Marina Tsvetaeva
OCTOBER ON THE TRAIN
(NOTES FROM THOSE DAYS)
Two and a half days-not a bite, not a swallow. (Throat
tight). Soldiers bring newspapers - printed on rose-colored paper.
The Kremlin and all the monuments have been blown up. The 56th
Regiment. The buildings where the Cadets and officers refused to
surrender have been blown up. 16,000 killed. By the next station it's
up to 25,000. I am silent . I smoke. One after another, travelers get
on trains heading back.
Dream (November 2, 1917, nighttime).
We are escaping. A man with a rifle comes up from the cellar. I
take aim with my empty hand. - He lowers the rifle. -A sunny day.
We are climbing on some debris. S.1 is talking about Vladivostok.
We ride in a carriage through the ruins. A man with sulphuric acid.
Letter in a notebook.
If
you are still alive, if! am to see you again -listen: yesterday,
approaching Kharkov, I read
Iuzhnyi Krai.
9,000 killed. I cannot tell
you about this night because
it's not over yet.
Gray morning now. I'm
in the corridor. Try to understand! I ride, and I write to you and
right now don't know - but here follow words which I cannot write
down.
We are approaching Oryo!. I'm scared to write to you the way I
want to-I'm afraid I'll burst into tears . This is all a terrible dream. I
try to sleep. I don't know how to write to you. When I'm writing,
you-are there, since I'm writing you! and then-ach! -the 56th
Regiment, the Kremlin. (Do you rerriember the huge keys you used
to lock the gate for the night?) But most important, most important,
most important - you, you yourself, with your self-destructive in–
stinct. Could you actually stay at home? If everyone stayed home,
you would go out alone all the same. Because you are irreproach–
able. Because you can't stand for others to be killed. Because you are
a lion, giving away a lion's share: to give life - to everyone else, rab–
bits and foxes . Because you are selfless and balk at self-preservation,
Editor's Note: "October on the Train" was originally published in an emigre journal
in 1927 .
It
was to have been part of a book to have been titled,
Earthly Signs.
Transla–
tion
(C
1987 ] amey Gambrell.
1.
Sergei Efron, Tsvetaeva's husband.
