Vadim kept his mouth shut. Antonina was grimly silent, not understanding, but opposed to everything he had said. His wife had a strange smile, suspecting something. Only Zoya asked, “But can we be different?”
Testily, with a nod at her drying canvas on its stretcher, he said,
“What for? What would be the point? I don’t know, but someone will swallow us. That’s how it always ends.”
Marfushin came happily back to life. “I wonder how much those fish are going to cost now! Tell me, Zoya, honestly. I would like to buy them and eat them all myself. They are such beauties!”
Zoya, unwilling to understand the joke, replied, “I bought the bream in the shop.”
Antonina said, “Shut up Vadim! Zoya, forgive him. It’s time we went. We interrupted your work. How silly.”
Marfushin said, “But still! Wh
