Marya had visited the Fein residence when Fein’s graduate seminar—his “circle”—was invited over, but of course she had never been there alone; she had never been free, as she was now, to explore the downstairs rooms . . . with their high shadowy beamed ceilings, their slightly warped parquet flooring, their narrow leaded windows that appeared to glow with, rather than to transmit, sunshine . . . and, of course, the rows and rows of books. Even in the dining room books were shelved nearly to the ceiling; even in the narrow hallways. Ah, what a feast of books! Marya had begun to assemble a library of her own, she could appreciate Fein’s collection of some forty-odd years. (He owned a first edition of Hegel’s Logic, for instance. A first edition of Goethe’s completed Faust. Volumes by Nietzsche, Schiller, Mallarmé, Hölderlin, Locke, Kant. Medieval manuscripts in German, French, English. Inscribed copies of Mann’s Dr. Faustus, Broch’s The Sleepwalkers, volumes by Georg Lukacs, Erich Kahler, Hannah Arendt, Lévi-Strauss . . . and many others, which privileged members of the circle were allowed to examine and even to consult if their work required.)

Marya entered the living room—two steps down—a narrow cavernous room with its shades partly drawn. Her eye darted nervously about but there was nothing to see, nothing out of place. The Romanesque bas-relief (a mirthless grinning angel) on the mantel above the fireplace, the tilted old mirrors in their heavy frames, the overstuffed furniture, the discolored lampshades, the slightly frayed carpets. . . . There was a smell of dust, mildew, pipe tobacco, old books which she found highly agreeable.

What might it be, Marya dared wonder, to live here by rights, to be Maximilian Fein’s wife.

One by one the Feins’ cats appeared, blinking mistrustfully. There was Deuteronomy, there was Cagliostro, and now Twill. . . . Marya coaxed them to come closer but they kept their distance. She thought them exceptionally beautiful creatures but it rather annoyed her that she had to court them anew each time she came to the Feins’. And now she was their custodian for more than a week. Empowered to change their cat litter, freshen their bowls of water and food, squat before them and make the effort of scratching their ears: an ignoble sort of task, Marya supposed, but so long as no one observed, she did not greatly mind. In fact she did not mind at all.

She tried to pet Cagliostro—silky, gray, suspicious, with widened greeny eyes—but the cat stepped haughtily away and Marya was left squatting off balance, groping at the air.