4
He was thoughtful on the way home. “So, I’ve lowered the basket into the water, it will float off, baby and all. Who knows which shores the waves will carry it to?” The name and address on the card were those of the S. B. in the diary he had just read.
“There’s no-one else,” N. tried to convince himself he’d made the right choice. “I’ll have to risk it. Funny, he held the fate of a person’s life in his hands—Beta’s friend—and now he holds… well, not exactly my fate, of course, but the fate of my book. Will he let me down? He takes trips abroad, like Poro. Maybe the Bolsheviks were right about rotten intelligentsia? If so, how can you determine the extent of the rot? I’ll just have to hope for the best, there’s nothing else to hope for. So my manuscript is taking on a life of its own, a
