He turned his head this way and that, as though seeking a way out, which, nevertheless, he feared to find....
Another car slipped silently along beside his, a great, black-gleaming shadow, the couch of a woman, set on four wheels, decorated with flowers, lighted by dim lamps. Georgi saw the woman very clearly, and the woman looked at him. She cowered rather than sat, among the cushions of the car, having entirely wrapped herself in her gleaming cloak, from which one shoulder projected with the dull whiteness of a swan’s feather.
She was bewilderingly made-up—as though she did not wish to be human, to be a woman, but rather a peculiar animal, disposed, perhaps to play, perhaps to murder.
Calmly holding the man’s gaze, she gently slipped her right hand, sparkling with stones, and the slender arm, which was quite bare and dull white, even as the shoulder, from the wrappings of her cloak, and began to fan herself in a leisurely manner with one of the sheets of paper on which the word Yoshiwara stood....
“No!” said the man. He panted, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Coolness welled out from the fine, strange stuff with which he dried the perspiration from his brow.
Eyes stared at him. Eyes which were fading away. The all-knowing smile of a painted mouth.
With a panting sound Georgi made to open the door of the taxi and to jump out into the road. However, the movement of the car threw him back on to the cushions. He clenched his fists, pressing them before both eyes. A vision shot through his head, quite misty and lacking in outline, a strong little machine, no larger than a five-year-old child. Its short arms pushed and pushed and pushed, alternately forwards, backwards, forwards.... The head, sunken on the chest, rose, grinning....
“No!” shrieked the man, clapping his hands and laughing. He had been set free from the machine. He had exchanged lives.
Exchanged—with whom?
With a man who had said: “You will find more than enough money in my pockets....”