. For King, this was a call to play: an assistant rehearsed with him an episode for “The Italians”, when a lion runs after a man and knocks him to the ground. He stood on hind legs, squeezed out the glass in the window, ran up to the guy and threw him to the ground. The girl waiting for him at the fence shouted: “Help, a lion is tearing a man!”

Police Lieutenant Gurov was returning from his lunch break. He heard screams, ran up to the fence, not understanding what was happening, and shot at King. Lev immediately moved away from the guy towards the broken window. But Gurov unloaded the entire clip into King...

After the first shot, King left the guy, without even growling, the guy got up and went out through the gap in the fence. And the shooter, having climbed onto the roof of the transformer booth, began sending bullets from a Makarov pistol after King, who was leaving home, one after another. One of the bullets pierced the heart... The guy was more afraid than injured: the scratches turned out to be insignificant...

“King was lying on his side, not far from the fence,” Nina Berberova later recalled, “with wide open, surprised eyes. Not realizing what was happening, dad rushed to King, hugged him, but King was no longer breathing...

Tolstoy's story

“The next morning everyone was traveling in an open truck,” Berberova continues. – King was covered with some kind of mourning veil, the headwind was moving his mane dead lion. We headed to the Yakovlevs' dacha, where the lion had recently stayed and where they decided to bury him. I remember the hitch when they began to remove King from the car and the huge circus performer Yura, who worked with us in the film, moved everyone away, crying, took King on his shoulders and carried him to the young oak tree near which King loved to lie.
None of us have ever experienced such grief. In life as in life, there have been many troubles and misfortunes, but everyone had a premonition or something, and this happened immediately. Optimists by nature, we realized that with King an irreplaceable part of his soul goes to the grave, that this animal, who came to us as a terminally ill cub, was put together by us literally cell by cell, was seriously ill many times and was saved by us from death, responded to us with love, devotion, spiritual communication and closeness, becoming our own son, with whom we will be proud to be related all our lives...
Then, already in Baku, King’s friend, the dog Chap, died. The dog fell on his side, his pulse began to fluctuate, he was given an injection of cordiamine, and a few hours later Chap was gone. He died of a massive heart attack on the twentieth day after King's death. We all had no time for Chap’s worries then, but in the little dog’s life, King became everything. Chap's death altered Tolstoy's legend of the lion and the dog. The dog died.
By the way, the lieutenant subsequently made a dizzying career and became a general and chairman of the State Duma Security Committee.

After “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia,” Eldar Ryazanov swore off filming animals.

Tragic ending

After King’s death, Sergei Obraztsov and Yuri Yakovlev gave the Berberovs a second lion, which they also named King. It was he who, a few years later, killed the son of his owners and wounded the owner.

“I was against getting a second lion—I foresaw trouble,” Berberova sums up her story. – The second King was not at all like our first favorite: we saved him from death, and he thanked us for this with respect and good attitude, while this one demanded that we respect him. In 1978, my husband died of a heart attack, and I was left alone with two children, a lion and a house full of animals.
That day, November 24, 1980, became a nightmare for me. In the morning I went to the publishing house: a book was being prepared for printing that my husband and I wrote about all our pets. Then she hurried home to feed the children and animals. When I entered the apartment, I smelled the acrid smell of smoke. Our neighbor, a complete alcoholic, set a fire and threw a piece of plastic comb at the lion, which burned the animal’s skin. The lion rushed at me, tore my head with its paw, and threw me onto my back.

At this time, Roma’s son returned from school. He tried to escape, but the second King caught up with him in one jump and killed him on the spot: he tore off his scalp and broke the cervical vertebrae. I lost consciousness. I woke up only when the shots started. The police, called by neighbors, began shooting. They finished off the second King when the door had already been broken down. At the same time, they also shot the quiet cougar living in the house.

The death of her son was hidden from Nina for a long time. She found out about this only after leaving the hospital, after which she fell ill again for three months...

The lion who inspires no fear

A lot of good things have been written about the first Lion King. Here, for example, are the words of children’s writer Yuri Yakovlev from the article “The Lion Who Inspires No Fear”: “King visited me in Krasnaya Pakhra. We went with him to visit the pioneers, and he, arousing the delight of the children, walked next to them. Then King himself received guests, lying under an oak tree near my house. Scientists, doctors came to the lion, statesmen, writers. Precisely to the lion!.. Then, tired, King lay down in the grass under a young oak tree and fell asleep. The fact that the lion was nearby, so trusting and accessible, brought a holiday to everyone’s soul. And no one had a question: why is a lion needed, why does he live in the city, in the same room with two guys...

