Chapter 3 Chapter two

Pensions are a Russian and at the same time annoying place, the main annoying being the rumble of trains on the suburban subway line all day and most of the night, and there is a sense that the whole building is The feeling of moving slowly.There was a dim mirror in the hall, with a ledge for gloves beside it, and an oak cabinet at an angle where it was easy to scratch your shin against it; There are three rooms on each side of the very narrow corridor, and the room numbers are pasted on the door in large black numbers. They are a few pages torn from a calendar from a year ago-the beginning of April 1923. six days.The first door on the left is the room of Alfeorov on the first of April, the second is the room of Ganin, and the third is the room of the landlady, Lidia Nikolaevna Dorn. , she was a widow, and her husband, a German businessman, brought her here from Zarephath twenty years ago, and died of encephalitis last year.The three rooms on the right - from April 4th to April 6th - housed the elderly Russian poet Anton Sergeyevich Potyagin, with striking blue-brown eyes , the busty girl Clara, and the two ballet dancers Colin and Gornotsvitov in Room 6 at the corner of the corridor, both of them are like women who love to giggle, are very thin, and paint on their noses. Powdered, with two muscular thighs.At the head of the first passage was the dining room; on the wall facing the door hung a lithograph of The Last Supper, and on the other side a yellowed horned deer skull, Below is a bulbous sideboard holding two crystal glass vases, once the cleanest things in the apartment, now overshadowed by a lint-like layer of dust .

The passage turned to the right at right angles outside the dining-room door, and in its woefully fetid depths lurks the kitchen, the maids' closet, a filthy bath-room, and a cramped lavatory marked on the door by Two bright red ○, which were two pages of two Sundays in Mr. Donne's desk calendar, now the other numbers have been dropped, and only these two ○ are left.A month after Mr. Dorn's death, the little, slightly deaf, slightly eccentric Lidia Nikolaevna took a vacant apartment and converted it into a pension.In the process, the way she distributed the little household goods she had inherited displayed a curious, rather frightening ingenuity.She divided tables and chairs, creaking wardrobes, and lumpy couches among the rooms she planned to rent.After they were placed in different rooms, the furniture immediately looked old, taking on the bewildered and dejected look of dismantled skulls.Her late husband's desk was a monstrous thing of oak with a cast-iron inkwell in the shape of a toad, and a central drawer as deep as a ship's lower hold.This table was placed in Room 1 where Alfeolov now lives.The swivel stool that was originally bought to be used with the desk is now separated from the desk, and lives like an orphan in the No. 6 room of the dancers.A pair of green armchairs were also separated, one languishing alone in Ganin's room, the other being used by the landlady herself or by her German terrier.It was a fat black bitch with a gray muzzle and two pendulous ears with furry tips like the fringes of a butterfly's wings.The shelves in Clara's room were dotted with the first volumes of a set of encyclopedias, while the rest were assigned to Potyagin's room.The only decent washstand with mirror and drawers was also given to Clara, and in the other room there was only a squat wooden shelf on which stood a tin basin and a pitcher of the same material.But Mrs. Donne had to buy beds, and it pained her very much, not because she was stingy, but because she got a wonderful thrill, a thrift with herself, in so distributing the old furniture. pride.Now that she is a widow, her double bed is too big for one person, and she resents not being able to saw the bed into the required number.She cleaned all the rooms at will, but she could never cope with cooking, so she hired a cook—a formidable figure in the local market, a burly red-haired shrew who wore a Put on a bright red hat and set off for the north of the city, using her red charm to make deals.Lidia Nikolaevna was afraid of going into the kitchen, was a timid and quiet creature, and whenever the clatter of her clumsy little feet led her into the corridor, the lodger always had a feeling as if This little gray-haired, flat-nosed woman was not a landlord at all, but just a silly old woman who had strayed into someone else's apartment.Every morning, like a doll made of rags, she bent over as if folded in half, hurriedly swept away the dust under the furniture, and then disappeared into her room.It was the smallest room, and she read in tattered German books, or flipped through the papers of her late husband, which she could not understand.The only other person who came into her room was Potyakin, who would always pet her friendly black German terrier, scratch its ears and the warts on its gray muzzle, and try to make it The dog sat up and stretched out the misshapen paw.He would talk to Lydia Nikolaevna about the various aches and pains of his old age, how he had been trying for six long months to get a visa to Paris, and his niece Live there, where the baguette and wine are so cheap.The old lady was always nodding, and occasionally asked him about the other lodgers, especially Ganin, who she thought was very different from all the other young Russians who had lived in her pension.Ganin has lived here for three months and is now planning to leave, even saying that he will check out next Saturday.However, he had planned to leave several times before, but he changed his mind and postponed the trip.Lidia Nikolaevna learned from the gentle old poet that Ganin had a girlfriend.The root of the problem lies here.

