Category: Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

On the third day Vera said:’I love your body because it is beautiful. But I do not know your soul. I do not know whether there is a soul. Nor is it necessary for me because your body is beautiful.But everything is mutable and you will grow old. At first your face will grow old. Your body will live longer. An old face will be a mockery before a youthful body. And then a wasted body will be a mockery to ravenous desires.This is like the dead light of the setting sun which from the clouds above was reflected in the water… feeble and full of disillusion.Should I not kill you so that I might always possess you for myself.’And Vera became terrifying.I found this unpleasant.But from these words I understood that she had decided upon the day.(“Thirty-Three Abominations”)

Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

I came there again another time. And I looked many times again. I was filled with consolation, with my consolation.The thirty-three abominations were truthful. They were the truth. They were life. The sharp fragments of life, sharp, complete moments. Such are women. They have lovers.Each of these thirty-three (or how many of them were there?) had painted his mistress. Excellent! I grew used to myself being in their presence.Thirty-three mistresses! Thirty-three mistresses!And I was all of them and yet all were not me.I studied the abomination for a long while: before I modeled for them, as well as afterwards.I modelled in order to study. This I felt so keenly. It seemed to me that I was learning about life by pieces, by separate pieces, fragments, but every fragment possessed all its own complexity and power.The abominations began to divide in half. With every day this became clearer. One half became mistresses and the other half queens.Each of the thirty-three created his mistress or his queen.(“Thirty Three Abominations”)

Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

I often think about this, that is, I imagine to myself that here is Vera, dead, totally motionless, lying on the table, in a coffin… and I too, of course can no longer live. But for some reason this gives me pleasure, a terrible amount of pleasure to imagine so the one I love: earlier I imagined grandmother and then my fiance in this manner, even my favorite animals, Sparky our cat with the fiery bursts of red on his gray-black fur.(“Thirty-Three Abominations”)

Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

I was standing alone with him when she burst impetuously through the door, tall and wearing a rain-cape on top of a queen’s costume, a forgotten crown on her head.She directed some rapid words at him. He began to tremble all over and dropped my hand from under his arm. Vera seized me cruelly by the arm and led me off… She led me through murky, dusty expanses, between strange machinery and constructions, through valleys and mountains and past a precarious wood to her dressing-room. And she still held me cruelly by the arm. There she slammed the door shut, rudely chasing away some handsome women with the amorous eyes of worshipers.I do not recall her words. It was as though she were all aflame. She kissed my hands and I realized then that she had seen only me that evening, that she had performed for only me, that she loved me and that this was all such madness.(“Thirty-Three Abominations”)