post-script

have been unusually haunted by mariengof's novel less the lying, and esenin's cruel transgressions. his refusals, first to know, and then even acknowledge his children by zinaida, first wife whom he never managed to divorce despite a number of later marriages. his first abandoned child, the one time he meets him, doesn't warm to esenin. the second one, years later, he sees unexpectedly at a train station with the mother. he says the kid is too dark to be his and walks away.

another anecdote from the book that broke my heart--there is a neighbor in moscow, a widower with a young son, maybe four years old. he tries placing him in a state boarding school, or an orphanage, but ultimately resorts to sitting with the boy on a train up north until he falls asleep, then slipping out and getting a ticket back to moscow alone. problem solved.