He has become dull and gloomy lately.It was not so long ago that he could walk upside down with two hands, his legs gracefully upright and glide like sails, on par with Japanese acrobats.He can pick up a chair with his teeth and snap a rope with a flexion of his biceps.His body was filled with the desire to move -- to jump a fence or pull up a pole, in short, to "seek excitement," as we used to say in our youth.But now a bolt has come loose in him, and he even walks stooped and admits to Potyakin that he suffers from insomnia "like a nervous woman."He hadn't slept particularly well that Sunday-Monday night after spending twenty minutes with the emotional guy in the stuck elevator.On Monday morning he sat naked for a long time with his cold hands clasped between his knees.The thought that today was another day when he would have to put on shirts, trousers, socks--all these nasty things soaked in sweat and dust--made him horrified; he pictured a circus poodle, It looks so bad in human clothes, it's disgustingly pitiful.Part of his laziness is the fact that he currently has no job.He had saved some money for the winter, so there was no particular need to work at the moment; however, there were only two hundred marks left, and the past three months had been a lot of money.

He found work as soon as he arrived in Berlin last year and worked several different jobs until January.He knew what it meant to go to work in a factory in a yellow haze in the morning; he knew what it was like to have sore legs after winding six miles a day with plates between the tables at Bill Goroy's; Had other jobs too, peddling just about every commodity imaginable for a commission—Russian buns, pomade, the usual lightener.Nothing he does feels demeaning, and he even sells his shadow more than once, as many of us have done.In other words, he went to a movie location in the suburbs to work as an extra for a crowd scene, in a big booth at a fair, where a huge lamp was aimed like a cannon at a group of extras, and the intense light from the lamp filled the air. There was a mysterious hissing sound, lighting them up in a pale white.A series of murderous glares illuminated the immobile face of a masked wax man, and then went out with a click - but there was still a long time, still appearing on the glass of those elaborate lamps. The red light of the setting sun—the shame of our humanity.The deal is done, and our nameless shadows are sent across the world.

He had enough money left to get him out of Berlin, but that meant getting rid of Lyudmila, and he didn't know how to part with her.Although he had given himself a week to finish the matter, and had told his landlord that he had finally decided to leave on Saturday, Ganin felt that this week or the next would not make any difference.At the same time, the reverse homesickness, that is, the desire to go to another strange place became stronger in spring.Outside his window were train tracks, so the possibility of leaving never ceased to lure him.Every five minutes, a faint rumble began to spread throughout the building, followed by a huge cloud of smoke billowing outside the windows, obscuring the white light of Berlin's sky.Then the cloud of smoke slowly dissipated again, and the railroad track stretched out into the distance - dividing the blackness behind the house into several pieces - narrowing as it went, and everything was covered by a sky as gray as almond milk.

Ganin would have felt much more at home if he had lived in Potyagin's or Clara's room across the corridor.Outside their window was a very dreary street, and though a railway bridge spanned it, at least there was no alluring horizon of gray beyond.The bridge was a continuation of the railroad tracks visible from Ganin's window, and he couldn't shake the feeling that every train passed right through the house without being seen.A train would come from far away, its ghostly echo would make the walls vibrate, jolt through the old carpet, scrape the glass of the dresser, and disappear out the window with a icy clang—followed by a A huge cloud of smoke billows outside the window, and when the cloud subsides, a train on the suburban subway line suddenly appears, as if excreted by the building: a grass-green carriage with a row of black dog teats on the roof, a The stubby locomotive hangs at the rear of the car, pulling the train vigorously backwards to the white distance between the windowless walls. The black on those walls is either peeling off in pieces, or pasted by outdated advertisements like mottled murals .It was like a strong draft blowing through the whole house forever.

