>460
M I KH A It
Z 0 SHe H nno
I
ceived with tremendous success, and I've · heard the delighted
ov;ttions and the ddight of entire audiences, but I have never
known such feeling and warmth as for Esenin.
Dozens of hands raise him .from the chair onto the table.
Everyone wants to clink glasses with him. Everyone wants
to
touch him, clasp him and kiss him.
)
The crowd is tightly ringed around the table where
he's
sitting.
I leave the beerhalJ.B
It's My Fault
Evening. I go along the Nevsky with K.
I met her in Kislovodsk.
She is pretty, witty and amusing. She has the joie de vivre
whi.ch.I lack. Perhaps that attracts me most in her.
We go along, tenderly holding hands.. We come out by the
Neva,
We
go along the dark embankment.
K. talks endlessly about different things. But I don't listen
very carefully to what she's saying. I listen to her words like
music.
Then suddenly I hear displeasure in the music. I listen
ca,refully.
"This is the second week we've been walking about the
streets," she says. "We've covered all these silly embankments and
parks. I just want to sit with you in a hotel, and talk a bit, and
drink
tea."
"No, we might
be
seen there."
"Ah, yes. I had forgotten." She has quite a complicated life.
A jealous husband and a very jealous lover. Many enemies who
would report that they had seen us together.
We stop on the embankment. We hold each other. We
kiss.
She murmurs:
3. ESenin committed"suicide in Leningrad in 1925.
