He was a god, re-creating a world that had perished. Gradually he resurrected that world, to please the girl whom he did not dare to place in it until it was absolutely complete. But her image, her presence, the shadow of her memory demanded that in the end he must resurrect her too — and he intentionally thrust away her image, as he wanted to approach it gradually, step by step, just as he had done nine years before. Afraid of making a mistake, of losing his way in the bright labyrinth of memory, he re-created his past life watchfully, fondly, occasionally turning back for some forgotten piece of trivia, but never running ahead too fast. Wandering around Berlin on that Tuesday in spring, he recuperated all over again, felt what it was like to get out of bed for the first time, felt the weakness in his legs. He looked at himself in every mirror. His clothes seemed unusually clean, singularly ample, and slightly unfamiliar. He walked slowly down the wide avenue leading from the garden terrace into the depths of the park. Here and there the earth, empurpled by the shadows of leaves, broke into molehills that looked like heaps of black worms. He had put on white trousers and lilac socks, dreaming of meeting someone, not yet knowing who it would be.
Reaching the end of the avenue, where a white bench gleamed amid the dark greenery of fir needles, he turned back, and now far ahead in a gap between the lindens could be seen the orange-red sand of the garden terrace and the glittering panes of the veranda.
The nurse went back to Petersburg; leaning out of the carriage for a long while she waved her dumpy little arm and the wind worried her wimple. The house was cool, with spreads of sunlight here and there on the floor. Two weeks later he was already riding himself to exhaustion on his bicycle and playing Russian skittles in the evening with the son of the cowman. After another week the event he had been waiting for happened. And where is it all now?’ mused Ganin. ‘Where is the happiness, the sunshine, where are those thick skittles of wood which crashed and bounced so nicely, where is my bicycle with the low handlebars and the big gear? It seems there’s a law which says that nothing ever vanishes, that matter is indestructible; therefore the chips from my skittles and the spokes of my bicycle still exist somewhere to this day. The pity of it is that I’ll never find them again — never. I once read about the “eternal return.” But what if this complicated game of patience never comes out a second time? Let me see — there’s something I don’t grasp — yes, this: surely it won’t all die when I do? Right now I’m alone in a foreign city. Drunk. My head’s buzzing from beer laced with cognac. I have tramped my fill. And if my heart bursts, right now, then my whole world bursts with it? Cannot grasp it.’
He found himself again in the tiny public garden of the same square, but now the air had grown chilly, the pale sky had dimmed in a vesperal swoon.
‘Four days left: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I might die any moment.’
‘Pull yourself together!’ he mumbled abruptly, knitting his dark brows. ‘Enough of that. Time to go home.’
On walking upstairs to the landing of the
‘I’m going out to buy a newspaper, Lev Glebovich. Like to join me?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Ganin, and went on to his room.
But as he grasped the door handle he stopped. A sudden temptation overcame him. He heard Alfyorov getting into the lift, heard the machine go down with its laborious dull din and heard the clang as it reached the bottom.
‘He’s gone,’ he thought, biting his lip. ‘Hell, I’ll risk it.’
Fate willed it that five minutes later Klara knocked on Alfyorov’s door to ask him whether he had a postage stamp. The yellow light showing through the frosted glass upper panels of his door suggested that Alfyorov must be in his room.
‘Aleksey Ivanovich,’ began Klara, simultaneously knocking and opening the door slightly, ‘do you have —’
She stopped short in amazement. Ganin was standing by the desk and hastily shutting the drawer. He looked round, teeth flashing, gave the drawer a push with his hip and straightened up.
‘Good God,’ Klara murmured, and backed out of the room.
Ganin quickly strode after her, turning out the light and slamming the door as he went. Klara leaned against the wall in the semidarkness of the passage and looked at him with horror, pressing her chubby hands to her temples.
‘Good God,’ she repeated in the same low voice. ‘How could you —’
With a slow rumble, panting after its exertions, the lift was rising again.
‘He’s coming back,’ whispered Ganin, with an air of mystery.
‘Oh, I won’t give you away,’ exclaimed Klara bitterly, her shining wet eyes fixed upon him. ‘But how could you? He’s no better off than you are, after all. No, it’s like a nightmare.’
