The kitchen was getting chilly. Filya quietly formed a ring with his lips and exhaled to check whether steam would come from his mouth. Things hadn’t gone that far yet, but not moving at all was starting to get uncomfortable. The wine was virtually drained, and the droning oven couldn’t hold the warmth in that large kitchen, which was built for central heating. With the temperature outside a good forty below, and considering the aged window, which was closed far from as tightly as one would have wished, and the streams of icy air that made Filippov feel not only with his skin but also, as it seemed to him now, the entire surface of his stupid coat—given these difficult circumstances and, most of all, given his stillness, he was probably going to freeze solid and very soon. It was starting to sting a little. The trembling rose inside him first in tentative, timid waves, in spurts, sort of, leaving behind the blissful silence that arises in pauses between attacks of the hiccups, but gradually these pauses became briefer, the trembling more and more noticeable, and Filya more and more sober and unhappy. He realized it was time to get moving, come back to life, and prove himself, but some deep inner languor was compelling him to be patient.

  Filippov was absolutely unfazed by the sudden appearance of a grown daughter. This news didn’t bother him for a second. Truth be told, he didn’t care whether the girl was lying or telling the truth, but his desire not to take part in a discussion on this topic was of catastrophic proportion. In his capacity as a lifeless body, all claims to paternity were received for now merely like general delivery, and whether the addressee ever looked at his mail or not—that was unclear.

  “What will we do if they don’t ever turn on the heat?” the bustier shadow was saying meanwhile.

  “Mom, are you totally insane?” the rather less elegant shadow said in a nervous whisper. “We’d all freeze right here.”

  A demanding knock at the door reached them from the vestibule.

  The shadows on the ceiling froze, hoping, evidently, that the knocking would stop, but the pounding started up again.

  “Who is it?” Inga said.

  “How should I know?” Rita said. “Go ask.”

  Filippov felt a wave of cold when the kitchen door opened for a couple of moments, and a few seconds later he heard nervous voices in the entry.

  “Mama, I think,” Tyoma said softly.

  “Damn,” Rita said. “What are we going to do?”

  “It’s all fine. Just keep quiet.”

  The nervous voices were getting closer. From the intonations, Filippov recognized Zinaida, and after her Pavlik as well. Inga was barely answering them.

  “Where is he?” Zinaida repeated. “Tyoma! Do you hear me? Where are you?”

  Entering the kitchen, they stopped next to the little sofa where Filya was playing possum. Crazy cold wafted off their backs.

  “Zina, I told you, he’s fine,” Pavlik said.

  “Get your things.” Zinaida rapped out her words, paying no attention to what her husband had said.

  “Maybe we should all sit down and have a talk,” Inga said.

  “Tyoma, did you hear me?”

  “Listen, Zina—”

  “Don’t touch me! Get your hands off me! Now!”

  Inga, who had barely touched Zinaida’s elbow, immediately staggered back as if struck.

  “Zina,” Rita shouted, reeling from the sudden insult, “have you completely lost your mind?”

  “No one’s talking to you,” Zinaida said. “Sit down and be quiet. If I see you next to my son one more time, you’ll regret it!”

  “Zina.” Pavlik tried to pacify his wife. “The girl has nothing to do with this.”

  “But her dear sweet mama does! You came here instead of a hotel when you were running around on those little ‘business trips’ of yours? To this apartment?”

  Filippov realized that he was probably never going to have a better moment to flee. Rising awkwardly to his feet while continuing to play possum, he slipped out behind Zinaida and Pavlik toward the door. The entry was totally dark, but he was able to feel for the lock and open it. Jealous Zinaida’s voice reached him from behind in the kitchen.

  Filippov could hear it for nearly two floors. He didn’t close the door behind him, although, naturally, that didn’t make the entryway any brighter, which was why, when he ran into the potato crates he could still come up with unflattering, cobblestone-hard epithets for Zinaida for a while. When he figured out that all the crates were lined up on his left, he pressed up to the right-hand wall and the voice above finally gave out. Like Filya, evidently it too had a hard time breaking through the pitch dark.