"Ah, let's go!" whispered Ganin, stretched listlessly, and then stopped suddenly—what about Lyudmila?It's ridiculous that he's become so indecisive.He had (in the days when he could walk on his head on two hands or jump five chairs at once) not only control but test his will.There was a time when he used to exercise his will, for example getting himself up in the middle of the night so he could go downstairs and throw cigarette butts into the mailbox.But now he couldn't bring himself to tell a woman that he didn't love her anymore.She had been in his room for five hours the day before yesterday, and yesterday Sunday he could not refuse to go on this ridiculous outing with her, spending the whole day with her on the lake outside Berlin.Everything about Lyudmila seemed to him now repulsive: her stylishly cropped yellow curly hair, with two unshaved black locks hanging down her neck; her listless black eyelids; especially her Lips that were glossy with fuchsia lipstick.After a bout of mechanical lovemaking, she would squint her eyes as she dressed—which instantly gave her eyes an unpleasant hardness—and say, "I'm very sensitive, you know, so when you don't When I love me the way I am, I feel it right away." At this point he was tired and disgusted.Ganin did not answer her, but turned to the window, where a white wall of smoke rose.And then she'd snicker through her nose and call him in a hoarse whisper, "Come here." At that moment he'd want to wring his hands so his knuckles crackled with delicious pain, and say to her, "Get out of here." Goodbye, girls." But he smiled and bent over her.She would scratch his chest with her sharp fake nails, pout her lips and flutter her black eyelashes, playing the part of a snubbed girl or a wayward marquise.It seemed to him that the perfume she was wearing had some stale, stale smell, even though she herself was only twenty-five.When his lips brushed lightly over her small fiery forehead, she forgot everything—forgot the hypocrisy that followed her everywhere like her smell, her false childish language, her false sensitiveness, False love of some imaginary orchid and Poe and Baudelaire she never read; And piggy-pink stockings—then she threw her head back and pressed her whole limp, poor, unwanted body against Ganin.

Weary and ashamed, Ganin felt a dull tenderness--a sentimental trace of tenderness after a love has passed by--so he kissed without passion the painted-rubber cunt she held out to him. lips.But this tenderness did not suppress the advice given to him by a calm and sarcastic voice: try to push her away now! He sighed and smiled gently into her upturned face.Clutching his shoulders, she begged him in a trembling voice so different from her usual nasal whisper, all her being seemed to burst into words: "Tell me—please—you love me." Is it?" At this moment, he couldn't think of anything to say.But as soon as she noticed his reaction—that familiar sullen look, that involuntary frown—she remembered that she should charm him with poetry, scent, and emotion, and immediately acted out, playing the poor The look of a little girl or an elusive courtesan.Once again boredom took hold of Ganin, who paced up and down between the window and the door, almost holding back his tears in order not to open his mouth when he yawned, while she put her hat on her head and sneered. Look at him in the mirror.

Clara, a small, plump-chested girl in black silk, knew that her girlfriend had come to see Ganin, and she was troubled and embarrassed whenever Lyudmila told her about her love life.Clara thinks that such feelings should be more restrained, without any purple pansies and weeping violin music.But it was even more unbearable when her friends would squint their eyes, puff cigarette smoke from their nostrils, and describe to her in horribly specific detail that still left her wanting nothing more.Clara would have terrible, embarrassing dreams after hearing this.Lately she had begun to avoid Lyudmila, fearing that her friend would end up destroying her huge and always happy feeling, which was elegantly called "fantasy."She loved Ganin's sharp, somewhat haughty features: his gray eyes, with exceptionally large pupils, radiating bright arrow-like streaks all around; It formed a thick black line when he listened, and spread like soft wings when a rare smile briefly revealed his beautiful teeth.Clara was deeply attracted by his outstanding features, and she lost her composure in front of him, often saying what she didn't want to say, or constantly patting the chestnut curly hair that half covered her ears, or straightening her chest The folds of her black silk dress pushed her lower lip out, revealing her double chin.Anyway, she saw Ganin at most once a day at lunch, and only once did she have dinner with him and Lyudmila, and that was at a dirty family restaurant where he used to eat sausages and sauerkraut or cold pork in the evenings. In a small hotel.She always sat opposite Ganin at lunch in the dull dining room of the pension, because the landlady arranged the tables for the tenants in the same order as their rooms, so that Clara sat between Potyagin and Gornotsvitov, while Ganin sat between Alfeolov and Colin.Mrs. Donne's prim, sad little black figure sat at the head of the table, flanked by the affected, powdered profiles of two ballet dancers facing each other, looking very incongruous and pathetic.They spoke to her abruptly and swiftly, like birds.Affected by a slight deafness, she herself spoke little, confining herself to noting that the imposing Erica would serve meals and remove plates in due time.Her small, wrinkled hand, like a dead leaf, would now and then stretch out to the bell knob hanging by the side, and then it would float down again like a withered yellow leaf.

