“In the bookcases of their apartment were four volumes of poetry which had written by Myron Krupnik. But the fourth book was her favorite. Her father’s photograph showed him bald and bearded, the way she had always know him. The poems were soft sounding and quiet, when he read them to her. The book was called Bittersweet; and it said, inside, ‘To someone special: Anastasia’.”
“We live in the block next door to our old block now, in an apartment exactly like the old one, but it’s on the ground floor. We have been given some second-hand furniture by the parish, and the women have also given as some things.”
“My dear count,” said he, “allow me to commence my services as cicerone by showing you a specimen of a bachelor’s apartment. You, who are accustomed to the palaces of Italy, can amuse yourself by calculating in how many square feet a young man who is not the worst lodged in Paris can live. As we pass from one room to another, I will open the windows to let you breathe.”