MARINA TSVETAEVA
519
gathering his strength. You come to the countryside now-life
there's gray , the women are gray-haired. 'A devil , they say, a clown.'
Look - he's tossing cabbage stalks. But what kind of clown when he's
a born prince , the light created. You can't fight him with cabbage
stalks, you'll be needing the angelic hosts .... "
A fat officer squeezes into the compartment with us: a round
face, mustache , about fifty years old, a bit vulgar, foppish .
"I have a son in the 56th Regiment! I'm terribly worried . All of
a sudden I think - what the devil if. ... " [For some reason I calm
down immediately] "And he's no fool either; why should he want to
go into the thick of it?" [My calm passes instantaneously] "He's an
engineer, and bridges, well, it doesn't much matter who you build
them for: a tsar, or a republic-as long as they hold up!"
I , unable to hold back: -"My husband's in the 56th." –
"Hu-usband!? You're married? Well , I'll be. I'd never have
thought! And here I thought, Miss, you were finishing high school.
In the 56th regiment is he? You must also be worried sick."-"I don't
know how I'll make it"-"You'll make it! And you'll see each other.
Mercy me, with such a wife-how could he go into the shooting!
Your husband isn't his own enemy. He's very young then too?"
"Twenty-three ."- "There now, you see! And you're still worried!
Well , I can tell you , if I were 23 and had such a wife I wouldn't. . . .
But then again , here I am 53 and don't have anywhere near such a
wife and I still . .. . [That's the whole point! I think to myself. But
just the same , for some reason, clearly recognizing the ridiculous–
ness of it all, I calm down .]
* * *
The workman and I arrange to ride from the station together.
And although it's not at all on the way for either of us - he's going to
Taganka and I'm going to Povarskaia - I continue to plan it out: a
deferral of the next half hour. (In a half hour we'll be in Moscow.)
The workman - is a bulwark, and for some reason I fantasize that he
knows everything;
even more - that he is himself of the princely host
(not without reason Pugachov!) and that precisely
because he is the
enemy
he will save me (S .) . -Has already saved. -And that he sat
down in this compartment deliberately-to protect and reassure–
and that Lozovaia is beside the point, he could simply have ap–
peared in the window-amid the steppes, in stride with the train .
And that in the station in Moscow he'll turn to ash.
* * *
Ten minutes to Moscow. It's already beginning to grow
light. - Or is it just the sky? My eyes used to the darkness? I'm afraid
