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# Leonid Andreyev in “Two Letters” on a childhood longing for zhamki and desires fulfilled too late
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/kogda-ia-byl-malchikom-let-semi-ili-vosmi-ia-do-strasti-liubil-miatnye-deshevye-prianiki-prodavavshiesia-na-nashei-glukhoi-ulitse-v-malenkoi-lavchonke-nazyvalis-oni-pochemu-to-zhamkami/
- Published: 2026-11-05T08:50:40.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-05T09:10:13.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: The Golden Age, Books, Mores

> When I was a boy of seven or eight, I was passionately fond of the cheap mint gingerbreads sold in our out-of-the-way street, in a small 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 at that time and I wanted for nothing else, but for zhamki I  
> always fell 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, a whole mountain of gingerbreads! Probably I ate a good many of them, but I wanted still more, still more;  
> and to this day, many decades later, my hunger has remained unsatisfied. Do you understand it? I can buy that million zhamki, and sometimes I do, in fact, buy a pound or two, and the servants eat them: I do not want those, those are strangers, and their taste is unknown to me. It has come, but too late. Everything comes too late

Leonid Andreyev. "Two Letters"