Malianov howled a long silent howl, closed his eyes, and opened them again. However, his lips were making an automatic, friendly smile.
The wine flowed abundantly and all over the table. Snegovoi jumped up to protect his white pants. He was abnormally large, he really was. People shouldn’t be that big in our compact times.
Malianov shuddered. He put the dirty glass in the sink. The embryo of the future pile of dirty dishes.
“When I feel bad, I work,” Vecherovsky said. “When I have problems, when I’m depressed, when I’m bored with life, I sit down to my work. There are probably other prescriptions, but I don’t know them. Or they don’t work for me. You want my advice—here it is: Go and work. Thank God that people like you and me need only paper and pencil to work.”
He was a brilliant raconteur, and the dullest common events became dramas from Graham Greene or Le Carré in his retelling.
When he was through with this chest and came back to work, he saw that the discovery was, so to speak, discovered
Gubar was left with the boy. One on one. What took place between them until three in the afternoon, he didn’t wish to tell. But something did happen. (The boy had a brief statement on the matter: “I straightened him out is all.”)
A disgusting feeling was climbing up to his throat. He wanted to shut his ears, go away, lie down, stretch out, hide his head under a pillow. It was fear. And not plain ordinary fear, but the Black Fear. Get away from here. Run for your life. Drop everything, hide, bury yourself, drown. Hey you, he shouted at himself. Wake up, you idiot! You can’t do that, you’ll die. And he spoke with effort. “I get it,
A disgusting feeling was climbing up to his throat. He wanted to shut his ears, go away, lie down, stretch out, hide his head under a pillow. It was fear. And not plain ordinary fear, but the Black Fear. Get away from here. Run for your life. Drop everything, hide, bury yourself, drown. Hey you, he shouted at himself. Wake up, you idiot! You can’t do that, you’ll die.
Vecherovsky managed to make the room sparkle—all it lacked was a vacuuming—yet he remained elegant, suave, and without a single spot on his creamy suit. He didn’t even get sweaty, which was absolutely fantastic. While Malianov, even though he had worn Irina’s apron, had a wet belly, like Weingarten’s. If a woman’s belly is wet after doing the dishes, it means her husband is a drunkard. But what if the husband’s belly is wet? They sat in silence, watching
Vecherovsky managed to make the room sparkle—all it lacked was a vacuuming—yet he remained elegant, suave, and without a single spot on his creamy suit. He didn’t even get sweaty, which was absolutely fantastic. While Malianov, even though he had worn Irina’s apron, had a wet belly, like Weingarten’s. If a woman’s belly is wet after doing the dishes, it means her husband is a drunkard. But what if the husband’s belly is wet?
in your situation, not only do you not have any friends, you are so alone that you don’t have any enemies, either
And he said nothing else, but I felt that he was still speaking. There’s no hurry, he was saying. There’s still a billion years to the end of the world, he was saying. There’s a lot, an awful lot, that can be done in a billion years if we don’t give up and we understand, understand and don’t give up.
primogeniture” against the dull, blind, persistent force that knows neither
“If you have the guts to be yourself,” as John Updike wrote, “other people’ll pay your price.”