'I'll wait for you!'
'I don't know. . I'm awful. . It's really nice of you to come, but I'm completely fagged out.'
'You'll perk up outside.'
'I don't think so. Not today. Do you want something?'
'Let me have a beer.'
She poured him a beer and he stared at her breasts beneath the grubby overalls. She was older than him, but not much, maybe only five years; he'd never asked her, maybe not so
much — girls soon went to seed in this job. She wasn't especially plain, apart from those gold teeth and her nose, but she'd never been his idea of. .
'Fancy something to eat? There's not much left anyway.' The last open sandwiches were going dry under the glass. She put two of them on a plate for him.
'It's the heat that does it,' she said. She smoothed her hair slightly and looked at him.
He took the beer and the sandwiches over to a table. The last of the three drinkers finished his beer and they left; just the two of them remained.
'Bohouš,' she said, coming over to him, 'you really oughtn't wait for me. It's nice of you, but I'm dreadfully tired today.'
'It doesn't matter. I'll wait.'
'It's up to you. . Would you pass me those glasses?'
He stood up and brought her the glasses the three had left. She rinsed them under the tap and stood them alongside the others. 'I shouldn't think there'll be anyone else in now,' she said. 'It wouldn't be worth their while.' She poured herself a beer and sat down with him at the table. 'So what were you doing today?'
'You know,' he mumbled. 'I was supposed to be going for a swim but it didn't work out.'
'Someone diddled me again today,' she said, slowly. 'I don't see how it could have happened.'
She fixed a tired gaze on him and her arm lay wearily on the table top: a small hand, the veins showing through coarse skin; her nail varnish had cracked during the day. He covered her hand with his own. She didn't move a muscle but just kept staring into his face, or beyond it, somewhere behind him. Then she raised her glass and finished her beer. 'I don't see how it
could have happened,' she repeated. 'I suppose I must have miscounted when I was giving that tram bloke his change.'
'Which bloke?' he asked and took two ten-crown notes out of his wallet.
'Forget it,' she said. 'Just forget it.'
He left the money on the table. 'There was one guy today,' she began to tell him, 'with a sort of a limp. I see him in here occasionally. He got drunk and kept going on about being falsely convicted or something. It seems he went to jail,' she went on slowly, 'and got out last year, before Christmas. But what does he have to keep thinking about it for? There's no point thinking about it the whole time.' She took his glass and her own and stood them on the counter. Then she went to the door and pulled down the grill.
She let him out the back way.
'Well, then?' he asked.
"Fraid not.'
Her house stood at the end of a dark street. If only she weren't so tired. Just a little further. Go dancing, at least. If only she weren't so tired. 'Can you smell that?' he said. There was the scent of something but he couldn't tell what. She unlocked the door. 'You must have an early start tomorrow too. .'
'I know.'
He followed her down a long row of doors. She lived in a single room; water dripped quietly in the passage. 'I'll have to mend that for you,' he said.
'You've been promising that. . Ever since you first came. .'
She started making up the bed on the couch. The place was empty apart from a cupboard, a small table, a chair and the couch. And two pictures on the walclass="underline" some sort of cliff above a river and a birch wood. He sat down and waited.
'Why don't you have a wash in the meantime?' she asked.
'Okay' He went out into the passage. Hair grips, a bottle of egg shampoo, lipstick and a few half-squeezed tubes lay scattered on the shelf by the sink. He ran some water before taking off his shirt.
'There was a bloke I knew once. .' she called. 'You don't mind me talking about them?'
'No!' he said, over the sound of the water.
'There's no point, though.' He heard her slapping the eiderdown. 'I'm completely fagged out today' she called. 'Should I make some coffee?'
She opened the door slightly and he could see the kettle in her hand. 'Fill it for me.'
He had finished washing long ago, but he stayed there
splashing himself with the cold water.
'He used to drink an awful lot of coffee,' she remembered, 'that bloke. He'd drink four coffees of an evening. Big ones, and I used to have to make them with three spoonfuls of coffee. He'd always bring it with him. He was a doctor. They posted him to somewhere in the country where he was all on his own. And had to make night calls too. He used to before. . and he said he had got used to it. So he couldn't get to sleep,' she said. 'Some nights he didn't manage to fall asleep at all.'
He dried himself with a soft, fragrant towel. 'You told me before.'
'About that bloke?'
'About him driving to see that woman who was dying.'
'There you go,' she said, 'I'd completely forgotten.'
'What's he doing now?'
'Him? No idea. He hasn't shown up in ages. Some of them
disappear all of a sudden. They don't even try to get in touch… As if we hadn't been. . You won't, will you?'
'Of course I won't,' he muttered.
'Maybe that coffee did for him,' she said quickly, 'and that's why he's not been in touch.'
They were sitting opposite each other — he by now only in his boxer shorts — and drinking coffee. 'Come to bed,' he said. 'Seeing you're so tired.'
'All right.'
He knew she would now spend ages washing herself. He hated waiting for her to finish washing, the time he had to stay in the room alone. It wasn't an ugly room, just empty and alien. There was nothing out of the ordinary, not even a spot on the wall, not even an old radio, or an aquarium with a single blue fish.
'Why the silence?' she called.
'I don't feel like talking!' Now he too felt an oppressive weariness. He always did lying here under a strange eiderdown, when he knew he ought to say something: to say he loved her and why he had come, or about the way things were and were going to be. Or at least to think about her and look forward to her. But weariness would force him to close his eyes, and he would start to fall into the dark sack with coarse sides, always the same material; it enveloped him and didn't let in the tiniest ray of light, or thought or image, even. He lay there totally still until suddenly he noticed that the coarse-woven side of the bag, the dark impervious material, was moving, slowly, inch by inch, moving almost imperceptibly: an endless grey conveyor belt.
A few quiet footsteps, the click of the light switch and he felt her body at his side. 'My little boy,' she said, 'my pet. Did you fall asleep?'
He opened his eyes, and a bright reflection moved across the ceiling before her face got in the way: two big shining. .
'Now I'm glad you're here,' she whispered. 'I'm always glad when you're with me.'
She waited in case he said something too, but she knew he'd probably stay silent. He never said anything. Sometimes it made her sad. 'My daddy-long-legs,' she whispered, 'my horrible daddy-long-legs.' Then she touched his chin with her lips, then his neck, breathing quickly and loudly, then his cheeks. Then she moved her lips to his, put her arms around him. And this was the moment, the moment that always made him come back for more. He knew it, she knew it. The soft pressure of her body. He was falling. He could feel himself gently floating. The unbearably light, dizzy fall, now it was for real. . Completely and totally happy at this moment. Nothing could equal this moment. Nothing tempted him away from it, everything converged here in this single instant, even though it was so brief and then after there would just be an ordinary old night.