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one with a long stem and pale violet flowers, and Nadezhda writes on her pad: “Parnassia palustris.”
    The walls are covered with ornate gilt frames, several with old blown-up photographs of Civil War battle fields strewn with corpses, one with a map of the Paris Metro, some with nothing in them at all but wall. One series of photographs in particular catches Pravdin’s eye: four stills that have captured, through streaks of light and a suggestion of blurring, the motion of the earth.
    “Extraordinary is what they are,” Pravdin comments. “Who made them?”
    “I made them,” writes Nadezhda. “I work as a photographer at the central fashion house. These I do for me.”
    Pravdin is mesmerized by the photographs. “The peoplein these photos look as if they’re being pulled in different directions by forces they can’t control,” he says. He shakes his head in admiration.
    Nadezhda writes excitedly, “We are being pulled in different directions—we are in giddy motion. The earth’s spin on its axis = 16 miles a minute. Around the sun = 1,200 miles a minute. Solar system moves through local star system = 780 miles a minute. Local star system moves through Milky Way = 12,000 miles a minute. Milky Way moves with respect to distant galaxies = 6,000 miles a minute. All in different directions!!!”
    “We are being pulled apart, little sister. They are all in your photographs, every one of these motions. On display is where these should be.”
    “Not possible,” Nadezhda quickly writes. “They say they don’t present life as it really is. They say such photographs might be misinterpreted.”
    “They say, they say, they say,” sneers Pravdin.
    Nadezhda writes: “You sound as if you want to change the system.”
    “You’ve got it all wrong, little sister.” Pravdin laughs. “All I want to do with the system is beat it.”
    “What do you do for work?” Nadezhda asks.
    “For work I do what everyone does,” Pravdin answers, “which is as little as possible. Actually, I’m what is known as a professional hustler.”
    “Hustler?”
    “It’s like this, little sister: When I was a boy I lived in a village not far from Moscow. Nowadays it’s a watering hole for certain artists who know which side their bread is buttered on. In those days the local militia used to pay ten rubles to anyone bringing in a viper, which gave me the bright idea to breed them. I dug a snake pit behind the cottage and raised vipers, and once or twice a week I wouldmake my way to the militia headquarters and hand in a dead snake and collect the bounty. I brought in so many that the regional paper wrote me up and the Komsomol pinned a medal on me. I lost that medal, but I still have the cottage; a teenage hustler breeds vipers in the same pit. Nothing is what changes.”
    Nadezhda writes: “I don’t believe a word.”
    “True is what it is, little sister, all of it and more. Listen,” he says, leaning forward, “what I do is buy and sell: blue jeans, records, automobile parts, residence permits, exit visas, electrical appliances, books, and so forth and so on. But I have big plans too.” And he tells her about his idea for developing the Q-Tip and the classic comic.
    “I have heard about such people as you,” Nadezhda writes, “but I have never met one before. How do you stay out of the way of the police?”
    “By giving them, from time to time, things that they need too,” Pravdin explains. “Screening for a dacha, a carburetor for a 1956 Mercedes, tickets to a hockey match; I am famous in certain circles because I managed to acquire twelve tickets to the final with Canada last winter. At the time they had approximately the same value on the open market as exit visas to Israel.”
    “And so the police leave you alone.”
    “Up to now,” Pravdin agrees. He remembers the microphone in his room. “Can I use that?” he asks. She hands him her pad. He writes:
    “Before me who lived in the attic?”
    “A Berber girl,”