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much beauty. The enormity of such an undertaking, which displaced tons of shitty soil and replaced it with a permanent art exhibit, simply amazed him. All the same, he preferred to get around Moscow above ground, and adopted the streetcar as his vehicle of choice.
    One evening at the hostel, Kolia was preparing soup with two men he worked with in the sewers — Volodya and Misha. He had supplied the bread and the cream, and the other two had picked up the rest of the meal’s ingredients after work. Their grocer was an enterprising retired labourer who made the rounds of the city’s grocery stores buying only the best products, and reselling them at one and a half times the price fixed by the state.
    They settled into a corner of the cafeteria with their mess tins in order to avoid the noise of the group who had taken possession of the six benches. One of them had been keeping an eye on Kolia since he’d arrived. He was a thickset young man named Alexei, who always wore a spotless and impeccably ironed white shirt, but whose most striking feature was his plump lips. Behind his back, the others called him Fat Lips. Misha had mentioned to Kolia that he was someone you wanted to have in your pocket.
    When he had finished his bowl of soup, Kolia got up, grabbed the bottle of vodka that Tanya had given him, and unscrewed it in plain view of Alexei, who was sitting at the head of one of the tables. Kolia walked over, poured a glass for Alexei and then for himself, and placed the bottle down right in front of Alexei’s china plate. They clinked glasses. It was this gesture, which he repeated on a regular basis during his stay at the hostel, which undoubtedly saved Kolia from certain discomforts at the hands of the authorities.
    Alexei was a spineless but clever individual, a member of the Komsomol Brigade, and the committee’s mole at the hostel.
    The week following his arrival in Moscow, Kolia stumbled into the path of a smartly dressed man as he was getting off the streetcar. The man was flanked by an attractive woman and two other men who appeared to be plainclothes policemen. He was pointing a camera at him. Kolia did a sudden about-face, slamming into the woman behind him in a frantic attempt to dodge the weapon, which clearly had him in its sights.
    â€œPlease tell him it’s okay!” said the man behind the camera to one of the others.
    The photographer spoke French. The other man, who was evidently his interpreter, reassured Kolia in Russian. The woman, who was either his wife or his sister, addressed him as Henri. Kolia realized his error. As he walked away, he held back from saying something to the man in French, despite an overwhelming desire to do so.
    The encounter with the photographer and his camera had left him deeply disoriented. He was holding a book in his hand, but he had no idea where he was going or whether someone was waiting for him. He turned down the first street he came to, completely lost and mistakenly convinced that he had just run into someone from Switzerland.

PART TWO

PAVEL
    KOLIA MET PAVEL FOR THE first time in 1961, in a tavern with no name and no street number. It was located in the basement of a building in the Taganskaya quarter and functioned as a somewhat clandestine meeting place. But, on the first Friday of every month, it hosted the local amateur drama club, which had the official approval of the Workers’ Circle. Kolia was a member of the club.
    Dimitri, who was known to everyone as Mitya, tended bar. From time to time, he would bring Kolia first editions of books published in France, as well as French magazines that he had somehow managed to get his hands on. His most recent find was the April issue of Paris Match and a copy of Fahrenheit 451 .
    â€œIn exchange for what?”
    â€œA pair of shoes for my wife. But no heels, okay? Give her an extra ten centimetres and I look like a midget . . . Size thirty-nine.”
    â€œI’ll ask