‘There was a girl, I tell you. No, I’m not talking about my wife — my wife’s pure — but I’d been so many years without my wife. So not long ago — no, it was long ago — can’t remember when — girl took me up to her place. Foxy-looking little thing — such filth — and yet delicious. And now Mary’s coming. D’you realize what it means? D’you realize or not? I’m drunk — can’t remember how to say perp — purple — perpendicular and Mary’ll be here soon. Why did it all have to happen like this? Eh? I’m asking you! You, you damn Bolshevik! Can you tell me why?’
Ganin gently pushed away his hand. Head nodding, Alfyorov leaned forward over the table; his elbow slipped, rumpling the tablecloth and knocking over the glasses. The glasses, a saucer and the watch slid to the floor.
‘Bed,’ said Ganin and jerked him violently to his feet.
Alfyorov did not resist, but he was so unsteady that Ganin could hardly make him walk in the right direction.
Finding himself in his own room, he gave a broad, sleepy grin and collapsed slowly onto the bed. Suddenly horror crossed his face.
‘Alarm clock —’ he mumbled, sitting up. ‘Leb — over there, on the table, alarm clock — set it for half-past seven.’
‘All right,’ said Ganin, and began moving the hand. He set it for ten o’clock, then changed his mind and set it for eleven.
When he looked at Alfyorov again the man was already sound asleep, flat on his back with one arm oddly thrown out.
This was how drunken tramps used to sleep in Russian villages. All day in the shimmering, sleepy heat tall laden carts had swayed past, scattering the country road with bits of hay — and the tramp had lurched noisily along, pestering girl vacationists, beating his resonant chest, proclaiming himself the son of a general and finally, slapping his peaked cap to the ground, he had lain down across the road, and had stayed there until a peasant climbed down from his hay wagon. The peasant had dragged him to the verge and driven on; and the tramp, turning his pale face aside, had lain like a corpse on the edge of the ditch while the great green bulks, swaying and sweet-smelling, had glided past, through the dappled shadows of the lime trees in bloom.
Putting the alarm clock noiselessly down on the table, Ganin stood for a long time looking at the sleeping man. Then jingling the money in his trouser pocket he turned and quietly went out.
In the dim little bathroom next to the kitchen, briquettes of coal were piled up under a piece of matting. The pane of the narrow window was broken, there were yellow streaks on the walls, the metal shower head curved, whiplike, out from the wall above the black, peeling bathtub. Ganin stripped naked and for several minutes stretched his arms and legs — strong, white, blue-veined. His muscles cracked and rippled. His chest breathed deeply and evenly. He turned on the tap of the shower and stood under the icy, fan-shaped stream, which produced a delicious contraction in his stomach.
Dressed again, tingling hotly all over, trying not to make any noise, he dragged his suitcases out into the hallway and looked at his watch. It was ten to six.
He threw hat and coat on top of the suitcases and slipped into Podtyagin’s room.
The dancers were asleep on the divan, leaning against each other. Klara and Lydia Nikolaevna were bending over the old man. His eyes were shut, and his face, the color of dried clay, was occasionally distorted by an expression of pain. It was almost light. The trains were rumbling sleepily through the house.
As Ganin approached the bed-head, Podtyagin opened his eyes. For a moment in the abyss into which he kept falling his heart had found some shaky support. There was so much that he wanted to say — that he would never see Paris now, still less his homeland, that his whole life had been stupid and fruitless, and that he didn’t know why he had lived, or why he was dying. Rolling his head to one side and glancing perplexedly at Ganin he muttered, ‘You see — without any passport.’ Something like faint mirth twisted his lips. He screwed up his eyes again and once more the abyss sucked him down, a wedge of pain drove itself into his heart — and to breathe air seemed to be unspeakable, unattainable bliss.
