"...what happened to my accomplices - were they acquitted or not?" (1928)
The postcard from yesterday's entry, mailed in October 1928, had this message addressed to A. Aleksandridi in Tallinn, Estonia: "Hello Misha, my friend! Write me and send any news you have because I'm missing you. How are you doing there and what are you up to? How did the exhibition go and what happened to my accomplices - were they acquitted or not? I'd like to know. Here, in Berlin, I'm peddling goods from a suitcase to the Russians - sprats, sardines, canned goods and chocolates. Say hello to everyone. Yours ever, Miron."
Peddling goods door to door was a common practice among the Russians. Vladimir Nabokov often mentions in his letters to his wife Vera 'the little man' (chelovechek) who comes to his boarding house on certain days to sell cigarettes by the hundred. In one letter, Nabokov writes: "Suddenly the maid comes in: “A lady to see you.” Enter a lady with a briefcase. “Gräger sent me to you. I sell cigarettes. My husband, an officer, was killed by a firing squad in Kiev.” I took a hundred, feeling that I was terribly betraying our little man." [quoted by Brian Boyd, Letters to Vera]
Image: © Vykortsmuseum 2012.