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The child Agrenev had vividly pictured to himself how Nina Kallistratovna had walked, holding her daughter with one hand, an attache-case in the other: of course her bearing must have been singular, as she was going to the flat to administer a slap in the face; no doubt she had walked either in a squatting or a bandy-legged fashion.
In childhood, as a small lad, Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev had heard from listening to his mother's conversation how lo and behold! one morning at 9 o'clock Nina Kallistratovna Zamotkina had proceeded with her daughter to Doctor Chasovnikov's flat, in order to deliver a slap in the face to his wife for having broken up the family hearth by a liaison with Paul Alexander Zamotkin, Nina Kallistratovna's husband.
It was highly interesting in the child's imagination to picture Nina Kallistratovna entering the flat, swinging back her arm, and delivering the slap: her gait, her arms, the flat all had a sudden hidden and exceedingly curious meaning for the child. This had remained out of his childhood memories of the little town and province, where all had seemed unusual as childhood itself.
In the pitchblack darkness overhead the wild-geese could be heard rustling their wings as they flew southward, scared by his cigarette the tenth in succession. "Southward, geese, southward!... But you shall go nowhere, slave, useless among the useless!" Then he remembered that slap in the face Nina Kallistratovna had given for her husband nobody would give Olya Golovkina one for him!
Yes, it was certainly interesting how Nina Kallistratovna had entered that flat, swung back her hand which hand had it been? was it the one in which she held the attache-case or was that transferred to the other hand first? and delivered the smack to Madame Chasovnikova. Then there was Olya, darling Olya Golovkina, from whom as from them all he desired nothing.
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