15. 08.1915. Perm.
I am riding on "Prince Igor". He will leave Perm on the 17th-18th, cabin 11. When he will be in Kazan - I don't know. Get on the phone. Leave your math for a minute and come to the marina. The boat will be standing for at least an hour. You are lazy to write, and I need to see you and talk to you personally.
23.08.1915.
All for the better, isn't it? The ship was six hours late and only left Kazan in the morning. Have you met me? I did not dare to look for you at night, in the city, far from the marina. All I had to do was sit on deck and try not to think about you and us. It was difficult, although there were strong means of doing so. I remembered, for example, the chemistry course I had just taken. Alas! Instead of some kind of "anhydride", I imagined that we had failed to meet, and I was doing qualitative and quantitative analyses over it.
I met your brother's comrades, Warrant Officer Medyantsev, on a steamship. A nice boy, pink, with children's cheeks. Bringing warrior to Khabarovsk - said hello to his father.
7.09.1915. St. Petersburg.
Karnovsky does not write! And don't - I already have a raspberry ringing on my soul. (Don't think that it's a garden raspberry. I prefer a forest raspberry.) If you want to know what it tastes like, remember "Campanella" Liszt. I've just listened to it performed by a young Swedish conservatory student who likes me because he looks a little like you and I like him because he looks like his Stockholm bride.
You must be looking at this postcard and thinking, "Good Venice! Where do you guess that this is not Venice, but the real Cathedral of Kazan and Moika next to it, and on the Moika - our Russian Van Gogh. And we are not afraid of the Germans, although we drink tea "at a glance". Yes, we are. Things are good, but they are bad. Well, it's full! Arm yourself with a magnifying glass and patience. Writing is allowed. Not yours.
28.09.1915.
My dear, do you think that zeppelins fly over Peter? No. We are not afraid of zeppelins or Germans yet. We are afraid of cold and hunger. Ways are blocked, navigation is missed, there are no supplies in the city or almost no supplies.
Life in St. Petersburg has become hard labor, so expensive. All sharks are ready to swallow even the average man, not just the contents of his pocket. Life rushes with dizzying speed - you will not have time to look back, not only to stop. This year I can't paint at all. In the mornings I go to lectures, from there to lessons and only in the evening I come home. I don't go to Sunday classes not to torture myself. The club that we started in the spring broke up because we didn't raise any money for nature. If you knew, Kostya! Oh, what can I say! Being unable to work torments me, becomes an obsessive delusion. In my dreams, I now invariably write - a blissful state! I paint geographical maps - once I was famous for it in a boarding house - and they come to life: a high wall of turquoise color stands in front of me, permeated with veins, which are silver in the sun. It's the sea. Shadows hiding in deep copper-red folds slowly crawl upwards. They are mountains.
But in reality, I often remember the joyful feeling that you have when working or even not working, but squeezing the colors on the palette. It always seemed to me that paints are special, endowed with miraculous properties of a creature, with which you can even talk if they want to. In their names, I always felt a mysterious meaning: "bone burnt", "dead head". So: I don't work. I write in my sleep, in my mind, on lectures, in trams. The moment when the brush touches the canvas, I remember it as bliss, which I am deprived of unfairly, unfairly. Even my summer ointment in Perm, when I was writing to God, seems to me to be something underrated to tears. I didn't mention tears by chance. I cry a lot of now. Oh, Kostik! If you knew! Without painting, I don't hear music, I don't understand books. I need it like the Blue Bird in Maeterlinck's play, like a granddaughter dying of the desire for happiness. Sometimes I think I can't live because I want to live too much.
How are you doing at the gymnasium? How is Lavrov? I envy that you have such a close friend. What have you brought to the teaching? I've been meaning to talk to you about this for a long time. Today I failed again.
19.10.1915.
I would like to share with you my impressions about Balmont's lecture. It was called: "Oceania". I was amazed when he came on stage - he seemed to me completely different. Small, like a Spaniard, red, with a long mustache and a pointed beard. He reads with his head down and his eyes down. There was no other talk in the intermission except for his manners, estrangement, arrogance. But in the second department, everything was forgotten. I don't know how it happened, but we followed him "from silent Russia, past foggy England and smiling France", to Samoa, where quick flying dreams appear "like dragonflies, like violins, like dreams trembling" and where dark beauties greet you: "Talefa" (this greeting translates as "love to you").
To be continued...