4
Masha's two-room apartment was on the third floor of a large adobe buildingwhich, with two others, occupied an entire block. She entered it on the side ofthe Street of the Dry Well, but first she had to wake up old Shmurt, thecaretaker, by beating on the thick oaken door. Grumbling at the late hour, heunshot the bolt and let her in. She gave him a padpool, a tiny copper coin, forhis trouble and to shut him up. He handed her her oil lamp, she lit it, and shewent up the three flights of stone steps.
She had to wake up her mother to get in. Wallu, blinking and yawning in thelight of an oil lamp in the corner, shot the bolt. Masha entered and at onceextinguished her lamp. Oil cost money, and there had been many nights when shehad had to do without it.
Wallu, a tall skinny sagging-breasted woman of fifty, with gaunt deeply-linedfeatures, kissed her daughter on the cheek. Her breath was sour with sleep andgoat's cheese. But Masha appreciated the peck; her life had few expressions oflove in it. And yet she was full of it; she was a bottle close to bursting withpressure.
The light on the rickety table in the corner showed a blank-walled room withoutrugs. In a far corner the two infants slept on a pile of tattered but cleanblankets. Beside them was a small chamberpot of baked clay painted with theblack and scarlet rings-within-rings of the Darmek guild. .
In another corner was her false-teeth making equipment, wax, moulds, tinychisels, saws, and expensive wire, hardwood, iron, a block of ivory. She hadonly recently repaid the money she'd borrowed to purchase these. In the oppositecorner was another pile of cloth, Wallu's bed, and beside it another thundermugwith the same design. An ancient and wobbly spinning-wheel was near it; Wallu