DANILOKIS
105
face of the woman by the window, and the red stamps with Lenin's
picture would have sufficed to highlight "the red seal of royal blood."
(The explanation you give of "royal blood" is perfectly valid.) Oh, he
would have found a way to evoke the radiance of hell!
I could tell he had already discovered the fatal error. The mo–
ment he laid eyes on me, he knew what I was up to: there was a pile
of shredded paper at my side . I stood up and thrust his books at him.
"rve torn out the inscriptions," I said. Then I handed him an
envelope full of photographs. "I've destroyed the ones that showed us
together."
I saw him only once again-at a rally, reading a proclamation.
He was a broken man by then; he sensed his end was near. You are
aware of what followed . One night the "faceless people" took him
away and confiscated all the remaining letters. And that is how
Mendel Osipovich's
Collected Works
were deprived of their fifth
volume and his correspondence reduced to twenty notes to pub–
lishers and friends . What the terrible "sword of the revolution" failed
to destroy was destroyed by the frenzy of love.
What is done is done. The past lives on in us ; we cannot blot it
out. Since dreams are an image of the otherworld and proof of its ex–
istence, we shall meet in dreams : he kneels by the stove, feeding it
with damp wood , or calls to me in a hoarse voice. I wake up and
switch on the light. Pain and remorse slowly turn into the melan–
choly joy of memories . Our long, passionate , fearful love has ftlled
my life and given it meaning. Fate has been well disposed toward
me, and I seek no reparations . I shall not be in the index of Mendel
Osipovich's books or in his biographies or in the footnotes to his
poems . I, sir, am the very oeuvre of Mendel Osipovich, and he is
mine. Is any fate more to be desired?
Please do not think, sir, that I have "reconciled myself to my
lot" and given up. Since no one knows where Mendel Osipovich lies
buried, I have no intention of "resting at his side" (as the unfortunate
Z. has declared).
If
the arch-materialist Diderot could be carried
away by such fantasies , why shouldn't I too , all materiality aside,
hope that we shall meet in the otherworld? And I trust in God I shall
not find another shade at his side .