The tragedy in the Berberov family, who popularized the love of animals by their example, happened in 1980. Not only relatives and friends were deeply shocked by what happened. The Berberov family's foster lion King II killed his owner's 14-year-old son and seriously injured her. Many professionals from dynasties of trainers of predatory animals then said: “This was to be expected! Keeping predators, particularly lions, is inappropriate at home.”

This tragic story The Berberov family began long before 1980.

Back in 1970, the family of Baku architect Lev Berberov took in a little lion cub that was dying in the zoo. The lioness mother did not recognize him. Predatory beast came out, tamed him, and he became a grateful and loving member of the family. Lev Berberov, his wife Nina and two small children Eva and Roman completely dissolved in this unusual proximity to a predatory pet.

King acted in films, in particular in famous movie E. Ryazanova " Extraordinary Adventures Italians of Russia,” was a favorite of the Soviet public and, unfortunately, died in 1974 under tragic circumstances.

After the death of the lion King, the Berberov family, on the advice of many friends, “adopted” a new pet, calling him King II. But the previous harmony in the family no longer worked; the new predatory guest was only superficially similar to his predecessor, his character was not flexible. This became especially aggravated after the death of the head of the family, Lev Berberov, in 1978.

Left without her husband, Nina Berberova, with two children, a huge aggressive lion King II, a puma and a lot of more domestic pets in her arms, wondered whether it was worth continuing this “experiment.” That was the name then for this long-term union of a lion and people living in the same apartment.

During the time of the Berberov lion King II, two more films were made with his participation, and a book was written about what it is like to raise a real ruler of the wild at home.

Nina felt the approach of tragedy. King II's aggression increased; he never recognized anyone as the head of the pride after the death of Lev Berberov.
Berberova reached an agreement with the Berlin Zoo, and was soon ready to give away King II. But I didn’t have time. Provoked by the stupid cruelty of his neighbors, who threw burning pieces of a plastic comb at him, King II attacked the owner. Nina's son Roman Berberov died while trying to help his mother. The lion was shot, and the puma, which tried to escape, also died. A terrible picture.

The unfortunate woman learned about the death of her son only after 3 months, which she spent in the hospital, healing terrible wounds.
She subsequently got married and gave birth to two more children, but said with tears: “I will never forgive myself for the death of my son.”

The Berberov family and Lev King II have become an edifying example to all those who take it upon themselves to keep predatory animals at home.

Man is not the king of nature; there are situations when he becomes a victim, rightfully weak in front of a predator, when it would seem that everything is under control.
Living with a loving family for several years did not stop the Berberov lion King II's aggressive predatory instincts, as he mercilessly attacked, killed and maimed those who may have been dear to him.

Victoria Maltseva

This year marks the 30th anniversary of terrible tragedy, which took place in 1980 in Baku. The Berberov family, which, to the surprise of the whole country, kept a lion and a puma in their apartment for many years, paid a bloody price for this. Lev King is a movie star. was killed in the summer of 1974, after which the Berberovs decided to “adopt” another lion cub. But what they succeeded with one predatory animal, they failed with the other. On November 24, 1980, King II, in a fit of rage, attacked the owner Nina Berberova and tore her son Roman to pieces. Both the killer lion and the puma died from the bullets of the arriving policemen.

Movie star Lev King Lev Lvovich

The first lion named King appeared in the Berberov family after the architect Lev Lvovich (an amazing coincidence of name and animal) took a lion cub from the zoo, where his mother abandoned him, and managed to get him out. So the lion cub ended up in the Berberov family, which consisted of four people: Lev Lvovich Berberov, his wife Nina Petrovna and two children - Roman and Eva. The animal had a calm disposition and did not show aggression towards people. Among the animals in the family, in addition to King, there were also cats, dogs, parrots, hedgehogs, raccoons, snakes and the dog Chap. Twenty-four hours a day the lion cub was under constant attention. At first he was fed milk from a pacifier. Then, when the lion cub grew up, they switched to meat... They gave the lion cub sonorous name- King, which means King. From a little runt, King turned into a real king of beasts before our eyes. A year later he was already a mighty handsome man with a proud posture and a luxurious mane. And his noble character fully corresponded to his royal origin.

“My husband Lev Lvovich adored all living creatures,”remembers Nina Berberova - Therefore, in our hundred-meter apartment, in addition to me, daughter Eva and son Roma, there were many animals and birds. And the lion cub did not appear by chance. One day my daughter and I decided to take a little walk around the Baku Zoo. In one of the cages, Eva saw a small, pitiful gray lump and told me: “Mommy, look, the dog is dying there.” I answered: “Daughter, this is not a dog, this is a little lion cub, the king of animals. He is probably sick.” I begged the director of the zoo to give us this unfortunate baby.