When Ganin walked into the restaurant at around 2:30 on a Monday afternoon, other people were already seated.Alfeolov saw him, greeted him with a smile, and got up from his seat.But Ganin did not extend his hand to him, cursed his troublesome neighbor in his heart, nodded silently and sat down beside him.Potyakin, an old man in neat and unpretentious clothes, who ate like an animal, was gurgling soup, holding the napkin tucked in his collar with his left hand so that it wouldn't fall into the soup dish.He glanced at Ganin over his pince-nez, sighed vaguely, and went back to his soup.Ganin was frank for a while, telling him about his depressing love affair with Lyudmila, which he now regrets.Colin on his left handed him a plate of soup cautiously, and he gave Ganin such a flattering look and smiled at him with his strange eyes closed that Ganin felt uncomfortable all over.At the same time the sweet tenor of Alfeolov on his right resumed his chatter, objecting to something that Potyagin, who sat opposite him, had said.

"You are wrong to find fault, Anton Sergeyevich. This is a very civilized country, and it cannot be compared with old and backward Russia." Potyakin's pince-nez flickered gently, and he turned to Ganin. "Congratulate me. The French sent me an entry visa today. I really want to wear a large ribbon of honor and visit President Dumegue." His voice is very pleasant, soft, with a constant high and low pitch, and a round and thick timbre.He had a gray goatee under his lips, and his plump, clean, receding face seemed to be evenly tinged with a reddish brown, with kindly scallops around his serene, intelligent eyes.From the side he looked like a giant gray guinea pig. "I'm glad," Ganin said. "When are you leaving here?" But Alfeorov did not allow the old man to answer, and he habitually twitched his thin neck with its thin golden hair and large, active Adam's apple and said: "I suggest you stay here. What's wrong with it here?" Everything is straight forward here, France has its twists and turns, and our Russia - it's all here and there. I like it here - there are jobs, the streets are good for walking. I can prove to you beyond a doubt that if one has to live In one place..." "But," Potyakin interrupted him calmly, "what about the mountains of papers? Those coffin-like cardboard boxes, the endless files, files, and more files! The shelves are crushed by their weight. Crunching, the officer nearly died trying to find my name in the case file. You can't even imagine (Potyagin shakes his head slowly and sadly at the word 'imagine') just to get permission What a crime it is for a person to be allowed to leave the country. As for how many forms I have to fill out! Today I was hoping: ah, they will put an exit visa on my passport! Nothing like that. They sent me Go take pictures, but the pictures won't be developed until tonight." "It's normal," Alfeorov nodded. "In a well-governed country, that's the way it should be. There's none of your Russian inefficiency here. Like, did you notice, what's written on the gate? 