On a narrow street, winding along the snowdrifts, she went to some square. The women were rattling buckets at the water booth. At a distance, there were horses that had become indelible and were pulled into low, roofless sleds. It was a parking lot for barabuses - Tatar cab men. Kostya said something to her about them. She came up - they rushed to her. She sat down in a sled, the coachman covered her legs with a thick nightmare.
- Where do you want it, young lady?
- To Szczecinka's rooms.
And the stale horse touched quickly.
Lavrov was waiting for her in the vestibule, she did not immediately notice his shrunken little figure in a wide armchair in a student overcoat with a raised scribbler collar.
- Hello," he said joyfully. - I was told you left early. Did you have breakfast? What happened? You look upset.
She took the key, they went to the room, and Lavrov, embarrassed, took a box of chocolates out of his overcoat.
- Thank you. Why are you spending money, dear Kolya?
- What are you, nothing! Bones will soon come, we met at the university. He said you had a fight.
They sat down, kept quiet. Lavrov sighed.
- I wanted to... - He hurriedly said. - This dinner at the Hospital... I lived with them, I know Anna Ignatyevna well. She is a good person, and you might say she loves Kostya selflessly. But love, especially motherhood, is a strange thing. She has some kind of... Well, vindictive or something... Don't think that Kostya asked me to talk to you. - Lavrov was worried, a dark buckle fell on a narrow, high forehead.
- Oh, come on!
- And now I'm afraid... For him and for you.
- I don't understand.
- Forgive me for this interference. I mean, you shouldn't be mad at him. He had a very hard day yesterday. - He was silent. - I was thinking about you. About him and you. Correspondence is not the same. Even when I take a pen in my hand, I become a completely different person. You haven't looked at each other yet. For example, you think that he strives for independence. No, he doesn't just aspire. It's a passion for independence, and passion can't be loved or hated. You have to understand it. And yesterday... - Lavrov said faster and faster: "You understand, he was in a humiliating position almost all day long. He was ashamed of what you saw in the hospital and had to hide from you what he was ashamed of, even though I told him the whole point was that he shouldn't hide anything from you. And then there was this conversation with Marisha... - Lavrov suddenly got accosted, embarrassed, blushed, silenced. - I want to say... - He started it and stopped talking again.
- Are you saying that Bones had a conversation with some Marisha yesterday?
- Oh, my God, what nonsense! Your arrival was a holiday, an extraordinary event, and there was, to be more precise, some commonness, which is ridiculous to attach importance to. Marisha is a friend of mine, and she started asking Kostya about you, and he...
Lavrov took out a handkerchief and ball, spinning it in his hands like a guilty boy.
- It's all over and it's nothing," he muttered with despair. - Kostya will come soon. Everything will be fine. Well, please believe that everything will be all right! You're a good girl. How are you doing with your health? For some reason Anna Ignatyevna thinks that you are sick.
- I am healthy. However, now I have a headache, and I need to walk so that it does not play out.
Lavrov put on a coat, they came out together. He also talked about something on the stairs, in the hallway. She didn't listen. They said goodbye at the entrance of the hotel, and Lisa went right to the Kremlin.
Kazanka's frozen ribbon was dimly shining. On the roof of a two-storey house, a green dome was surrounded by vulgar iron flowers, and Lisa thought that for some reason there were many such houses in Kazan. But the white high wall of the Kremlin, which reached the tower, and then continued with dark arrows of loopholes, was beautiful - and Lisa calmed down a little, looking at its shining under the sun, the desert white. To the left were five blue domes of some church, and to the right were all the hills and hills, a lot of red and red - roofs with whitewashed pipes, from which grayish and transparent smoke was rising. And life went on everywhere: the woman hung up her laundry in the yard, sawed wood, and somewhere wings were covered with barns. Nothing happened. The land was huge, reliable, busy with life and yourself, beautiful and simple.
She returned to the rooms, paid the price. The porter told her that the train to Samara departs through Saransk at four fifteen. She wrote Kostia in a hurry - and did not reread her cold, dead letter. It was different, and she didn't know where to start, where to end it - something fell out of her hands and broke.
It was dirty and noisy at the station. The city guy was yelling at some guy sitting on tightly packed bags.
A marching battalion was built, and the platforms to the freight cars got along. The women cried. Tatar, kneeling, praying, whispering, bowing in the corner of the spitting hall...
To be continued...