We had a veterinarian friend, Mikhail Smirnov, who helped us deliver the lion cub. We named our king of beasts, naturally, King. When the lion cub got a little stronger, grew up and turned into a beautiful lion, we wanted to return him to the zoo. But when they tried to take him there, he caused a real scandal and almost overturned the car. We were told that he would no longer be able to live either in the zoo or in the wild. We had to leave our pet."

The story of keeping a lion in a city apartment became very famous in the USSR; several films were made about the family and the tame lion. documentaries. Scientists followed the experiment with interest. King became a silver screen star after starring in several films - "The Lion Left Home", "A Girl, a Boy and a Lion" and especially "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia." Lev Lvovich Berberov quit his job as an architect and became the “producer” of the King of Beasts.

Nina Berberova:“King adored Lev Lvovich and treated me tenderly, apparently understanding that I was a woman! Either the jealousy of a male awoke in him, or there was another reason for this, but as soon as he felt his adolescence, King began to spend the night in our marital bed between me and Lev Lvovich. And very often on such nights I woke up from a roar and found my husband on the floor next to the bed. It was King who pushed his master out of bed, since he did not understand that in such a situation the third wheel... So that the late Lev Lvovich, by the grace of his pupil, got himself more than one bump"

From the memoirs of photographer Vladimir Alekseev, who often visited the Berberovs, pulled the mane of a huge lion and, by the will of fate, was an eyewitness to the bloody denouement.

"They covered King with heating pads, fed him all sorts of mixtures from the nipple. At first, the lion cub's front paws did not work at all. So they massaged them alternately all day long. Gradually the lion began to walk, but the defect remained for the rest of his life. If you look closely, in "Extraordinary adventures..." can be seen when King runs down the street, his front paws rake like flippers. King grew up big, big, handsome, beautiful. And a kind-hearted man - the likes of which the world has never seen. King behaved exactly like an ordinary house cat . The only problem: this "cat" tried to lick the guest, and the lion's tongue was like sandpaper. But if he really got tired of it, you could point at him, push him away. The lion would meekly go into a corner or climb onto the mezzanine where he was rightful place."

Artistic abilities manifested themselves in King as early as childhood, when he acted out various scenes with his toy friend Boniface - a stuffed lion. At the same time, he demonstrated ingenuity unusual for such a beast. Later, these qualities were noticed in him by Azerbaijani filmmakers, who cast him in two films: “The Girl, the Boy and the Lion” and “The Lion Left Home.”

True, the neighbors were not happy to be next door to the movie star. A smell emanated from a spacious apartment on the second floor in a prestigious area of ​​Baku - something like hanging up an ax and putting on a gas mask. And then a lion appeared!.. Moreover, King from time to time, often in the middle of the night, announced his royal origin with a loud roar. Dozens of people living in neighboring apartments jumped up in a cold sweat. We walked King on a leash early in the morning in the park, but when we entered the entrance, no, no, we ran into neighbors. Not everyone could bear it calmly when they were pressed against the wall by a two-hundred-kilogram lion carcass on a flight of stairs.

About the friendship of a lion and a dog

“The balcony of our apartment overlooked the roof, we put a net on it so that King could not climb out into the street, and we calmly let him walk throughout the living space,- recalls Nina Berberova. - Sometimes, when he got bored, he would come into my husband’s and my bedroom, climb onto the bed, push me or Leva off it, lie down on his back with his stomach up and fall asleep soundly. In the morning I woke up with everyone else, had breakfast, and played with the children. They dragged him by the mustache, rode him like a horse: they could do anything with him, he was not offended by anything and never snapped.

King was friendly not only to all two-legged animals, but also to four-legged ones: he respected all the animals that were in our house. I especially became friends with Chap, a small black dog that weighed less than four kilograms. Chap was already six years old when King appeared, so he considered himself a kind of “grandfather”, and King as a youth. If the “youth” tried to play pranks, tiny Chap would run after him around the apartment and bark. The huge King crawled under the table and tucked his tail. They also slept together: first King lay down, and then Chap settled on his huge “plush” paws. They ate from the same bowl: Chap tried the “dish” first, then King came up. Chap was tiny and ate very little, while King needed a whole refrigerator of food for lunch: several kilograms of meat, eggs, fish oil. Our salary was small, and it was very difficult to feed a huge adult lion. So we had to do a side hustle: accept filming offers. Work in “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia” became our King’s finest and last hour.”

Deadly game And worldwide fame- "Posthumously"

As temporary living space for the period of filming in “The incredible adventures of Italians in Russia” gave the Berberovs a whole school. Every day a car with a loudspeaker drove around Leningrad and warned that a lion lived at such and such a school and you should not approach this place. But this public ban did not affect everyone.

