“Tell me, you did know?”

He lifted his shoulders; again, his indifferent lifting of his shoulders. “No.”

Nora tried not to believe him.

“It’s not true. Isn’t that right – it’s not true? And isn’t somebody waiting for you somewhere this evening? Your wife, your girlfriend. Someone who knows ...”

She came to a halt. There was something in his hazy, settled silence that made her suddenly certain that she would not be able to wrest a reply from him.

He took a step towards the door. Nora seized his arm. “Don’t leave yet.”

On a bookshelf, in a glass vase, were three carnations with long stalks. She took a carnation and offered it to him without smiling, almost with gravity.

“For your birthday.” Then, with unexpected enthusiasm, she pressed even closer to him. “Stay here. As you can see, it’s bright, it’s warm. We can call the porter and send him to the grocery store. We’re going to make a big dinner and clink our glasses. That’ll bring us luck.”

“You think so?” he said, distracted.

“I’m sure.”

A boyish sparkle lighted up his eyes. “I accept. But you’ve got to let me go down to the shop.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t come back.”

“Of course I will.”

... And she had no more time to refute him because he had opened the door and disappeared down the stairs in a tempestuous rush.

Nora remained on the threshold, listening to his steps fading away.

 

 

She looked restlessly at the clock on her desk: twenty minutes had gone past. He may not come back.

An immense silence filled the entire building. From somewhere on a distant floor came the feeble sound of a song on a gramophone or on the radio:

 

Goodnight, Mimy,

And sweet dreams

Goodnight, Mimy

And deep sleep ...

Nora thought about that Mimy, who no doubt had been sleeping for a long time as a result of the song’s persuasion.

She would have liked to sleep, too. It seemed wrong to have taken off that soft bathrobe in which she had felt so warmly embraced. In this evening dress she had the uncomfortable impression of being a visitor in her own apartment. But she had seen that he took with complete seriousness the “dinner” for which she was preparing, and she thought with pleasure that when he returned he would find a stunning woman ... Stunning. She repeated the word in her head and smiled with slight fatigue.

A dull hum cut through the silence of the building. Someone was coming up in the elevator.

Acquainted with the building’s most intimate secrets, Nora’s ear followed the sound as it would have followed the rise of mercury in an oversized thermometer.

First floor, second floor ...

As it approached, the hum of the elevator vibrated like the lower chords of a piano, prolonged by the pressure of the pedals. Would it stop on the third floor ...? No, it had continued upward.

At each floor there was a brief thunk, like a pulse beating harder.

Nora closed her eyes. She felt the rising of the elevator inside her, as though a secret driving-belt had taken over her blood and nerves.

Fourth ... Fifth ... Had it stopped?

It seemed as though, within the silence that had existed until now, a new, deeper zone of silence had opened.

Had it stopped?

Yes. It had stopped. The interior lattice work, made of wood, clattered back with a meshing shudder, the door opened and closed mechanically, the hum of the elevator’s chords fell away, dwindled ...

It’s pointless to wait for him.