Yesterday I didn’t have time to do these exercises, and the day before I didn’t so much do exercises as fill page after page with accounts of my dreams. I was pleased to hear that the writing was legible, even though forming the letters couldn’t have been further from my mind—unlike now, when I’m concentrating hard on it. Practicing like this is paying off, then. Anyway, yesterday I had another dream. I’ll write it down now, and while I do I won’t worry about my handwriting.

I was in an enormous bathtub—like a big swimming pool, only narrower and very long—full of soapy water. The soap in the water made it very murky, and because of that nobody could see I was naked. My friend M was with me (and I knew she was also completely naked, though her body was out of sight; only her head was visible above the surface). We were both swimming around happily, and the overriding mood was one of gentle eroticism. But then I notice that the water level in the bathtub is going down; there’s much less water than before. I move toward the plug and M is already there, trying to sort it out. “The plug’s leaking,” she says, struggling to fix it. But her fiddling only loosens it even more, and the water’s escaping fast as we try to cover our “modesty” with our hands and arms, twisting our bodies so as little as possible is on display. The gentle eroticism disappears and is replaced by a certain anxiety about what’s happening, but at the same time we find the situation funny and start laughing. There are other women outside the bathtub, and we ask them to bring something to cover us up. The bathtub is in the middle of the countryside.

December 14

Last night I had another dream about water. This one took place in a little cove in the river or the sea. To the right there was a wooden bridge, or jetty, that extended a certain distance over the water. There were also a few pieces of wood in view, some floating and some poking out above the surface like concrete piles. I often used to swim there, always for long stretches of time, and I was feeling happy, even though Stalin had just come to power and there was a bit of political tension in the air. The public still didn’t see him as a malevolent figure, but I knew no good would come of him. Nevertheless, I didn’t feel personally afraid—it was as if I had a kind of immunity. I even advised other people, who looked like tourists (and maybe I was a tourist too), to try to get out of that country, though I carried on swimming peacefully myself.