Nina Berberova: “That day, our assistant Sasha was playing football with King in the school gym. The huge windows of this hall looked right onto Apple orchard. Sasha left King alone for a few minutes: he went to pour himself some tea. And, apparently, at that moment Markov appeared (I will never forget his name). King saw a new man and went to the window. According to eyewitnesses, Markov began to make faces and jump, turning first his face and then his back to the lion. For King, this was a call to play: our assistant rehearsed with him the episode for “The Italians”, when a lion runs after a man and knocks him to the ground. He stood on his hind legs, squeezed out the glass in the window, ran to this Markov, threw him to the ground. The girl waiting for him at the fence shouted: “Help, a lion is tearing a man!” And then we heard shots. Then we learned that police lieutenant Gurov was returning from his lunch break. He heard screams, ran up to the fence, not understanding what was happening, and shot at King. Lev immediately moved away from the guy towards the broken window. But Gurov, apparently, got excited, and he unloaded the entire clip at King. Student Valentin Markov escaped with only minor scratches."

Thus ended the life of the movie star - the King of Beasts. Everyone was very worried and cried. After the film was released abroad, King gained worldwide fame. Posthumously.

From the memoirs of Eva Berberova: "Dad jumped out the window and ran towards the clap. King was lying on his side, not far from the fence, with wide-open surprised eyes. Not realizing what was happening, dad rushed to King, hugged him, but King was no longer breathing. At that moment, mom ran up A woman's voice was heard from a small crowd near the fence: “Your lion tore the man to pieces”... The next morning everyone was traveling in an open truck. King was covered with some kind of mourning veil, the headwind was moving the mane of the dead lion. We headed to the writer’s dacha Yakovlev, where the lion had recently visited and where they decided to bury him. I remember the hitch when they started to remove King from the car, the huge circus performer Yura, who worked with us in the film, weeping, pulled everyone away, took King on his shoulders and carried him to a young oak tree.

We realized that an irreplaceable part of the soul goes to the grave with King, that this animal, who came to us as a terminally ill cub, was seriously ill many times and was saved by us from death, responded to us with love, devotion, spiritual communication and closeness, becoming our own son, kinship with whom we will be proud all our lives..."

But Chap suffered the most. When we returned to Baku, boxes with King’s things were left in the corridor: collars, leashes, bowls. Chap first ran around, wagging his tail, looking for King, and then climbed into one of the boxes, lay there and sighed. The veterinarian said that he would not live long because he was in a pre-heart attack condition. And indeed, the next day Chap was gone too.

The death of the lion caused serious psychological trauma to family members. At night, the children Eva and Roma screamed hysterically in their sleep: “Kika! Kika! Let’s go home! Kika, don’t go!” It was necessary to save the children. So a second lion cub appeared in the Berberov family, which was also named King in memory of the first lion...

"I was against having a second lion, but the husband insisted on his own, -It was as if Nina Berberova had a presentiment of trouble.- Yes, and the Moscow intelligentsia was very excited about this idea. Sergei Obraztsov, Yuri Yakovlev, Vladimir Vysotsky, Marina Vladi collected money and began looking for a new lion cub throughout the Soviet Union. Found in the Kazan Zoo. He spent a month in quarantine in Moscow, then he was solemnly presented to us. The second King was not at all like our first favorite: we saved him from death, and he thanked us for this with respect and good attitude, but this one demanded that we respect him."

In 1975, based on real facts from the life of the Berberov family, director Konstantin Bromberg and screenwriter Yuri Yakovlev made the film “I Have a Lion.” The main roles were played by King II, Roma and Eva Berberov. King II loved Roma most of all. He became very attached to the boy and obeyed him unquestioningly. Roma rode around King as if he were not a lion, but a racing stallion. But what was allowed to Roma was not allowed to the other members of the film group. King did not tolerate familiarity. Thus, director Bromberg's attempt to make a lion jump into a cold river ended in failure. King bit Bromberg's leg. The lion's fang left a wound eight centimeters deep in the director's thigh... Another time, the lion chopped off half the finger of the camera assistant when he, with a sharp movement, brought a tape measure to his mouth - measuring the distance from the lion's nose to the movie camera. In the end, not without losses, the film starring King II was made. Both children and adults watched it with pleasure... The Berberovs were already negotiating with the studio. Gorky about a new film project. Alas, fate decreed otherwise. The life of King the Second turned out to be as tragic as the life of King the First.

