About Safonov, Igor asked on Tuesday, exactly a week later, and asked so much in passing that at first I didn't understand what he meant.
We were sorting the hotel batch. The shoes had come back for adjustment, because the housekeeper at the hotel had changed and decided the instep was too high, and Igor had been irritated about it for three days, because the instep was fine and the housekeeper was new.
"Listen," he said, without looking up from the last. "Did that old man come again?"
"Which one?"
"The one who was asking about the father. In the autumn."
I was counting pairs at that moment and did not lose count. That I remember exactly, because afterwards I tested myself many times at that spot: I did not lose count, did not stop, nothing in me flinched. I simply counted to the end and wrote the figure in the ledger.
"He came," I said.
Igor raised his head.
"And?"
"Nothing. You were busy with the cases, I didn't call you. He sat a while, drank tea. Talked about the trade school."
That was true. All of it was the plain truth, and I didn't even feel that I was saying something false, because I wasn't saying it.
"And what did he want?"
"Nothing in particular. He's retired, he goes about, remembers things."
Igor grunted and went back to the last.
I stood there thinking that was that, the conversation was over, and that it had ended on its own, without my taking part. And in that second he asked again, in the same voice he had asked about the instep.
"And did he leave anything?"
Between that question and my answer there was nothing. No pause, no thought, no choice. I searched my memory for that interval afterwards and did not find it: it is empty there, like film with a frame missing.
"No," I said.
Igor nodded and started grinding down the instep.
I went out into the front room, stood behind the counter, opened the till and looked at the tray. The tray lay straight. Under it lay a sheet folded in four, and there was not one reason why Igor should ever reach in there, because I keep the till and he has not counted the takings once in twelve years.
Then a woman came in with children's boots, and I took the boots.
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