For instance, she had a few romances in embryo. Mere ideas, wisps, of romance.

There was a young Englishman studying physics who seemed quite taken with her, perhaps because her manner with him was so unforced, so casual, and he was accustomed to far more determined American women. There was a young assistant professor of history who approached her at the Bach cantata, and afterward took her out for dinner several times—though in fact Marya always insisted upon paying her bill. A youngish man squired her about the computer center under his guidance (he was in “computer science”), took her to an on-campus showing of a Fellini film, and afterward—deeply offended, it seemed, by her insistence that she had to go to bed early, she couldn’t invite him to stay in her room—came close to raping her. (The struggle took place in silence. Though they each grunted, panted, swore. He tried to lock Marya in an armhold and force her down onto her bed, Marya resisted strenuously, Marya managed to knee him in the groin. . . . Only then did he cry out: “God damn you! Cockteaser! Cunt!”)

Ernest Slater too dropped by but his approach was oblique and circumspect. He chatted for a while about the books they were reading and the books they hoped to write. Finally he said, “You are an attractive woman, Marya,” as if the issue had been hotly debated; Marya stared at him with no idea of how to reply. She had seen him once or twice with a young woman she assumed to be his wife: limp fair hair, glasses, a narrow pretty face, features rather like Ernest’s. He had not troubled to introduce them, nor had Marya sought an introduction.

Can it be, Marya thought, mesmerized, stiffening, in another minute he’s going to touch me? In another minute something will happen?

But the minute passed. Nothing happened.

Ernest roused himself to his feet, yawned nervously, ran a hand through his hair. On the way out of Marya’s room he said suddenly, in a rush of words, “Does he ever mention me? I mean, you know, now and then—just in passing—incidentally? Does he ever allude to me at all?”

MARYA NOTED A chilling aphorism of Nietzsche’s. Terrible experiences give one cause to speculate whether the one who experiences them may not be something terrible.

She would have liked to hear Maximilian say these words in his native German, with that special Bavarian inflection.

MARYA AND HER lover began to quarrel frequently but it was never entirely clear what they quarreled about.