"Will not be back before nine.
Pantelei".
"That's no harm," said Ostap. "I know where the key is."
He groped underneath the cabinet, produced a key, and unlocked the door.
Ivanopulo's room was exactly of the same size as Nicky's, but, being a corner room, had one wall made of brick; the student was very proud of it.
Ippolit Matveyevich noted with dismay that he did not even have a mattress.
"This will do nicely," said Ostap. "Quite a decent size for Moscow.
If we all three lie on the floor, there will even be some room to spare.
I wonder what that son of a bitch, Pantelei, did with the mattress."
The window looked out on to a narrow street.
A militiaman was walking up and down outside the little house opposite, built in the style of a Gothic tower, which housed the embassy of a minor power.
Behind the iron gates some people could be seen playing tennis.
The white ball flew backward and forward accompanied by short exclamations.
"Out!" said Ostap. "And the standard of play is not good.
However, let's have a rest."
The concessionaires spread newspapers on the floor and Ippolit Matveyevich brought out the cushion which he carried with him.
Ostap dropped down on to the papers and dozed off.
Vorobyaninov was already asleep.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HAVE RESPECT FOR MATTRESSES, CITIZENS!
"Liza, let's go and have dinner!"
"I don't feel like it.
I had dinner yesterday."
"I don't get you."
"I'm not going to eat mock rabbit."
"Oh, don't be silly!"
"I can't exist on vegetarian sausages."
"Today you can have apple pie."
"I just don't feel like it."
"Not so loud.
Everything can be heard."
The young couple changed voices to a stage whisper.
Two minutes later Nicky realized for the first time in three months of married life that his beloved liked sausages of carrots, potatoes, and peas less than he did.
"So you prefer dog meat to a vegetarian diet," cried Nicky, disregarding the eavesdropping neighbours in his burst of anger.
"Not so loud, I say!" shouted Liza. "And then you're nasty to me!
Yes, I do like meat.
At times.
What's so bad about that?"
Nicky said nothing in his amazement.
This was an unexpected turn of events.
Meat would make an enormous, unfillable hole in his budget.
The young husband strolled up and down beside the mattress on which the red-faced Liza was sitting curled up into a ball, and made some desperate calculations.
His job of tracing blueprints at the Technopower design office brought Nicky Kalachov no more than forty roubles, even in the best months.
He did not pay any rent for the apartment for there was no housing authority in that jungle settlement and rent was an abstract concept.
Ten roubles went on Liza's dressmaking lessons.
Dinner for the two of them (one first course of monastery beet soup and a second course of phoney rabbit or genuine noodles) consumed in two honestly halved portions in the Thou-Shalt-Not-Steal vegetarian canteen took thirteen roubles each month from the married couple's budget.
The rest of their money dwindled away heavens knows where.
This disturbed Nicky most of all.
"Where does the money go?" he used to wonder, drawing a thin line with a special pen on sky-blue tracing paper.
A change to meat-eating under these circumstances would mean ruin.