Page:Diamonds To Sit On.pdf/63

 

WHILE Bender was inspecting the home for the aged, Hippolyte left the porter's room, and feeling the cold air on his shaved head he hurried down the streets of his native town.

The pavements were wet and there was a ceaseless dripping of water from the roofs of the houses. Sparrows were busy pecking in the gutter. The sun was shining brightly. Advertisements on the damp telegraph poles were wrinkled and the printed letters of the notices: 'I can teach you to play the guitar by the numerical system', 'I give lessons in social science to those about to enter the Academy of Music', were all smeared. A detachment of Red soldiers wearing winter helmets were tramping through the puddles.

As Hippolyte walked along he examined the passersby with interest. He, who had lived in Russia all his life and during the revolution, saw how the old manners and customs were being effaced and new ones taking their place. He had grown used to this in the town of N, but now that he had returned to his native place he discovered that it upset him. He could not make anything of it: he felt uncomfortable and strange, as though he really had been abroad and had just returned from Paris. In the old days, when he used to drive through the town in his carriage, he used to meet friends or at least people known to him, but he had now walked through four different districts without meeting a soul he knew. They had vanished or perhaps they had grown so old that he could not recognize them, or perhaps they were unrecognizable because they were wearing other clothes and other hats. Perhaps they had changed the way they walked.