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Hand on heart an oath I swear,

I am not a highborn lady fair,

Rather, rebel — gut and brow — that's me.

People in the square confirm —

I've never been on friendly terms

With my genealogical tree.

Kremlin! Black! You've blackened me!

But—no secrets, now — key

To my heart are Grishka's ashes.

If I hurl my bonnet high,

Isn't this how boys the whole world wide

Cheer on city squares and plazas?

Shout "Hurrah!" Marvelous morn

Of all entrances since time was born.

Yes! Hurrah! Hurrah! Long Live the Tsar!

Flying, cap surpasses spire,

Skirts the idol's wreath of bronze — heads higher —

Charting passage straight on to a star!

This poem was my alliance with the audience, with all the audiences and town squares of die world, my last confidence — covering all divisions—the flight of all caps —whether Phrygian or familial —above all fortresses and prisons — it was me — my very own true self.

"Miss Tsvetaeva, that will be enough," came Briusov's command-ingly pleading whisper. In a half turn to Briusov: "Quite enough," a bow to the audience — and to the side, yielding the road—

"Now Comrade Adalis will read."

*

Comrade Adalis definitely should not have been reading on that particular evening, more precisely, in that particular month of her life, and her performance, like every act of disregard for possible, unavoidable sneers — was a form of heroics. Sneers there were, and also, clearly, jeers. But, as always, the voice (and it isn't always there) had its effect: the audience was drawn in, began to listen. (It's not a matter of the voice's resources: "on a toujours assez de voix pour etre entendu.") A—Adalis, B —Benar. Benar's poems, I remember, seemed ultracontemporary and cheaply topical: whorl-world, glass-glad, cloud-flouting, with artificial, purely visual rhyming that gives the ear nothing and works only in Akhmatova (who first introduced it)—for whom everything works. Themes and comparisons from the world of cement, subtle sounds without subtle meanings. I don't think that the poems were terribly valuable —they were far too terribly contemporary. With a nod to the audience, Benar stepped aside.

In Benar's place —the elegiac appearance of Malvina. She had an album, and poets wrote poems in it — not just any poets and not just any poems — I had the luck to open it to the simple, sophisticated dedication by Vyacheslav. (I say "Vyacheslav" not to be abrupt with the poet and not from a behind-the-back familiarity —it's just that this name doesn't need a surname any more than Balmont needs a first name. Vyacheslav covers Ivanov the way Balmont covers Konstantin. Ivanov after Vyacheslav is like Romanov after the monarch — revolutionary protocol.) And thus, the elegiac, streamy, willowy Malvina faced an audience that was beginning to enjoy itself. What were the poems about? About streams and about willows, it seems, about the abstract yearning for spring. (Briusov, Briusov, where are your famed love and passion? I read about the White Guard, Adalis read something descriptive, Benar — about cars, Malvina — about streams; moreover no one, except me, did so on purpose! Are not you yourself that very woman in the singular, and won't you be obliged, to justify your words, to perform after the ninth muse — as the tenth?)

I didn't hear the poems of the fur-covered beauty —but I doubt that cocaine was conducive to love. Having listened to the cooing of Malv-ina's streams, I went to check on Adalis, who disappeared right after her performance. When I came in, Comrade Adalis was lying down on the bench, wrapped from the sharp point of her patent leather shoes to the sharp point of her chin in something like a fur coat. She looked shaky and somber. "Well?"

"They're still reading."

"And V.Ya.?"

"He's listening."

"And the audience?"

"It's watching."

"A total embarrassment?"

"A bride inspection."

We lit cigarettes. Comrade Adalis's teeth chattered. Suddenly, throwing off the coat: "You know, Tsvetaeva, I think it's starting."

"It's your imagination."

"I tell you, it's starting."

"And I tell you that you're imagining it."

"How do you know?"

"It's too dramatic: an evening of poetesses —and . . .Something like Pope Joan. It happens in history, but it doesn't happen in life."

We laugh. And a minute later, Adalis, in a singsong voice: "Tsvetaeva, I don't know if it's starting or not, but could you do me a great service?"

I, sensing something: "Yes!"

"Go and tell V. Ya. that I'm asking for him — and it's urgent."

"And interrupt the reading?" "Well, that's up to you."

"Adalis, he'll have a fit."

"He won't dare, he's afraid of you, especially after today."

"Are you serious, this is what you want?"

"Serieux comme la mort."

I enter during the applause for Sable-Tails, call Briusov aside and say, quietly and distinctly, eye to eye: "Comrade Briusov, Comrade Adalis asked me to tell you that it seems to be starting." Briusov's eyebrows:"?" "I don't know what is starting, I'm repeating what I was told, she asks you to come quickly: it's urgent."

