A Hunt for Optimism. Viktor Shklovsky

daughter to me.

      Since there was always a cold draft from under the door of the empty room, we took a tenant.

      Georgi Sigizmundovich is Polish too, but he doesn’t speak the language. He’s a short man, only comes up to my shoulder.

      He lived with us for a while. But there was still a cold draft from under his door.

      “You should keep the stove burning through the night,” I told him. “The stove doesn’t keep the heat, you’ll catch a cold.”

      “I have healthy lungs,” he said, “I don’t need heat at night.”

      I got up one morning, and my daughter, you know, she usually sleeps on the stove. I went into the kitchen. They were right there on the stove together, the tenant and my daughter, covered with his coat. His officer’s breeches were hanging on the chair. I was really upset. So that’s the kind of lungs you have!

      I didn’t say anything to them.

      I just started selling the merchandise by myself in the market.

      I have many things to sell.

      The tenant started calling me “mamenka.”⁵

      And we lived quietly like that.

      It was my husband’s death anniversary, and I decided to visit his grave at the Smolensky cemetary. I got up in the morning and started geting dressed in warmer clothes.

      The tenant found out.

      “We’ll go with you, mamasha,” he says.

      It’s peaceful in the cemetery. I’m standing by the grave. It’s cold. I can’t even bring myself to cry.

      My daughter takes out a piece of paper. She sprinkles some powder on her palm and eats it.

      I ask them — what’s that?

      “These, mamasha, are pills for the heart,” Georgi Sigizmundovich instantly replies. “The feldsher at work gave them to me. We are going through difficult times, the blockade, and people don’t have any food to share with others. So people eat this powder. You eat it and it makes you happy. I have some for you too, if you want.”

      I ate the powder.

      We left.

      I walked ahead. They’ll probably start kissing, I thought — I didn’t want to get in the way.

      Then I heard my daughter asking: “Why isn’t she falling down?”

      “In a second,” replied the tenant, and I heard a clicking sound behind my back. I turned around and saw him shooting at me from a revolver. He misfired.

      I jumped at him. I wanted to crush him right into the snow. And without turning the revolver, he hit me straight on my forehead with the barrel. But that’s good because I would’ve been dead had he hit me with the handle, even though he’s a weak man. I fell to the ground, screaming, and the blood was pouring into my eyes. I tried to cover the wound with snow, but all I was grabbing was sand. I could hear them running away, my daughter running and screaming. Some workers who were painting crosses caught them.

      They dragged them back to where I was.

      They were panicked and all they could say was “mamasha.”

      Georgi Sigizmundovich was severely beaten. They kept pushing his head into the pool of blood and he kept saying: “I’m sorry.”

      They gave him a sleigh and told him: “Since you tried to killed her, you take her to the hospital.”

      I was taken to the hospital and the doctors were shocked, because as it turns out, I had been given a dose of strychnine. I was ill for some time and then I recovered.

      I returned home.

      Lived alone for a while.

      It’s cold. It blows from under the door. I am walking along the street one day. A sleigh comes up to me, with a convoy guard and next to him is a woman lying with her face down and her feet kicking up in the air. She is wearing my stockings.