"Your wife told me that you sold her apartment. Is it true?"
"What wife?"
"The one with the dogs. Whose leg is hurt."
"You mean Limping Vera?" Adik laughed. "I've got wives like her to fill a stadium. So get your ass out of here. I've already sold this apartment again, to some new Russians."
Outside, on the stairs, the painter could hear familiar voices: braying, fighting, a child's wailing.
"Wait a minute. These new Russians, did they already pay you?"
"Why do you care?"
"I'll tell you why: their money is fake, understand? As soon as you show one bill, you'll be arrested." The painter was lying his head off. "Look, Adik, I rented my room to these people, and they paid me in advance. When I went to buy bread with their money, the cashier started screaming. I barely got away."
Adik glanced down at his breast pocket, which was bulging out of his shirt like a balcony on a house. "I see," he said, thinking fast. "You stay here, O.K.? Don't let them in. Hold down the fort. I'm not here, you understand?"
"Give me the key. I'll lock the door"—which he did just in time.
Adik, pale and sweating, listened to the fearful drumming on the door and the chorus of shouts, and whispered, terrified, "What am I to do?"
"I'll guard the apartment, but you must move Vera and her family off the street immediately, or they'll find you through her."
"But how am I to get out?"
"The fire escape leads to the attic. From there, you get onto the roof."
Adik climbed out the window. On the way out, he said, "I've installed steel bars on the windows. Lock them behind me. Or they'll climb in."
The door was shaking under the new Russians' onslaught, but it was a steel number, which Adik had also installed.
The painter barred the windows and made a dash for the easel he had dragged to the apartment: since he didn't have another canvas, he began to paint right over the previous study of the bakery. Quickly, he sketched the girl, her dogs, and her parents, then he unlocked the shutters and checked outside: the pavement in front of his building was empty.
