EMIL DRAITSER
417
Was he a fur dealer or an oil tycoon? Only he knew that he was really
an embroiderer, one who fashions plots on a tambour, and how happy
it made him if, after enormous efforts, he managed to unburden himself
of one plot, then another. But soon new ones would pop up out of
nowhere and jump on his back.
The writer was not in the habit of leaving his suitcases unpacked and
rushing off into the city. He spent the morning getting settled in the
hotel. He realized long ago that a room, like a human being, needs to
be honored, however briefly, with one's presence.
It
doesn't like being
treated like a mere thing. Otherwise, in revenge, it will inflict bumps and
bruises with its corners and radiators, sticking them in the way when
one is least aware.
He sat awhile on the bed, touched the bedspread, and sniffed the air.
My sense of smell is already failing, he thought. There wasn't any spe–
cial scent here, except perhaps that of an artificial rose. American hotels
don't smell at all like human dwellings; that butterfly chaser was right.
He picked up the little bible, put out by indefatigable Gideons through–
out the country. He looked at its thickness, its unmarked cover. Protes–
tant people read little-the book had been bent open in only one place.
Masha was also there, at the edge of the bed. She, a gentle soul, knew
his ways and did not hurry him. Yet he was sure she was longing to run
off to some outlet to look over the dresses. She's a woman after all. Oh,
what a woman she was when they first met. "Masha, Masha, it's good
that you are not someone else's, but ours," as the Russian song goes.
And she was still a beauty. Light blue eyes, tender white face with little
maddening dimples on her cheeks. She fingers the kerchief on her neck,
tries to push away a little cloud of gray hair near her eyes. It's okay, let's
sit awhile, and then go.
He was driven around town. He was bored by this empty settlement,
vast like the Russian steppe and just as desolate. A truly large city, but
without people on the streets, only cars and in them apparitions. He was
bored with the palms, the many-floored hotels like upright matchboxes,
and the freeways.
Somewhere downtown he got out for a stretch. There was nothing
much to look at. There was as much taste here as at the market square in
Serpukhov, a provincial town, only less dust perhaps. The mechanical
watering hoses shot volleys of water at the close-cropped grass. (Is it pos–
sible they are synthetic, those damned modern lawns, and the water is for
show after all?) But life here is also like an empty husk. Maybe the people
do look a little more cheerful. And their step, too, is livelier than ours. A
young black woman chiseled from dark warm bone, her skin gleaming in
