Don’t spare yourself anything. I’ll bring you some hot borsch right away.’

He then patted Ozarski familiarly on the knee and immediately disappeared behind the door to a neighbouring room.

As he ate, Ozarski glanced about the room. It was low, square, with a heavily smoke-stained ceiling. In one corner, near the window, stood a bed or a bed of boards, opposite it – a type of counter with barrels and a small cask of beer. The place was filthy. Cobwebs, uncleared for years, spread out their grey, monotonous threads over the ceiling and a stack of coal.

‘A dive,’ he muttered through his teeth.

Close to the entrance door, a fire blazed under a stove; higher up, coals were dying out in a baker’s oven, over which was a wide square hood. The softly smouldering embers merged with the bubbling food cooking on the stove into some mysterious, drowsy chat, into a muffled murmur of a humid interior set against the background of the riotous snowstorm outside.

The door to the other room squeaked, and, contrary to Ozarski’s expectation, a stocky girl hastened to the stove. She removed the large stone pot from the fire and, tilting it, poured its contents into a deep clay bowl. The borsch was hearty and thick. The girl silently placed the fragrant soup in front of Ozarski, while with the other hand she gave him a tin spoon from a cabinet. As she did this, she leaned over so close to him, that one of her breasts, hanging out freely from her blouse, brushed his cheek. The engineer trembled. The breast was firm and young.

The girl drew back, and sitting down near him on a bench, wordlessly fixed her large, blue, almost watery eyes on him. She looked twenty, at most. Her luxuriant golden-red hair fell down to her shoulders in two thick braids; the top of her hair was parted evenly, like a village beauty’s. The rather good-looking face was disfigured by a lengthy scar that, starting at the middle of the forehead, cut through the left eyebrow. The generously-developed breasts, which she didn’t attempt to cover at all with the border of her blouse, had the hue of pale-yellow marble and were overgrown with a light, golden down. On the right breast was a birthmark shaped like a horseshoe.

He liked her. He reached out his hand for her breasts, which he started to stroke. She didn’t defend herself and sat in silence.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Makryna.’

‘A beautiful name. Is that your father in there?’

And he gestured with his hand toward the closed room where the old man had disappeared.

The girl smiled mysteriously.

‘Who? In there? There’s no one there now.’

‘Come, come! Don’t evade the question. The innkeeper, the owner of this place, that’s who I mean. Are you his daughter or his lover?’

‘Not one or the other!’ she burst out with a deep, hearty laugh.

‘So you’re just a servant girl?’

She clouded up proudly.

‘Humph! So that is what you think! I’m the landlady here.’

Ozarski was astounded.

‘Well, then, he’s your husband?’

Makryna shook with a renewed drawn-out, generous laugh.

‘You haven’t guessed it. I’m no one’s wife.’

‘But you sleep with him, eh? Even though he’s lived long, he’s still strong. He could take care of three like me. And sparks are constantly flying from his eyes. An old wolf.’

A vague smile appeared on Makryna’s crimson lips. She nudged him with her elbow:

‘How curious you are! No – I do not sleep with him; no, I don’t. How could I? After all, it’s from him that I’m –’ She broke off, as if not knowing the appropriate word or as if unable to properly clarify things for him.

All of a sudden, apparently to evade further questions, she slipped free from his already too insistent hands and disappeared into the other room.

‘A strange girl.’

He drank down his fifth cup of vodka and, resting his legs comfortably on the bench, leaned back into the chair. A light languor came over him.