Chilling and listening to good stuff

March 20, 2021

The mystery behind "her lover"

<p>I entered her apartment. I looked round. She was sitting at the table, leaning on her elbows, with her head in her hands.<br> "Listen to me," I said.<br> Now, whenever I come to this point in my story, I always feel horribly awkward and idiotic. Well, well!<br> "Listen to me," I said.<br> She leaped from her seat, came towards me with flashing eyes, and laying her hands on my shoulders, began to whisper, or rather to hum in her peculiar bass voice: "Look you, now! It's like this. There's no Boles at all, and there's no Teresa either. But what's that to you? Is it a hard thing for you to draw your pen over paper? Eh? Ah, and you, too! Still such a little fair-haired boy! There's nobody at all, neither Boles, nor Teresa, only me. There you have it, and much good may it do you!"<br> <br> "Pardon me!" said I, altogether flabbergasted by such a reception, "what is it all about? There's no Boles, you say?"<br> <br> "No. So it is."<br> <br> "And no Teresa either?"<br> <br> "And no Teresa. I'm Teresa."<br> <br> I didn't understand it at all. I fixed my eyes upon her, and tried to make out which of us was taking leave of his or her senses. But she went again to the table, searched about for something, came back to me, and said in an offended tone:<br> "If it was so hard for you to write to Boles, look, there's your letter, take it! Others will write for me."<br> I looked. In her hand was my letter to Boles. Phew!<br> "Listen, Teresa! What is the meaning of all this? Why must you get others to write for you when I have already written it, and you haven't sent it?"</p>