“What did you say?” asked Artiom, standing at the window, as though he were not hurrying inside.
“What do you mean what did I say? I asked if he wanted to visit Sekirka — there he could give as full a report as he’d like.”
… She was doing awful things… Asked him to touch everything, to scratch her, to brag, and she herself scratched him and knew no shame in anything, as though she had never before met a person with a different anatomy and wanted to learn it by heart forever, in the most excruciating detail…
It was the first time she was completely naked with him; he went completely mad from it.
“How can it be?” Artiom thought afterwards, without any sorrow, but only in a tremulous and grateful astonishment, “In bodily union, this woman from the beginning nestles so much closer than wit