'Gentlemen only.' That's telling. .In general, the difference between our country and Germany can be illustrated in this way: imagine a curve, on which..." Ganin stopped listening to him and said to Clara, who was sitting opposite him: "Yesterday Lyudmila Borisovna asked me to tell you to call her as soon as I got home from get off work. I think it was to the movies." thing." Clara wondered, confused: "How could he talk about her so nonchalantly? After all he knows I know about them." In order to save face, she asked, "ah, did you see her yesterday?" Ganin raised his eyebrows in surprise and continued eating. "I don't quite understand your geometry," said Potyakin, carefully gathering up the crumbs with a knife and pushing them into the palm of his hand.Like most older poets, he has a passion for lucid human logic. "But don't you understand? It's so clear," cried Alfeolov excitedly, "just imagine..." "I don't understand," repeated Potyagin firmly, throwing back his head a little, and poured the crumbs from his hand into his mouth.Alfeolov spread out his hands, made a gesture of helplessness, and knocked over Ganin's glass. "Ah, sorry!" "It's an empty glass," Ganin said. "You're not a mathematician, Anton Sergeyevich," Alfeorov babbled, "but I've been swinging on that high swing all my life. I used to say to my wife, If I am 'Xia', you must be a spring clover flower..." Gornotsvetov and Colin laughed politely, and Mrs. Donne looked at them both in surprise. "All in all, it's a flower, a pattern." Ganin said coldly.Only Clara smiled.Ganin began to pour himself a glass of water, and everyone watched him. "Yes, you are right, a most fragile flower," said Alfeolov slowly, turning his bright and bewildered eyes to his neighbor. "It is an absolute miracle that she survived those seven horrific years. I am sure she will be happy and youthful here. You are a poet, Anton Sergeyevich, and you should write Poems about it—about women, lovely Russian women, how they were stronger than any revolutionary movement, and survived everything—adversity, terror—" Colin whispered to Ganin: "Here he is again—yesterday was the same thing—all he talks about is his wife." "Vulgar man," thought Ganin, looking at Alfeolov's twitching beard. "I bet his wife is very active. It would be a crime to be loyal to someone like him." "It's mutton today," announced Lidia Nikolaevna abruptly and abruptly, looking angrily at the listlessness of the lodgers as they ate the meat dish.Alfeorov nodded for some unknown reason, and went on: "You made a big mistake not to take this as a subject." (Potyagin shakes his head slightly but firmly.) "When you see My wife, maybe you know what I mean. By the way, she is very fond of poetry. You two should agree. I have another thing to tell you..." Colin looked sideways at Alfeolov and surreptitiously tapped him.Gornotsvetov looked at his friend's fingers and shook with silent laughter. "But the main thing," continued Alfeorov, still muttering, "is that Russia is dead, it's over, she's been erased, like someone taking a funny face off a blackboard with a wet sponge." It's like rubbing it off." "But..." Ganin smiled. "Did what I said make you uncomfortable, Lev Glebovich?" "Yes, it makes me uncomfortable, but I won't stop you from saying it, Alexey Ivanovitch." "So does that mean you believe..." "Gentlemen, gentlemen," broke in Potyagin's calm, slightly inarticulate voice, "please don't talk about politics. Why must we talk about politics?" "Anyway, Mr. Alfeolov was wrong," interrupted Clara unexpectedly, patting her finished hair vigorously. "Is your wife coming on Saturday?" Colin asked playfully from the other end of the table, and Gornotsvitov giggled and hid his mouth with a napkin. "Yes, Saturday," answered Alfeolov, pushing away the plate of mutton he