Briusov exits abruptly, I don't follow, but listen to the next poetess, one of the ones who dissolved in the mist. (By the way, the un-Russianness of the first names and surnames: Adalis, Benar, Susanna, Malv-ina, the Pole Poplavskaya, the Georgian princess ending in "ili" or "idze." The un-Russianness, that in this instance coincided with the inorganic quality of the poetry. A coincidence by no means a priori: Man-delstam, for example, is not only a Russian poet, but derives from a specific Russian poetic tradition. In 1916 I was the first to christen him Derzhavin:

What good is my ill-mannered verse,

To you, my youthful Derzhavin!

Briusov himself, the merchant's son, is a Muscovite who reflects neither Moscow, nor Russia, nor the land. Nationality is not nothing, but it's not everything.)

After four stanzas Briusov reappears; this time he says to me: "Miss Tsvetaeva, comrade Adalis asks you to come . . ." Also quietly and distinctly, also eye to eye. I go in: Adalis is powdering her nose in front of the mirror. "What a horrible man, he doesn't believe anything."

I: "Especially when 'it's starting' every day."

Adalis, pouting: "How do I know? It could be, after all it will start sooner or later! ... I send him for a cab — he won't go: 'My place is on the stage.'" "And mine is above. Do you want me to go get one?"

"Tsvetaeva, dearest, I don't have a kopeck for a cab, but I really don't feel well."

"Should I get the money from Briusov?"

She, terrified: "No, no, God forbid!"

Both of us shake out the contents of our purses — it's hopeless, there's not enough for a quarter of a cab.

Suddenly—there's a gust of wind, perfumed, garrulous, and alarmed. Sable-tails flies in, accompanied by a young man in a jacket and a fur hat with earflaps. The pearls on her stringed neck rattle, the sable tails fly, and so do the deer's ears: "Je vous assure, je vous assure, je vous jure . . ." Absolutely pure French with that incomparable, pearly "r" —in the throat or in the palate? no, nestled in the ages and in the blood —which stirs the whole Slavic soul. "Mais ce que je voudrais bien savoir, Madame," this is the ears gasping, "si c'est vous ou votre mari qui m'avez vendu?" Blind, obsessed, they don't hear, don't see. The young man is in the last stage of rage, the woman is restrained, you just hear the tap of patent leather on cement. (If she were a snake, the very end of the tail would be tapping.) "That's N." Adalis whispers in my ear, forgetting all about the cab; "she's a baroness, recently married a baron, and the young man . . ."

The young man and the woman are now talking simultaneously, not listening, not answering, not pausing—lengthy roulades of Vs," each of them repeating the same thing, each his or her own: "Je vous assure, je vous assure, je vous jure." "Je le saurai, Madame!" The words "Tscheka, fusille, perquisition" recur. The pearls are in grave danger: any second now she'll break them, they'll spill, roll around with the same rattling scatter of guttural roulades: "Je vous assure, je vous assure, je . . ."

The heroine's eyes are light, unseeing, transcending the interlocutor and life. On the lunatic face, only the mouth is alive, unclosing, relentlessly throwing out roulades, cascades, myriad Vs." My eyes are already drooping from the "r's" in a drowsy stupor, as though from thousands of burbling brooks. A scene from a novel? Yes. From cheap, gutter fiction? Yes. Only the outpost rivals the gutter in bloodiness. But the situation has changed; now it's the woman who's attacking, overtaking, hurling insult after insult in his face, and the man has shrunk, like his own ears under the fur ones, he's slunk off, shriveled down to nothing at all —nothing! Sable-tail has cornered Deer-ears!

"The Devil can take this woman's poetree! No box office in it! Only cadets and coquettes. I told V Ya., and he told 'feminine leerics, feminine leerics . . .' and here's your leerics — a room and some perfume!"

The actual impresario entered, the organizer of the evening, an eastern type, with an "idze." (He was the author of the witticism making die rounds in Moscow at the time regarding the now deceased writer Ger-shenzon, after a reading that was unprofitable for Idze: "How could I think that the Writers Union would put out such an idiot?")

I said:

"Under Ludwig XIV the poet Gilbert went mad from lyrical poetry and swallowed the key to his manuscripts; in the XVIII century the Englishman Chetterton — I don't remember exactly what happened — but it was from lyrical poetry; Andre Chenier — lost his head. It's dangerous -stuff, lyrical poetry. Just be glad that you got off so cheap."

"You're talking about the gentlemen poets themselves — it's their business they want to choose such a profession — but what's it got to do with me, Miss Poetess?"

"You loiter around lyrical poetry. You want to get rich off lyrical poetry!"

"That's what you think. Just who you think organized Igor Severianin's evening? Your humble servant. And I made good money off that Igor, and he came out none the worse. The problem's not poetree, but. .."

"Broads. There's a moral for you: don't get involved with women — it will always end in woe."

