Mary

17

The thick, heavy hands on the huge white clockface that projected sideways from a watchmaker’s sign showed twenty-four minutes to seven. In the faint blue of the sky that had still not warmed up after the night, only one small cloud had begun to turn pink, and there was an unearthly grace about its long, thin outline. The footsteps of those unfortunates who were up and about at this hour rang out with especial clarity in the deserted air and in the distance a fleshy pink light quivered on the tram tracks. A small cart, loaded with enormous bunches of violets half covered with a coarse striped cloth, moved slowly along close to the curb, the flower-seller helping a large red-haired dog to pull it. Its tongue hanging out, the dog was straining forward, exerting every one of its sinewy muscles devoted to man.

From the black branches of some trees, just beginning to sprout green, a flock of sparrows fluttered away with an airy rustle and settled on the narrow ledge of a high brick wall.

The shops were still asleep behind their iron grilles, the houses as yet sunlit only from above, but it would have been impossible to imagine that this was sunset and not early morning. Because the shadows lay the wrong way, unexpected combinations met the eye accustomed to evening shadows but unfamiliar with auroral ones.

Everything seemed askew, attenuated, metamorphosed as in a mirror. And just as the sun rose higher and the shadows dispersed to their usual places, so in that sober light the world of memories in which Ganin had dwelt became what it was in reality: the distant past.

He looked round and saw at the end of the street the sunlit corner of the house where he had been reliving his past and to which he would never return again. There was something beautifully mysterious about the departure from his life of a whole house.

As the sun rose higher and higher and the city grew lighter, in step with it, the street came to life and lost its strange shadowy charm. Ganin walked down the middle of the sidewalk, gently swinging his solidly packed bags, and thought how long it was since he had felt so fit, strong and ready to tackle anything. And the fact that he kept noticing everything with a fresh, loving eye — the carts driving to market, the slender, half-unfolded leaves and the many-colored posters which a man in an apron was sticking around a kiosk — this fact meant a secret turning point for him, an awakening.

He stopped in the little public garden near the station and sat on the same bench where such a short while ago he had remembered typhus, the country house, his presentiment of Mary. In an hour’s time she would be coming, her husband was sleeping the sleep of the dead and he, Ganin, was about to meet her.

For some reason he suddenly remembered how he had gone to say goodbye to Lyudmila, how he had walked out of her room.

Behind the public garden a house was being built; he could see the yellow wooden framework of beams — the skeleton of the roof, which in parts was already tiled.

Despite the early hour, work was already in progress. The figures of the workmen on the frame showed blue against the morning sky. One was walking along the ridge-piece, as light and free as though he were about to fly away. The wooden frame shone like gold in the sun, while on it two workmen were passing tiles to a third man. They lay on their backs, one above the other in a straight line as if on a staircase. The lower man passed the red slab, like a large book, over his head; the man in the middle took the tile and with the same movement, leaning right back and stretching out his arms, passed it on up to the workman above. This lazy, regular process had a curiously calming effect; the yellow sheen of fresh timber was more alive than the most lifelike dream of the past. As Ganin looked up at the skeletal roof in the ethereal sky he realized with merciless clarity that his affair with Mary was ended forever. It had lasted no more than four days — four days which were perhaps the happiest days of his life. But now he had exhausted his memories, was sated by them, and the image of Mary, together with that of the old dying poet, now remained in the house of ghosts, which itself was already a memory.

Other than that image no Mary existed, nor could exist.

He waited for the moment when the express from the north slowly rolled across the iron bridge. It passed on and disappeared behind the façade of the station.

Then he picked up his suitcases, hailed a taxi and told the driver to go to a different station at the other end of the city. He chose a train leaving for southwestern Germany in half an hour, spent a quarter of his whole fortune on the ticket and thought with pleasurable excitement how he would cross the frontier without a single visa; and beyond it was France, Provence, and then — the sea.

As his train moved off he fell into a doze, his face buried in the folds of his mackintosh, hanging from a hook above the wooden seat.