“Yes, true, I am one of the family here,” he continued calmly, moving his glass in slow circles on the table. “Just think, I dined in this very house, day after day, for exactly four months.”
“No? Seriously?” Yarchenko wondered and laughed.
“In all seriousness. The table here isn’t at all bad, by the way. The food is filling and savory, although exceedingly greasy.”
“But how did you ever...”
“Why, just because I was tutoring for high school a daughter of Anna Markovna, the lady of this hospitable house. Well, I stipulated that part of my monthly pay should be deducted for my dinners.”
“What a strange fancy!” said Yarchenko. “And did you do this of your own will? Or ... Pardon me, I am afraid of seeming indiscreet to you ... Perhaps at that time ... extreme necessity? ...”
“Not at all. Anna Markovna soaked me three times as much as it would have cost in a student’s dining room. I simply wanted to live here a while on a somewhat nearer, closer footing, to enter intimately into this little world, so to speak.”
“A-ah! It seems I am beginning to understand!” beamed Yarchenko. “Our new friend—pardon me for the little familiarity—is, apparently, gathering material from life? And, perhaps, in a few years we will have the pleasure of reading ...”
“A t-r-ragedy out of a brothel!” Boris Sobashnikov put in loudly, like an actor.
While the reporter had been answering Yarchenko, Tamara quietly got up from her place, walked around the table, and, bending down over Sobashnikov, spoke in a whisper in his ear: