The mathematician sat so.
I shouldn’t have been this. Maybe not in this matter.
It was a wonderful evening. Laura, Motya’s wife, she could do this. Without candles and deafening music and the other labuda, without buffet confusion. They simply sat in the big dining room, having thrown open the balcony doors in the armchairs behind a low table, Alyosha with wonder recognised a couple or three of Mum’s and Aunts’ favourite dishes, either mathematician wised up to Laura or she herself guessed something. Some drank vodka, some white wine, they blathered lazily, kindly; the dog slowly walked around the couches, the elder girls spent time on the young one, Laura didn’t pay them any attention, absorbed conversation, the mathematician sat down, throwing himself onto the armchair and squinted pea