Tragedy - death in the clutches of the King

An idyll reigned in this family, which gave fantastic hopes for the possibility of different relationships between people and animals. All-Union fame is all-Union fame. Heydar Aliyev, who then headed the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, ordered to help the Berberovs. Moreover, the authorities provided them with all possible assistance and provided meat for the animals. They even gave us a minibus, which was an unprecedented act at that time. And suddenly everything collapsed. Tragic events went one after another. In 1978, after the death of the head of the family, Lev Berberov, from a heart attack, his wife and children found it difficult to handle the lion, and they planned to transfer him to the Berlin Zoo, but these plans could not be realized.

Nina Berberova:“The Second King still considered Lev Lvovich to be the “leader of the pack” and obeyed him, but in 1978 my husband died of a heart attack, and I was left alone with two children, a lion and a house full of animals. First, the Second King was looking for his owner, "he called him when he found Leva's things, lay down on them and hugged him with his paws. He also obeyed me and never showed aggressiveness, so no one even thought about the danger."

On November 24, 1980, in a fit of aggression, the lion seriously injured Nina Berberova and killed her 14-year-old son Roman. The police arrived and killed the lion and puma.

“That day became a nightmare for me,”recalls Nina Berberova.- In the morning I went to the publishing house: a book was being prepared for printing that my husband and I wrote about all our pets. Then she hurried home to feed the children and animals. When I entered the apartment, I smelled the acrid smell of smoke. The second King behaved very strangely, growled and rushed towards the balcony net. Puma Lyalya jumped onto the sofa and hid in the corner. I went up to the balcony and saw that our neighbor, a complete alcoholic, was setting fire and throwing pieces of a plastic comb at the lion. I exploded: “What are you doing?! I’ll call the police now!” At this time, Roma’s son returned from school. First I sat him down to eat, then I started working on Second King. She chopped the meat and took the bowl to him. At that time, the lion climbed onto the mezzanine, hung from it, fell off and fell with all his strength on his back, jumped up and rushed at me. He tore my head with his paw and threw me on my back."

14-year-old Roman came running to his mother’s cry, grabbed King by the collar, but intoxicated with blood, an angry lion killed his son in front of his mother’s eyes - the lion’s paw tore off the guy’s scalp and broke the cervical vertebrae...

Nina Berberova:"I lost consciousness. I woke up only when the shots started. The policemen, who were called by the neighbors, climbed onto the roof from all sides and began shooting. They finished off Second King when they had already broken down the door. At that time, the frightened puma jumped out into the street and immediately received a bullet in her heart. Although she had no intention of attacking anyone, she was also frightened by everything that was happening.”

This happened thirty years ago... The death of her son was hidden from Nina Petrovna for a long time. She found out about this only after leaving the hospital, after which she fell ill again for three months. She didn’t want to live, but a friend saved her and came out, he made her believe in herself and in the future. She and Kazim got married. Children were born.

“The doctors miraculously saved my life, but I lost my son, whom I loved madly,” Nina Petrovna indulges in difficult memories. “After what happened, I didn’t want to live at all, I thought about suicide. My daughter and friend Kazim (Kazim Abdullaev - Azdrama actor, honored artist). I married him, gave birth to two more children, Farhad and Rachel. We no longer keep wild animals at home, now we only have dogs, cats and a parrot. I don’t hold a grudge against the Second King, he "I'm a beast, not a man, and I didn't understand what I was doing. The only thing I can't forgive myself is that I didn't save my first-born son Roma."

Many birds and animals still live in Nina Petrovna Berberova’s Baku apartment, but there are no longer lions among them. Only in the most prominent place are photographs of King Sr. and King Jr. displayed. One of them shows Roma tightly hugging King Jr. Double tragedy - the boy died and the lion died. But man and animal loved each other so much...

When preparing this article, materials from websites were used:

The Berberov family, which, to the surprise of the whole country, kept a lion and a puma in their apartment for many years, paid a bloody price for this. Lev King is a movie star. was killed in the summer of 1974, after which the Berberovs decided to “adopt” another lion cub. But what they succeeded with one predatory animal, they failed with the other. On November 24, 1980, King II, in a fit of rage, attacked the owner Nina Berberova and tore her son Roman to pieces. Both the killer lion and the puma died from the bullets of the arriving policemen.

