I said that I could hardly "get out" of his seances.
He asked what was the matter with me and answered himself: the state of love.
Yes, - I answered.
When ?
He was very reserved, but his last phrase gave him away. His tone was much warmer.
I tried to remember and recollected the first unexpected seance, when I switched off the TV set. I only looked at him. I said nothing.
Yes, yes – he understood everything.
Do you want a meeting? He said.
Yes.
He looked at me intently.
"Write down the telephone number."
I wanted to write it down in a note-book. But he did not like it. He insisted on my remembering it rather than writing it down.
I don't know what made him insist on it. There is a peculiarity about me: I usually do not write down the telephone numbers of my closest people, I know them by heart.
We agreed that I would ring him today in the evening. He said when he would be at home. I got home by 11 o'clock and I called him up at some 12 p.m.
He takes up the receiver. He invites me to his house right now.
I say to him that he has evidently got tired after the performance . . .
He says it is not like this and I should go to him right now.
I did not intend to be an obstinacy champion. Besides, I was eager to be with him. But my circumstances were such that could not be neglected!
We finally decided that I would call him up tomorrow.
Next day I called him up in the morning as has been agreed. The meeting was assigned for evening. And he said the following: do not be offended by the circumstances that occur sometimes", and he added that "there were much unfinished things", asked me to call him up prior to leaving.
Meeting! Meeting! Meeting!
I could hardly await for the assigned hour! And I recalled that I was to call up beforehand only when I my car came up to the door. I went up the stairs to the suite where he lived then. The door of his "home" was open and a chambermaid who cleaned up the room said that he had accounted for the suite, and left. . .
I was walking by the Tverskaya. I was very sad. I didn't see the people's faces. Suddenly I saw a face! It was his face! He goes across me, looks at me and goes by. When he was going by me, I saw his hand, the hand I have touched on the meeting, and that's what has resulted from it. I feel that I should take his hand and never let it go. I am perplexed, now I am looking after him: if it isn't he? He turned back and I thought: no, it isn't. I am calmed, because it is not he. However, after that I begin to feel more and more uncomfortable, I feel that he is calling me over the coals. I don't know, what is going on, but I have a presentiment, that something bad is happening.
Then I saw the film " The Awakening", where they had filmed him from all the sides, in different angles. As if they had made it for me. Now I have no reasons for not to recognize him.