Marina and Katerina

“Mountains and valleys—(and years, decades)—language, people, land—all separates these two women, Marina and Ekaterina. They don’t know of each other’s existence and will never find out; they have never met and cannot meet (like two parallel lines). The ‘time’ separating them (three decades) would be enough to explain it. I came to know Marina—tall, round-faced, a true Russian woman—at the end of the century. Back then she was about 29. As for Ekaterina, a French girl of Italian blood—she’s still not yet twenty-five. Pale-yellowish Marina, her braid gathered and pinned on top, her singing, ‘a’-tinged northern Russian speech—while Ekaterina has black fashionable curls, scattering French ditties… what do they have in common? What connected them in my thoughts?..”