Marina Tsvetaeva
ATTIC LIFE
I'm writing in my attic- I think it's the 10th of November
- since everyone started living by the new calendar I don't know the
dates any more.
I know nothing ofS .! since the month of March, the last time I
saw him was January 18, 1918, how and where-someday I'll say ,
right now I don't have the strength.
I live with Alya and Irina (Alya is six, Irina is two years and
seven months) on Boris and Gleb Lane across from two trees, in an
attic room
~!lich
used to be Seriozha's . There's no flour, no bread,
under the desk there's about twelve pounds of potatoes, the leftovers
of a bushel "loaned" by our neighbors - the entire pantry! The anar–
chist Charles took away Seriozha's "eleve de Breguet" antique gold
watch - I've gone to see him a hundred times - at first he promised
to return the watch, then he said that he'd found a buyer for it but
had lost the key, then that he'd found a key for it at Sukhareva but
had lost the buyer, then that fearing a search he'd given it to some–
one else to keep, then that it had been stolen from the person he gave
it to for safekeeping but that he was a rich man and wouldn't bicker
over such trifles, then, turning nasty, he started to scream that he
couldn't be expected to answer for other people's things. - The up–
shot : no watch, no money . (That sort of watch goes for 12,000 now,
i.e. fifty lbs. of flour.) The same thing happened with the baby scales.
(Charles again.)
I live on donated meals (children's). Not long ago the wife of
the shoemaker Gransky - a thin, dark-eyed woman with a pretty,
martyred face - the mother of five children - sent me a lunch ticket
and a little "doughnut" for Alya through her oldest daughter (one of
her girls had left for camp). Mrs. G-man, our neighbor on the floor
below sends the children soup from time to time and today forcibly
"loaned" me a third thousand . She herself has three children . Small,
gentle, worn down by life: by the nanny, by the children, by a
Editor's Note:
Attic Life
is excerpted from
Moscow Notes 1919-1920,
part of a manu–
script which was never completed. Translation copyright
C
1986 Jamey Gambrell.
1. Sergei Efron, Tsvetaeva's husband.
