I sat.
“It is most unfortunate. I am devilishly busy and don’t have a minute’s time.”
“I called you several times today,” said I.
“I just got back. What’s your name?”
“Ivan.”
“And your last name?”
“Zhilin.”
“You see, Zhilin, to make it short, I have to get dressed and leave again.” He was silent awhile, rubbing his flabby cheeks. “Anyway there’s not much to talk about…. However, if you wish, you can sit here and wait for me. If I don’t return in an hour, come back tomorrow at twelve. And leave your telephone number and address, write it down right on the table there….”
He threw off the bathrobe, and dragging it along, walked off into the adjoining room.
“In the meantime,” he continued, “you can see the town, and a miserable little town it is…. But you’ll have to do it in any case. As for me, I am sick to my stomach of it.”
He returned adjusting his tie. His hands were trembling, and the skin on his face looked gray and wilted. Suddenly I felt that I did not trust him — the sight of him was repellent, like that of a neglected sick man.
“You look poorly,” I said. “You have changed a great deal.”
For the first time he looked me in the eyes.
“And how would you know what I was like before?”
“I saw you at Matia’s. You smoke a lot, Rimeyer, and tobacco is saturated regularly with all kinds of trash nowadays.”
“Tobacco — that’s a lot of nonsense,” he said with sudden irritation. “Here everything is saturated with all kinds of tripe…. But perhaps you may be right, probably I should quit.” He pulled on his jacket slowly; “Time to quit, and in any case, I shouldn’t have started.”
“How is the work coming along?”
“It could be worse. And unusually absorbing work it is.” He smiled in a peculiar unpleasant way. “I am going now, as they are waiting for me and I am late. So, till an hour from now, or until tomorrow at twelve.”
He nodded to me and left.
I wrote my address and telephone number on the table, and as my foot plowed into the mass of bottles underneath, I couldn’t help but think that the work was indeed absorbing. I called room service and requested a chambermaid to clean up the room. The most polite of voices replied that the occupant of the suite categorically forbade service personnel to enter his room during his absence and had repeated the prohibition just now on leaving the hotel. “Aha,” I said, and hung up. This didn’t sit well with me. For myself, I never issue such directions and have never hidden even my notebooks, not from anyone. It’s stupid to work at deception and much better to drink less. I picked up the overturned armchair, sat down, and prepared for a long wait, trying to overcome a sense of displeasure and disappointment.
I didn’t have to wait for long. After some ten minutes, the door opened a crack and a pretty face protruded into the room.
“Hey there,” it pronounced huskily. “Is Rimeyer in?”
“Rimeyer is not in, but you can come in anyway.”
She hesitated, examining me. Apparently she had no intention of coming in, but was just saying hello, in passing.
“Come in, come in,” said I. “I have nothing to do.”
She entered with a light dancing gait, and putting her arms akimbo, stood in front of me. She had a short turned-up nose and a disheveled boyish hairdo. The hair was red, the shorts crimson, and the blouse a bright yolk yellow. A colorful woman and quite attractive. She must have been about twenty-five.
“You wait — right?”
Her eyes were unnaturally bright and she smelled of wine, tobacco, and perfume.
She collapsed on the hassock and flung her legs up on the telephone table.
“Throw a cigarette to a working girl,” she said. “It’s five hours since I had one.”
“I don’t smoke. Shall I ring for some?”
“Good Lord, another sad sack! Never mind the phone .. or that dame will show up again. Rummage around in the ashtray and find me a good long butt.”
The ashtray did have a lot of long butts.
‘They all have lipstick on them,” said I.
“That’s all right; it’s my lipstick. What’s your name?”
“Ivan.”
She snapped a lighter and lit up.
“And mine is Ilina. Are you a foreigner, too? All you foreigners seem so wide. What are you doing here?”’
“Waiting for Rimeyer.”
“I don’t mean that! What brought you here, are you escaping from your wife?”
“I am not married,” I said quietly. “I came to write a book.”
“A book? Some friends this Rimeyer has. He came to write a book. Sex Problems of Impotent Sportsmen. How’s your situation with the sex problem?”
“It is not a problem to me,” I said mildly. “And how about you?”
She lowered her legs from the table.
“That’s a no-no. Take it slow. This isn’t Paris, you know. All in good time. Anyway, you should have your locks cut — sitting there like a perch.”
“Like a who?” I was very patient as I had another forty-five minutes to wait.
“Like a perch. You know the type.” She made vague motions around her ears.
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I don’t know anything yet as I have just arrived. Tell me about it, it sounds interesting.”
“Oh no! Not I! We don’t chatter. Our bit is a small one — serve, clean up, flash your teeth, and keep quiet. Professional secret. Have you heard of such an animal?”
“I’ve heard,” I said. “But who’s ‘we’ — an association of doctors?
For some reason, she thought this was hilarious.
“Doctors! Imagine that.” She laughed. “Well, wise guy, you’re all right — quite a tongue. We have one in the once like you. One word, and we’re all rolling in the aisles. Whenever we cater to the Fishers, he always gets the job, they like a good laugh.”
“Who doesn’t?” said I.
“Well, you are wrong. The Intels, for instance, chased him out. ‘Take the fool away,’ they said. Or also recently those pregnant males.”
“Who?”’
“The sad ones. Well, I can see you don’t understand a thing. Where in heaven’s name did you come from?”
“From Vienna.”
“So — don’t you have the sad ones in Vienna?”
“You couldn’t imagine what we don’t have in Vienna.”
“Could be you don’t even have irregular meetings?”
“No, we don’t have them. All our meetings are regular, like a bus schedule.”
She was having a good time.
“Perhaps you don’t have waitresses either?”
“Waitresses we do have, and you can find some excellent examples. Are you a waitress then?”
She jumped up abruptly.
“That won’t do at all,” she cried. “I’ve had enough sad ones for today. Now you’re going to have a loving cup with me like a good fellow….” She began to search furiously among the bottles by the window. “Damn him, they’re all empty! Could be you’re a teetotaler? Aha, here’s a little vermouth. You drink that, or shall we order whiskey?”
“Let’s begin with the vermouth,” said I.
She banged the bottle on the table and took two glasses from the window sill.
“Have to wash them. Hold on a minute, everything’s full of garbage.” She went into the bathroom and continued to speak from there. “If you turned out to be a teetotaler on top of everything else. I don’t know what I would do with you…. What a pigsty he’s got in his bathroom — I love it! Where are you staying? Here too?”
“No, in town,” I replied. “On Second Waterway.”
She came back with the glasses.
“Straight or with water?”
“Straight, I guess.”
“All foreigners take it straight. But we have it with water for some reason.” She sat on my armchair and put her arms around my shoulders. We drank and kissed without any feeling. Her lips were heavily lipsticked, and her eyelids were heavy from lack of sleep and fatigue. She put down her glass, searched out another butt in the ashtray, and returned to the hassock.
“Where is that Rimeyer?” she said. “After all, how long can you wait for him? Have you known him a long time?”
“No, not very.”
“I think maybe he is a louse,” she said with sudden ire. “He’s dug everything out of me, and now he plays hard to get. He doesn’t open his door, the animal, and you can’t get through to him by phone. Say, he wouldn’t be a spy, would he?”
“What do you mean, a spy?”
“Oh, there’s loads of them…. From the Association for Sobriety and Morality…. The Connoisseurs and Appraisers are also a bad lot….”
“No, Rimeyer is a decent sort,” I said with some effort.
“Decent… you are all decent. In the beginning, Rimeyer too was decent, so good-natured and full of fun… and now he looks at you like a croc.”