It’s too far away. That’s why I get off at the turn, where the tram goes onto Orientul. Not just me. Everybody who lives around here does it. And nothing ever happens. Except for today ... I don’t know how it happened.”

They were passing beneath the pulsing of a streetlight. In the light, his face again looked distracted.

What an unpleasant guy! Even so, she summoned the courage to stop.

“Don’t be troubled by what I’m about to ask you. I want you to pull up my stocking. I’m completely frozen.”

She bent over, realizing only now that she was bleeding: her right knee was red, but lower down, towards her ankle, where the scrape was deeper, frozen blood plastered the stocking’s fabric to the wound.

“Is it serious?”

“I don’t know. For the time being it’s not hurting. I should go to the pharmacy. Will you come with me?”

He didn’t reply, but he took her arm and asked with his eyes: Which way?

“It’s not far. Look, over there on the other sidewalk.”

They crossed the street. From afar she found it difficult to recognize herself in the reflection in the pharmacy’s windows next to this man, who looked even stranger in the distant image on the glass. As she approached, she smiled with compassion at her own face. How pathetic I look, poor me! She took off her hat with a brisk motion and stood with it in her hand, dismayed.

“I can’t go into that shop. The pharmacist knows me, he’ll ask, I’ll have to explain ... Will you ...?”

He accepted unenthusiastically, frowning with his brows.

“What do you need?”

“A little iodine and ... I don’t know, a little oxygenated water.”

She was about to open her handbag to give him the money, but, without waiting, he pushed open the door of the pharmacy and went inside.

From outside, she watched him through the pane of the display window: how he entered, how he took off his hat, how he said good evening, how he approached the pharmacist in his white lab jacket. She found it odd to watch him opening his mouth and uttering words that she couldn’t hear. What a peculiar voice he had! A little muffled, a little quashed, and yet with a rough tone. The pharmacist was pouring the tincture of iodine into a bottle.

Why was he taking so long? It must be as hot as a greenhouse inside. The metal scales were still. The heavy liquids, as though drowsy, slept on the shelves in solemn crystal flasks.

The pharmacist was asking him something and he was replying with plenty of enthusiasm. He was more talkative inside in the heat than he had been out here in the cold. And if she were to leave him? If she walked away now, without waiting for him? How astonished he would be at not finding her here, but what a feeling of relief he would have, the saucy devil!

Her knee started to hurt. To sting more than to hurt. She thought again of the lovely warmth on the other side of the display window and closed her eyes. She felt as though she were slipping into a kind of slumber ...

“Did I take too long?”

It was his voice.