262
VLADIMIR DUDINTSEV
a long time afterwards to print articles, especially for my
benefit. In one footnote, he wrote that I was shamefully silent;
in others, that I was wearing the blinders of reserve, that I
was hiding in the bushes, that, like an ostrich, I had buried
my head in the sand. He crowed from afar and flapped his wings
like a cock, trying to provoke me to continue the battle.
Seeing me push the clipping aside, my colleagues exchanged
glances.
"Can this
be
yOU?" asked the amazed practical joker.
"Just look at him! He hasn't even shaved! Friends! He has
tossed his overcoat on the chair! Well, well . . . Two buttons
are missing from the coat! Doesn't he look like a changeling?
There's something about him that reminds me of that . . .
the one who used to sit here beside
him. . . ."
And he glanced expressively at the bandit's vacated desk.
True enough, my character had changed drastically. I had
become a different man. I had all at once forgotten the man–
nerisms of the established scientist; I stopped speaking in a sing–
song voice; I stopped playing around with trifling problems.
I was floating all the time in a kind of frenzied half-dream.
Greed for life had awakened within me and, strangely enough,
what a change I felt in my conception of pleasure!
What did I enjoy now? I kept gazing at her all the time.
She fitted splendidly into my room, having brought with her
a folding bed, and she worked day and night with the ap–
paratus. I don't even know when she slept. And I found delight
in gazing from afar at her as she sat at the table; I admired the
distinctive curves of her head and neck- those of a young
mother bending over her child.
And I continued to dream, watching the lines of her head,
her neck and her sloping shoulder, that lightly-curved, affec–
tionate arch, by which alone I could have always recognized
her; I wanted her to tum around and look at me. She always
sensed my unspoken command and, when she turned, she would
press her chin against her shoulder. But some perpetual question
