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derived  pleasure from telling how everything had gone  in  the hospital and
embellishing the story  with invented details. But just then he was far from
such things,  and, little  observant  though  Riukhin  was, now,  after  the
torture on the truck, he peered keenly at the pirate for the first time  and
realized  that,  though the  man  asked about  Homeless  and  even exclaimed
'Ai-yai-yai!', he was essentially quite indifferent  to  Homeless's fate and
did  not  feel a bit sorry for him.  'And bravo!  Right  you  are!'  Riukhin
thought  with cynical, self-annihilating malice and, breaking off  the story
about the schizophrenia, begged:
     'Archibald  Archibaldovich,  a drop of  vodka  . ..' The pirate made  a
compassionate face and whispered:
     'I understand . . . this very minute . . .' and beckoned to a waiter. A
quarter of an hour later, Riukhin sat in complete solitude, hunched over his
bream, drinking glass after glass, understanding and recognizing that it was
no longer  possible to  set  anything right in  his life, that  it was  only
possible to forget.
     The  poet  had  wasted his night  while  others  were feasting and  now
understood  that it was impossible to get it  back. One needed only to raise
one's head  from  the  lamp  to  the  sky to understand  that  the night was
irretrievably lost. Waiters were hurriedly tearing the  tablecloths from the
tables. The  cats  slinking  around  the veranda  had  a morning  look.  Day
irresistibly heaved itself upon the poet.


CHAPTER 7. A Naughty Apartment

     If Styopa Likhodeev had  been told the next morning: 'Styopa! You'll be
shot if  you don't get  up this minute!' --  Styopa would have replied in  a
languid, barely audible voice: 'Shoot me, do what  you like with me, I won't
get up.'
     Not only not get up, it seemed to him  that he could not open his eyes,
because if he were to do so,  there would be a  flash of  lightning, and his

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