Artiom didn’t even begin to read it all. He just leafed and leafed through all these journals and books, reading two or three lines at a time, rarely a full stanza to its end, then leafed again. As if he had lost a line somewhere and wanted to find it.
He kept repeating a single poetic phrase without meaning, not understanding it and not trying to understand it.
“Whose feet will walk over our rust?” he kept whispering and his face looked like he was working out an impossible geometric equation out loud.
He wouldn’t have noticed that it was getting dark, but hunger reminded him.
He walked out with the packet of books and papers. “Whose feet… over… our rust… damn it. Some kind of feet, rust. What will I say to Boris Lukianovich? Something. I’d better go buy some candied fruit for my even
