Mary

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.