His brother always said that solemnity would kill Boris before any illness could. Boris never corrected him. Since retiring, he had spent three mornings a week in a small studio reading romance novels. He used another name. He was hiding nothing illegal or particularly unusual, but he did not want jokes about a judge now assuring fictional women that someone would wait for them for the rest of their lives.
He had found the work through a former colleague. At first he read as though delivering a judgment, flatly and cautiously. The producer taught him that a man begging someone to stay sometimes swallowed half a word. That small detail absorbed him. At home he repeated a sentence ten times until it stopped sounding like someone who held all the power in the room. His wife teased him gently, leaving tea outside his study door.
His brother recognized the voice in a friend's car. He saved the recording without mentioning it. He waited for their old association's formal dinner, where Boris was due to present certificates of thanks. At a table full of acquaintances, he connected his phone to a little speaker and played a sentence about a glove the hero had kept in his pocket for years. Then he turned it up. "Our judge has changed the kind of cases he handles," he said, pleased with his introduction.
Several people laughed. Boris put down his cutlery, while the association chairman glanced anxiously at the lectern, as though a romance novel might stain its microphone. The woman who ran the library asked for the title. His brother did not know. She said she thought she had listened to the sequel and that the voice was good, although the final chapter had been too fast. That ordinary criticism completely spoiled the prepared joke.
Boris made no speech about the right to a new life. He asked his brother to stop the recording. He told the chairman that if reading novels bothered him, somebody else could present the certificates. The chairman waved a hand and began looking for a missing envelope. The evening continued somewhat awkwardly. His brother tried twice more to bring the conversation back to the glove, but nobody knew what to add.
The next day Boris asked to record the final chapter again. The producer asked whether somebody had criticized it. He said yes, a reader he trusted. During a break he sent his wife the exact title and pseudonym to forward to the librarian. Then he opened the manuscript of a new book. On the first page its hero lost his hat. Boris laughed and decided to give him a less dignified voice from the outset this time.