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I am writing by the light of a stinking kitchen lamp, using up the last of the kerosene. How sick, how outrageous this all is. My Capri friends, the Lunacharskys and the Gorkys, the guardians of Russian culture and art, express self-righteous anger when they warn New Life about abetting “tsarist sympathizers.” What would they do with me now if they caught me writing this criminal tract by a stinking kitchen lamp or trying to hide it in the crack of the ledge?
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