Hot. The days are yellow—heavy with the yellow ripeness of apples ready to drop if you but touch the tree, if you but look or blow. The lindens and the lilacs lean their breasts over the fence of her garden like those Russian beauties of Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Zamoskvorechye, who look out of their windows on sultry evenings, crushing their opulent bodies against the windowsills.
– Yevgeny Zamyatin, from “In Old Russia,” The Dragon: Fifteen Stories (The University of Chicago Press, 1976)

