  Darting out onto the front steps, Filippov was blinded by an unbearably bright light. Aimed right at the doorway were the headlights of some car parked opposite the front door. Filya squinted, but stinging tears still managed to spurt from under his flaccid, wrinkly eyelids. At that moment Filippov’s eyelids felt like paper—paper some scamp had spent a long time plucking at with his pudgy and sweaty hands—as a result of which they were now totally withered, gray, indistinct, and sore. The merciless light easily pierced through this flimsy veil and pierced Filippov’s skull all the way to the occiput.

  Cloaked by clouds of white exhaust fumes, the car gave a snort and crunched into reverse. Its headlights continued to blind Filya as he stood on the front steps. The cold made the air squeak and crunch, like the ice chunks under the wheels of the departing Zhiguli. In the glowing gloom, something shone and sparkled, but this celebration only made Filya feel worse. His tears instantly froze in the corners of his eyes, his eyelids stuck together as if they’d been thickly spread with glue, his breathing seized up hard, and his ears, his bald spot, and his unexpectedly defenseless legs in their thin trousers blazed, truly scorched.

  Ordinarily, Filya didn’t even acknowledge that these parts of his body existed, that he was made up of them in principle. Not to say that he denigrated their significance. No, they simply didn’t interest him, being somewhere at the outer periphery of his notion of himself; when he said “I,” that “I” did not include his ears, bald spot, knees, or ankles. Though right now he assuredly felt that he did have all these and that everything was twisted up and just about to die. Like a ruthless felt pen, the cold had marked off each and every part of him, and his idle thoughts about his special talent’s otherworldly essence writhed, turning into a panicked, trembling cloud of steam at his rubber lips, which were too cold to obey him.

  Nevertheless, he knew for certain he wasn’t going back. He had to get to his friend. It was time. Putting off the meeting no longer made sense. Back in Inga’s apartment, Filippov had realized that it was useless to hide. The longer he delayed, avoiding an unpleasant conversation—the most unpleasant and difficult conversation of his life, as it now seemed to him—the more evilly this very life served him up surprises, and it was pretty clear that its supply of shit for Filya was unlimited. He had to see his friend, tell him the truth, and get out of this hellhole.

  But for starters, it would be nice to reach his goal alive.

  The right thing, of course, would be to go back to Inga’s apartment and ask for some winter clothing, but Filippov was already Odysseus and his journey had begun. The deep had been opened wide by Poseidon, and their boats had lost the way back. Racing through forty degrees below zero from the embankment where Inga apparently now lived to the center of town was theoretically possible. Even not having a cap didn’t scare him that badly, because the city remained, as it had been, an artless grid of a couple of dozen streets. If he tacked from entryway to entryway, from one courtyard to the next, with Rita’s scarf, which no one had bothered to take off him, wound around his head, and covering his ears completely with his hands, then, more than likely, he might not even get frostbite. Well, if he did, it wouldn’t kill him. And if he was lucky and there was no security intercom in any of the entryways, then everything would be hunky-dory.

  All he had to do was plan a route so that he moved only among buildings and didn’t end up in a vacant lot. He had to trace a dotted line for his small ships, a line that bypassed the Cyclops, Sirens, lotus-eaters, Circe, Charybdis, and whatever else was out there. With luck, he might be able to flag down a car.

  Filippov was running on disobedient legs that couldn’t always bend at the knees. He took the first ten steps quickly, his soles tapping like a cheerful tap dancer, but closer to the next building he started slowing down. His legs weren’t moving as confidently, the cheerful tapping there below had quieted down, and then something crunched and Filya thought he’d broken his stiffened foot, although he didn’t feel any pain. Given an anesthetic that powerful, you could probably have torn off his whole leg—and he would have noticed the loss only because he’d started stepping less often.

