Reflections: Various Variations on Old Themes

the Melenki relative’s, there was a kind, dreamy soul; girls are generally incomparably more expansive than our own kind; they possess a warmth that always heats, a sympathy that is always ready to love; their feelings are rarely suppressed by egoism and they lack the calculating male mind. During one of her visits, she petted me, showed me affection; she felt sorry that I was so lonely, so without a greeting; she began to treat me, a thirteen-year-old boy, as if I were grown up; I loved her with all my heart for this; I fervently offered her my small hand, swore friendship and love, and now, 13 years later, I am ready to reach out my hand again—but how many circumstances, people, and miles have crowded between us!... She flew in like a bright ghost from the banks of the Klyazma and disappeared for a long time afterward; back then, I wrote letters to Melenki every week, and in these letters, all the dreams and beliefs of that time were preserved. She did not remain in my debt; she answered every letter and squandered, with extraordinary generosity, nouns and adjectives to describe the outskirts of Melenki, her room with its green window curtains and purple gilliflowers on the sills. But I was little satisfied by letters and waited for her arrival with impatience; it was decided that she would come to stay with us for a whole six months; I counted the days on my fingers... And so, one winter evening, I am sitting with Vasily Evdokimovich; he is discoursing on the four types of poetry and washing down each type with kvass. Suddenly: noise, kisses, the loud conversation of joy, her voice... I opened the door; small bundles and hatboxes were being hauled through the hall; my cheeks flushed with joy, I no longer listened to what Vasily Evdokimovich was saying about didactic poetry (perhaps that is why I still do not understand it, although since then I have had occasion to read Petrosilius’s poem "On Porcelain"); a few minutes later, she came into my little room and, after the insulting "Oh, how you’ve grown!", she asked what we were doing. I answered proudly: "Analyzing poetic compositions." I even remember the red merino dress in which she appeared before me then. But, alas! Times had changed: she had braided her hair; this insulted me, me with my à l’enfant child-style collars—the new hairstyle so