A true story whose letters moan, and whose dense words fall short of expressing its bleeding melody and its great, sorrowful tune...

Little Alya sighed a deep sigh as she sat by the stove, on the floor, tugging with her small, frozen hands at the sleeves of her spring dress... hoping she might force it to cling to her blue-tinged body, the blood frozen in its veins... And she put her swollen hand over her mouth, wishing to smother a dry cough that tore at her small chest with painful tearing...

I was roused from my abstraction — absorbed as I was in reading a book on the life of Byron — by that wounded, strangled voice. And I found myself contemplating this little girl intently, as though I had not seen her pass before me every day, barefoot, her cracked feet afraid to tread the ground lest it hurt them... as though I had never seen her until this moment. She would allow herself to sit only kneeling on her knees, as though it had been decreed that she must kneel forever, begging mercy and tenderness from heaven — for how should the harsh, deaf earth take pity on her wretched childhood?... And how those two wide eyes bewitched me — forever clouded, gazing at things with such depth, as though they longed to solve the riddles of this world muffled before her in a thousand thousand curtains of pitch darkness, where no sooner does one curtain fall than new black veils wrap it round... or as though they dreamed of a new future, an oasis of greening hopes dancing across the desert of her life. That pale face speaks weeping pain in every one of its cells. And that long jet-black hair, drooping over

As though it had been decreed that the orphan must kneel forever, begging mercy and tenderness from heaven...

her small face like silent death..., encircling it like a halo — the sight of her stirs whatever affections of latent pity and deep, sorrowful musing lie in the

depths... And from time to time the poor little thing looks at her chapped hands, trying to soothe their speaking pain, only to return to staring at the ground like a