One morsel of luck came my way on the eve of my departure for home: a threeand– a–half ruble honorarium for my translation into Russian of a long poem by a Tuva poet whose name I no longer remember. I did not know the Tuva language—a Turkic dialect with many Mongolian words (the Tuva Republic lies in the extreme south of East Siberia and has a long border with Mongolia)—but a fellow student by the name of Artyna was a Tuvan and he had given me a literal crib. It had actually been his idea to begin with: students from national republics were as a rule proud of their cultural heritage and wanted to bring it to the awareness of Russian speakers, and he had approached me as a sort of unofficial “poet in residence.” However, the poem had a passage with the obligatory glorification of the October Revolution, which I simply couldn't bring myself to translate. So I'd made a deal with Grisha, offering him the ideological bit and half of the future payment, while keeping the other sections, about the nature, seasons, and landscape, for myself. (Grisha hadn't minded in the least and did a decent job.)

The translation was printed in some Russian–language publication in Tuva's capital, Kyzyl: it must have been a magazine as the poem would have been too long for a newspaper. I do remember the letter from its editor, which accompanied the honorarium. It praised the translation and said that the poet—still young and a good swimmer—had since drowned in the strong current of a local river.

Having diluted my sorrow at the failed exam in booze, which I had asked Lena to share with me, I had only two rubles left for the rail ticket back to Riga; the cost was about ten rubles. So I begged Grisha to let me owe him half the money and keep the three–anda– half rubles toward the ticket. He was kind enough to agree.

Now I was faced with the difficult task of negotiating with a train conductor at Moscow's Riga Station. I sent Lena to do the job.