37

p I recall the remarkable rainy day when coming home thoroughly drenched I was greeted by the kind voice of my landlady, Aleksandra Nikolayevna, inquiring whether I would like some hot tea.

p “No thank you, I must go. I am in a hurry.”

p “Should you in such weather?”

p “No, no, I must go.”

p As I went out into the evening rain I felt a warmth in my chest, for somehow I felt completely certain that around the corner on which Zeida sold cigarettes each morning (he was a tiny old man who gave me cigarettes on credit) I would meet Olya. But, at the same time, I also felt slightly doubtful: "What nonsense, Olya does not know where I live. She lives in a different world; she has never lived in a small room, so I am simply imagining things...” But this feeling of doubt was very weak, while the hope that she would be there, around the corner across the street from the barber shop, was almost a certainty. The barber had once very accurately foretold my future: "There is so much happiness in store for you.” "What makes you think so?" I had asked, and he replied: "You will see.” Well, I faltered as I approached the fence on the corner of Rybnaya and Grekovskaya streets. I could imagine Olya walking around the corner, her light blue coat, high fur collar, her infinitely beautiful face, the unusual slant of her eyes and the luminous fragrance around her that absorbed everything, and me as well, and I would be dissolved in the feeling of happiness that she radiated. I slowly turned the corner, and indeed I saw Olya walking towards me.

p Words failed me. I was completely stunned. She sensed my confusion, but fortunately darkness would not let her see my eyes.

p “I came out to meet you,” I said.

p “That’s wonderful.”

p “I cannot understand how one can sense such things.”

38

p “I, too, felt certain that you would meet me.”

p I could see her hand even though she held it in her pocket. Her entire soul seemed to radiate from that hand. It was that hand that conquered me six months ago. The moment she quietly placed it on my palm, the moment that she touched me with her tiny fingers, I thought: "For the sake of that touch I am ready to walk into any fires as long as I live.” And in an instant that feeling was transmitted to her. Perhaps against her own will she was drawn towards me forever.

p I felt dizzy. Two days earlier I had finished the last remaining portion of noodles. Since then I had not eaten. That was why my legs were wobbly, and somehow this made my feeling of happiness even more intense.

p While Olya was describing an orchestra conductor, a concert which she had been out to and still other things, I revelled in the sound of her voice and felt happy, for I still could not recover from my odd intuition. I do not remember what Olya told me nor how we arrived. We walked up the stairs. I stood on a small mat that absorbed the water from my feet. I was offered tea and I heard someone inviting me to a birthday celebration. I fell asleep on a couch and when I awakened I saw my shoes and socks drying in a corner. They were out of place in this room. I felt that utter helplessness and dull pain that overwhelmed me could be seen in my eyes. But what was most frightening was that I knew that Olya sensed what I felt, and that it was painful for her to know that I knew this. She left the room. I quickly put on my shoes.

p “You mustn’t,” Olya stopped me, "You have a fever.”

p “No, I will go.”

p Olya accompanied me for a short distance. She turned to me as we reached the other side of the house. Her fragrant radiance engulfed me and I seemed to become weightless. I heard myself speaking and asking for something, while Olya asked in reply:

p “And what will happen next?”

p I did not know what would happen next. I staggered home.

p Life’s lessons produce layers within man that constitute his spiritual essence. And subsequently, it is precisely this spiritual element that will form the core of his moral force.

p Once again my mind turns to Kharkov and I see myself entering the courtyard.

39

p Small children flock about me.

p “Please tell us the next part of that fairy-tale.”

p “All right, come closer, all of you. Today’s episode will be especially interesting.”

p And as if they are enchanted my small birdies fly towards me as I begin to tell them how Nellie learned that her friend lived in a tiny room. She embraced him and kissed him and then said: "Farewell. We will never see each other again for I cannot be friends with someone who does not even have a proper room.”

p “And that is all,” I add.

p The children are silent. Never before have my fairy-tales ended in such an awkward way. Tolik looks at me as if I have stolen his most precious, possessions: two bolts, a broken switch and a new rubber band for his slingshot. Kolya is silent. He has not understood a thing and is weighed down by my own unexpected sadness. Everyone is silent, including Katya. But then she states with conviction:

p “This is a bad fairy-tale.”

p “That is not true,” 1 reply. "Was the entire fairy-tale bad?”

p “No. At first it was good.”

p “It was ruined because of that Nellie,” Tolik adds.

p “No, it was not,’^^1^^ I say. "The fairy-tale is good and so is Nellie. It is simply that a spell has been cast on her by one of those with the wooden legs and sawdust heads. And in my next story, I will free her from the spell.”

p “Be sure to remove the spell,” says Katya ’as she claps her hands.

p And once more I asked myself: how did this need to communicate with children develop? Why did I feel such delight at mingling with them?

p Could it be because in some respects they were closer to me than adults? Or because it is possible in an indirect way to share one’s own feelings with them? Or is it because I was captivated by the purity of their own world as one can be captivated by the purity of the sky and the transparency of sea water—it may seem that there is nothing special about them and yet one can watch them for hours and feel drawn to their primeval living force and feel rejuvenated and rested from that form of contact. The longer one lies on the green or sandy bank of a river and the longer one runs along the 40 resillent and cool sand beach, the water licking your bare feet, the more happiness one feels; a type of happiness that will continue to live within you throughout the year until the next grass, the next beach, and the next walk in the sea’s cool waters.

Or is it that my tendency to fantasize could only realize itself among children, since they accepted any fiction providing that it expressed a living thought.