BEFORE SUNRISE
"Oh, how stupid. We are in the street!"
We-walk-again and
kiss
again. She covers her eyes with her
hand. She
is
dizzy from the endless kisses.
We reach the gates of a house. K. murmurs:
"I must go in here and see the dressmaker. Wait for me
here. I'll just tryon a dress and be right back."
I walk up and down by the house. I walk up and down for
ten minutes, fifteen. Finally she arrives. Happy. Laughing.
"Everything's all right," she says. "It's a very pretty dress.
It's very modest and unpretentious."
She takes me by the hand and I see her home. I meet her
five days later. She says:
"If
you like, we can meet today at the house of a friend of
mine."
We arrive at the house. I recognize it. It was where I waited
twenty minutes for her. It's the house where the dressmaker lives.
We go up to the fourth floor. She opens the door with her
key. We go into the room. It is a well-furnished room. Not like
a dressmaker's room.
From professional habit I leaf through a book I find on a
small table. On the front page I see a familiar name. It is the
name of K.'s lover.
She laughs.
"Yes, we're in his room." But don't worry. He's gone away
to Kronstadt for two days."
"K.! It's not that I'm worried about.
So
you were here
with him then?"
"When?" she asks.
"When I waited twenty minutes for you by the door."
She laughs. She closes my mouth with a kiss. And says:
"It was your fault."
September Twenty-.Third
,.
The window of my "room looks out onto "the comer
0{
the
Moika -and the Nevsky Prospect.