Movie star Lev King Lev Lvovich

The first lion named King appeared in the Berberov family after the architect Lev Lvovich (an amazing coincidence of name and animal) took a lion cub from the zoo, where his mother abandoned him, and managed to get him out. So the lion cub ended up in the Berberov family, which consisted of four people: Lev Lvovich Berberov, his wife Nina Petrovna and two children - Roman and Eva. The animal had a calm disposition and did not show aggression towards people. Among the animals in the family, in addition to King, there were also cats, dogs, parrots, hedgehogs, raccoons, snakes and the dog Chap. Twenty-four hours a day the lion cub was under constant attention. At first he was fed milk from a pacifier. Then, when the lion cub grew up, they switched to meat... The lion cub was given a sonorous name - King, which means King. From a little runt, King turned into a real king of beasts before our eyes. A year later he was already a mighty handsome man with a proud posture and a luxurious mane. And his noble character fully corresponded to his royal origin.

“My husband Lev Lvovich adored all living creatures,” recalls Nina Berberova. “Therefore, in our hundred-meter apartment, in addition to me, my daughter Eva and my son Roma, there were many animals and birds. And the lion cub did not appear by chance. One day, my daughter and I decided to take a little walk around the Baku zoo. In one of the cages, Eva saw a small, pitiful gray lump and told me: “Mommy, look, the dog is dying there.” I answered: “Daughter, this is not a dog, this is a little lion cub, the king of animals. He probably got sick." I begged the director of the zoo to give us this unfortunate baby.

We had a veterinarian friend, Mikhail Smirnov, who helped us deliver the lion cub. We named our king of beasts, naturally, King. When the lion cub got a little stronger, grew up and turned into a beautiful lion, we wanted to return him to the zoo. But when they tried to take him there, he caused a real scandal and almost overturned the car. We were told that he would no longer be able to live either in the zoo or in the wild. We had to leave our pet."

The story of keeping a lion in a city apartment became very famous in the USSR; several documentaries were made about the family and the tame lion. Scientists followed the experiment with interest. King became a silver screen star after starring in several films - "The Lion Left Home", "A Girl, a Boy and a Lion" and especially "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia." Lev Lvovich Berberov quit his job as an architect and became the “producer” of the King of Beasts.

Nina Berberova: “King adored Lev Lvovich and treated me tenderly, apparently understanding that I was a woman! Either the jealousy of a male awakened in him, or there was another reason for this, but as soon as he felt his youthful age, King began to spend the night on our marital bed between me and Lev Lvovich. And very often on such nights I woke up from a roar and found my husband on the floor next to the bed. It was King who pushed his master out of bed, since he did not understand that in such a situation the third wheel. .. So the late Lev Lvovich, by the grace of his pupil, got himself more than one bump."

From the memoirs of photographer Vladimir Alekseev, who often visited the Berberovs, pulled the mane of a huge lion and, by the will of fate, was an eyewitness to the bloody denouement.

"They covered King with heating pads, fed him all sorts of mixtures from the nipple. At first, the lion cub's front paws did not work at all. So they massaged them alternately all day long. Gradually the lion began to walk, but the defect remained for the rest of his life. If you look closely, in "Extraordinary adventures..." can be seen when King runs down the street, his front paws rake like flippers. King grew up big, big, handsome, beautiful. And a kind-hearted man - the likes of which the world has never seen. King behaved exactly like an ordinary house cat . The only problem: this "cat" tried to lick the guest, and the lion's tongue was like sandpaper. But if he really got tired of it, you could point at him, push him away. The lion would meekly go into a corner or climb onto the mezzanine where he was rightful place."

King's artistic abilities manifested themselves in childhood, when he acted out various scenes with his toy friend Boniface, a stuffed lion. At the same time, he demonstrated ingenuity unusual for such a beast. Later, these qualities were noticed in him by Azerbaijani filmmakers, who cast him in two films: “The Girl, the Boy and the Lion” and “The Lion Left Home.”

True, the neighbors were not happy to be next door to the movie star. A smell emanated from a spacious apartment on the second floor in a prestigious area of ​​Baku - something like hanging up an ax and putting on a gas mask. And then a lion appeared!.. Moreover, King from time to time, often in the middle of the night, announced his royal origin with a loud roar. Dozens of people living in neighboring apartments jumped up in a cold sweat. We walked King on a leash early in the morning in the park, but when we entered the entrance, no, no, we ran into neighbors. Not everyone could bear it calmly when they were pressed against the wall by a two-hundred-kilogram lion carcass on a flight of stairs.

About the friendship of a lion and a dog

“The balcony of our apartment overlooked the roof, we put a net on it so that King could not climb out into the street, and we calmly let him walk throughout the living space,” recalls Nina Berberova. “Sometimes, when he got bored, he came to ours with my husband bedroom, climbed onto the bed, pushed me or Lyova off it, lay down on his back with his stomach up and fell asleep in a sound sleep. In the morning he woke up with everyone, had breakfast, played with the children. They pulled him by the mustache, rode him like a horse: you can handle him he could do whatever he wanted, he was not offended by anything and never snapped.

