Sargel drooped for several days, as if struck by a knife. He muttered that the end of the world had come, and his affairs were rubbish. All night, not knowing sleep, he paced along the worn old parquet between the kitchen and the corridor. Listening to the creaking of the floorboards under her husband’s feet, Malika noted: “Kitchen, kitchen – corridor.” These home walks of Sargel led him to a wild decision. He made a dash for Moscow. But apparently, there was no one in the attestation commission who would have met him with an enthusiastic exclamation “O dear Sir Sargel!” Sargel returned home emaciated, with deeply sunken eyes. On ordinary days, he looked at people with distrust, walked, taking on a dead weight of jealousy and bile, and after this incident he completely lost his peace. “You don’t pity me, it doesn’t matter to you,” he repeated whiningly at home. “They don’t want me to become a doctor because they envy me. They all enter my house with curiosity and leave with envy. All of them are enemies, everyone! In our time, there can be no friends, everyone wants to snatch things for themselves, only for themselves! I don’t trust anyone. How can I trust others if my own thoughts are against me?! My wife, that’s right? A man’s first enemy is his wife!” Malika knew well that a man can speak out of malice, sinking lower than a woman. And if you show restraint, wait a little while, the reckless anger recedes, he will again become a man. But the external state of Sargel was not like a mountain river, as if throwing stones; his character from birth was not bubbling, but quietly, stinkingly spiteful, falling asleep all around with the ashes of mute hatred. She stopped arguing with her husband, went to work early in the morning and, under any pretext, returned late. Sargel, as before, met her with an incredulous look, humiliating questions, demanded, frowning his eyebrows: “Stop, please!” And suddenly he received a rebuff, which plunged Sargel into confusion. He saw with fear that Malika would stop at nothing if he brought her to a white heat. These dreary unpleasant days were left behind, they were preparing for the New Year holiday with special enthusiasm. “Malika,” Sargel said to his wife when they had established a good relationship and he was lying next to her.
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