It didn’t. You couldn’t do these things indefinitely. But you weren’t supposed to live forever. Maybe I have had all my life in three days, he thought. If that’s true I wish we would have spent the last night differently. But last nights are never any good. Last nothings are any good. Yes, last words were good sometimes. “Viva my husband who was Mayor of this town” was good.
He knew it was good because it made a tingle run all over him when he said it to himself. He leaned over and kissed Maria who did not wake. In English he whispered very quietly, “I’d like to marry you, rabbit. I’m very proud of your family.”
32
On that same night in Madrid there were many people at the Hotel Gaylord. A car pulled up under the porte-cochere of the hotel, its headlights painted over with blue calcimine and a little man in black riding boots, gray riding breeches and a short, gray high-buttoned jacket stepped out and returned the salute of the two sentries as he opened the door, nodded to the secret policeman who sat at the concierge’s desk and stepped into the elevator. There were two sentries seated on chairs inside the door, one on each side of the marble entrance hall, and these only looked up as the little man passed them at the door of the elevator. It was their business to feel every one they did not know along the flanks, under the armpits, and over the hip pockets to see if the person entering carried a pistol and, if he did, have him check it with the concierge. But they knew the short man in riding boots very well and they hardly looked up as he passed.
The apartment where he lived in Gaylord’s was crowded as he entered. People were sitting and standing about and talking together as in any drawing room and the men and the women were drinking vodka, whiskey and soda, and beer from small glasses filled from great pitchers. Four of the men were in uniform. The others wore windbreakers or leather jackets.and three of the four women were dressed in ordinary street dresses while the fourth, who was haggardly thin and dark, wore a sort of severely cut militiawoman’s uniform with a skirt with high boots under it.
When he came into the room, Karkov went at once to the woman in the uniform and bowed to her and shook hands. She was his wife and he said something to her in Russian that no one could hear and for a moment the insolence that had been in his eyes as he entered the room was gone. Then it lighted again as he saw the mahoganycolored head and the love-lazy face of the well-constructed girl who was his mistress and he strode with short, precise steps over to her and bowed and shook her hand in such a way that no one could tell it was not a mimicry of his greeting to his wife. His wife had not looked after him as he walked across the room. She was standing with a tall, good-looking Spanish officer and they were talking Russian now.
“Your great love is getting a little fat,” Karkov was saying to the girl. “All of our heroes are fattening now as we approach the second year.” He did not look at the man he was speaking of.
“You are so ugly you would be jealous of a toad,” the girl told him cheerfully. She spoke in German. “Can I go with thee to the offensive tomorrow?”
“No. Nor is there one.”
“Every one knows about it,” the girl said. “Don’t be so mysterious. Dolores is going. I will go with her or Carmen. Many people are going.”
“Go with whoever will take you,” Karkov said. “I will not.”
Then he turned to the girl and asked seriously, “Who told thee of it? Be exact.”
“Richard,” she said as seriously.
Karkov shrugged his shoulders and left her standing.
“Karkov,” a man of middle height with a gray, heavy, sagging face, puffed eye pouches and a pendulous under-lip called to him in a dyspeptic voice. “Have you heard the good news?”