King was friendly not only to all two-legged animals, but also to four-legged ones: he respected all the animals that were in our house. I especially became friends with Chap, a small black dog that weighed less than four kilograms. Chap was already six years old when King appeared, so he considered himself a kind of “grandfather”, and King as a youth. If the “youth” tried to play pranks, tiny Chap would run after him around the apartment and bark. The huge King crawled under the table and tucked his tail. They also slept together: first King lay down, and then Chap settled on his huge “plush” paws. They ate from the same bowl: Chap tried the “dish” first, then King came up. Chap was tiny and ate very little, while King needed a whole refrigerator of food for lunch: several kilograms of meat, eggs, fish oil. Our salary was small, and it was very difficult to feed a huge adult lion. So we had to do a side hustle: accept filming offers. Work in “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia” became our King’s finest and last hour.”

Deadly game and worldwide fame - "Posthumous"

The Berberovs were given an entire school as temporary living space during the filming of “The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia.” Every day a car with a loudspeaker drove around Leningrad and warned that a lion lived at such and such a school and you should not approach this place. But this public ban did not affect everyone.

Nina Berberova: “That day, our assistant Sasha was playing football with King in the school gym. The huge windows of this room overlooked the apple orchard. Sasha left King alone for a few minutes: he went to pour himself some tea. And, apparently, in this moment Markov appeared (I will never forget his name). King saw a new man and went to the window. According to eyewitnesses, Markov began to make faces and jump, turning first his face and then his back to the lion. For King this was a call to play: our assistant This is how I rehearsed with him an episode for "The Italians", when a lion runs after a man and knocks him to the ground. He stood on his hind legs, squeezed out the glass in the window, ran to this Markov, knocked him to the ground. The girl who was waiting for him at the fence screamed : “Help, a lion is tearing a man apart!" And then we heard shots. Then we learned that police lieutenant Gurov was returning from his lunch break. He heard screams, ran up to the fence, not understanding what was happening, and shot at King. The lion immediately walked away from guy towards the broken window. But Gurov, apparently, got excited, and he unloaded the entire clip at King. Student Valentin Markov escaped with only minor scratches."

Thus ended the life of the movie star - the King of Beasts. Everyone was very worried and cried. After the film was released abroad, King gained worldwide fame. Posthumously.

From the memoirs of Eva Berberova: “Dad jumped out the window and ran towards the clapping. King was lying on his side, not far from the fence, with wide open surprised eyes. Not realizing what was happening, dad rushed to King, hugged him, but King was no longer breathing. At that moment, my mother ran up. A woman’s voice was heard from a small crowd near the fence: “Your lion tore the man to pieces”... The next morning everyone was riding in an open truck. King was covered with some kind of mourning veil, the headwind moved the mane of the dead lion. We We headed to the dacha of the writer Yakovlev, where the lion had recently visited and where they decided to bury him. I remember the hitch when they started to remove King from the car, the huge circus performer Yura, who worked with us in the film, weeping, removed everyone, took King on his shoulders and carried him him to the young oak.

We realized that an irreplaceable part of the soul goes to the grave with King, that this animal, who came to us as a terminally ill cub, was seriously ill many times and was saved by us from death, responded to us with love, devotion, spiritual communication and closeness, becoming our own son, kinship with whom we will be proud all our lives..."

But Chap suffered the most. When we returned to Baku, boxes with King’s things were left in the corridor: collars, leashes, bowls. Chap first ran around, wagging his tail, looking for King, and then climbed into one of the boxes, lay there and sighed. The veterinarian said that he would not live long because he was in a pre-heart attack condition. And indeed, the next day Chap was gone too.

The death of the lion caused serious psychological trauma to family members. At night, the children Eva and Roma screamed hysterically in their sleep: “Kika! Kika! Let’s go home! Kika, don’t go!” It was necessary to save the children. So a second lion cub appeared in the Berberov family, which was also named King in memory of the first lion...

“I was against having a second lion, but my husband insisted on his own,” Nina Berberova seemed to have a premonition of trouble. “And the Moscow intelligentsia was very excited about this idea. Sergei Obraztsov, Yuri Yakovlev, Vladimir Vysotsky, Marina Vladi collected money and began to look for new lion cub throughout the Soviet Union. Found in the Kazan zoo. He spent a month in quarantine in Moscow, then he was solemnly presented to us. The second King was not at all like our first favorite: we saved him from death, and he thanked us for this with respect and good attitude, this one demanded that he be respected."

