I will soon be sixteen, Asya will be fourteen. Three years ago our mother died.1

Charlottenburg, near Berlin. The sweltering time of the day and of the year. Waterfalls, torrents, avalanches of sunshine. The horrifying girls' fashions of those years: long skirts, long sleeves, vises for cuffs and armholes, trap-jaws for collars. Not dresses-prisons! Black stockings, black boots. Black legs!

"Papa, is it much longer?"

We have been plodding along a good half hour and an hour of walking with father is worth a whole day with any other walker.

"Soon, soon, another fifteen or twenty minutes, not more!"

My father is a passionate, more accurately—a desperate, still more accurately—a natural-born walker. For he strides the same way he breathes, without being conscious of the actual action. For him to stop walking would be the same thing as for someone else to stop breathing. My sister and I, puffing, follow along. We go single file: father in front, behind him—me, behind me—Asya.

"Charlotte's town" (some "Charlotte the Great" probably, since it's named with her name), Charlottenburg is completely dead. Shutters closed. Not a dog in the vicinity. We are the only dogs on the street. I said: closed shutters. But are they real? Shutters? Houses? I don't know and I can't know because I am walking without raising my head, hypnotized by the movement of my own black feet along the white roadway.

"Soon, Papa?" Asya is asking again, while I, from the pride of a born pedestrian—and from my other prides—keep quiet.

Six black boots on a white roadway.

Two in front, two following, two closing up.

But it just can't drag on this way eternally! You have to think up something. And—I do. All this is only a dream. I am asleep. Because heat like this, to the seventh sweat, glowing-hot light like this—in a word, horror like this simply can't exist.

And since my dream, even the very longest, has a limit-three minutes and no more—that means I won't have had time to get tired. Even in the dream.

It was enough simply to convince myself—it was as if the tiredness never existed.

And father's voice: "Here we are, we've arrived."

* * * * *

A gigantic, if not endless, Gypsabgusserei* [*Plaster casting works]: heaps of plaster casts from marble originals.

Statues, statues, statues.

"You're plucky youngsters. You walked—didn't complain," says father wiping off his forehead. "As a reward I'm giving each of you a plaster model, two in fact. You choose what you like while I'm having a talk with the director. Be quick, we're not staying for long."

And so, Asya and I are alone in an enchanted land, alone— strangely-black-legged among all these still-frozen, white-and-bare-footed beings. We start the search from statue to statue, from torso to torso, from head to head. To tell the truth, I don't like sculpture very much. Now if father had offered me the choice of two books instead of two plaster models, I would instantly have named about ten of the most coveted. But—it can't be changed. Let's try at least to hit on something not too statuary.

We go off in different directions so as not, Lord forbid, to choose the very same thing. From time to time as if in a forest hunting mushrooms:

"Hey-ey. Found one?"

"Not yet. And you?"

"I haven't either."

"Can you see me?"

"Yes, I can."

"Where are you?"

"Here."

A game of hide-and-go-seek among statues. Finally, Asya's yell.

"Got one! Looks like a boy."

Full of envious curiosity I would have hurried to her voice, but you can't really hurry much here. I pick my way, in fact push my way through.

Yes indeed, it's a boy. Just our age or maybe even younger— and with our bangs on his forehead. Not a statue, not a torso— a head.

"You like it?"

"For you—yes, for myself—no."

I haven't time to get out of sight in the thickets of human petrifications when again—a call.

"I've found another one! I's another boy!"

I come up and, taking, a close look:

"That's not a boy at all."

"It is!"

"I tell you-it's not."

"Well, you know what? You've lost your mind if you call that a girl!"

"But I'm not saying that it's a girl. It's more—an angel."

"And the wings?"

"So—it's a Greek angel. Or Roman. In any case—it's not a human boy."

"Human or not—I've got two and you have nothing."

Nothing—it's true. Because I want something very much my own, not selected, but beloved from the first glance, predestined. What's no less hard to find than a husband-to-be.

Oh, if only the head of Bonaparte were here! I would have snatched it up long ago, would have pressed it to my chest—but he was born so much later than Greece and Rome! So, and I don't need Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius either.

That leaves continuing the search among the women.

And—here she is! Here—a head thrown back towards the shoulders, brows twisted by suffering, not a mouth but—a cry. A living face among all these soulless beauties!

Who is she? I don't know. I know one thing—she's mine! And since I won't be able to find anything else so much my own, and since I don't need anything (anyone!) except her, without thinking it over I add to her a well-behaved and dull-faced maiden with something like a little scarf in her hair—the first thing I hit on.

Now that we've found our statues, we take a short walk.

"Want a candy?"

"Please."

In my fingers, which are already stuck together, is a little blood-like, drop, a sour Russian fruit drop, bearing the French name—(dating back to their emigration?)—"Monpensier." We exchange looks and, in one and the same lightning-fast movement, we push: Asya—the green, I—the red candy into the open mouths of a lion (Asya), and of a hero (I).

And how that emerald and that garnet liven up the whiteness of their plaster tongues!

Putting her hand down deeper my sister says:

"You know, he doesn't have a throat. None at all. There, inside— it's a dead end! "

(Father's voice: "Asya! Musya!"— "Right away, Papa.")

"We have to take them out."

"No, let's leave them."

"But what'll the director think?"

"He won't see, he has glasses."

"And even if he does see, he'll never believe that the daughters of our father..."

"And even if does believe it, he'll never make up his mind to tell..."

"And even if he does make up his mind, he won't have time..."

..."Well now, did you choose?"

Oh horror! Papa and the Director are heading in our direction!

"Did you find yourselves something to your taste, young ladies?" (the Director).

"This here— and this— and this— and this."

"I can see right away that you are your father's daughters (approvingly): Donatello2 — and the Amazon3— and (I've forgotten the name)— and Aspasia.4 Excellent, excellent choices! Allow me, honored professor, to make a gift of these models to your daughters!"

And so, my love at first sight is the Amazon. The beloved enemy of Achilles, killed by him and bewept by him; and that one, the other, well-behaved one, my "first thing I hit upon" is no one else but Aspasia!

"Say thank you now, to the director for a marvelous gift!"

We say thank you. But the director will discover our real gratitude a while later— in the gaping maws of the hero and the lion.

Satisfied, we leave the enchanted kingdom.

"And now, let's go have some beer," says father.

1936

1. Tsvetaeva's dates are inexact. Maria Alexandrovna, Tsvetaeva's mother, died in July 1906. In the summer of 1909 Tsvetaeva went alone to Paris, where she studied at the Alliance Francaise. Anastasia and Marina were in Germany with their father in the summer of 1910. In that year Tsvetaeva turned eighteen in October.

2. Donatello (c. 1386-1466)-Tuscan sculptor, born in Florence where he worked during the early part of his career.

3. The head of the Amazon must correspond to Tsvetaeva's description of her first choice: "a head thrown back towards the shoulders, brows twisted by suffering, not a mouth but-a cry." Given Tsvetaeva's fascination with Amazons, the choice would indeed seem predestined. (See Note 64 to "Voloshin.")

4. Aspasia lived with Pericles of Athens as his mistress from 445 B.C. A woman of outstanding intellectual gifts, she conversed with Socrates and is mentioned in the writings of Plato. Charges of immorality and other politically motivated attacks were made against her, but she was successfully and ardently defended by Pericles.