Free The Buddha's Return by Gaito Gazdánov Page A

moss forcing their way through rock, about this strange growth on his face. I invited him into a small café, ordered him a glass of red wine and a sandwich—he ate very little, like all alcoholics—and asked him whether he knew Zina, her husband and her daughter. At first he answered evasively, but soon enough the wine set to work on him, and he told me everything he knew about what he called “that family”. I had to make a tremendous effort, however, to get him to talk about what interested me, as he would constantly digress onto a never-ending tale of some princess, a former mistress of his, whom he swore he would never forget and who had made such a wonderful career for herself in Paris, which, incidentally, was only to be expected, as she was such an exceptional woman. I couldn’t quite gather what sort of career it was exactly, all the more so as my friend said that it had taken years of patience and careful planning for the princess to achieve her aims. In the event, it all became clear: the princess, it turned out, had workedas a lady’s maid for an old woman who was almost deaf and blind, and whom she had systematically robbed. And when the old woman died, leaving her fortune to some distant relatives, the princess found herself in possession of a considerable sum of money. It was then, he said, that she scorned his love and retreated into herself. He was clearly looking to me for sympathy; I nodded and vaguely remarked that these things happen and that fortune is not always the privilege of the worthy. He shook my hand with drunken sincerity and at last began on Zina and Lida. He related to me their story with such details that seemingly no one could have known, yet he mentioned them as if they were plain for all to see. First, he alleged that Zina herself did not know who Lida’s father was, because she had led a rather varied life in those days. Until the age of twelve, Lida had lived in the countryside, and only then did she come to live with her mother. At fourteen, she became the lover of the mousey marksman; when Zina found out about this there was a terrible scandal, she launched herself at her the man and wounded him with a pair of scissors—“In a fit of female jealousy,” said the marksman. Later, however, everything “returned to normal”, particularly after Lida ran away from home and disappeared for four years. Precisely how she spent them, no one, not even my informant, knew. True, one of his friends, Petya Tarasov, said that he had seen Lida in Tunis, selling things along the waterfront, but it was impossible tobelieve everything that Petya Tarasov said, since he was a drunkard, and the marksman also spoke disapprovingly of him, averring that he was an untrustworthy man. It subsequently came out, however, that Lida had indeed lived in Tunis. Then she returned home; her appearance had given one to suspect that she had been ill for a long time.
    “Did they all live on Rue Simon le Franc back then?” I enquired.
    No, it turned out that they had never lived there: they had an apartment in Rue de l’Église Saint-Martin.
    “An apartment?” I said in astonishment. I knew this street; it didn’t seem at all possible for there to have been any apartments there—there were only wooden huts housing Polish labourers, Arabs and Chinese, and on the corner was Bar Polski, one of the most sinister places I had ever seen. According to the description provided by my friend, however, Zina’s apartment consisted entirely of two rooms, with no running water, gas or even electricity. I felt it would be too much to ask where Zina got the money for her meagre living; I knew that such questions were inappropriate among this sort of people. But the marksman explained to me that Zina and Lida earned decent money going from one building to the next, singing, while the mousey marksman accompanied them on the accordion. This had gone on until Zina somehow managed to ruin her voice for good. The money they