408
PARTISAN REVIEW
In her later years, my aunt read a great deal. She didn't reread
any of the books with inscriptions. Beside her bed , rather, lay vol–
umes of Akhmatova, Pasternak, Baratynski ....
When my aunt died, the library was sold at once. To get it
ready for sale, her son and his wife tore out the pages with the in–
scriptions . Otherwise it would have been more awkward to sell them
off.
Not long before this, my aunt had read me some lines of
poetry:
Already midway on the journey of this life
While I still think I am moving mountains,
That I plow the fields, that I water valleys ,
While life's already far beyond the midpoint .
"Verses of a certain poetess," she said with a smile.
I think she wrote them herself. The lines are clumsy, of course.
The first line is literally lifted from Dante. Still, in spite of
everything, the poem touched me.
Already midway on the journey of this life,
While I still think I am moving mountains ...
My aunt was mistaken. Her life was coming to its close. The
errors could no longer be corrected.
Translated from the Russian by Anne Frydman