  After a while, his running stopped altogether. His legs had definitely acquired the uncompromising flexibility of crutches. But a saving entryway was near. Already within the zone of visibility. It floated out of the darkness and fog like the rocky shore the sailor’s eyes seek so avidly. Not the sailor who’s in the warmth and on deck but the one on the fragile board rocking over the abyss and barely paddling anymore. In that situation, the main thing is for the wave not to wash over you and pull you back into the bottomless darkness.

  I hope there’s . . . no intercom . . . Lord . . . please . . . no intercom, Filya thought as he stormed the front steps.

  The lumpy ice on the concrete steps seriously complicated his ascent. Slipping, Filippov distinctly imagined the dull and slight smacking sound of his skull splitting against the sharp concrete edge.

  I think . . . I’ve forgotten how to walk. Damn . . . I’m like a zombie.

  “Even worse.” The Demon of the Void grinned as he waited for Filippov on the front steps, scarfing down ice cream.

  “Up yours,” Filya muttered, grabbing onto the railing with his bare hand, his whole body shuddering helplessly. “I don’t give a—”

  “Up yours! Care for an ice-cream sandwich?”

  Filippov hobbled past the demon and pulled on the door. It would have been easier to open a strategic bunker sealed shut in the event of a nuclear attack.

  “An intercom,” Filya moaned.

  “Are you an idiot or something? There’s no electricity in the whole city. What intercom?” The demon laughed behind his back. “Sure you don’t care for some ice cream? If not, I’ll eat it all.”

  “But why is the door locked?”

  “Are you stupid? It’s frozen shut. Pull harder.”

  When you end up in a dark foyer, the best thing is not to fidget. The best thing is to stand very still right at the door and give a good listen. You never know who’s going to be there besides you. Especially if you’re in the Far North, where people’s customs are simple and their actions swift and cruel. Especially if there hasn’t been heat for two hours and God knows what is going on in the city. And if out of the darkness something big comes toward you, and you have absolutely no idea what it might be—you can just tell it’s come close and is standing a few centimeters away from you, breathing—don’t be afraid. Don’t jump up, and there’s no point shouting. You can’t change anything now, and the best thing is to reach out, feel something shaggy and warm and indeed big, and then pull that toward you, bury your face in its thick, stinky fur, press your entire body to it, and try to warm yourself at least a little. And while all this is happening and a shuddering chill still pushes through you from time to time, in no event should you think about how this silent mutt managed to get into the entryway, bypassing the lobby’s three doors set out like a labyrinth and on such tight springs that a moment’s heedlessness could snap any dog in two. Especially such a big one. Especially such a warm one. Especially such a docile one. No need to think about this, just sit there, pressing every square centimeter of yourself to it, every square millimeter, every millisecond of your body, which is now living only in time, since space has vanished. You have to absorb this mutt, swallow it, dissolve it completely. And if all of a sudden you have a flash from a silent angel that this isn’t just a dog that’s come to you out of the cold and dark, not just thick, rough fur that stinks of urine, loneliness, and contagion, but that very mutt, that sad creature that last year fell still in the noose four meters above the stage—if all of a sudden you realize who has come to see you, then best of all is to bury your face in this warm, suffocating stench, find the trembling ear in it, and at last whisper what you have never once said: “Forgive me. I’ll never do it again.”

  The mutt heard the steps on the staircase before Filippov, who still thought they were utterly alone in this cosmos, but the dog had already tensed up, inwardly pushing him away, and started to whimper. A couple of seconds later, he heard it, too. Several people were coming down the stairs, quickly. One of them was a child. He was asking something in a high-pitched voice strange in this darkness, but getting no answer. The others were too preoccupied with walking. In their reindeer boots, their steps sounded like a soft toom-toom, like startled antelopes moving through thick grass. Then a patch of light flickered. The person walking in front was carrying a flashlight. Silently, they descended the stairs, silently they walked past Filippov, who pressed his hand over the mutt’s snout, silently they went outside, and only the child, round as a snowman in his clothing, managed to reach out in the direction of the mutt wiggling in Filya’s arms. The last second before the door shut solidly behind them, the mutt desperately jerked away, scratching Filippov in the leg as it scrambled out into the lobby.

