502
PARTISAN REVIEW
At 10 o'clock the day is over. Sometimes I saw and chop for
tomorrow. At 11 or 12 I am also in bed. Happy with the lamp just by
the pillow, the silence, a notebook, a cigarette, and sometimes–
bread.
I write badly, in a hurry. I didn't write down either the
ascen–
sions
up to the attic - there's no staircase (we burned it) - pulling my–
self up on a rope- for beams, nor the
constant
burns from coals, which
(impatience? embitteredness?) I grab with my bare hands, nor the
running about to secondhand stores (has it been sold?) and coopera–
tives (are they selling anything?).
I didn't write down the most important thing: the gaiety, the
keenness of thought, the bursts ofjoy at the slightest success, the pas–
sionate directedness of my entire being- all the walls are covered
with lines of poems and NB! for notebooks. I didn't write down the
trips at night to the terrible icy depths - to Alya's former playroom–
for some book, which I suddenly have to have, I didn't write down
Alya's and my abiding, guarded hope: wasn't that a knock at the
door? Yes, someone must be knocking! (The bell hasn't worked since
the beginning of the revolution, instead ofa bell-there's a hammer.
We live at the top and through seven doors we hear everything: every
scrape of someone else's saw, every stroke of someone else's axe,
every slam of someone else's door, every sound in the yard, every–
thing, except knocking at our door!) And - suddenly - someone's
knocking! - either Alya (throwing on her blue coat, made for her
when she was two years old, or I, not throwing on anything- head
downstairs, groping, galloping, first past the staircase with no
banister (we burned it), then down those stairs - to the chain on the
front door. (Actually, you can get in without our help, but not every–
one knows this.)
I didn't write down my eternal, one and the same - in the same
words! - prayer before sleep.
But the life of the soul- Alya's and mine - grows from my verse
-from my plays-from her notebooks.
I wanted to write down
only the day.
• • •
Alya and I:
Alya: "Marina! I didn't know how many people there were with
such wonderful names! For example: Junkovsky."
I: "He's the former Governor-General of Moscow (?), Alechka."
