Yesterday evening, Mrs. Fein said, she began to grow frantic. Maximilian had never behaved quite like this—to such an extreme. When she rapped at the door there was no response: nothing. She had halfway considered telephoning Marya then, to inform her of the situation, to ask would she come to the house and make her appeal. . . . Her reasoning was, she said with a glance at Marya, and a mirthless little laugh, her reasoning was, he would have opened the door to Marya if he would have opened it to anyone at all.

Marya, who did not believe this to be true, nonetheless sat in silence, her gloveless hands clasped tight together. She could not have said what seemed to her at that moment more frightening, unthinkable—the fact that her lover was gravely ill or the fact that her lover’s wife knew about her, seemed to know a great deal about her, had probably known all along.

She noted with what rough nervous skill the older woman drove the Mercedes along the narrow winding residential streets close by the university; how unhesitatingly she pushed into traffic on a larger street, even sounding her horn. She gripped the steering wheel hard; she was wearing smart black kidskin gloves. Marya’s own hands were chapped, her fingernails bitten and raw, but she made no effort to hide them. Her teeth were chattering from the cold.

Shortly before midnight, Else Fein continued, she had telephoned the hospital and the police. And an ambulance was sent at once, it arrived within minutes, and the door was forced open, and Maximilian was discovered lying on the floor . . . he’d had a cerebral hemorrhage, as it turned out.

Hearing these words, knowing now that all this would have a name, Marya began to cry.

Else Fein reached out to give both her hands a hard little squeeze, chiding, reproachful. She told Marya that she would have to be brave, wouldn’t she. She must not give in, she must not think the worst. For what if Maximilian had regained consciousness when they arrived, what if he wanted to see her. . . . Else Fein’s sudden intimacy, even the pressure of her strong fingers, struck Marya as unsurprising, familiar, though the woman had never touched Marya before. Though the two of them had never been alone together before.

Marya had no idea how far away the hospital was. She sat stiff, numbed, her cheeks wet with tears, listening to Else Fein’s accented voice (she spoke now disjointedly of interns, the emergency room, the remarkable quick service, she had counted at one time eleven persons, doctors and nurses both, attending her husband: she had faith that they would save him); watching the slushy street, the damp falling snow, the windshield wipers. None of this could be happening, yet it was happening with the effortlessness of a dream. Or was it in fact far less strenuous than a dream. . . . The two of them making their way through the twilight of a winter morning, in a sleigh of some kind, or was it a boat, a little blue boat, pushing its way bravely forward. She didn’t know their destination. She had not been told. She shut her eyes and made her secret wish: that their journey would never end.