They came together at the end of March, at closing time, and I understood at once that it was not by chance, because Safonov let the woman go first and held the door, and our door is not one that gets held, it gets pushed.
"This is Nina Sergeyevna," he said. "She wanted to come herself."
The woman was about fifty, in a blue coat, hair cut short, a bag over her shoulder. She said hello and looked at me attentively and calmly, and I understood that she had recognised me, though she could never have seen me.
"Nina," she said. "I'm the one who sends you the recordings."
I knew who she was. I had simply never thought about what she looked like.
"Igor Ilyich didn't ring," said Safonov, addressing no one. "I waited until New Year and realised that he wouldn't."
He said it without any expression, the way one speaks of the weather, and he did not return to it.
Igor was behind the partition working, and you could hear him working. Slava had left at six.
I offered tea. Nina said there was no need, but I put out three mugs anyway: for me, for Safonov and for her. The third is Slava's now, he brought his own in December because there wasn't one of ours left for him. She sat down on the same chair by the window and never touched hers. Safonov remained standing by the wall, quite far from both of us, holding his mug with both hands.
"I'll tell you now," she said. "Nikolai Arkadyevich says you need to know. I thought about it and decided that probably I should."
And she began.
She spoke evenly, in short sentences, without a single unnecessary word, the way one tells a story one has rehearsed many times. I did not interrupt.
They agreed on a year. Pavel left in March, she stayed, because the flat was rented and had to be paid for, and her work was here, and her mother was here. The year passed. He rang and said the master was taking him for a second season, because you learn nothing in one season, and that was true.
Then there was a proper paid job in Kostroma. Then another belfry, and benefactors were found for it, and that happens once in a lifetime. Then the master said that now it made sense to finish learning properly, because after forty it's too late to retrain.
"Every time there was a reason," said Nina. "I want to make that clear. Not once did he stay for some foolish whim."
In the fourth year she went to see him herself, to look, and stayed two weeks.
"And everything there was good," she said. "He had a room, work, people. He showed me everything. He'd come alive; I hadn't seen him like that in fifteen years."
She was silent a moment.
"And by then there was nowhere left for him to come back to. Not because I wouldn't have taken him back. Because there was nothing left to put back together. Over those four years I had started living alone. It happened somehow by itself."
I repeated it to myself: four years for them, twelve for Igor and me. Then once more, though I already knew both numbers.
Safonov stood by the wall and said nothing.
"We didn't quarrel," Nina added. "Don't think that. We still talk on the phone. I listen to the recordings, he sends them to me."
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
She thought.
"I don't know. Nikolai Arkadyevich said you're a person who asks. I thought: then let her know what comes after."
She said it without any emphasis. I remember her face at that minute and I think I shall always remember it: calm, a little tired, and there was no reproach in it. A reproach I could have borne.
Then she looked at the clock and said she had a bus to catch.
I went out onto the front step with her. We stood a while, she buttoned her coat, adjusted her bag and said it was forty minutes to the Kirovsky district if there were no jams. Then she said goodbye and set off for the stop.
I went back, gathered up the mugs, carried them to the sink, washed two. The third was full and cold, and I poured it into the sink and did not wash it. Behind the partition Igor switched off the machine.
It went quiet in the shop.
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