woolen fabrics, which was what most of the establishment’s customers required; she was on the lookout for synthetic material. Before long, she found what she wanted: a slick blue fabric, which though unpleasant to the touch was made entirely from a fiber described by its manufacturer in Omsk as indestructible. As Anna lifted out the bolt of material, she flinched from the discharge of static electricity. She asked for a length of twenty feet, chose a tape, paid, and left the shop.
When she got home, instead of climbing to her fourth-floor apartment she knocked at a door on the first. The door opened, slowly and hesitantly. “I’m glad you’re home, Avdotya,” Anna said, greeting the shape in the semidarkness.
“Ah, Anna, well, well. I thought you were the mailman!” Avdotya said, shouting because she was hard of hearing. Anna, who had no desire to listen to the Metsentsev story, strode briskly and purposefully into the apartment. “I have something for you.” She turned her head toward Avdotya so that the older woman could read her lips.
Next to the window stood the symbol of Avdotya’s craft, the pride of her life: her own sewing machine. At the end of her long and meritorious service in the garment industry, the company had rewarded its retiring forewoman with the gift of an obsolescent model. As a consequence, Avdotya had been the recipient of a virtually unbroken series of commissions ever since her retirement. Since Metsentsev, the Party secretary for that district of Moscow, was also one of her customers, things went smoothly for her.
Anna laid her packet of material on Avdotya’s table and said, “I need a curtain!”
“What?” Avdotya closed the door.
“A curtain, little mother!”
“I couldn’t possibly start making it before next week!”
“But this is only Tuesday!” Anna unrolled the fabric.
“I have to turn the cuffs on thirty shirts. Then Ryukhin on the fifth floor wants me to alter his suit, and the Perth family has ordered a wall hanging!”
“My Petya needs the curtain!” Anna acted distressed. “He’s sick, he’s really sick. He’s got some kind of nasty allergy. If I don’t keep everything that sets it off away from him, then my boy can’t get any air! This curtain will let him breathe freely!”
The old woman picked up the material and examined it with an expert eye. “Loosely woven,” she muttered. “I’ll need to make a double stitch.”
“But look how smooth.” Anna spread out the piece of fabric. “Three panels every six feet. How much work can that be?”
“What about the tape?”
Anna took it out of her bag. “It won’t take you even an hour, Mother! And you’ll be helping Petya breathe at night! Besides, the curtain will muffle Papa’s snoring.”
She negotiated the price in the same tone of voice, and Avdotya determined that Anna should check back with her in two days to see when the work would be finished. Relieved, Anna left the ground-floor apartment and mounted the stairs to her own. Halfway up, she stumbled and spent a few moments wondering about her lack of strength; then she realized she hadn’t had a thing to eat all day long. She closed her eyes and leaned against the banister. When she felt better, she walked up the rest of the way, took off her scarf as she entered the apartment, and hung her coat on the hook.
“You’re late.” Viktor Ipalyevich looked up from the table. “I couldn’t give your lady friend any information about when you might come home.” With a movement of his head, he indicated the sofa. In front of the wall hanging sat Rosa Khleb. A stack of Anna’s father’s poetry collections lay on Rosa’s lap, and the top volume was open.
“Good evening,” she said. “With Comrade Tsazukhin’s poems to read, the time flew by.”
Speechless at this “house call,” Anna looked from one of them to the other.
“She didn’t want anything to drink,” said Viktor Ipalyevich, by way of excusing himself for the fact that he had a cup of tea in front of him while Rosa had nothing.
Anna turned her head toward the sleeping alcove. “Petya’s playing in the courtyard with the others,” his grandfather explained.
“I never tire of reading the poems in The Red Light,” Rosa said, holding up the battered volume.
“May I offer it to you as a gift?”
“What have I done to deserve such an honor?”
“I rarely meet any of Anna’s friends.” He looked at his daughter. “You usually get home at five.”
“I bought the material for Petya’s curtain. Avdotya’s going to sew it