20.05.1915. St. Petersburg.
I wanted to come to you after your exams, but I received a letter from my aunt, who is going on vacation from the active army. I have to see her because I don't want to hurt my family, which I haven't seen in two years. I will live in Moscow for a while, and then I will go to Simbirsk - to Shura for the wedding. Do you want me to come to you from Simbirsk? You know what this date means to me, and so I ask you, moreover, to answer directly, even if ruthlessly. My dear, don't play cat and mouse with me, at least unwittingly. I know you're always "straightforward. But you do not know how I spent this winter. After all, I tried to interpret each of your obscure words in my favor! I was looking for this ambiguity, uncertainties, and they were the only consolation for me. No, it wasn't, but then it was forever and immediately! I won't buy a ticket before your answer, and I have to do it well in advance. I am waiting.
01.06.1915. Moscow.
I will be in Kazan on the 5th, at 11.20 am. I want to stay in the rooms, somewhere far away from you. Familiars shouldn't talk about my arrival yet. If you can't meet me, leave me a letter on demand at the station.
06.06.1915. Morning. Kazan.
How do I like it? I promised to tell you about it yesterday, didn't I? No, I can't. When I realized that you would not come to the holy places, it seemed to me that I would not survive this lonely, snowy, frosty winter. Then spring came, and it was June, summer, but until yesterday I still felt buried under a pile of snow, tiredness and desire not to think about you, to forget you. Yesterday all this ended, melted. Or not, it did not melt, but moved away, lurked. I remember with unnatural clarity everything that happened and is happening now between us - all ours, and I sometimes find it strange that this is not much of ours I have to protect - from whom? From you. My dear, don't be angry, but why didn't I pick up another word when I started asking about your mother and sisters? Did you think I wanted to meet them? Let's say that it is, what's wrong with that? I care, I am interested in everything that concerns you. By the way, I talked about it because you complained about your younger brother, because of whom you had to give up one lesson, because otherwise he would not go to fifth grade.
I know it's hard for you that you're not just pulling on your brother, but the whole family, I always remember that. But why are you hiding everything about your family from me so diligently? After all, I tell you all about myself and mine, all the little things. I do not insist on anything, God forbid, but I can not hide that this inequality is upsetting and even hurtful to me.
It was difficult for me to talk to you about it - that's why I wrote it. And also because I promised to tell you how much I love you. That's right - without hiding anything.
23.07.1915. Perm.
Today in the morning there are thunderstorms, one after the other, lightning wide and long, and drops of rain - large, as if someone threw diamonds from the sky with handfuls. As a child, I believed that during a thunderstorm, when the sky opens, you can see God, and I looked, looked into all eyes. I did not see it. I must not see it.
It is now evening, I lit a candle, and I am writing to you. It is bright at heart, and why - I don't know. I drove well. The audience was not enough. I met a day before Perm with a tall, shy and shy student of the spiritual academy: I had just finished, and he was called up for a position. His eyes are bright, with long, dark lashes - eyes that show he will not return. All night long we sat on the deck, meeting the sunrise, talking about Tchaikovsky, about poetry, about ourselves - very frankly, as people who are sure that they will never meet again. I have never even met such a gentle soul in women.
I study mathematics in the morning, with a clear head and an even clearer desire to get rid of it and return to my canvases. I started here with a portrait of my brother, but I quit because he couldn't even sit still for a minute. I took up still life - a burning candle in a copper candlestick near the open book. I wanted to convey the silence of a lonely reading: a red-yellow tongue of flame on a dark blue, twilight background. It didn't work out! I have to learn, and one morning I want to wake up as an artist. I am impatient, carefree, trusting, I do not understand anything in art and in general irreparable, hopelessly stupid ...
I was in the library several times and was convinced that although Perm is a "bear corner", but there are a lot of cultural people. Sometimes I run to a boarding school friend I found married here. Still, I try to write over and over, and for fun "exercise" my strength with my brother. After these exercises, my strength is shown to the light of God in the form of huge bruises. How do you live? When do you think about resting? I may go through Kazan. What do you think about it "maybe"?
To be continued...