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I remember a woman who once lived in our building — bright, ample, and splendid. Aunt Kapa. Kapitolina Panteleyevna. Every morning from April through October she would step out onto her balcony in a silk robe covered with enormous roses and drink coffee from a tiny cup, her little finger coquettishly…

“Addressed to a friend, the little song goes round in circles, because...” sang the radio. I did not manage to hear the rest: someone knocked on the window. 

I terribly did not want to wake up. It was a day off; the day before there had been so much to do that it seemed it could never all…

I used not to know how to cook. Grandmother ruled the kitchen. She cooked borscht, baked pies, salted cabbage.  She tolerated no one beside her in her kitchen kingdom. The most I was allowed to do was turn the handle of the old kitchen meat grinder when minced meat was needed for cutlets or a meat…

Since childhood I was certain that one must always know exactly what one wants.
After all, you never know at what moment you may catch a magic pike or even a golden fish, or when you may find the seven-colored flower.
There is also the option that you might be sent somewhere far away,…

Nothing is worse than not knowing what to write about.  No, I know that I have to write about hats. But what can one write about them? Only the lazy have not written about hats.  About the cap of invisibility, and “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “The Living Hat.”  Everything has already been written.…

There was such a roaring in her ears that she did not at once understand where she was. She lay for a while, unable to open her eyes because of lack of sleep and a strange anxiety, almost fear: where am I? What is happening to me? What is that noise?

Her hands were heavy and somehow alien.…