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Those poor Sollogubian Elzevirs!16 In open boxes! In the rain! Parchment bindings, ornate French type . . . They carry them away by the cartloads. The library commission is headed by Briusov.17

They take away: sofas, chests of drawers, chandeliers. My knights remain. So do the portraits painted on the wall, it seems. Right on the spot—the diwy. The jealous dispute of the "desks."

"That's for our director!"

"No, for ours."

"We already have the Karelian birch table, and the armchair goes with it."

"That's precisely why. You have the table, we get the armchair."

"But you can't break the set!"

I, sententiously:

"Only heads can be broken!"

The "desks" are disinterested —we won't get anything anyway. Everything goes into the directors' offices. In flies my "white negro":

"Comrade Efron! If you only knew how wonderful it is atTs-ler's! A redwood secretary, a rug, bronze sconces! Just like in the old days! Do you want to take a look?"

We run through the floors. Room Number .... Section such and such . . . The director's office. We enter. My "negro", triumphantly:

"Well?"

"Just add a cushion under foot and a lapdog . . ."

"A cat would be enough!"

In her eyes, a joyful demon.

"Comrade Efron! Let's catch him a cat! There's one in apartment 18. What do you say?"

I, hypocritically:

"But he'll dirty everything here."

"That's exactly what I want! Darn thugs!"

Three minutes later the cat is nabbed and shut in. "Work" is over. We fly down all six flights, forgetting everything.

"Comrade Efron! The raspberry ottoman, eh?"

"And the countess's rugs, no?"

The diabolic meowing of the avenger pursues us.

*

The three vital M's.

"So, how'd you carry the potatoes back?" "It wasn't too bad. My old man met me."

"You know, to make meal you have to mix 2/3 potatoes with 1/3 Hour."

"Really? I'll have to tell my mother."

I have neither mother, nor man, nor meal.

*

Frozen potatoes.

"Comrade Efron! They've brought potatoes! Frozen!"

I, of course, find out later than everyone, but bad news — always too soon.

Some of "our people" went on an expedition, promised sugar deposits and lodes of lard, traveled about for two months and brought back . . . frozen potatoes! Three poods a head. First thought: how to get them home? Second: how to eat them? The three poods are rotting.

The potatoes are in the cellar, in a deep, pitch-dark crypt. The potatoes croaked and were buried, and we, die jackals, are going to dig diem up and eat them. They say they arrived healthy, but then someone suddenly "prohibited" them, and by the time the prohibition was lifted, the potatoes, having first frozen and then thawed out, had rotted. They sat at the train station for three weeks.

I run home for sacks and the sled. The sled is Alya's, a child's sled, with littie bells and blue reins —my gift to her from Rostov in the Vladimir region. Spacious wickerwork like they use for baskets, die back upholstered with a handmade rug. Just hitch up two dogs — and mush! —off to the Northern Lights . . .

But it was I who served as the dog, and the Northern Lights stayed behind: her eyes! She was two years old then, and she was regal. ("Marina, give me the Kremlin!" pointing at the towers.) Oh, Alya! Oh, die sled along midday lanes! My little tiger-fur coat (Baltic leopard? Snow leopard?) that Mandelstam, having fallen in love with Moscow, stubbornly designated Boyaresque. Snow leopard! Sleigh bells!

There's a long line to the cellar. The frostbitten steps of the staircase. Cold at your back: how to lug them? My hands — I believe in these marvels, but 100 pounds upstairs! Up thirty leaning, pushing steps! Besides which, one of the runners is broken. Besides which, I'm not sure the sacks will hold. Besides all of which, I'm so cheery that —even if I died — no one would help.

They let us in in groups: ten at a time. Everyone's in pairs — husbands have run over from their jobs, mothers have dragged themselves over. Lively negotiations, plans: one will exchange, another will dry two poods, a third will put them through die meat grinder (100 pounds?!) — obviously, I am die only one who intends to eat them.

"Comrade Efron, are you going to take the supplement? A half pood for every family member. Do you have a certificate for the children?"

Someone:

"I wouldn't! There's only slime left."

Someone else:

"You can unload it!"

We forge ahead. Grunts and sighs, occasionally laughter: someone's hands have met in the darkness: men's and women's (men's and men's — isn't funny). Apropos, whence this jollying effect of Eros on the simple people? Defiance? Self-defense? Impoverished means of expression? Timidity under the guise of levity. After all, when they're afraid, children often laugh as well. "L'amour n'est ni joyeux ni tendre."

But maybe —more likely —no amour, just surprise: men's hands — cursing, a man's and a woman's — laughter. Surprise and impunity.

There's talk of an impending trial for our coworkers —they presented huge bills for both purchases and expenses. Lodging, supplies carts, drivers . . .

They brought a lot of everything for themselves, of course.

"Did you notice how so-and-so has fattened up?"

"And so-and-so? His cheeks are about to burst!"

They let us in. We run into a crazed string of sleds. Runners over feet. Shouts. Darkness. We go through puddles. The smell is truly putrid.

"Move aside, will you!!!"

"Comrades! Comrades! The bag broke!"

Squish. Squelch. The feet disappear up to the ankles. Someone, braking the entire team, furiously removes his footwear: his felt boots are soaked through! I stopped feeling my feet a long time ago.

"Hey! Is there ever going to be any light?!"

