I asked him how he knew where she lived. Oh, he said, he'd looked up the address she had given him the night before, in bed, studying a map. He wanted to know his way about, and he was good with maps.
He could memorise turnings and street names easily because he always went one way on foot. "One way?"
"I mean when I'm calling on a girl—or someone."
He hadn't, of course, known that she would be in, that her play was not on that night in the Josefstadt, or perhaps he had memorised that too from the posters. In at any rate she was, if you could really call it being in, sitting alone in an unheated room, with the bed disguised as divan, and the typewritten part lying open at the first page on the inadequate too fancy topply table because her thoughts were so far from being "in." He said awkwardly (and nobody could have said, not even Rollo, how much his awkwardness was part of his technique): "I thought I'd just look in and look you up. You see, I was passing ..."
"Passing (проходил)? Where to (куда)?" It had been a good half an hour's walk from the Inner City to the rim of the English zone (это была добрая получасовая прогулка от внутреннего города = от центра города к краю английской зоны), but he always had a reply (но у него всегда был ответ /наготове/). "I had too much whisky with Cooler (я выпил слишком много виски с Кулером). I needed a walk (я нуждался в прогулке) and I just happened to find myself this way (и я просто случился оказаться: «найти меня самого» здесь = случайно оказался здесь)."
"I can't give you a drink here (я здесь не могу дать вам выпить: «напиток»). Except tea (кроме чая). There's some of that packet left (немного осталось из того пакета)."
"No, no thank you (нет, нет, спасибо)." He said, "You are busy (вы заняты)," looking at the script (поглядев на сценарий).
"I didn't get beyond the first line (я не добралась дальше первой строчки)."
He picked it up and read (он поднял его /сценарий/ и прочитал): "Enter Louise (входит Луиза). Louise: I heard a child crying (я слышала плачущего ребенка)."
"Can I stay a little (могу я остаться немного)?" he asked with a gentleness that was more Martins than Rollo (спросил он с мягкостью которая была больше Мартинс, чем Ролло).
"I wish you would (я хотела бы: «желаю», чтобы вы остались)." He slumped down on the divan (он тяжело опустился вниз на тахту; to slump — проваливаться /в болото, трясину/; шлепаться в воду; тяжело, неуклюже двигаться), and he told me a long time later (и он рассказал мне много позже) (for lovers talk and reconstruct the smallest details if they can find a listener (ибо влюбленные говорят и восстанавливают мельчайшие детали, если они могут найти слушателя) that there it was he took his second real look at her (что именно тут он посмотрел на нее второй раз: «взял свой второй настоящий взгляд на нее»). She stood there as awkward as himself (она стояла там такая же неловкая, как он сам) in a pair of old flannel trousers which had been patched badly in the seat (в паре старых фланелевых штанов, которые были заплатаны ужасно =