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.

Eight

EIGHT

Sylvester was black. That was the first—but was it the most significant?—of the problems.

Heavyset middle-aged Sylvester with his bloodshot eyes and his plump pouting lips, the color of mashed grapes; Sylvester with his jaunty railroadman’s cap pulled low over his forehead, and a cigarette (the ash grown long, precarious) slanted in his mouth; Sylvester swinging past with his noisy wheeled contraption—pail, wringer, cloth mop—mumbling in a low graveled voice, “G’morning, Professor Knauer.” Though the man gave the impression of being harassed, overworked—he panted, sweated, his skin exuded a rich oily moisture even on cold mornings—he usually had time to contemplate Marya, to stare very hard at Marya, and to give the innocent words “Professor Knauer” an exquisite sort of spin.