"Comrades! I lost my identification! In the name of all that's holy— light a match!"

It sputters. Someone on their knees, in the water, is helplessly raking aside the slime.

"You should look in your pockets!"

"Could you have left it at home?"

"How do you think you'll find it here?"

"Move along! Move along!"

"Comrades, there's another group coming this way! Watch out!!!"

And — a glade and a waterfall. A square hole in the ceiling, through which rain and light fall. It gushes, as if from a dozen pipes. We'll drown! Leaps and jumps, someone lost their sack, someone else's sled got stuck in the passageway. Lord Almighty!

*

The potatoes are on the floor: they take up three hallways. At the far end they're more protected, less rotten. But there's no way to get to them except over them. And so: with our feet, our boots. Like climbing over a mountain of jellyfish. You have to take them with your hands: one hundred pounds. The unthawed ones have stuck together in monstrous clusters. I don't have a knife. So, in despair (I can't feel my hands) —I grab whatever kind comes my way: squashed, frozen, thawed . . . The sack won't hold any more. My hands, numb through and through, can't tie it. Taking advantage of the darkness, I start to cry, but then and there I stop:

"To the scales! To the scales! Who's ready for the scales ?!"

I hoist and haul.

Two Armenians are doing the weighing, one in a student uniform, the other in Caucasian dress. The snow-white felt cloak looks like a spotted hyena. Just like an archangel of the Communist Last Judgment! (The scales undoubtedly lie!).

"Comrade Meess! Don't hold up the public!"

Quarreling, kicking. Those in back push. I've blocked the entire passageway. Finally, the Caucasian, taking pity—or growing angry—shoves my sack aside with his foot. Poorly tied, the sack spills open. Slip. Slobber. I gather them up patiently, taking my time.

*

The return route with the potatoes. (I only took two poods, the third I stashed away.) First through raging hallways, then up a resistant stairway—whether it's tears or sweat on my face I can't tell.

And I know not whether it be tears or rain

That burn my face . . .

Maybe it was rain! That's not the point! The runner is very weak, it's split in the middle, it's unlikely we'll make it back. (It's not I who pulls the sled, we pull together. The sled is my comrade-in-woe, and the potatoes are the woe. We carry our own woe!

I'm scared of the plazas. The Arbat can't be avoided. I could have gone by the Prechistenka lanes, but would have gotten lost there. Neither snow, nor ice: I'm sliding on water, and in some places —on dry ground. I admire the cobblestones pensively, some are already pink . . .

"Oh how I loved all this!"

I remember Stakhovich.18 If he could see me now, I would indubitably become the object of his loathing. Everything, even my face, is dripping. I am no better than my own sack. The potatoes and I are now one and the same.

"Where the hellrya goin? Canya like that —right into people?! Tailless bourgeoise!"

"Of course I've no tail —only devils have tails!"

Laughter all around. The soldier, not assuaged:

"Some hat yer decked out in! And that mug could use a washing . . ."

I, in the same tone, pointing to his leg wrappings:

"Some rags you're decked out in!"

The laughter grows. Not wanting to relinquish the dialogue, I stop, and pretend to adjust the sack.

The soldier, working himself up:

"The upper classes they call 'em! Huh! Intellygents! Can't wash our face without a servant, can we?!"

A simple woman, shrilly:

"You'll give her some soap then, will you? Who's slipped off with all the soap, tell me? What's soap going for at Sukhareva, d'ya now?"19

Someone from the crowd:

"How would he know? He gets it for free! And you, Miss, you've got

potatoes there?"

"Frozen. From my job."

"Of course they're frozen — they need the good ones for themselves!

Give you a hand, then?"

He gives a push, the reins grow taut, Pm off. Behind me the woman's voice — to the soldier:

"So what, she wears a hat, so she's not a human being?" The ver-r-r-dict!

*

The day's outcome: two tubs of potatoes. We all eat: Alya, Nadya, Irina, I.

Nadya —to Irina, slyly:

"Eat, Irina, it's sweet, with sugar."

Irina, stubbornly, lowering her head: "Nnnnnoooo . . ."

*

March 20th.

Instead of Monplenbezh, lost in thought, I write "Monplesir" (Monplaisir) — something like a small Versailles of the i8th century. 20

Annunciation 1919.

Prices:

1 Ib. flour— 35 rubles,

1 Ib. potatoes —10 rubles.

1 Ib. carrots — 7.50 rubles,

1 Ib. onions —15 rubles.

Herring —25 rubles.

(Salary—our raises haven't gone through yet — 775 rubles a month.)

*

16: Those poor Sollogubian Elzevirs! Books published by the seventeenth-century Dutch publishing family Elzevir, presumably from Count Sollogub's library.

17: The library commission is headed by Briusov. On Valery Yakovlevich Briusov (1873 -1924), see "A Hero of Labor."

18: I remember Stakhovich. On Aleksei Aleksandrovich Stakhovich (1856-1919), see "The Death of Stakhovich."

19: What's soap going for at Sukhareva? There was a large flea market at Sukhareva Square in Moscow.

20: Instead of Monplenbezh. Tsvetaeva is apparently referring to Tsentroplenbezh, the "TsentraPnaia kollegiia po delam plennykh i bezhentsev" (Central Collegium on Affairs of Prisoners and Refugees).