8.10 P.M. Just left the gang at the Internet café about an hour ago. We had indulged yet another night in desert, I having my usual cream puff. I still feel bloated after a forty-minute walk alone along the Nevsky to Catherine Square. Great excitement much of the time of an impromptu parade of cars of some sports fans tooting horns, waving huge blue and white flags as they sat on window sills or out of sun roofs. Presumably some great triumph in soccer or something. Of course I had my usual revulsion against competition with the accompanying notions of it being born of aggressiveness and that it is better they get it out of their systems this way than in war. But I could not stop a tear and throat swelling at the triumph, if for no other reason than the poor Russian people have been so benighted in so many ways after their great nation status of the past.

V found a grand old babushka to draw today. She was so delightful as with her huge expressive powers as she spoke of her past and bemoaned her present. Unlike some of the others, she was delighted with her drawing calling me “golden hands”. Because she could not sit still, the drawing has a long way to go before I feel good about it but she does seem to be conversing rather than just sitting, her mouth agape with a half dozen silver teeth on her lower jaw. Otherwise she was toothless. She was dirty and smelly but what a charmer.