Read Online The Buddha's Return by Gaito Gazdánov - Free Book Online Page B

excruciating pain. He gave up drinking and after a short while regained the majority of his health. By the time we met in the Jardin du Luxembourg, he had already been teetotal for a year and a half. He had long alreadyfelt the acute shame of his situation, but now he was old, physically frail, and for many years had led the life that his former acquaintances were now leading, and he fancied that if nothing were to change in the near future, there would be only one thing for it—suicide.
    Such was the apparent explanation for what had happened to him. It seemed to me, however, that there must have been something else—the constant passive resistance of his unquestionable innate culture to that sudden fall, some internal, perhaps almost subconscious, almost organic stoicism, which he himself so stubbornly denied.
    Naturally, I couldn’t help but notice that there was a woman living in his apartment, although I had never once set eyes on her, and Pavel Alexandrovich never so much as said a word about it. However, I often spotted evidence of her presence: in the ashtray lay cigarette ends bearing the imprint of encrimsoned lips, and a barely perceptible hint of perfume would linger in the room. But what ultimately could have been more natural? And so one day when I arrived—as usual, towards eight o’clock in the evening—I found not two, but three place settings at the table.
    “There will be three of us for dinner this evening,” said Pavel Alexandrovich, “assuming you’ve no objection.”
    “On the contrary,” I hastened to say. That very moment I heard footsteps and turned my head—I started with surprise and an unexpected feeling overwhelmed me: before me stood a young woman, in whom I instantly recognizedZina’s daughter, although she was completely transformed since that day I saw her on the street with her mother and the mousey marksman. She was elegantly attired in a navy-blue silk dress, fairly broad with ample pleats; her fair hair was combed in waves, her lips were crimson, and her eyes lightly pencilled. But still there was that same look about her face that I had spotted when I first set eyes on her and which was extremely difficult to define—something both attractive and unpleasant at the same time.
    She offered me her hand and excused herself, saying that she often found it difficult to express herself in Russian. She pronounced her “r”s as the French do and continually lapsed into French during the conversation—but there she had nowhere to hide. She spoke much as people did on the streets in the poorer quarters of Paris, and I shuddered to hear these familiar intonations, that itinerant mass of sounds, wretched and somehow genuinely tragic. In any case, she remained mostly silent, occasionally transferring her gaze from Shcherbakov to me and back again, irking me somewhat with her absurd air of self-importance. She was twenty-six years old, although to look at she seemed older, as her complexion had lost the taut freshness of youth, and because there was a slight hoarseness in her voice when she lowered it. But even this held a peculiar allure…
    That evening I knew almost nothing about her. I could have learnt everything from Mishka, but he was no longeramong the living. I had, however, alternative sources of information, of which I later availed myself: I invited one of the Russian tramps I knew by sight to accompany me to a café, and on the third glass of wine he revealed a lot about her life to me. But this happened five or six days after our dinner for three.
    Pavel Alexandrovich, as always, did not touch the wine; I took a few sips. Lida, on the other hand, drank four glasses. After dinner Pavel Alexandrovich asked me whether I liked Gypsy romances. I replied that I did.
    “Then let me invite you to a little amateur concert,” he said.
    We retired to the other half of the apartment, which until then I had not had the opportunity of seeing. There was a fur rug on the floor, and the