Mary

10

The noise grew louder, flooded in, a pale cloud enveloped the window, a glass rattled on the washstand. A train had passed by and now the empty expanse of the railway tracks could be seen again fanning out from the window. Berlin, gentle and misty, toward evening, in April.

That Thursday at twilight, when the noise of the trains sounded hollower than ever, Klara came to see Ganin in a high state of agitation to give him a message from Lyudmila: ‘Tell him,’ Lyudmila had said, ‘tell him this: that I’m not one of those women that men can just drop. I’m the one who does the dropping. Tell him I don’t want anything from him, I’m not making any demands, but I think it was filthy of him not to have answered my letter. I wanted to break it off with him in a friendly way, to suggest that even if we don’t love each other any more we can simply be friends, but he couldn’t even be bothered to ring me up. Tell him, Klara, that I wish him luck with his German girl and that I know he won’t be able to forget me as quickly as he may think.’

‘Where on earth did she get the German girl from?’ said Ganin, making a face, when Klara, without looking at him and talking in a low, rapid voice, had delivered her message. ‘Anyway, why does she have to involve you in this business? It’s all very tiresome.’

‘You know, Lev Glebovich,’ Klara burst out, dousing him with one of her moist looks, ‘you really are heartless. Lyudmila thinks nothing but good of you, she idealizes you, but if she knew all about you —’ Ganin looked at her with amiable astonishment. Embarrassed, Klara dropped her glance.

‘I only gave you the message because she asked me to,’ Klara said quietly.

‘I must leave,’ Ganin said after a silence. ‘This room, these trains, Erika’s cooking — I’m fed up with it all. Besides, I’m nearly out of money and I shall have to work again soon. I’m thinking of leaving Berlin for good on Saturday, going south, to some sea port.’

He clenched and unclenched his fist and lapsed into pensiveness.

‘I don’t know, though — there’s one circumstance — You’d be amazed if you knew what has just occurred to me. An extraordinary, incredible plan! If it comes off I’ll be out of this town by the day after tomorrow.’

‘Really, what a strange man he is,’ thought Klara, with that aching feeling of loneliness which always overcomes us when someone dear to us surrenders to a daydream in which we have no place.

Ganin’s glassy black pupils dilated, his thick eyelashes gave his eyes a warm, downy look and a serene smile of contemplation lifted slightly his upper lip, baring the white expanse of his glistening, even teeth. His dark eyebrows, which reminded Klara of scraps of expensive fur, alternately met and parted, and soft furrows came and went on his smooth forehead.

Noticing Klara’s stare, he blinked, passed his hand across his face and remembered what he had been intending to say to her. ‘Yes. I’m going, and that will end everything. Simply tell her that Ganin is leaving and wants her not to think ill of him. That’s all.’