Whoever had let Arkady in wasn’t altogether trusting. The ground-floor door opened and a stern face in a nurse’s cap looked out and demanded, “Wohnen Sie hier?” Her eyes were on the mail.

“Nein, danke.” He backed out the door, surprised she had let him get as far as he had.

Arkady didn’t know much about social customs in the West, but it struck him as odd that a housemaid would tell an unknown caller how long her employer would be away from home. Or that she would be so patient with the caller’s primitive German. Why was she cleaning the apartment if Benz was gone? He wondered about the letter. In Moscow, depositors stood in line with bankbooks. In the West, banks mailed statements, but did the envelope usually come personally signed?

He walked a couple of hundred meters up Königinstrasse, crossed to the park and strolled back on a path overhung with oaks to sit on a bench with a view of Benz’s house. It was the hour when Müncheners walked their dogs. They favored small ones—pugs and dachshunds not much larger than their beers. This parade was followed by a promenade of elderly, elegantly dressed couples, some with matching canes. Arkady wouldn’t have been amazed to see carriages rolling down Königinstrasse behind them.

People went in and out of the house. The doctors drove away in long, somber cars. Finally the nurse of the dour countenance emerged, gave the street a parting look that put it on its good behavior and walked toward the other direction.

At a certain point, Arkady became aware that the lamps were brighter, the path darker, the night black. It was eleven P.M. All he was sure of was that Herr Benz had not returned.

It was one A.M. before he returned to the pension. If the rooms had been searched in his absence, he couldn’t tell; they simply looked as barren as before. He remembered that he should have bought food. There were so many things he forgot to do. Here he was in the lap of luxury and it was as if he craved starvation.

He sat at the window with his last cigarette. The station was still. Red and green switches lit the yard, but no trains were moving. At one corner of the station was a bus terminal. It had shut down too. Empty buses lined the street. An occasional headlight went by, racing after … what?

What is the thing we crave most in life? The sense that someone somewhere remembers and loves us. Even better if we love them in turn. Anything can be endured if that idea holds fast.

What could be worse than discovering how fatuous, how ignorant, that assumption can be?

So, better not to seek.

In the morning, Arkady was visited by Federov, who flitted around the apartment like a maid on inspection.