In the evening we were deciding whether to go to the wedding.
The Gushchins' son from the third entrance was getting married, the one I remember in a pram and whom Igor doesn't remember at all, because he doesn't look at the people in the yard, he looks at their shoes. The wedding was set for the eighth, in the works canteen, and the invitation was brought to us in person, and that means you can't not go.
"We're not going," said Igor.
"We've been invited."
"We've been invited because we're in the entrance."
"We've been in the entrance twelve years."
He sighed and started eating. We were eating potatoes I had fried badly, because I was distracted, and we both noticed and both said nothing.
"So what do we give them?" he asked after a while.
"Money."
"Money's not interesting."
"Everybody needs money."
"Everybody needs it, but nobody will remember it." Igor pushed his plate away and began to reason, and he always reasons the same way, with examples. "What were we given? A dinner service we've never once eaten off. Towels that are still in the cupboard, never unfolded. And an iron."
"The iron was good."
"The iron was excellent. The iron did twelve years." He raised a finger. "So an iron is what you give."
"Igor, you can't give an iron at a wedding."
"Why?"
"Because it looks like a hint."
"A hint at what?"
Here I was at a loss. We sat a while, I thought about it and was still at a loss.
"I don't know," I said. "You just can't. Everybody knows you can't, and why, nobody knows."
Igor took this as proof that he was right and said that in that case he doesn't know anything either, and if nobody knows, then you can. We argued for about twenty minutes. I said that if he gave an iron I would announce to everyone that it was from him alone, and he said that was exactly right, because the idea was his. It ended with our deciding to give money in an envelope and put a card on top, and the card he assigned to me, because he has handwriting.
Then he went to watch the football and commented aloud, although there was nobody in the room.
The bag hung on the hook in the hall.
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