There is a poem by Mikhail Kuzmin called "Theatre"
You will come quite unexpectedly,
Clattering loudly down the corridor –
Oh, how much meaning is attached
To a gait, a smile, a glance!
How sweet to be kissed before everyone.
With a greeting that seems heartless,
To hearken with a shackled heart
To dear, indifferent words.
Literal translation
"Clattering loudly down the corridor" refers to one of the most adored women of the Silver Age, the actress Olga Sudeykina. It was at just this time that Sudeykina learned from the diary of her husband, Sergey Sudeykin, that he was Kuzmin's lover.
Olga Sudeykina is the very heroine of "Poem Without a Hero". She and Akhmatova were not only in love with each other, and probably in an intimate relationship, but also loved the same man, Arthur Lourié.
As for Akhmatova, the memoirist and NKVD informer Sofya Kazimirovna Ostrovskaya left a recollection of her sexual life: "Akhmatova keeps me until 4 in the morning, a drunk, lonely woman. I pretend to be short-sighted in everything. I feel squeamish, curious and strange. She bares her breasts, sighs, kisses me on the lips with sharp, stinging lips, as she must once have kissed her lovers."
