history of Pugachev, but the librarian in the black silk blouse, whispering through the handkerchief pressed to her lips, observed to him that they did not give out so many books at once into the same hands, and that to obtain the works that interested him, he would have to return some of the reference books and periodicals he had taken.
Therefore Yuri Andreevich began more assiduously and hurriedly to acquaint himself with the as yet unsorted books, so as to select and keep the most necessary out of the pile and exchange the rest for the historical works that interested him. He quickly leafed through the collections and ran his eyes over the tables of contents, undistracted by anything and not looking to either side. The many people in the room did not disturb or divert him. He had studied his neighbors well and saw them with his mental gaze to right and left of him without raising his eyes from the book, with the feeling that their complement would not change before he left, any more than the churches and buildings of the city seen through the window would move from their place.
Meanwhile the sun did not stand still. It moved all the while around the eastern corner of the library. Now it was shining through the windows on the southern side, blinding those who sat close to them and preventing them from reading.
The librarian with a cold came down from her fenced-off elevation and headed for the windows. They had festoon curtains of white fabric, which pleasantly softened the light. The librarian lowered them on all the windows but one. That one, at the end, in the shade, she left uncurtained. Pulling the cord, she opened the vent pane and went into a fit of sneezing.
When she had sneezed for the tenth or twelfth time, Yuri Andreevich guessed that she was Mikulitsyn’s sister- in-law, one of the Tuntsevs, of whom Samdevyatov had told him. Along with other readers, Yuri Andreevich raised his head and looked in her direction.
Then he noticed that a change had taken place in the room. At the opposite end a new visitor had been added. Yuri Andreevich recognized Antipova at once. She was sitting with her back turned to the front tables, at one of which the doctor had placed himself, and talking in a low voice with the sick librarian, who stood bending towards Larissa Fyodorovna and exchanged whispers with her. This conversation must have had a beneficial influence on the librarian. She was instantly cured not only of her annoying cold, but also of her nervous apprehension. Casting a warm, grateful glance at Antipova, she took away the handkerchief that she kept pressed to her lips all the time and, putting it in her pocket, went back to her place behind the counter, happy, confident, and smiling.
This scene marked by touching details did not escape some of those present. From all sides of the room, people looked sympathetically at Antipova and also smiled. By these insignificant signs, Yuri Andreevich ascertained how well-known and loved she was in the city.
12
Yuri Andreevich’s first intention was to get up and go over to Larissa Fyodorovna. But then the constraint and lack of simplicity, foreign to his nature but established in him in relation to her, got the upper hand. He decided not to bother her, and also not to interrupt his own work. To shield himself from the temptation to look in her direction, he placed the chair sideways to the table, almost back to the readers, and immersed himself in his books, holding one in his hand in front of him and another open on his knees.
However, his thoughts wandered a thousand miles away from the subject of his studies. Outside of any connection with them, he suddenly realized that the voice he had once heard in his sleep on a winter night in Varykino had been Antipova’s voice. He was struck by this discovery and, attracting the attention of those around him, he abruptly put his chair back in its former position, so as to see Antipova from where he sat, and began to look at her.
He saw her almost from behind, her back half turned. She was wearing a light-colored checkered blouse tied with a belt, and was reading eagerly, with self-abandon, as children do, her head slightly inclined towards her right shoulder. Now and then she lapsed into thought, raising her eyes to the ceiling or narrowing them and peering somewhere far ahead of her, and then again, propped on her elbow, her head resting on her hand, in a quick, sweeping movement she penciled some notes in her notebook.
Yuri Andreevich tested and confirmed his former observations in Meliuzeevo. “She doesn’t want to be admired,” he thought, “to be beautiful, captivating. She scorns that side of a woman’s nature, and it is as if she punishes herself for being so good-looking. And that proud hostility to herself increases her irresistibility tenfold.
“How good is everything she does. She reads as if it were not man’s highest activity, but the simplest of things, accessible to animals. As if she were carrying water or peeling potatoes.”
These reflections calmed the doctor. A rare peace descended into his soul. His thoughts stopped scattering and jumping from subject to subject. He smiled involuntarily. Antipova’s presence had the same effect on him as on the nervous librarian.
Not bothering about how his chair stood, and fearing no hindrances or distractions, he worked for an hour or an hour and a half still more assiduously and concentratedly than before Antipova’s arrival. He went through the tall stack of books in front of him, selected the most necessary ones, and even managed in passing to gulp down the two important articles he came across in them. Deciding to be satisfied with what he had done, he started gathering up the books in order to take them to the librarian’s desk. All extraneous considerations, derogatory to his consciousness, abandoned him. With a clear conscience, and with no second thoughts, he decided that his honestly done work had earned him the right to meet with an old and good acquaintance and that he had legitimate grounds for allowing himself this joy. But when he stood up and looked around the reading room, he did not find Antipova; she was no longer there.
On the counter to which the doctor carried his tomes and brochures, the literature returned by Antipova still lay unshelved. It was all manuals on Marxism. She was probably requalifying herself to be a teacher, as before, going through political retraining on her own at home.
Larissa Fyodorovna’s catalogue requests lay in the books. The ends of the slips were showing. On them Larissa Fyodorovna’s address was written. It could easily be read. Yuri Andreevich wrote it down, surprised by the strangeness of the designation. “Kupecheskaya Street, opposite the house with figures.”
On the spot, having asked someone, Yuri Andreevich learned that the expression “house with figures” was as current in Yuriatin as the naming of neighborhoods by parish churches in Moscow or the name Five Corners in Petersburg.
It was the name of a dark gray, steel-colored house with caryatids and statues of Greek muses with tambourines, lyres, and masks in their hands, built in the last century by a theater-loving merchant as his private theater. The merchant’s heirs sold this house to the Merchants’ Association, which gave its name to the street on the corner of which the house stood. The whole area around it was named for this house with figures. Now the house with figures accommodated the city’s party committee, and the wall of its slanting basement, running obliquely downhill, where theater and circus posters hung in former times, was now covered with government decrees and resolutions.
13
It was a cold, windy day at the beginning of May. Having wandered around town on errands, and looked into the library for a moment, Yuri Andreevich suddenly canceled all his plans and went in search of Antipova.
