Somewhere in the distance, there was an explosion. I was about to down the rest of my Brombeere (raspberry) juice in one gulp and run outside when I realized there was no juice glass on the table. The waiter had never come. This restaurant wasn’t even open. It had gone out of business after all. Then, I remembered it was summer. Yet Mayakovsky was dressed for winter with a heavy coat and a scarf. He had apparently disappeared while I wasn’t watching. When had he left? If I hurried, I might catch him.

The Ring named after him was deserted and perfectly still. Wondering if he had left the Ring I went out to the main street, where I caught sight of a scarf waving in the breeze, a back receding into the distance. Smoothly threading its way through the steady stream of Volkswagens, the figure crossed the wide avenue to the trolley stop on the other side. I tried to cross too, but with so many cars whizzing by I couldn’t get across. By the time three big trucks had rumbled by, blocking my view, Mayakovsky had disappeared, but when I finally managed to cross over to the trolley stop, which was called Tschaikowskistrasse, I discovered a bar in front of it, with an open door. I peered in to see her sitting at a table right in the middle, looking at me. It couldn’t be. I rubbed my eyes, took a closer look, and saw that it was Lilya. That well-built, dapper man next to her must be her husband, Osip B. His clean-shaven cheeks glowed with confidence, and his eyes were bright—sharp but not cold. Using long division as a metaphor, if that brightness was the dividend, with either determination or a sense of responsibility the divisors, what was left over would be the sort of longing I saw in his eyes. The burliness of his chest was proportionate to the size of his fortune, and his freshly shined shoes gleamed like the backs of Japanese rhinoceros beetles.

“Lilya,” he called, and the woman grasped his arm, placing her cheek on his shoulder, sweetly whispering “Osip” in his ear. Yet all the while she was looking straight at me, sending me a come-hither look. She must have thought I was Mayakovsky. I couldn’t forgive her for sidling up to Osip that way while continuing to flirt with me.

“You promised me you’d be where we’d agreed at four o’clock, and here you are,” I said, loud enough for her husband to hear. Perhaps it was his old lover Maria rather than Lilya he’d agreed to meet at four, but that didn’t matter anymore. My heart was full of Mayakovsky’s pure anger, and as his spokesman, I was determined to torment this woman.

Ignoring what I’d said, and with a sticky sort of smile, Lilya peered into her husband’s eyes. The smile Osip gave her in return was tender, all-embracing; then he turned to me with the same kind look in his eyes and asked, “Did you get some poems written?” He wasn’t the least bit jealous. While he was definitely convinced that I was Mayakovsky, it apparently didn’t occur to him that I might steal his wife. I now saw something of her in Osip.