And so, in the meantime, I drag myself through the streets, past houses and buildings, high ones and low ones, each with its own color and architecture. Streetcars blow their horns, cars screetch, trains whistle, and ships of the Volga let off steam. People hurry about, this way and that way, as though it is a market day. The Orthodox Russians hurry about buying supplies for their holy day, Sunday.

Wherever I turned, I saw the large display windows, stocked with all kinds of merchandise. People come out of the stores, laden with packages. I see on their faces a contentment, a satisfation. I was struck by a feeling of envy for them. "Oh," I thought, "how happy I would be, if I could also have even a little peace and calm, like these people here who go about as though completely at home..."

I noticed the town clock. It's arms moved ever so slowly, just as my own feet seemed to drag themselves. Hunger gnawed at my insides, and my all of my limbs were aching with fatigue. But I kept moving, with uncertain steps. And so I came upon some kind of a large square, which was swarming with people.

I stood there my eyes peeled wide open: I saw before me a strange picutre, and unusual, astonishing scene, like nothing I'd ever seen before. I had accidentally stumbled upon the famous Yaroslav flea market.

Buying and selling was taking place everywhere you looked....all kinds of deals being made over used goods: clothing, household goods, furniture, articles of value, and all kinds of antiques. A collection of things, that poverty and need had brought together from all corners of the city....everything was laid bare, right out in the open: among the poor, everything becomes "merchandise".

A great commotion from countless voices filled the air. And as various and different as were the goods for sale, so were the teeming crowds: a colorful mixture of various peoples, races, and tongues: broad-shouldered Russian "Ivans" with blond, black and grey beards, with long cowlick; Poles with long pointy moustaches, Jews with tired, worried eyes; Chinese with long braids and shaved heads; tall blond Letts; slant-eyed Tartars and Kalmucks; Cossacks with proud, turned-up sideburns; soldiers in gray coats and khakhi shirts; Circassians in long black cloaks with daggers by their sides and belts of ammunition draped over their shoulders; peasants and peasant women in their colorful dress; workers in their dark factory-clothes. Each with his own ways, each with his own manner of dress, each with his own language. The place was virtually swarming with humanity: used and broken goods, pieces of brass, clothing, glassware and porcelain, all mixed together and jumbled up in one great, confused mass...

The market was now in full swing. Some wandered here and there, laden with packs of merchandise over their shoulders, while others stood in one place with their merchandise at their feet. People bought, sold, argued, haggles, shouted, swore, each by his own God, each in his own language and dialect.

Here stood a group of people, men and women, factory workers, peasants from the villages, bent over a pile of old, used clothing. One of them drags out a black jacket, another one a wrinkled shirt with shiny white frills, which the original eygentumer must have worn to fancy dress balls, a shirt whose arms had once led rich, beautiful women around the dance floor....

Another one examined a piece of female undergarment with lace and frills, which at one time had been worn by a young, beating heart; where once that heart had called out to its beloved: and now, it was held aloft by a strange man with thick hairy hands, waved about like a flag for everyone to see. In his great enthusiasm he showed a full mouth of great, yellow teeth, so that the drool ran down from the corner of his mouth.

Another one held in his hand an old, black, wrinkled with still-shiny golden buttons. Once upon a time it had been worn by a high official; and now, it was being examined from all sides by a peasant. He rifled through the pockets admiring the gold buttons, with the emblem of the Czar’s eagle, as thought he had just uncovered the secret of the power that lay within them.. There was a time when those gold buttons would have cast the fear of death over him, the poor peasant....and now, it was nothing more than a useless, wrinkled rag.

Buying and selling! A market fair, a great celebration of poverty. Every piece of clothing had a certain history behind it, and could have told many interesting tales about the people whom it had once clothed, decorated, and kept warm. Now, however, everything lay their ins silence.

There stood another one, a soldier with a long drawn face, with sunken cheeks and dark sacks under his red, sleepless eyes. In his hand, he held a fiddle for sale. A one-time musician perhaps, a "faded star"?...he wandered about with the fiddle in one hand and with a case in the other, looking for a buyer, as though with a little cash he'd be able to go and buy bottle of whiskey to drown his sorrows....who knows?

Not far from him stood an older woman, with still-remaining signs of youth and beauty. She clutched to her bosom a finely-groomed dog, who stared out with frightened eyes at the strange surroundings. Who knew what reasons had brought her here to sell her dog?

There on the earth lay a pile of books from famous Russian authors; a volume of Pushkin and a volume of Tolstoy, a volume of Dostoyevsky on top of a volume of Maxim Gorky. Nearby stood an old leather corner-table, and on it a fat-bellied chrome samovar, which once must have stood an a rich, aristocratic table, boiling tea for family and guest....

Over there stood an ancient peasant, whose sons and even grandsons must have been off to war, carrying a large accordion which let out a great whine every time he moved.

Anything and everything, "that a mouth could speak of"...it was all here to be bought and sold. Everything was laid bare before God and Man. This was the Kingdom of Poverty! Here you could see the irony of human fate, where after a life of honor, greatness, and pride, the remnants are scattered somewhere among used and broken goods, like those discarded clothes, which spoke volumes in their silence about the days and years gone by.

And as I dragged myself about among the strange crowds, I also began to rummage among the heaps of used items, which were once new and fresh, just like I myself was not so long ago fresh and whole....whole in body and in spirit...and now I felt like I, too, was no more that a piece of junk.

And as I sorted through the piles of old clothes, I was struck by a sudden thought: could it be that here, among all this old baggage, I might possibly find my mother’s pillow, in which I had hidden my passport with my real name? And most importantly, my manuscripts, the first fruits of my Muse, that had been stolen from me in my travels?? If only I could find them and buy them back, redeem them....

I went frantically from one pile of junk to the next...searching, rummaging with trembling hands and eyes on fire. And my dry lips kept whispering:

"Oh, God! Help me to find my lost works!"

But my request was ignored......