Mary

1

‘Lev Glevo. Lev Glebovich? A name like that’s enough to twist your tongue off, my dear fellow.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Ganin agreed somewhat coldly, trying to make out the face of his interlocutor in the unexpected darkness. He was annoyed by the absurd situation in which they both found themselves and by this enforced conversation with a stranger.

‘I didn’t ask for your name and patronymic just out of idle curiosity, you know,’ the voice went on undismayed. ‘I think every name —’

‘Let me press the button again,’ Ganin interrupted him.

‘Do press it. I’m afraid it won’t do any good. As I was saying every name has its responsibilities. Lev and Gleb, now — that’s a rare combination, and very demanding. It means you’ve got to be terse, firm and rather eccentric. My name is a more modest one and my wife’s name is just plain Mary. By the way, let me introduce myself: Aleksey Ivanovich Alfyorov. Sorry, I think I trod on your foot —’

‘How do you do,’ said Ganin, feeling in the dark for the hand that poked at his cuff. ‘Do you think we are going to be stuck here for long? It’s time somebody did something. Hell.’

‘Let’s just sit down on the seat and wait,’ the tiresome, cheerful voice rang out again just above his ear. ‘Yesterday when I arrived we bumped into each other in the passage. Then in the evening, through the wall, I heard you clearing your throat and I knew at once from the sound of your cough that you were a fellow countryman. Tell me, have you been boarding here for long?’

‘Ages. Got a match?’

‘No. I don’t smoke. Grubby place, this pension — even though it is Russian. I’m a very lucky man, you know — my wife’s coming from Russia. Four years, that’s no joke. Yes, sir. Not long now. It’s Sunday today.’

‘Damned darkness,’ muttered Ganin, and cracked his fingers. ‘I wonder what time it is.’

Alfyorov sighed noisily, giving off the warm, stale smell of an elderly man not in the best of health. There is something sad about that smell.

‘Only six more days now. I assume she’s coming on Saturday. I had a letter from her yesterday. She wrote the address in a very funny way. Pity it’s so dark, or I’d show it to you. What are you fumbling for, my dear fellow? Those little vents don’t open, you know.’

‘For two pins I’d smash them,’ said Ganin.

‘Come, come, Lev Glebovich. Wouldn’t it be better to play some party game? I know some splendid ones, I make them up myself. For instance: think of a two-figure number. Ready?’

‘Count me out,’ said Ganin, and thumped twice on the wall with his fist.

‘The porter’s been asleep for hours,’ droned Alfyorov’s voice, ‘so it’s no use banging like that.’

‘But you must agree that we can’t hang here all night.’

‘It looks as if we shall have to. Don’t you think there’s something symbolic in our meeting like this, Lev Glebovich? When we were on terra firma we didn’t know each other. Then we happen to come home at the same time and get into this contraption together. By the way, the floor is horribly thin and there’s nothing but a black well underneath it. Well, as I was saying, we stepped in without a word, still not knowing each other, glided up in silence and then suddenly — stop. And darkness.’

‘What’s symbolic about it?’ Ganin asked gloomily.

‘Well, the fact that we’ve stopped, motionless, in this darkness. And that we’re waiting. At lunch today that man — what’s his name — the old writer — oh yes, Podtyagin — was arguing with me about the sense of this émigré life of ours, this perpetual waiting. You were absent all day, weren’t you, Lev Glebovich?’

‘Yes. I was out of town.’

‘Ah, spring. It must be nice in the country now.’

Alfyorov’s voice faded away for a few moments, and when it sounded again there was an unpleasant lilt to it, probably because the speaker was smiling.

‘When my wife comes I shall take her out into the country. She adores going for walks. Didn’t the landlady tell me that your room would be free by Saturday?’

‘That is so,’ Ganin replied curtly.

‘Are you leaving Berlin altogether?’

Ganin nodded, forgetting that nods were invisible in the dark. Alfyorov fidgeted on the seat, sighed once or twice, then began gently whistling a saccharine tune, stopping and starting again. Ten minutes passed; suddenly there came a click from above.

‘That’s better,’ Ganin said with a smile.

At the same moment the ceiling bulb blazed forth, and the humming and heaving cage was flooded with yellow light. Alfyorov blinked, as though just waking up. He was wearing an old sandy-colored, formless overcoat — of the so-called ‘in-between-season’ sort — and holding a bowler hat. His thin fair hair was slightly ruffled and something about his features reminded one of a religious oleograph: that little golden beard, the turn of that scraggy neck from which he pulled off a bright-speckled scarf.

With a lurch the lift caught on the sill of the fourth-floor landing and stopped.

‘A miracle,’ Alfyorov said, grinning, as he opened the door. ‘I thought someone had pressed the button and brought us up, but there’s no one here. After you, Lev Glebovich.’

But Ganin, with a grimace of impatience, gave Alfyorov a slight push and, having followed him out, relieved his feelings by noisily slamming the steel door behind him. Never before had he been so irritable.

‘A miracle,’ Alfyorov repeated. ‘Up we came and yet there’s no one here. That’s symbolic too.’