‘I was in town yesterday and had some “fun.” It was very gay, with lots of music and lights. A very amusing man with a little yellow beard made a play for me and called me “the queen of the ball.” Today it’s so boring, boring. It’s such a pity that the days go by so pointlessly and stupidly — and these are supposed to be the best, the happiest years of our life. It looks as if I shall soon turn into a hypocrite — I mean, hypochondriac. No, that mustn’t happen.
‘Quite something, isn’t it?
‘Write to me as soon as you get my letter. Will you come here and see me? Impossible? Well, too bad. Perhaps you can, though? What nonsense I’m writing: to come all the way here just to see me. What conceit! — don’t you think?
‘Just now I read a poem in an old magazine: “My Little Pale Pearl” by Krapovitsky. I like it very much. Write and tell me absolutely everything. I kiss you. Here’s something else I’ve read — by Podtyagin:
‘Dear Podtyagin,’ mused Ganin. ‘How strange. Goodness, how strange. If someone had told me then I should meet him, of all people.’
Smiling and shaking his head, he unfolded one last letter. He had received it the day before leaving for the front line. It had been a cold January dawn on board ship, and he had felt queasy from drinking coffee made from acorns.
‘Lyova, my darling, my joy, how I waited and longed for your letter. It was so hard and painful to write you such restrained letters. How can I have lived these three years without you, how have I managed to survive and what was there to live for?
‘I love you. If you come back I’ll plague you with kisses. Do you remember:
‘Goodness, where has it gone, all that distant, bright, endearing — Like you, I feel that we shall meet again — but when, when?
‘I love you. Come to me. Your letter was such a joy that I still can’t regain my senses for happiness
‘Happiness,’ Ganin repeated softly, folding all five letters into an even batch. ‘That’s it — happiness. We’re going to meet again in twelve hours’ time.’
He stood motionless, preoccupied with secret, delicious thoughts. He had no doubt that Mary still loved him. Her five letters lay in his hand. Outside it was quite dark. The knobs on his suitcases gleamed. The desolate room smelled faintly of dust.
He was still sitting in the same position when voices were heard outside the door and suddenly, without knocking, Alfyorov strode into the room.
‘Oh, sorry,’ he said without showing any particular embarrassment. ‘I somehow thought you’d already gone.’
His fingers playing with the folded letters, Ganin stared vacantly at Alfyorov’s little yellow beard. The landlady appeared in the doorway.
‘Lydia Nikolaevna,’ Alfyorov went on, twitching his neck and crossing the room with a proprietorial air. ‘We must get this damn thing out of the way, so that we can open the door into my room.’
He tried to move the wardrobe, grunted and staggered back helplessly.
‘Let me do it,’ Ganin suggested cheerfully. Thrusting the black wallet into his pocket he stood up, walked over to the wardrobe and spat on his hands.
The black trains roared past, shaking the windows of the house; with a movement like ghostly shoulders shaking off a load, heaving mountains of smoke swept upward, blotting out the night sky. The roofs burned with a smooth metallic blaze in the moonlight; and a sonorous black shadow under the iron bridge awoke as a black train rumbled across it, sending a chain of light flickering down its length. The clattering roar and mass of smoke seemed to pass right through the house as it quivered between the chasm where the rail tracks lay like lines drawn by a moonlit fingernail and the street where it was crossed by the flat bridge waiting for the next regular thunder of railway carriages. The house was like a specter you could put your hand through and wriggle your fingers.
