I’m blossoming like an aromatic country burdock. I now read my poems only to other writers and poets, the literati. I have only read once to the public at large—“In the Watchmaker’s Shop” and “Night Visions” (news—“enormous success,” as they write sometimes on posters). I write a great deal, and talk, and feel I’m sprouting wings in the region of my ribs. My poems have been accepted in: The New Journal for Everyone, Education, The Lively Word, The World, and The Dale, among others. Not bad for a start. Some editors give me the same honorarium they give Roslavlev and Dyadya Fedya: forty kopecks a line. I’ll be a millionaire by February. For now, I’m in debt. I don’t know whether I’ll get clear of it by New Year’s. And fifty rubles of my current salary is nothing to sneeze at … But don’t worry, Marusya, I will earn the money for your tuition with my literary labors. It’s not all for Mark. Oh yes! “At the Mirror” will appear in Theater and Art. I moonlight now and then for Averchenko (Satyricon). A ruble here and a ruble there—it all adds up.
You say Mama is angry that I don’t write. If only she could put herself in my shoes, she’d understand—I’m so busy I don’t even have a spare second. Besides, when I write to you, I see everyone before me and I’m talking to all of you. Explain this to them, please!
I think that with this letter you’ll be “pleased” for the time being.
Write to me on thin paper in small script. I’ll send you stamps at some point. What’s going on at home? Are you freezing to death? Lord, it’s so painful to me to think about the daily hardships, about the frost in the rooms, etc., etc.
On Friday, I will go to the Society of Writers and Scholars, where Gradovsky is reading (he was supposed to read last Friday but took ill, so Likhachev read instead). I’m always there on Fridays.
In fact, Friday is the best day of the week for me, because on that day I float in clouds of “chimera-like propensity” (as dear Ivan Ivanovich Marzhetsky says) and bask in the presence of my radiant literary family. I think I already told you that I received a personal pass to the St. Petersburg Literary Society, and it was suggested I put myself up for nomination. I hemmed and hawed (for show), but my heart was singing. Toward the New Year, I will be selected—for my name is printed (this is the custom) and distributed to all members, to find out whether anyone can point to any of my sins. Then they “announce” me at two consecutive meetings, and only after that is it put to the (secret) vote. It’s something like the ancient feudal custom of bestowing knighthood on someone. I am somewhat timid and apprehensive about the whole thing, because I haven’t made any special contributions yet to literature. Nevertheless, the future is cloudless and bluey! (I think this is a neologism … “bluey”!) I love new words—“speedupping,” “twinx,” “itaksigranstal,” “pokomopstkzhopaktotepel…” I love the “sonorous and impure spirit.” In short, I am a modernist. (I have a dramatic poem called “I am a Modernist” for which I would have myself flogged. In any event, I’ll send it to you.) As a companion piece to the poem “Book,” I wrote a poem called “Newspaper.” It will pass. Where it will end up I don’t know, because I have to think long and hard about it first. I only know that not a single newspaper would ever print it.
How’s Mama? Is it possible that even now she’s bustling about the stove? This makes me so unhappy. You can’t imagine how much I want you to be able to live well, to be warm and carefree. Oh, how I long to be a leading light! If not for the fame, then for money. It’s all one! I have one poem called “To the Gourmet.” You must read it. You’ll see how much truth it contains.
Go to Ms. Nelli and give her my regards; kiss Anya-Asya-Basya-Musya-Dusya-Verusya, and all our cousins, who don’t rhyme. Greetings to Boomya. Don’t forget. Why didn’t she respond to my letter? Now I don’t remember; I think I wrote her. Tell Nelli that I’ve become good friends with a Polish writer named A. Nemoyevski. Has she read him? Tell her that a certain gentleman who was sitting with us at the Editorial Board and didn’t say a word to anyone for three days (I thought he was a Brit) turned out to be a Pole, and when I started talking to him in Polish, he nearly threw himself on my neck and kissed me (he’s our Warsaw agent) and wouldn’t let me out of his sight after that. Here I don’t hesitate to speak Polish like a natural-born … Turk! I make tons of mistakes, of course.
I still have a lot to tell you, but that’s all for today. I do everything in extremes!
If need be, write me at poste restante, or c/o G. Block and Partners, 62 Nevsky Prospekt.
I receive several newspapers and journals. I buy books.
There are many pretty blue eyes here—but none of them are dear to my heart.
I have spent four hours writing this letter! I’m exhausted. That’s enough.
12 One-of-a-Kind Yurik
Yahoos and Houyhnhnms
(1976–1981)
At least a whole year passed after the child was born before Nora realized what profound changes were taking place in her as well. Besides the obvious things, things that were to be expected—that she was destined for lifelong servitude to Yurik, that she was intimately, physiologically dependent on whether her child was hungry, healthy, or in good spirits—she discovered that her perception of the world had become doubled, as though it had acquired a stereoscopic property. A pleasant puff of wind blowing through the window became both frightening and alarming, because Yurik turned over in his crib from the stream of air on his cheeks. The tap of a hammer in the apartment above, which she wouldn’t even have noticed before, was painful to her ears, and she responded to these blows from the depths of her body, just like the baby. Moderately hot food now burned her mouth; the tight elastic of her socks irritated her. These and many other things she now seemed to measure with two different thermometers—one for adults and one for children.
The habit of constant analysis so quickly took root in her that she became a bit frightened for herself. She hadn’t expected motherhood to alter her entire biochemistry so thoroughly. She hoped that when she stopped breast-feeding him her familiar world would re-establish itself. But this never happened. On the contrary, it was as though, together with the baby, she was learning to know what was soft, hard, hot, or sharp; she looked at the branch of a tree, a toy, any object at all, with primordial curiosity. Just like him, she ripped pages of newsprint and listened to the rustling of the paper; she licked his toys, noting that the plastic duck was more pleasing to the tongue than the rubber kitten. Once, after she had fed Yurik, she was wiping the sticky cream of wheat off the table with her hand and she caught herself thinking that there was indeed something pleasurable about smearing it on the surface. Yurik was thrilled when he saw his mother doing what he liked to do, and started slapping his little palm in the mess of porridge. Both of them were rubbing their hands around on the tabletop. Both of them were happy.
Nora shared fully in the surprise and excitement of the baby the first time he saw snow falling from the sky and the cold white carpet on the ground. He stamped around in his little boots, examining the ribbed footprints and tracks they made, caught snowflakes, put them in his mouth and wanted to chew them (but they melted, and he didn’t understand where they had gone—he stuffed his mitten into his mouth and licked it). Nora stood beside him and tried looking around through his eyes: a huge dog that towers a head above you, a giant bench you can neither climb up on or sit on, a statue of Timiryazev with only the pedestal visible, the rest of the monument stretching up to the clouds.