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half-full, started to move.
    Before they reached Vazrazhdane, where Margarita prepared to get off, obviously to return home, she had won quite a few games of solitaire, on average a game every couple of stops. He let her descend from the tram alone and stayed on, feeling a kind of dazed relief. Margarita had apparently won her right to go out and play with the computer.
    Valentin got off several stops after his sister and also headed home. He was ashamed, but he had managed to get some kind of essential information. He had witnessed something that could serve as an explanation, although he knew it didn’t really explain anything. Some words could be used to describe what Margarita was doing with the computer, but so what? Other words could be used to describe what had happened between him and Raya, but so what? Such words could form sentences full of pathos, yet they didn’t lead to any clarity or illumination. They couldn’t show him a way, or reveal a place where everything resolved itself and fell into place, if not forever, at least for a while. Why could things happen like this, but also like that, and otherwise?
    Valentin felt like he had become the embodiment of a crossroads and that there were many possible directions. And he silently cursed his fate—to have been born an imperfect being, and lured, who knows why or how, into searching for meaning.
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20.
Suite
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    The gentleman with the umbrella entered the café, looked around him for a place to leave his umbrella and after freeing himself of the thing by propping it up against the edge of the table, sat down and stared at it. Suddenly there was the sound of parchment-dry skin, hands rubbing together, and his fingers produced a kind of impatient double snap. He cast a glance around, as if to stretch his neck inside his shirt and jacket, though elegantly enough not to attract any attention. Still, several pairs of bored eyes briefly turned in his direction, then, the movement caused by his entry having subsided, his presence was accepted as a fact. The gentleman rose from his seat a little and settled back comfortably, obviously in a peaceful state of mind. He laughed to himself at the thought of the panicky “No room! There’s no room!” from Alice in Wonderland , and felt happy.
    The place was just the way he liked it—ceilings at least fifteen feet high, lined with plaster friezes, supported by large cream-colored marble columns; a thick, dark-green carpet on the floor and shiny brass ornaments over the heavy, polished furniture; ample, cushiony armchairs that invited intimacy; a discreet melody drifting from the enormous white grand piano which someone was probably playing.
    In such a place, even waiting could be pleasurable. And he assumed the posture of a patient guest waiting for his party with an expression of benevolent tolerance.
    He was meeting a client in a divorce case. She had emphatically refused to come to his office, for who knows what complicated reasons. So their first meeting was to take place on neutral ground, far from the courtroom, over afternoon tea whose taste could delicately suggest the beau monde . He had already ordered his tea and wondered whether his client would appear before the waiter returned, and whether his client would be able to recognize him. The elaborate ritual of recognizing someone, with its “oh” and “ah” and “are you… oh, I recognized you immediately.” The gentleman speculated if their conversation in such circumstances could be called “tête-à-tête.” It probably could, if it came to that. Some deluded hope that their starting positions would be equal, a game whose purpose was to distance themselves from what usually happened and so suppress the mounting anxiety. He felt satisfaction at his own ability to analyze the situation. Everything seemed under control.
    Two people, a man and a young woman, entered, leaving the winter