Bear's Corner

Gurov woke up to a dull, drilling pain in his temples. In the quiet of the hotel room, he could clearly hear his heart thumping in his chest—in sync with the steady clicks of a mechanical alarm clock that the kind Aleutina Nikanorovna had put at his disposal in this “hotel.” This woman combined, in one person, the roles of a porter, a corridor attendant, and the responsible administrator. In none of these roles—naturally—did she excel, but it didn’t seem to bother her at all. Aleutina Nikanorovna’s ideas of hotel service were stuck at the level of the 1970s: when permission to spend the night on a hard sofa in an unheated vestibule could pass for an act of mercy, and cold water in the room was considered an extra service.

And yet, she was, without question, a kind and responsive woman. Before a presentable guest from Moscow, she was terribly shy and did her best to please him. When Gurov, out of the capital’s habit, casually told Aleutina Nikanorovna that he wanted to be up no later than six o’clock, she made every effort to get him a working alarm clock. The thought of stepping into the role of such an alarm clock herself couldn’t even occur to her—women in the settlement of Nakat didn’t like getting up early, whether they were at home or on night duty.