had left behind.His eyes lost their combative gleam and immediately took on a brooding look. "Did you know, Lidia Nikolaevna," he said, "that Lev Glebovich and I were stuck in the elevator yesterday." "Pear stew," replied Mrs. Donne. The dancer laughed.Erica pushed the elbows of the diners and began to clear away the plates.Ganin carefully rolled up the napkin, tucked it into the napkin ring, and stood up.He never eats sweets. "It's boring," he thought to himself as he walked back into the room. "What am I going to do now? I think, let's go for a walk." The day, like the others, dragged on in a state of dreary idleness, without even the hazy anticipation that makes idleness charming.No work bored him now, but there really was no work here.He turned up the collar of an old raincoat he bought for a pound from an English lieutenant in Constantinople (the first stage of exile), and thrusting his fist into his pocket, walked slowly along the pale April streets. As I walked, the black domes of the umbrellas on the street moved back and forth, undulating up and down.He stared at the beautiful model of the "Mauritania" in the window of a steamship company and the colored lines connecting the seaports of two continents on a huge map.Behind the window was a photograph of a tropical grove—chocolaty palms against a beige sky. For about an hour, he drank coffee and sat by a large glass window watching the people go by.After returning to the bedroom, he tried to read, but he found that the content of the book was very strange and not suitable for him. As a result, he put down a clause after reading half of it.He was in what he called a "scattered will."He sat motionless at the table, undecided what to do: to change his body position, to stand up and wash his hands, or to open the window, which had entered dusk on a cold day outside.It's a horrible and painful state, much like the vaguely uneasy feeling we have when we first wake up and can't keep our eyes open, as if they were glued together forever.Ganin felt that the gloomy twilight that was creeping into the room was slowly penetrating into him too, turning his blood into a mist; he felt that he had no power to keep the twilight from working its magic on him. He has no power because he has no definite desire, and this causes him great pain, for he is seeking in vain for something to make him desire.He couldn't even bring himself to reach out and turn on the light.This simple transition from thought to action seems like an unimaginable miracle.Nothing eased his sinking mood, his thoughts wandering aimlessly, his heart beating weakly, his underwear clinging uncomfortably to his body.For a moment he felt that he should write to Lyudmila immediately, insisting that it was time to end their dead relationship; but after a while he remembered that he was going to the movies with her that night, and somehow It was much more difficult to bring himself to call her to cancel the appointment than to write a letter, and he ended up doing neither. How many times he'd sworn to himself that he broke up with her the next day and had no trouble making up the right words, but just couldn't imagine the moment when he squeezed her hand and left the room.It was that movement—turning around and walking away—that seemed so incredible.He's one of those people who can get everything they want, achieve results, outshine others; but just won't give up or run away - and