21 September I was born and raised in a stern society by an eerie eccentric half aunt who happened to own a notorious

whorehouse mockingly called Saint Teresa of Avignon !owever" I was a child greatly inclined towards meditation and inward oriented activities which" as a matter of fact" had nothing in common with the perennial moans locked between the walls I inhabited Today I have beheld before my eyes a youth as I once were She was wearing a bloody scarlet scarf at her ivory neck #limpses of the past infested my brain and festered thereon 1 September $y bloody aunt had died and all her millions gone to the devil So I had nothing 21 September" 1% years before I met him in the back of a buss" it was filled with soldiers and the air was pierced by their obscene outrageous roar of de&ection 'ords so vile and wholesome" bursting of the most ignominious lust Amid these words of utter decadence I felt his hand seeking mine !e gave me a toffee" I took a bite and returned it to him !e carefully slid it into his pocket !e said that the mark of my front teeth should always remember him of me (ou see" he was my $ashenka" I do not know whether I was his In the same day I met him for the first time" I saw three women in full mourning They didn)t have money to bury their boy who had died at the hospital of consumption and the board refused to render them the body I gave them my sole coin and whished him a *uiet slumber