Sara had been polite to him for three days running. Distrustful, he sought to provoke her, but she saved her tantrums for Volf and Albrekt, left the matches where Sanzo could find them, asked him if he didn't want a few kroner back from his pension so he could go to the tavern, and finally asked him if he wouldn't like somebody to come in and read to him now and then.

"Read what?"

"The newspaper, anything you like. It wouldn't be so dull for you. One of the Benat children would do it, Lisha maybe, she's always got a book. You used to read so much."

"I don't any more," he said with stupid sarcasm, but Sara sailed on, talking about Mrs Benat's laundry business, Lisha's losing her job, where Sanzo's mother's old books might have got to, she had been a great reader too, always with a book. Sanzo half listened, made no reply, and was not surprised when Lisha Benat turned up, late the next afternoon, to read to him. Sara usually got her way. She had even dug out, from the closet in Volf's room, three books that had belonged to Sanzo's mother, old novels in school editions. Lisha, who sounded very ill at ease, started in promptly to read one of them, Karantay's The Young Man Liyve. She was husky and fidgety at first, but then began to get interested in what she was reading. She left before Sara and Albrekt came home, saying, "Shall I come back tomorrow?"

"If you want," Sanzo said. "I like your voice."

By the third afternoon she was quite caught in the spell of the long, gentle, romantic story. Sanzo, bored and yet at peace, listened patiently. She came to read two or three afternoons a week, when her mother did not need her; he took to being at home by four, in case she came.

"You like that fellow Liyve," he said one day when she had closed the book. They sat at the kitchen table. It was close and quiet in the kitchen, evening of a long September day.

"Oh, he's so unhappy," she said with such compassion that she then laughed at herself. Sanzo smiled. His face, handsome and rigidly intent, was broken by the smile, changed, brought alive. He reached out, found the book and her hand on it, and put his own hand over hers. "Why does that make you like him?"

"I don't know!"

He got up abruptly and came round the table till he stood right by her chair, so that she could not get up. His face had returned to its usual intent look. "Is it dark?"

"No. Evening."

"I wish I could see you," he said, and his left hand groped and touched her face. She started at the very gentle touch, then sat motionless. He took her by the arms, a groping touch again but followed by a hard grip, and pulled her up to stand against him. He was shaking; she stood quiet in his arms, pressed against him. He kissed her mouth and face, his hand struggled with the buttons of her blouse; then abruptly he let her go, and turned away.

She caught a deep breath, like a sob. The faint September wind stirred around them, blowing in from the open window in another room. He still did not turn, and she said softly, "Sanzo – "

"You'd better go on," he said. "I don't know. Sorry. Go on, Lisha."

She stood a moment, then bent and put her lips against his hand, which rested on the table. She picked up her kerchief and went out. When she had closed the door behind her she stopped on the landing outside. There was no sound for some while, then she heard a chair scrape in the apartment, and then, so faint she was not certain it came from behind that door, a whistled tune. Somebody was coming up the stairs and she ran down, but the tune stayed in her head; she knew the words, it was an old song. She hummed it as she crossed the courtyard.

Two tattered beggars met on the street,

'Hey, little brother, give me bread to eat!'

After two days she came again. Neither of them had much to say, and she set to reading at once. They had got to the chapter where the poet Liyve, ill in his garret, is visited by Countess Luisa, the chapter called "The First Night." Lisha's mouth was dry, and several times her breath stuck in her throat. "I need a drink of water," she said, but she did not get it. When she stood up he did, and when she saw him reach out his hand she took it.

This time in her acceptance of him there was one obscure moment, a movement suppressed before it was made, before she knew she had resisted anything. "All right," he whispered, and his hands grew gentler. Her eyes were closed, his were open; they stood there not in lamplight but in darkness, and alone.

The next day they had a go at reading, for they still could not talk to each other, but the reading ended sooner than before. Then for several days Lisha was needed in the laundry. As she worked she kept singing the little song.

'Go to the baker's house, ask him for the key,

If he won't hand it over, say you were sent by me!'

Stooping over the laundry tub, her mother took up the song with her. Lisha stopped singing.

"Can't I sing it too, since I've got it in my ears all day?" Mrs Benat plunged her red, soap-slick arms into the steaming tub. Lisha cranked the wringer on a stiff pair of overalls.

"Take it easy. What's wrong?"

"They won't go through."

"Button caught, maybe. Why are you so jumpy lately?"

"I'm not."

"I'm not Sanzo Chekey, I can see you, my girl!"

Silence again, while Lisha struggled with the wringer. Mrs Benat lifted a basket of wet clothes to the table, bracing it against her chest with a grunt. "Where'd you get this idea of reading to him?"

"His aunt."

"Sara?"

"She said it might cheer him up."

"Cheer him up! Sara? She'd have turned him and Volf both out by now if it wasn't for their pensions. And I don't know as I could blame her. Though he looks after himself as well as you could expect." Mrs Benat hoisted another load onto the table, shook the suds off her swollen hands, and faced her daughter. "Now see here, Alitsia. Sara Chekey's a respectable woman. But you get your ideas from me, not from her. See?"

"Yes, mother."

Lisha was free that afternoon, but did not go to the Chekeys' flat. She took her youngest sister to the park to see the puppetshow, and did not come back till the windy autumn evening was growing dark. That night, in bed, she composed herself in a comfortable but formal position, flat on her back, legs straight, arms along her sides, and set herself to think out what her mother had been saying. It had to do with Sanzo. Did Sara want her and Sanzo to be together? What for? Surely not for the same reason she herself wanted to be with Sanzo.

Then what was wrong with it, did her mother think she might fall in love with Sanzo?

There was a slight pause in her mind, and then she thought, But I am. She had not really thought at all, this last week, since the first time he had kissed her; now her mind cleared, everything falling into place as if it had been that way all along. Doesn't she know that? Lisha wondered, since it was now so obvious. Her mother must understand; she always understood things sooner than Lisha did. But she had not been warning Lisha against Sanzo. All she had said was to stay clear of Sara. That was all right. Lisha did not like Sara, and willingly agreed: she wouldn't listen to anything Sara had to say. What had she to say, anyhow? It was nothing to do with her.

"Sanzo," Lisha said with her lips only, not her voice, so that her sister Eva beside her in the bed wouldn't hear; then, content, she turned on her side with her legs curled up and fell asleep.

The next afternoon she went to the Chekeys' flat, and as they sat down as usual at the kitchen table she looked at Sanzo, studying him. His eyes looked all right, only his intent expression gave away his blindness, but one side of his forehead had a crushed look, and you could follow the scarring even under his hair. How queasy did it make her? Did it make her want to get away, as from hydrocephalic children and beggars with two huge nostrils in place of a nose? No; she wanted to touch that scar, very lightly, as he had first touched her face; she wanted to touch his hair, the corners of his mouth, his strong, beautiful, relaxed hands resting on the table as he waited for her to read, or to speak. The only thing that bothered her was a passivity, an unconscious submissiveness, in the way he sat there so quietly waiting. It was not a face or a body made for passivity.