that's the same thing.What stands in his way is shame and compassion.A man who would otherwise undertake any creative enterprise, make any strenuous effort, and would eagerly and willingly undertake a task, cheerfully devote himself to all difficulties and all victories, would be weakened by shame and sympathy. his will. He did not know what external stimulus would give him the strength to interrupt his three-month affair with Lyudmila, any more than he knew what would be needed to get him up from his chair.Only for a short time did he really fall in love with her—in that state of mind Lyudmila seemed to be enveloped in an enchanted mist, he was in a state of questing, exuberant, almost earthly affections. , as when a person is doing a very mundane thing, such as walking from the table to the bar to pay, and the music plays, it imbues a simple movement with an inherent dance-like quality, turning it into a A meaningful, timeless gesture. The music came to an abrupt end the moment he possessed her on the bumpy floor of a dark taxi one night, and immediately everything became utterly banal—the woman put on the hat that slipped down the back of her neck. Well, the lights flashed outside the window, and the driver's back rose like a black mountain beyond the glass partition. Now he had to pay the price for that night: laboriously deceiving it to last forever, succumbing feebly and spinelessly to its creeping shadow, which now filled every corner of the room, The furniture became a blur.He dozed vaguely, resting his forehead on his palm, his legs stretched out under the table. Then we went to the movie theater, which was hot and crowded.For a long time, colorful advertisements for grand pianos, clothes, and perfumes silently flooded the screen. Finally, the band played the tune and the movie began. Lyudmila was especially pleased.She also invited Clara to watch the movie, because she clearly felt that Clara had a crush on Ganin. Lyudmila wanted to show off her personal relationship and show her ability to hide it. To give Clara but also to bring pleasure to himself.Clara herself agreed to come because she knew that Ganin was going to leave on Saturday; at the same time she was surprised that Lyudmila didn't know about it—or else she deliberately didn't mention it so that she could go with him then. Ganin sat between them, very annoyed because Lyudmila, like most women of her type, talked about other things throughout the movie, leaning over Ganin's lap and friends Chatting, filling his nose with her familiar, disappointing, nasty perfume smell every time.The film is well shot and tense, which makes Ganin even more unhappy. "Listen, Lyudmila Borisovna," said Ganin, unable to restrain himself, "stop biting your ears, the German sitting behind me is getting angry." She glanced at him quickly in the dark and leaned back to look at the bright screen. "I can't read anything, the movie sucks." "You've been biting your ear all the time," Ganin said. "No wonder you can't read it." Glowing blue-gray figures flickered across the screen.An opera diva who played a leading role was once guilty of manslaughter, and when she was playing a murderer in an opera, she suddenly remembered it, rolled her ridiculously large eyes, and fell on her back on the stage.At this time, the auditorium gradually emerged, people clapped their hands, and those in the box and the front row of the main hall also clapped enthusiastically