For a moment Ganin stopped recollecting and wondered how he had been able to live for so many years without thinking about Mary — and then he caught up with her again: she was running along a dark, rustling path, her black bow looking in flight like a huge Camberwell Beauty. Suddenly Mary pulled up, gripped him by the shoulder, lifted her foot and started to rub her sand-dusted shoe against the stocking of her other leg, higher up, under the hem of her blue skirt.
Ganin fell asleep lying dressed on top of his bedcover; his reminiscences had blurred and changed into a dream. The dream was odd and most precious, and he would have remembered it if only he had not been woken at dawn by a strange noise that sounded like a peal of thunder. He sat up and listened. The thunder turned out to be an incomprehensible groaning and shuffling outside the door; somebody was scraping at it. Gleaming very faintly in the dim dawn air, the door handle was suddenly pressed down and flicked up again, but although it was unlocked the door stayed shut. In pleasurable anticipation of adventure, Ganin slipped off his bed and, clenching his left fist in case of need, he flung open the door with his right hand.
In a sweeping movement, like a huge soft doll, a man fell prone against his shoulder. This was so unexpected that Ganin almost hit him, but he at once sensed that the man had only fallen on him because he was incapable of standing up. He pushed him aside toward the wall and fumbled for the light.
In front of him, leaning his head against the wall and gasping for air with his mouth wide open, stood old Podtyagin, barefoot, wearing a long nightshirt open at his grizzled chest. His eyes, bare and wild without their pince-nez, were unblinking, his face was the color of dry clay, the large mound of his stomach heaved beneath the taut cotton of his nightshirt.
Ganin immediately realized that the old man had been overcome by another heart attack. He supported him, and Podtyagin, moving his putty-colored legs with difficulty, tottered to a chair, collapsed into it and threw back his head; his gray face had now broken out in a sweat.
Ganin dipped a towel into his jug and pressed its heavy, wet folds to the old man’s bare chest. He had a feeling that any moment all the bones in that big tense body might snap with a sharp crack.
Podtyagin took a breath and expelled the air with a whistle. It was not just a breath, but a tremendous pleasure which immediately caused his features to revive. With an encouraging smile Ganin continued to press the wet towel to his body and to rub his chest and sides.
‘B — better,’ the old man breathed.
‘Relax,’ said Ganin. ‘You’ll be all right in a moment.’
Podtyagin breathed and groaned, wriggling his large bare crooked toes. Ganin put a blanket round him, gave him some water to drink and opened the window wider.
‘Couldn’t — breathe,’ said Podtyagin laboriously. ‘Couldn’t get into your room — too weak. Didn’t want — die alone.’
‘Just relax, Anton Sergeyevich. It will be daylight soon. We’ll call a doctor.’
Podtyagin slowly wiped his brow with his hand and began to breathe more evenly. ‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘Gone for a while. I had no more of my drops left. That’s why it was so bad.’
‘And we’ll buy you some more drops. Would you like to move over into my bed?’
‘No, I’ll sit here a while and then go back to my room. It’s gone now. And tomorrow morning —’
‘Let’s put it off until Friday,’ said Ganin. ‘The visa won’t run away.’
Podtyagin licked his dried lips with his thick, rough tongue. ‘They’ve been waiting for me in Paris for a long time, Lyovushka. And my niece hasn’t got the money to send me any for the journey. Oh, dear!’
Ganin sat on the window ledge (in a flash he wondered where it was that he had sat like this not long ago — and in a flash he remembered: the stained-glass interior of the pavilion, the white folding table, the hole in his sock).
‘Please put the light out, my dear fellow,’ Podtyagin asked him. ‘It hurts my eyes.’
Everything seemed strange in the semidarkness: the noise of the first trains, the large, gray ghost in the armchair, the gleam of water spilled on the floor. And it was all much more mysterious and vague than the deathless reality in which Ganin was living.
