Provalnaya . . .' Nikolka mouthed silently, and across his mind's eye passed the images of Nai-Turs, of the red-haired janitor, and of Myshlaevsky.
And just as the image of Myshlaevsky, in his slashed greatcoat, had entered Nikolka's thoughts, the clock on the face of Anyuta, busy at the stove with her sad, confused dreams, pointed ever more clearly to twenty to five - the hour of sorrow and depression.
Were his different-colored eyes still alive and safe?
Would she hear his broad stride again, the clinking sound of his spurs?
'Bring the ice', said Elena, opening the door into the kitchen.
'Right away', said Nikolka hurriedly, screwing up the cap, and running out.
'Anyuta, my dear', said Elena. 'Make sure you don't say a word to anyone about Alexei Vasilievich being wounded.
If they find out, God forbid, that he was fighting against them, there'll be trouble.'
'I understand, Elena Vasilievna.
Of course I won't tell anyone!' Anyuta looked at Elena with wide, anxious eyes. 'Mother of God, the things that are happening in town.
I was walking down the street today and there were two dead men without boots . . . and
blood, blood everywhere!
People were standing around and looking . . .
Someone said the two dead men were officers.
They were just lying there, no hats on their heads or anything ...
I felt my legs go all weak and I just ran away, nearly dropped my basket . . .'
Anyuta hunched her shoulders as though from cold as she remembered something else, and immediately a frying-pan slid sideways out of her hands on to the floor . . .
'Quiet, please, for God's sake', said Elena, wringing her hands.
At three o'clock that afternoon the hands on Lariosik's face were pointing to the zenith of strength and high spirits - twelve o'clock.
Both hands overlapped at noon, sticking together and pointing upwards like two sharp sword-blades.
This had come about because after the catastrophe which had shattered Lariosik's tender soul in Zhitomir, after his terrible eleven-day journey in a hospital train and after so many violent sensations, Lariosik liked it very much indeed at the Turbins'.
He could not yet have told them why he liked it, because he had not so far properly explained it to himself.
The beautiful Elena seemed a person deserving of unusual respect and attention.
And he liked Nikolka very much too.
As a way of showing this, Lariosik chose the moment when Nikolka had stopped dashing in and out of Alexei's room, and began to help him set up the folding steel bed in the library.
'You have the sort of frank expression which makes people trust you', Lariosik said politely and stared so hard at that frank expression that he did not notice that he had caused the complicated, creaking bed to snap shut and crush Nikolka's arm between the two halves of the frame.
The pain was so violent that Nikolka gave a yell which, although muffled, was so powerful that it brought Elena rushing into the room.
Although Nikolka exerted all his strength to stop himself from howling, great tears burst spontaneously from his eyes.
Elena and Lariosik both gripped the patent folding bed and tugged long and hard at it from opposite sides until they released Nikolka's wrist, which had turned blue.
Lariosik almost burst into tears himself when the crushed arm came out limp and mottled.
'Oh my God!' he said, his already miserable face grimacing even harder, 'What's the matter with me?
Everything I touch goes wrong!
Does it hurt terribly?
Please forgive me, for God's sake . . .'
Without a word Nikolka rushed into the kitchen, where at his instructions Anyuta ran a stream of cold water from the tap over his wrist.
By the time the diabolical patent bed had been prised apart and straightened out and it was clear that Nikolka had suffered no great damage to his arm, Lariosik was once more overcome by a delightful sense of quiet joy at being surrounded by so many books.
Besides his passion and love for birds, he also had a passion for books.
Here, on open shelves that lined the room from floor to ceiling, was a treasure-house.
In green and red gold-tooled bindings, in yellow dust-covers and black slip-cases, books stared out at Lariosik from all four walls.
The bed had been long made up; beside it was a chair with a towel draped over its back, whilst on the seat, among the usual male accessories - soap-dish, cigarettes, matches and watch - there was propped up a mysterious photograph of a woman. All the while Lariosik stayed in the library, voyaging around the book-lined walls, squatting down on his haunches by the bottom rows, staring greedily at the bindings, undecided as to which to take out first, The Pickwick Papers or the bound volumes of the Russian Herald for 1871.
The clock-hands on his face pointed to twelve o'clock.
But as twilight approached the mood in the Turbins' apartment grew sadder and sadder, and as a result the clock did not strike twelve, the hands stood still and silent, like a glittering sword wrapped in a flag of mourning that stood at half-mast.
The cause of the air of mourning, the cause of the discord on the clock-faces of all the people in the dusty, slightly old-fashioned comfort of the Turbins' apartment was a thin column of mercury.
At three o'clock in Alexei's bedroom it showed 39.6° Centigrade.
Turning pale, Elena was just about to shake it but Alexei turned his head, looked up at her and said weakly but insistently:
'Show it to me.'
Silently and reluctantly Elena showed him the thermometer.
Alexei looked at it and sighed deeply.
By five o'clock he was lying with a cold gray bag on his head, little lumps of ice melting and floating in the bag.
His face had turned pink, his eyes glittered and looked very handsome.