and stood up.Ganin suddenly became aware that he was looking at something vaguely but eerily familiar.He recalled with horror the rough rows of wooden benches and chairs, the railings of the box painted a menacing purple, and the lazy workers on the heights walking leisurely and nonchalantly on the planks like angels in blue , or point the blinding beams of the arc lights at the horde of Russians who are herded together onto this gigantic stage to perform in complete ignorance of what the film is about.He remembered the young men in well-made but well-worn clothes, the women with mauve and yellow make-up on their faces, and the innocent exiles, old men, and faces sent far back to fill the background Ordinary girl.The cold big barn on the screen is now a cozy auditorium, the sacks are velvet, the paupers are theater audiences.加宁拼命看着，带着深深的、令人打颤的羞耻感在那些按要求鼓着掌的人群中认出了自己，记起了他们如何必须看着前面一个想象中的舞台，那儿没有什么在歌剧中唱主角的女演员，而是一个红头发、没穿外套的胖男人，他站在泛光灯之间的平台上，拿着个喇叭筒发疯般地叫喊着。 加宁的幽魂也站在那边鼓着掌，旁边是那个留着黑胡子、胸前挂着绶带的、十分引人注目的男人。由于他的胡子和浆得笔挺的衬衫，结果总是给放在前排；中间休息时他吃三明治，镜头拍完后，他就在晚礼服外面穿上一件肮脏的旧大衣，回到离柏林市中心很远的家里去，他在那地方的一家印刷厂里做排字工人。 此刻，加宁不仅感到羞耻，同时也感到了人生之易逝。在银幕上他憔悴的身影、向上抬着的轮廓分明的脸和鼓着掌的双手与灰色的千变万化的别的身影融合在了一起；一会儿工夫，礼堂像只轮船摇晃着消失了，银幕上出现的是一个闻名世界的上了年纪的女演员，她以高超的演技扮演着一个死去的年轻妇女。“我们不知道自己的所作所为，”加宁厌恶地想，这场电影他再也看不下去了。 柳德米拉又在和克拉拉咬耳朵了——说的是有关一个裁缝和做衣服的料子之类的事。电影演完了，加宁觉得压抑得要命。不久当他们推推挤挤地朝出口处走去时，柳德米拉贴近他低声说：“明天我两点钟给你打电话，亲爱的。” 加宁和克拉拉把她送回家，然后一起回他们的膳宿公寓。加宁沉默不语，克拉拉拼命想找到一个话题。“你星期六要离开我们了吗？”她问。 “我不知道，真不知道。”加宁阴郁地说。 他一面走，一面心里在想他的影子将如何在一个又一个的城市中彷徨，在一个又一个银幕上闪过，而他将永远不知道什么样的人会看到它，或者它将在世界上徘徊多久。当他上床后听着火车驶过这所住着七个俄国游魂的凄凉的房子时，他感到整个人生就像演一段电影，里面没有头脑的群众演员对于他们参与拍摄的电影的内容一无所知。 加宁无法入眠。两腿神经质地抖动，枕头折磨着他的头。而半夜时分他的邻居阿尔费奥洛夫开始哼起一支曲子来。透过薄薄的墙壁他听得见他拖着步子走过房间，先向他这边走来，然后又走开去，而加宁则满肚子火气地躺在那儿。每当火车隆隆驶过时，阿尔费奥洛夫的声音和火车声交融在了一起，然后又浮现出来——达的，达的，达的达。 加宁再也无法忍受了，他穿上长裤到走廊上，用拳头捶着一号房间的门。阿尔费奥洛夫这时恰巧转悠到门边，他猛地打开了门，加宁猝不及防，惊得一跳。 “请进，列夫·格列博维奇。” 他穿着衬衫和内裤，金黄色的胡子有点乱——想来是嘴里不断喷气哼歌的结果——浅蓝色的眼睛里洋溢着幸福。 “你在唱歌，”加宁皱着眉头说，“吵得我睡不着觉。” “你进来呀，老天爷，别在门口待着，”阿列克谢·伊万诺维奇大惊小怪地说，一面好意而笨拙地用一只胳膊搂着加宁的腰。“真抱歉让你生气了。” 加宁很不情愿地走进了房间。屋子里没有多少东西，然而却十分凌乱。两把厨房用椅中的一把并没有放在书桌（就是那个上面镶有蛤蟆形铸铁墨水池的栎木制的庞然大物）边上，而似乎是在往洗脸盆方向去，但是停在了半路，显然是绊在了绿地毯翘起的边上。另外那把椅子是放在床边上当床头桌用的，现在埋在了好像是从亚拉腊山之巅重重落下而摔得不成形了的一件黑色上衣的下面。薄薄的纸张铺满了乱七八糟的木桌面，床上也到处是纸。加宁随意一瞥，注意到在这些纸上都是用铅笔画的轮子、方块，完全没有技术上的精确性，只是为消磨时间才涂抹的。穿着羊毛内裤的阿尔费奥洛夫本人——任何人，不管他有着阿多尼斯之躯还是花花公子布鲁梅尔之风度，穿着羊毛内裤都会显得非常难看——又开始在他房间的破烂中走来走去，偶尔用指甲弹弹台灯的绿玻璃罩或者椅子背。 “我真高兴你终于到我这里来了，”他说道。“我也睡不着觉。想想看吧——我妻子星期六就要到了。明天就是星期二了。可怜的姑娘，我能够想象她在我们那个应受诅咒的俄国经受了什么样的痛苦！” 加宁一直在闷闷不乐地企图破解一个画在纸上的国际象棋残局，这纸片和其他几张纸一起摊在床上，这时他突然抬起眼睛问道：“你说什么来着？” “她快来了，”阿尔费奥洛夫夸张地一弹指甲，答道。 “不，不是那个，你把俄国叫做什么来着？” “应受诅咒的。这是实情，不是吗？” “我说不上来，只觉得这个形容词很奇怪。” “我说，列夫·格列博维奇，”阿尔费奥洛夫突然在屋子中间停下来，“到了你该停止扮演一个共产党人的角色的时候了。你也许觉得这很好玩，但是，相信我，你这样做是非常错误的。是时候了，我们都应该坦率地承认它完了，我们'圣洁'的俄国农民结果只不过是些灰色的渣滓——顺便提一下，这本是预料之中的——我们的国家永远完蛋了。” 加宁大笑起来。“很对，很对，阿列克谢·伊万诺维奇。” 阿尔费奥洛夫用手掌从上到下抹了抹他那发亮的脸，突然咧开大嘴，温柔地笑了。“伙计，你为什么不结婚，嗯？” “没机会呀，”加宁说。“结婚有意思吗？” “非常好。我的妻子可爱极了，浅黑色皮肤，你知道，眼睛特别有神。她还很年轻。我们是一九一九年在波尔塔瓦结婚的，一九二〇年我被迫移居国外。书桌抽屉里有相片——我拿给你看看。”他弯起手指抠着抽屉底下，把那个大抽屉拉了开来。 “那时候你在干什么，阿列克谢·伊万诺维奇？”加宁不无好奇地问道。 阿尔费奥洛夫摇摇头。“我不记得了。谁能记得上辈子是干什么的——也许是只牡蛎，也许是只鸟，比如说，也许是个数学老师？反正我们过去在俄国的生活像是上辈子发生的事，超自然的，你不管怎么叫它吧——不，这个词不怎么合适——对了，我知道了：是灵魂转生。” 加宁不怎么感兴趣地看着打开的抽屉里的相片，上面是一个头发蓬乱、快活地露着牙齿的年轻女人的脸。阿尔费奥洛夫在他肩膀后面探头看着。“不对，这上面不是我的妻子，是我妹妹，她得斑疹伤寒死在基辅了。她是个快乐的好姑娘，特别会玩捉人游戏。” 他拿出了另一张相片。 “这是玛丽，我的妻子。照得不好，但还是很像她。这儿还有一张，是在我们的花园里照的，穿着白连衣裙坐着的是玛丽。我已经四年没有见到她了，不过我想她不会有多大的变化。我真不知道怎么能活到星期六。等一等！你上哪儿去，列夫·格列博维奇？再待一会儿吧！” 加宁两手插在裤子口袋里，正向房门走去。 “怎么啦，列夫·格列博维奇？我说什么让你生气的话了吗？” 门“砰”的一声关上了，剩下阿尔费奥洛夫独自站在房子中间。 “真是的！太无礼了，”他咕哝道，“什么事惹着他了？”