The telephone wakes him the next day at six o’clock in the morning. A surge of hope: tortured by remorse, Tanya is going to tell him that their breakup was a mistake … No, it’s Zhurbin! A telegraphic, impersonal voice: “I’m calling you from the street. Take your car. Come to the office. Park behind the building. Very important.” And he hangs up.

Impossible to refuse someone who has hurt you, a point of honor. Oleg grins at this old-fashioned psychology as he gulps down his coffee. Outside it is thirty below, his car is in a deep freeze. The Neva stretches out, as smooth as a snow-covered steppe. “With any luck Zhurbin’s going to tell me the role of the horse will now be taken by a mare, yes, a kind of lesbian bestiality … He’s quite capable of suggesting a deal like that.” Oleg laughs, mainly so as not to fall asleep at the wheel.

Zhurbin emerges from the service entrance, like an ambush. “Can you keep this stuff at your place?” Without understanding, Oleg helps him to carry half a dozen large cardboard boxes. “Don’t worry. It’s mainly paperwork to do with our series …” The flaps on the last of the boxes are not stuck down and by the hazy light of a lamppost, Oleg can make out the curved shapes of several cartridge clips, for Kalashnikov rifles. “Equipment for Catherine’s guardsmen, I presume,” he jokes. Zhurbin makes no reply, a blank look, an angry abruptness in his gestures. “Hide all this, OK? And come see me this evening. If they haven’t put me inside by then …”

That evening they meet, not in his office, which has been sealed off, but in the reception area from which everything has disappeared, even the secretary’s computer. Zurbin grumbles: “It’s the rules of the game. You want them to leave you alone and what happens? They slap a revenue department check on you …”

This remark has doubtless been repeated to a lot of people and Zhurbin utters it without conviction—a truth overtaken by the seriousness of the situation.

“The fact is, it’s even more stupid than that. A lot of idiots like me took the bait. Go ahead, capitalists of the future, bring out your savings, invest, sell, resell, work day and night, make yourselves rich and put the money you make into holding companies for eels from the salt marshes, five-star hotels, and unlicensed liquor. Cretins like me believed in it. We slaved away worse than convicts. Ask me if I remember a single day when I had an hour to myself—zero! No, I tell a lie. I remember those days they were sending me mutilated toy bears. That’s all … We amassed fortunes, we thought we were hunters on the trail of billions. But we weren’t really the hunters at all, we were merely the hounds, tracking down the quarry. And now the hunters have arrived. They’re snatching the prey from us and kicking us out. And these are not the lot who were sending me toy bears. The real hunters don’t need to use threats. They’re the ones with the power! They’re in the Kremlin, in the Parliament, in the ministries. We’ve done the dirty work and they’re going to dine off the quarry. And when I start complaining, a team of inspectors turns up, armed like an assault commando. The public prosecutor will find enough in the computers they’ve taken away to award me a long stay north of the Arctic Circle … He’s one of the hunters too. And the quarry they’ve bagged, Erdmann, is the whole country!”

He fills his glass, smiles wrily, shows the label on the bottle. Empress Vodka. The portrait of a tsarina in a gilded frame and underneath, two guardsmen lying beside a campfire.

“It was this distillery that they got their hands on first. Hooch. That pays. Now they’re going to grab the rest …”

“But I guess you’ll hold on to a few good bits and pieces …”

Oleg makes an effort to sound positive, clinks glasses with him, drinks. Zhurbin responds with an old man’s grimace, blinking rapidly. His voice is tense, weak.

“As you know, I can live off nothing, that’s how we lived when we were young. But the thing is … I’ve got my daughter. I went to see her in Lugano. The place where she lives is a paradise. The countryside, teachers, she has a big room that looks out over the mountains … A pond with fish and turtles. Wonderfully peaceful. That costs a lot. And that’s my only problem at the moment. I can go and sell cigarettes at a kiosk in the street, it’s all the same to me. But that wouldn’t bring in enough to pay for that paradise. She’s … quite a special child … As I already told you. She’s not mentally handicapped, no. But she doesn’t understand that somebody might want to harm her. That some people have the impulse to strike out, to say hurtful things, to hit for the pleasure of hitting. And yet that’s what people do all the time. How can you expect her to live here among these mutilated toy bears and the sick people who send them to me? She’s already given names to each of the fish and the turtles, she talks to them …”

A chime rings out in Zhurbin’s office—twelve brief notes that sound like those of a harpsichord. Oleg remembers the big clock in a mahogany case that stands on a malachite pedestal … The expression on Zhurbin’s face has not changed—the same aged grimace and the tears that seem to be flowing independently of what he is saying. Belatedly the striking of the clock rouses him, he stares at Oleg as if he were a stranger. His voice breaks off, then strengthens.

“Our series has got to continue, Erdmann! If they were to put me behind bars you’d have enough money to send what’s needed for my daughter. You’ll do it, won’t you? I know you’ll keep your word. But the series about Catherine has to keep going, even if you loathe it. I promise you that at the end we’ll surprise everybody. Here’s my idea: Catherine dies on the commode, her death throes, the pretenders cutting up rough, and then suddenly, a historian appears, a bit like your … what’s his name? … oh yes, Luria. And he says to the viewers: ‘You’ve really been gorging yourselves on this hash of sex and cruelty. You’ve had a great time watching that caricature in a petticoat jiggling about in her alcove. And you didn’t give a good goddamn about what this woman’s dreams might be. Well, now, in this very last episode, you’ll see the man who truly loved her …’ And then you can film what you like, her meeting with Lanskoy, their love, and their dream of escaping …”

They meet again two days later in a subway station, “like secret agents,” Oleg thinks. Zhurbin says he wants to keep him out of trouble but, no doubt, he is also trying to protect his production company, the only enterprise he hopes to be able to hold on to.

“We already have a good many episodes in the can. Enough to last two months, if not three. So we don’t need to do any more filming. OK, that scene with the horse … I was unfair to you, Erdmann. I admit it. But I was on edge, I knew they were bound to come and take me away. Now you can take two months’ vacation. Go and visit Germany in the meantime. You could look up that guy who made an erotic film about Catherine. He was the one who showed the horse … Yes, Max Pfister. The Red-Blooded Tsarina, I think it was called. Travel a bit, it’ll do you good. A visa? But you’re an ‘ethnic German’! They’re sure to give you one in a few days …”

At the moment when they part Zhurbin hands him his card. “No, I’m not the president of all that anymore … But I’ve made a note on it of the place in Lugano where they’re looking after my daughter. When you’re in Berlin, send her a postcard. She’ll be thrilled. She never gets any mail …”