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for days, waiting for his place in one of the dormitories. You’re a lucky man tonight, Toma said under his breath.
    Toma knew that Mrs. Pringle, the warden of this place, would be in her kitchen, the door open a crack so that she could hear anything from the dormitories above and below that required her attention. There’s only the one o’ me, she was fond of saying when some problem was brought to her attention, and when the sun went down, after a long day of lugging her pails of disinfectant from one twilit room to another, the time for complaints, suggestions, and even conversation was over. Mr. Pringle, in Toma’s experience, never left the apartment, but perhaps it was he who added the drop from the bottle to Mrs. Pringle’s tea, and who closed the door by degrees upon her immobile seated bulk until by eight o’clock the door was shut fast, and the Italians and the Poles could murder one another in their beds for all she cared.
    â€œMrs. Pringle,” said Toma, directing his voice through the sliver of light between door and frame, “may I come in?”
    It was Mr. Pringle who came to the door, spoke without opening it. “Mrs. Pringle is resting.”
    â€œSir, it is for my money. I must leave tonight, and I do not know when I can be coming back. My deposit is—”
    â€œMrs. Pringle is resting. Ye’ll have to come back in the morning ifit’s a question of money.” Before Toma could reply or move his foot, the door closed in his face.
    Sounds from the stairwell: the rustling of silk, a sharp in-drawn breath, a murmured exclamation. “Sweet Mary mother of Jesus.” And now hurried footsteps on the stairs.
    â€œDid I not tell you to stay? Women do not come here. Not even the others.”
    â€œI wanted to see the place where you live, that is all. The man on the stairs surprised me, and I was not paying attention to where I stepped. You are not angry with me, I hope?”
    He was not angry but ashamed, and so he said nothing.
    â€œYou are angry, then. You will not even look at me.”
    â€œThere is nothing to see here. It is simply the place where I sleep, that is all.”
    Her eyes roamed the ochre walls and the cobwebbed recesses of the ceiling. “I wish I had seen your real home. It is not very clean here.” So saying, she gathered her skirt an inch higher and then added as an afterthought, “Will I be disturbing anyone else if I see where you sleep?”
    He took her wrist and led her like a prisoner up the stairs and down another corridor, where two doors faced one another under a smoking lamp. He put his finger to his lips and opened the right-hand door.
    The room stretched away left and right, so shallow that Harriet’s skirt grazed the foot of the bed opposite the door once she had stepped inside. By the light from the hall she could see how many beds there were, and how closely set, and her imagination multiplied that number. In the far corner of the room in the deep shadows she could make out what appeared to be wide shelving, or platforms, each level punctuated by its row of boots. One of the boots moved. The door closed behind her and she was sightless, enveloped by the stale smell of the sleepers and their sounds: snoring, an unhealthy shallow cough, and an indistinct, disturbingly wet noise from that far corner of this human warehouse.
    Toma found her hand and led her toward the front of the room, toward that odd bright shape, which turned out to be a tear in thehanging cloth. He pulled the curtain to one side and the eddying snow reflected light onto the bed below the window. He knelt now to reach under the bed and spoke to the sleeper in a harsh whisper of unfamiliar sounds.
    The sleeper opened his eyes without stirring, nodded once in agreement to whatever Toma had said, and demonstrated no curiosity about his guest. Turning to the window, he pulled the blanket over his head while Toma foraged under the bed.