Then how can I help you?
It's not bleeding any more, is it?'
She touched his bandaged arm so lightly that he did not feel it.
'Don't worry, nothing's going to happen to me.
Lie down and sleep.'
'I'm not going to leave you', she answered, caressing his hand. 'You have such a fever.'
He could not stop himself from embracing her again and drawing her to him.
She did not resist.
He drew her until she was leaning right over him.
Then, as she lay down beside him he sensed through his own sickly heat the clear live warmth of her body.
'Lie down and don't move,' she whispered, 'and I'll soothe your head.'
She stretched out alongside him and he felt the touch of her knees.
She began to smooth back his hair from his temples.
He felt such pleasure that he could only think of how to prevent himself from falling asleep.
But he did fall asleep, and slept long, peacefully and well.
When he awoke he felt that he was floating in a boat on a river of warmth, that all his pain had gone, and that outside the night was turning gradually paler and paler.
Not only the little house but the City and the whole world were full of silence.
A glassy, limpid blue light was pouring through the gaps in the blinds.
The woman, warm from his body, but with her face set in a look of unhappiness, was asleep beside him.
And he went to sleep again. #
In the morning, around nine o'clock, one of the rare cab-drivers took on two passengers on the deserted Malo-Provalnaya Street -a man in a black civilian overcoat, looking very pale, and a woman.
Carefully supporting the man by the arm, the woman drove him to St Alexei's Hill.
There was no traffic on the hill, except for a cab outside No. 13 which had just brought a strange visitor with a trunk, a bundle and a cage.
Fourteen
That evening all the habitues of No. 13 began to converge on the house of their own accord. None of them had been cut off or driven away.
'It's him', echoed the cry in Anyuta's breast, and her heart fluttered like Lariosik's bird.
There had come a cautious tap at the little snow-covered window of the Turbins' kitchen.
Anyuta pressed her face to the window to make out the face.
It was him, but without his moustache . . .
Him . . .
With both hands Anyuta smoothed down her black hair, opened the door into the porch, then from the porch into the snow-covered yard and Myshlaevsky was standing unbelievably close to her.
A student's overcoat with a beaver collar and a student's peaked cap . . . his moustache was gone . . . but there was no mistaking his eyes, even in the half-darkness of the porch.
The right one flecked with green sparks, like a Urals gemstone, and the left one dark and languorous . . .
And he seemed to be shorter.
With a trembling hand Anyuta unfastened the latch, then the courtyard vanished and the patch of light from the open kitchen door vanished too, because Myshlaevsky's coat had enveloped Anyuta and a very familiar voice whispered:
'Hallo, Anyutochka . . .
You'll catch cold ...
Is there anyone in the kitchen, Anyuta?"
'No one', answered Anyuta, not knowing what she was saying, and also whispering for some reason.
'How sweet his lips have become . . .' she thought blissfully and whispered: 'Viktor Viktororich ... let me go . . .
Elena . . .'
'What's Elena to do with it', whispered the voice reproachfully, a voice smelling of eau-de-cologne and tobacco. 'What's the matter with you, Anyutochka . . .'
'Let me go, I'll scream, honestly I will', said Anyuta passionately as she embraced Myshlaevsky round the neck. 'Something terrible's happened - Alexei Vasilievich's wounded . . .'
The boa-constrictor instantly released her.
'What - wounded?
And Nikolka?'
'Nikolka's safe and well, but Alexei Vasilievich has been wounded.'
The strip of light from the kitchen, then through more doors . . .
In the dining-room Elena burst into tears when she saw Myshlaevsky and said:
'Vitka, you're alive . . .