526
PARTISAN REVIEW
I:
"That's the fashion nowadays."··
A sailor unexpectedly breaks , rather, bursts into the dis–
cussIOn.
"Comrades, you ain't thinking this thing out straight, you ain't
got no consciousness. It's these booklearned ones, this gentry, these
damned junkers that have filled Moscow with blood . Bloodsuckers!
Bastards! (To me): "And you, comrade, some advice: less talk about
Christs and dachas in the Crimea. That time is over."
My defender , scared. "Ach - she's just young - What kind of a
dacha could they have - a little shack on three legs , like I've got in
the country .. . . [Trying to make peace] : Take a look at her
shoes . . . look how cheap her boots are . . . . "
•
•
•
About this sailor. Uninterrupted obscenities . The others (he's a
Bolshevik!) are silent.
Finally, I ask him , sweetly, "Why do you swear so? Do you
really enjoy it?"
The sailor: "I'm not swearing, comrade - it's just a saying of
mine."
The soldiers roar with laughter.
I, contemplatively: "A bad saying ."
• • •
This very same sailor, by the open window
III
Oryol ,
III
the
tenderest voice: "What a lovely breeze!
•
•
•
Arya
(4 years old)
"Marina, you know Pushkin didn't say it right! He said :
Guns fire from the wharf
Calling the ships to join them
But it should be:
Guns fire
from the house
(After the uprising)
Alya's prayer during and since the uprising:
"Save us Lord and grant us grace: Marina , Seriozha, Irina,
Lyuba, Asya, Andriusha, the officers and not-officers, the Russians
and not-Russians, the French and not-French , the wounded and not–
wounded, the healthy and not-healthy - all friends and strangers."
Moscow, October-November 1917.
Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell
"The fashion came later. For Russia it came along with typhus , i.e., in '19 or '20;
for the West I don't know from or with what, in '23 or
'24-M.
T.
