Mary

12

Only four of the lodgers had turned up for lunch.

‘I wonder why our friends are so late?’ said Alfyorov cheerfully. ‘I suppose they’ve had no luck.’

He positively breathed joyful expectation. On the previous day he had been to the station and found out the exact time of arrival of the morning fast train from the north: 8:05. Today he had cleaned his suit, bought a pair of new cuffs and a bunch of lily-of-the-valley. His financial affairs appeared to have put themselves right. Before lunch he had sat in a café with a gloomy, clean-shaven gentleman who had offered him what was undoubtedly a money-making proposition. His mind, used as it was to figures, was now preoccupied with one single figure, made up of a unit and a decimal fraction: eight point zero five. This was the percentage of happiness which fate had temporarily allotted to him. And tomorrow — he screwed up his eyes, sighed and imagined how early tomorrow morning he would go to the station, how he would wait on the platform, how the train would come rushing in —

After lunch he disappeared, as did the dancers, who went out surreptitiously, as excited as two women, to buy little delicacies.

Only Klara stayed at home. Her head ached and the thin bones of her fat legs were hurting, which was unfortunate, as today was her birthday. ‘I’m twenty-six today,’ she thought, ‘and tomorrow Ganin is leaving. He is bad, he deceives women and he is capable of committing a crime. He can look me calmly in the eyes even though he knows I saw him just about to steal money. Yet he’s wonderful and I think about him literally all day. And there’s no hope whatsoever.’

She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was paler than usual; beneath a lock of chestnut hair low down on her forehead she had broken out in a faint rash, and there were shadows under her eyes. She could not stand the glossy black dress which she wore day in, day out; there was a very obvious darn on the seam of her dark, transparent stocking; and one of her heels was crooked.

Podtyagin and Ganin returned around five o’clock. Klara heard their footsteps and looked out. Pale as death, his overcoat open and holding his collar and tie in his hand, Podtyagin walked silently past into his room and locked the door behind him.

‘What’s happened?’ asked Klara in a whisper.

Ganin clicked his tongue. ‘He lost his passport, then he had an attack. Right here, in front of the house. I could hardly drag him upstairs. The lift’s not working, unfortunately. We’ve been searching all over town.’

‘I’ll go and see him,’ said Klara, ‘he’ll need comforting.’

Podtyagin would not let her in at first. When he finally did open the door, Klara groaned aloud when she saw his muzzy, confused expression.

‘Have you heard?’ he said with a wistful grin. ‘I am an old idiot. Everything was ready, you see — and then I have to go and —’

‘Where did you drop it, Anton Sergeyevich?’

‘That’s it: I dropped it. Poetic license: elided passport. “The Trousered Cloud” by Mayakovski. Great big clouded cretin, that’s what I am.’

‘Perhaps somebody will pick it up,’ suggested Klara sympathetically.

‘Impossible. It’s fate. There’s no escaping fate. I’m doomed not to leave here. It was preordained.’

He sat down heavily.

‘I don’t feel well, Klara. I was so short of breath on the street just now that I thought it was the end. God, I simply don’t know what to do now. Except perhaps kick the bucket.’