Then he would go to another house, and another, and yet another. He would explain his object, argue with the unfriendly "Madames," give countless details about Nacha. At times he begged for help; but at others, he would become enraged and insult the woman who told him "She is not here." Exasperated, maddened, he would rush out and stumble into the first taxi that passed, giving addresses of yet other houses. For he could think of nothing but this purpose. He came to the point of believing that everyone was in league to outwit him. But he would succeed yet! He had one irresistible ally: the will to find her!
"She is not here. We don't know her."
"What? Not here either?" Then the earth must have swallowed her! They all knew nothing about her, these people? That was a lie! They wanted to lead him on, exploit him, as they had done countless times. There was nothing but lies and hypocrisy and evil in these women. And he had defended them, ruined himself for them! Ah, Nacha! Nacha! What had her unhappy destiny brought her to? She asked him not to look for her, since she was destined to a bad life! But all the more would he persist, with all the more eagerness, all the more desperation! He would seek her, not for love, but to save her from those stagnant waters on whose brim ill-fated women and girls lurched and staggered, dizzy with the poisonous gases of that loathsome morass!
"She is not here. We don't know her."
Every word fell on him like a whip-lash. He would come out of these accursed houses, sick, in physical pain; and he could not grow used to disappointments. At first his heart had been high with hope. But now his step was beginning to falter, and a strange expression had come over his face. His eyes glanced nervously about at people and objects in the room, or stared at the woman he was questioning. He knew that she too would say, "She is not here." Yet he went on to the next house and to the next, repeating his frantic question. Then, almost invariably, without a word more he would rush out; though once, to the stupefaction of the women, he uttered an exclamation of anguish, and staggered to a chair.
"She is not here. We don't know her," was the unvarying reply.
At the thought that she might be dead his throat tightened and closed, while the rest of his body felt the oppression as of a great weight of earth upon it. Nacha dead! What was he to do in a world without Nacha? Should he return to the place he had formerly occupied in life? Or consecrate himself to those other wretches of the underworld? But then Nacha could not have died without his feeling it, without his knowing it! No, Nacha could not be dead! She was alive! She loved him! She was waiting for him!
"She is not here. We don't know her."
Well, didn't he know that Nacha wasn't there? Nacha loved him, and was expecting him, somewhere. That much was sure! If he had come to this particular house to inquire it was merely to be thorough. The people there could all go to the devil for all he cared! He wasn't going to ask any favors of them! Nacha was waiting for him.... What did the rest of the world matter ... society, or its victims, or the cabaret, or the workmen murdered in the Square, or his mother's death, or his sister's! Nacha was expecting him! His heart, where a sweet, incessant song was singing, leapt, mad with joy, like the throbbing breast of a bird! Nacha was expecting him....