Leonid Andreyev in “Two Letters” on a childhood craving for gingerbread and happiness that comes too late

When I was a boy of seven or eight, I had a passion for the cheap mint gingerbreads sold on our quiet street, in a little hole-in-the-wall shop; for some reason they were called "zhamki", and for a kopeck you were given two of them. And I do not know why I never had enough kopecks to eat my fill: my parents were not poor in those days, and I suffered no want of anything else, but for zhamki I always came up short. Of course, it was a small madness, a childish mania. But I remember my dreams of zhamki and my black envy of those who ate them; I remember their extraordinary taste and look, that thin chalky crust that broke softly under the fingers, I remember my longing for a million zhamki, for a whole mountain of gingerbreads! I probably ate a great many of them, but I wanted still more, still more; and to this day, after many decades, my hunger has remained unsatisfied. Do you understand this? I can buy that million zhamki, and sometimes, true enough, I do buy a pound or two, and the servants eat them: I do not want these, these belong to others, and their taste is not known to me. It has come, but too late. Everything comes too late, and my dear zhamki were only the bell announcing the start of this idiotic performance.

Leonid Andreyev, the story "Two Letters". In essence, about how everything in the world comes too late

Illustration: photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1933, "Valencia, Spain"