  Filya’s heart started pounding madly. He felt as if he’d been betrayed again by the perfidious Nina. He gave a sniff, scrambled to his feet in fury, and rushed for the exit. He wanted to catch up to the mutt immediately and punish it for its disloyalty—kick it, beat it, rip the heartless creature to shreds.

  “It’s in the car,” the Demon of the Void hinted, gallantly holding the heavy outside door open on the front steps. “He’s leaving with those people.”

  Next to the garage opposite the entryway was an Uazik enveloped in exhaust fumes. Metal bolts rumbled as the man in the bulky down parka shut the garage door. The headlights were shining straight at him, which was why he didn’t notice Filya, who, after slipping dangerously a couple of times on the front steps, flew down the stairs, ran toward the car, opened the back door, and dove inside.

  It was incredibly crowded in the Uazik, but he managed to shut the door behind him. Landing on the child, who was wrapped up in scarves and shawls, he heard someone squawk. Then the woman sitting next to him shouted, and then someone barked at him indignantly, and the very next second the man in the huge down parka tumbled behind the wheel in clouds of steam. Sensing something wrong, he turned his head, livened up like a bear disturbed in his den, and stared darkly at a now-quiet Filya. For a second, there was an oppressive silence in the Uazik.

  “Follow me!” the Demon of the Void barked, opening the door and trying to drag Filippov out of the car.

  “You can’t come in here!” someone hissed out of the darkness. “Have you lost your mind? What if someone sees you?”

  “Don’t fall behind,” the demon growled, pulling Filya by the arm.

  His hand was so pleasant to the touch, so reliable, and it instilled such confidence that Filippov, not doubting for a second, latched on to it the way, as a child, he used to latch on to his mama’s coat sleeve on a busy street, or on to a dolphin’s fin in his dreams.

  “Where are you going?” There was a rustling behind Filya’s back. “Go back immediately!”

  “Let’s go, let’s go,” the demon said, hurrying him along. “Pay no attention. Every flea tries to act like he’s the boss. Careful here. Watch your feet. There should be a manhole here somewhere.”

  In the pitch dark in front of them, something began to gleam. A deadly blue light seeped under the floor.

  “Don’t fall in,” the demon warned him in a whisper. “First feel out the step with your foot, and then there’s a ladder.”

  Filippov, who had been stumbling time and again and getting fouled up in heavy curtains, heaved a sigh of relief. The blue light was calming, like when he’d taken up photography as a child. It had been calm, right, and safe in the endlessly cozy bathroom where he’d locked himself in with his cuvettes and enlargers all night long, only the light from the lamp was red, not blue. But that didn’t matter.

  “Come on,” the demon whispered. “Go down that way.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll follow.”

  Climbing down the ladder, Filippov heard below him a vague, but at the same time persistent, bustling. Something was snuffling down below and whimpering reedily. The sounds were barely audible, which made Filya feel cheerful and awful at the same time.

  “What’s there?” he asked the demon, leaning his head back.

  “A little mutt,” the demon answered, stopping on the ladder.

  “My little mutt?”

  “Who else’s?”

  “Why is it whimpering?”

  “I don’t know. It probably misses you.”

  Filya let go and jumped down, counting on landing directly on the mutt. He was convulsed with a desire to feel beneath him that living muscular flesh, to have it twist in his arms, struggle, and never break away, never run away. However, the fall took a lot longer than he’d been counting on. After flying for about a minute, he tried to remember what Alice had done during her own fall to keep from being bored, but nothing came to mind, so he started patiently awaiting his landing, occasionally fluttering his legs smoothly and handsomely as if he were swimming underwater.

  “In fifteen minutes our plane will be landing at the Chemukbez Airport,” the demon’s voice announced in the darkness next to him. “Please bring your chair backs to an upright position and open your window shades.”

  To Filya’s right, a round window glowed in the darkness, and through it, far below, twinkled the lights of nighttime streets.