In 1975, based on real facts from the life of the Berberov family, director Konstantin Bromberg and screenwriter Yuri Yakovlev made the film “I Have a Lion.” The main roles were played by King II, Roma and Eva Berberov. King II loved Roma most of all. He became very attached to the boy and obeyed him unquestioningly. Roma rode around King as if he were not a lion, but a racing stallion. But what was allowed to Roma was not allowed to the other members of the film group. King did not tolerate familiarity. Thus, director Bromberg's attempt to make a lion jump into a cold river ended in failure. King bit Bromberg's leg. The lion's fang left a wound eight centimeters deep in the director's thigh... Another time, the lion chopped off half the finger of the camera assistant when he, with a sharp movement, brought a tape measure to his mouth - measuring the distance from the lion's nose to the movie camera. In the end, not without losses, the film starring King II was made. Both children and adults watched it with pleasure... The Berberovs were already negotiating with the studio. Gorky about a new film project. Alas, fate decreed otherwise. The life of King the Second turned out to be as tragic as the life of King the First.

Tragedy - death in the clutches of the King

An idyll reigned in this family, which gave fantastic hopes for the possibility of different relationships between people and animals. All-Union fame is all-Union fame. Heydar Aliyev, who then headed the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, ordered to help the Berberovs. Moreover, the authorities provided them with all possible assistance and provided meat for the animals. They even gave us a minibus, which was an unprecedented act at that time. And suddenly everything collapsed. Tragic events followed one after another. In 1978, after the death of the head of the family, Lev Berberov, from a heart attack, his wife and children found it difficult to handle the lion, and they planned to transfer him to the Berlin Zoo, but these plans could not be realized.

Nina Berberova: “The Second King still considered Lev Lvovich to be the “leader of the pack” and obeyed him, but in 1978 my husband died of a heart attack, and I was left alone with two children, a lion and a house full of animals. At first, the Second King was looking for "He called his master, called him when he found Leva's things, lay down on them and hugged him with his paws. He also obeyed me and never showed aggressiveness, so no one even thought about the danger."

On November 24, 1980, in a fit of aggression, the lion seriously injured Nina Berberova and killed her 14-year-old son Roman. The police arrived and killed the lion and puma.

“That day became a nightmare for me,” recalls Nina Berberova. “In the morning I went to the publishing house: a book was being prepared for printing that my husband and I wrote about all our pets. Then I hurried home to feed the children and animals. When I entered the apartment, felt the acrid smell of smoke. The second King behaved very strangely, growled and rushed towards the balcony net. Puma Lyalya jumped onto the sofa and hid in the corner. I went up to the balcony and saw that our neighbor, a complete alcoholic, was setting fire and throwing pieces of plastic at the lion. combs. I exploded: “What are you doing?!” I'll call the police now!" At this time, Roma's son returned from school. First, I sat him down to eat, then I took care of the Second King. I cut the meat and carried the bowl to him. At that time, the lion climbed onto the mezzanine, hung from it, fell off and fell from with all his strength on my back, jumped up and rushed at me. He tore my head with his paw and threw me on my back.”

14-year-old Roman came running to his mother’s cry, grabbed King by the collar, but intoxicated with blood, an angry lion killed his son in front of his mother’s eyes - the lion’s paw tore off the guy’s scalp and broke the cervical vertebrae...

Nina Berberova: “I lost consciousness. I woke up only when the shots started. The policemen, who were called by the neighbors, climbed onto the roof from all sides and started shooting. They finished off the Second King when they had already broken the door. The frightened puma at that time jumped out into the street and then "she received a bullet in the heart. Although she had no intention of attacking anyone, she was also frightened by everything that was happening."

This happened thirty years ago... The death of her son was hidden from Nina Petrovna for a long time. She found out about this only after leaving the hospital, after which she fell ill again for three months. She didn’t want to live, but a friend saved her and came out, he made her believe in herself and in the future. She and Kazim got married. Children were born.

“The doctors miraculously saved my life, but I lost my son, whom I loved madly,” Nina Petrovna indulges in difficult memories. “After what happened, I didn’t want to live at all, I thought about suicide. My daughter and friend Kazim (Kazim Abdullaev - Azdrama actor, honored artist). I married him, gave birth to two more children, Farhad and Rachel. We no longer keep wild animals at home, now we only have dogs, cats and a parrot. I don’t hold a grudge against the Second King, he "I'm a beast, not a man, and I didn't understand what I was doing. The only thing I can't forgive myself is that I didn't save my first-born son Roma."

Many birds and animals still live in Nina Petrovna Berberova’s Baku apartment, but there are no longer lions among them. Only in the most prominent place are photographs of King Sr. and King Jr. displayed. One of them shows Roma tightly hugging King Jr. Double tragedy - the boy died and the lion died. But man and animal loved each other so much...