Quest for Anna Klein, The by Thomas H. Cook Page B

whose weave Danforth immediately noticed.
    â€œThe mat,” he said. “I saw some that looked very much like it in Istanbul. They make carpets with the same weave. They last forever, but people here don’t like the way the colors aren’t uniform.” He shrugged. “Handmade objects aren’t perfect, and customers like perfection.”
    She offered no response to this but instead turned and disappeared into the tiny kitchen. He couldn’t see her at work, but he had no trouble hearing the clatter of pans and plates as she made dinner.
    While she worked, Danforth surveyed the room, noting its spare furniture, all of which might easily have been rescued from the street. There was a table large enough for two, a few chairs, a small desk, a bookshelf bulging with old books, most with cracked spines, which she’d probably bought in one of the many used-book stores that lined Fourth Avenue below Fourteenth Street. It was a hand-me-down décor, every object bearing signs of long use, nicks and scratches, even an odd burn where someone years before had let a cigarette slip from the ashtray to char a wooden surface. Even so, he found that he couldn’t say for certain whether she’d furnished her quarters with such worn-out furniture because she didn’t have the money to buy anything new or out of some strange attraction to the broken and the wobbly, things cast aside or left for junk.
    But it was the map that drew Danforth’s attention. It was spread out over the table near him, a map of Europe with smallmarks along the southern coast of France. Dark lines moved along the roads and rivers of this map, and near these lines there were yet more dots, some with notations. Some of these notations were in French, some in Spanish, some in German, and there were others he couldn’t read, though he recognized the letters as Cyrillic.
    â€œYou speak Russian?” Danforth called to her.
    â€œYes,” she said. “And Ukrainian.”
    â€œI would love to study the Slavic languages someday,” Danforth said.
    â€œYou can go to the table now,” Anna said when she came out of the kitchen.
    Danforth did as he was told, then watched as she set the table: two plates, one slightly cracked at the edge, mismatched utensils and cloth napkins, and two large water glasses, neither of which, he was relieved to see, was chipped at the mouth.
    They ate a few minutes later, food clearly left over from the day before, hearty peasant food, as Danforth would have described it, and which he’d eaten during his travels when he’d been waylaid by weather or other circumstances and ended up in some small hotel that served local fare.
    â€œVery tasty,” he said at one point.
    â€œGood,” Anna said. She tore off a piece of pumpernickel bread and offered it to him. “Try this.”
    From time to time, he thought he was being evaluated in some way, put through an arcane test, and for that reason found himself not altogether comfortable. The less fortunate always had a way of mocking the rich. He’d seen its various forms throughout the world, the petty signals of their ridicule. It came in half-concealed winks and smiles, or was spoken in the shared idioms of both the idle and the working poor. The rich were always fops to them, always inept, protected from the storms of life andtherefore assumed to be unable to weather them. Rickshaw pullers had guffawed at his approach, then bowed to him with an exaggeration that burned with comic ridicule. Ferrymen had done the same, and taxi drivers everywhere. It was class and ethnic war fought with smirks and muttered asides, and he wondered if this dinner might not be some version of it.
    Then, rather suddenly, Anna said, “Does anyone know you?”
    â€œWhat?” he asked, completely taken aback by both the frankness and the intimacy of her question.
    â€œDoes anyone know you?” she repeated. “At the office,