"You think it's funny, Miss Poetess."

"It's laughable. Selling women's souls! Like Chichikov! You'd be better off selling their bodies!"

"Idze", not listening:

"You'll get your honorarium and" (suddenly stopping): "what is this disaster now?"

We all run out: the impresario, the warring lovers, N., Adalis, and I.

A dam broke? The ceiling didn't hold? The Polytechnical Museum decided it was Vesuvius? Or Moscow is collapsing—for its sins?

On the stage, with the sweetest, most luminous, most raspberry-colored of smiles —was Red Beret!

A short digression. We were all applauded — Adalis, Benar, the poetess in pearls, Malvina, I —just about equally: within the limits of a fully satisfied curiosity. This, however, was —success. (Success in advance and on credit, for she hadn't yet uttered a single word, but—do words really matter?)

And so, still silent, gradually, the way the sun as it rises illuminates ridge after mountain ridge, Red Beret was greeting the amphitheater. She must have recognized someone in the first row — there was a nod to the first row, and someone in the third as well, because she nodded to the third, and in the fifth, and the fifteenth; and each got a different, an individual, not a standard nod — but a sly nod, a short nod, a nod with a sudden toss of the beret from one ear to the other, a superficial nod, a memorable nod. How lovely she was, how simple in her joy, how humble in her triumph. The applause persisted; not satisfied with hands, the audience had already engaged its feet —soon it would start throwing things! And the smile grew wider still, stretched into infinity, transcended the boundaries of the lips and the possible, the raspberry beret was cocked further and further back, completely upward into the heavens, to paradise, to the balconies. And —strangely enough —the audience wasn't oppressed by this expectation, wasn't hurrying events or rushing things; the audience didn't want poems, the audience was happy—just like that.

"Comrade X, begin!" But Comrade Beret didn't hear, she had her own affair with the audience. "Come now, begin, Comrade X!" In BriusoVs voice one could almost hear irritation. And naturally enough, because of the entire mirage — to see only the back and the crown of the cocked beret!

Nearby, "Idze's" exclamation:

"Now if you just put this one out all by herself! A girl like that wouldn't flop!"

*

Poems? Were there any? I don't remember any words or ideas. Ideas and words dissolved, were lost, flowed out in the smile, raspberry-colored and wide like the dawn. Even if she'd been a genius in a woman's being, she couldn't have said more about it than this smile of hers. This was not a smiling face — there are many of those, they are easily forgotten; it wasn't a mouth — the mouth was lost in die smile, there was nothing but the smile: an endless extension of the lips, which had already been washed away by it! A smile — and nothing but, the dissolution of the world in a smile, the smile itself: a smile. And if I'm asked about the earth on another planet—-what I saw there, what I remember most, sorting through things and leaving much aside — I'll smile.

But, from the planets to the stage. This performance was the decisive triumph of red —not a bloody, banner, comradely red, but, with a correction for the feminine (the tint of the face, the coloring, the outfit), the triumph not of a plaza or street red —but of a battle red —a feminine-battle red.

Thus, if not in creative work, then at least in the personality of this poetess, BriusoVs assertions regarding the sources of female creativity—were confirmed.

*

Red Beret's performance dragged on. The restless Adalis and I sat in the cement room awaiting fate (money). "Will they pay or not?"

"They'll pay, but how much? They promised thirty each."

"That means ten each."

"That means three each."

The tower of Babylon boomed anew —obviously Beret was leaving her post. Babylon booms, booms, booms. Cries penetrate even our cement coffin.

"Red Devil! Red De-eevillU! De-e-vi-il!"

Frightened, I ask Adalis: "Could they really be calling her that?"

Adalis, laughing: "No, it's the name of one of her poems, her farewell to the audience, her grand finale. When she's finished, that's the end. Let's go."

We catch the last fling of the raspberry beret. All effects at the end! And yet another unforeseen fling (effect)—the broad gesture with

which the poetess, passing by, instantaneously and just for an instant — sincerely, in an excess of emotion — wraps Briusov in her cheery, striped, voluminously rustling, hospitable skirt.

This final gesture marked the final end of the evening. Nine muses girdled the stage — for rhyme and reason I'll get rid of one of us — "eight girls, and me at the pearly gates." The last, by now utterly bestial, howls, calls, the bows in response, shortened by the upcoming versts home, the thunder of the amphitheater, which was dispersing, scattering like a bunch of grapes; the barrier is down, the audience goes to the barrier, the stage into the audience.

*

The upshot: not thirty, not ten, but not three either — nine. And the tenacious arm of the willowy streamy Malvina, digging into my steel arm. The '?os feet, mistaking the century, not waiting for a carriage, couldn't handle icy Soviet conditions, and given the lack of more pleasant support, I ended up having to direct them along the sidewalk glaciers of Moscow, early February 1921.

*