“Were you asleep or what? I rang ten times! It was your boozy neighbor who let me in … Aha, I see our scriptwriter’s been writing about his flighty Katie. May I read your masterpiece? Come on, wake up, Erdmann! Give me a kiss! Make me a coffee, you mummified zombie …!”

Oleg smiles through a fog of images: a white-and-gold salon, a mirror going up, a vaulted alcove … Lessya’s lips are freezing cold. He comes back to the present: a bedroom in a communal apartment, fifteen occupants housed in seven rooms, a shared kitchen, a single bathroom. A daily hell, yet one where you can be happy (in his parents’ time they used to say: “If you’re in hell, enjoy the fire …”). He’s happy to feel the snow on his girlfriend’s coat as she hands it to him, the warmth of the body that briefly squeezes against him. Happy to see Lessya settling down amid the disorder and, by her presence, creating harmony within it. Happy to make his way along the endless corridor where the exhalations of lives crammed together hang in the air, and to find himself in the kitchen—bliss, he is alone! And to slide his coffeepot onto the stove that is laden with heavy saucepans full of family soups. A transom is open—the chill air sharpens the scent of roasted beans. He’s giddy with happiness: waiting for him at the other end of the communal labyrinth is a woman he loves …

Still in the corridor he peers into his room: Lessya is reading, stretched out on the sofa. With a girlish pout she puffs away a lock of hair tickling her cheek … He has recently taken to noticing details he would never have remarked on but for his obsessive scrutiny of Catherine the Great’s life. The woman historians call “the Russian Messalina” but who, for Oleg, is gradually turning back into a child of long ago—a little German princess watching the snow as it falls on the Baltic …

He longs to tell Lessya how picturing that forgotten child makes it possible to imagine another way of living. And loving …

“Erdmann, undo your bootlaces. You’re going to need a rope!”

Lessya is being melodramatic: this comes with the territory in their world of young filmmakers. But he gasps as if he had been hit in the solar plexus.

“No, it’s the truth. You’d better go hang yourself! Your screenplay’s clinically insane. And it’s not even funny! Look at me: am I laughing? No. I’m frankly confused. This mirror, this alcove, what’s all that about? Can you picture the audience’s faces? They’re not going to be laughing either …”

Oleg hands Lessya a cup and tries to remain calm.

“Look, it’s not a script that’s meant to be played for laughs …”

“Excuse me? You’re not going to tell me this grotesque vaudeville is meant to be taken seriously?”

“Yes, I am. This is just the way I see history …”

Still clowning, Lessya chokes on her coffee. Oleg feels too weak to fight back …

“How many pages have you read, Lessya? Eleven? You’ll see. Later on, it all falls into place. Chronologically, biographically … Catherine’s childhood in Germany, her arrival in Russia, where she’s going to marry the future Peter the Third. She’ll take lovers and when her husband comes to the throne, her lovers’ll kill him. Then she’ll reign, introduce reforms, defeat the sultan, seduce French philosophers … Don’t worry. All the historical details will be accurate, down to the width of the crinolines … Now, wait a minute. You’re not going, are you?”

His voice lurches into a plea and he realizes that to hold on to Lessya he would even be prepared to write a platitudinous biopic: childhood, youth, illustrious reign …

“Yes, I am. There’s going to be a party at Zyamtsev’s. He’s just been given the green light to make his film. And as he’s not your best buddy … Besides, you’ve got work to do. You’ve got a good story line! First of all young Catherine in her dreary little principality back in smalltime Germany and then, hey!, we see her at the head of an empire! It’ll be a great rags-to-riches movie. But there’s just one thing. Promise me you’ll scrap the first eleven pages …”

Lessya grabs the little pocket mirror lying beside the typewriter, and starts putting on lipstick.

He goes with her to the entrance hall. In the kitchen a woman is sitting on a stool, her gaze lost amid the swirl of snowflakes outside the dark window. “The boozer,” whispers Lessya, with a wink at Oleg.

The door bangs shut, he goes back past the kitchen, greets the woman: “Hi there, Zoya. Thank you for opening the door to my friend just now …” The woman nods, lost in a dream. She has a fine face, aged by weariness and, doubtless, by drink … He has never seen anyone come to call on her. From time to time Zoya’s ancient kettle appears on the stove, a utensil probably dating back to the time of the Second World War.

Once more in his room Oleg gathers up the scattered sheets, the pages Lessya advises him to scrap: the mirror going up, the alcove revealed, the mirror coming down … The shadowy figures come and go, every one of them, for Catherine, epitomizing the impossibility of being loved.