Going out on the front steps, he saw the silhouette of the dog waiting for him. The mutt jumped to its feet, started whimpering in brief screeching bursts, and then vanished under the building. In the darkness and fog, Filya knew he might just be imagining this, of course, but in the entryway, after all, it had been much darker, so Filya was forced to admit that more than likely he did in fact see the dog.

  “Mutt, I am so sick of your shit,” he grumbled, cautiously descending the steps, which were bumpy from patches of ice. “What do you need?”

  Looking under the building, he tried to see anything at all between the posts.

  “Hey,” Filya called out. “Where are you, you creature?”

  In the icy, dark abyss, something started to move. Filya slapped his hand against the concrete cover overhead.

  “Come here! I’m not crawling in there.”

  A few meters away, he once again heard barely audible whimpering. It was strange hearing sounds like that from such a large mutt, but what wasn’t strange tonight?

  The cold had already started squeezing Filya in its pitiless vise, so he had to decide: either go back to the entryway or onward, toward whatever was whimpering there beyond the posts. Filya swore quietly, but creatively, clutched his coat collar, and ducked into the reverberating darkness. In any case, he needed to go to the other side of the building. Circumventing this hulk and its seven or eight entryways would have taken much more time, which meant warmth.

  Reaching out with his free hand, he moved for a while quite boldly between the posts. His feet had finally stopped slipping, and he could focus fully on his bat instincts. Which, actually, he turned out not to have. Clearly his echolocation skills were deficient. After he’d endured a painful bump to the shoulder a couple of times on the corner of a gigantic post, he became more cautious and decided not to rely on his hearing anymore. The whimpering mutt was constantly changing location, so ultimately Filya said to hell with the search and kept moving toward the opposite side of the building.

  In any other situation, he would have compared these wanderings in the pitch dark among huge squared-off pillars to a lab mouse running through a research labyrinth, but he didn’t have a shred of irony left right now. Along with everything else, the cold in his quaking body had paralyzed Filya’s sarcasm, his don’t-give-a-shit-ism, his wicked sense of humor, and, apparently, even his very ability to think. Viscous bursts of what previously would have been thoughts were crawling around in his head from place to place, like freezing snails, refusing to coalesce. He imagined he’d ended up under the belly of the dinosaur from the Steven Spielberg movie; he recalled the jungles and the warmth. He grinned at the fact that here, under these buildings, in summer, was the very best place to hide from the unbearable local heat, and to pee, and to drink vodka from the bottle before the school dance, or to wait for Nina to come back from rehearsal and then run after her into the foyer.

  “Why the fuck did I come here?” he managed to get out, trembling. “I should have . . . there . . .”

  After crashing into a few more posts, he realized that in searching for the mutt, he’d lost his sense of direction and possibly might have been going not crosswise but lengthwise to the building, like a fragment of plankton traveling in the body of a whale. Or like a Jonah swallowed not in the Mediterranean but far beyond the Arctic Circle, and he’d gotten a freshly frozen whale, not a warm and cozy one, like the primary source had suggested was his due.

  With unbending fingers, Filya tried to flick the little wheel of his lighter. He might as well have tried to flick with a prosthesis or a totally paralyzed hand. Even putting the lighter back in his pocket was a problem. A familiar problem, but a problem. It was at this moment that someone gave him a slight push. He spun around in fright and flung his arm up but found no one there. Whatever had pushed him had apparently jumped back and in the next instant started to growl slightly.

  “It’s you, you creature,” Filya muttered, lowering his hand and still not finding anything. “Come here . . . How are you doing?”

  He tried to remember what they’d called the hanged mutt from the theater, but other than the idiotic name Spot, nothing came to mind. He couldn’t get a whistle out, either. His stiff, frozen lips just wouldn’t make the right shape, and instead of a summoning whistle, all that came out was summoning steam and a light hum. Nonetheless, that was enough. The mutt pushed him with its nose again, ran off a couple of steps, and resumed whimpering. Filya moved toward its sounds. The pushes were repeated, Filya went where the whimpering was, and soon after realized that they were in business.

  “We’re getting out,” he mumbled, encouraging either himself or the mutt that had taken him under its patronage. “Come on. Good boy. Come on.”

  Once they’d gotten out from under the building, Filya realized that without the mutt he probably would have died. On that side, access to the posts was almost solidly covered over with sheet metal. There was just a small opening left, about a meter and a half wide, and it was toward this that the good mutt had led Filippov, as if toward a permanently unfrozen hole in the icy deep.

  “Hey! Where are you?” Filya called out softly as he leaned, wiped out, against a tottering, crooked fence.

  But the next second, he jolted alert when, two hundred meters from the building he’d miraculously just emerged from, an arrow of light slashed through the darkness and retreated infinitely to the left and right.

  “Is this hell?” He exhaled. “I’m sick of your theater.”

  The closer he got to the flaming line, and the more solidly the icy gloom thickened around the fire blazing up ahead, the more powerfully his certainty grew that all this was once again a joke of the Demon of the Void, and nothing but no end of trouble and deception awaited him. Approaching the flames, rising a meter and a half up, Filya was already sure that the shadows cast in front of the fire were, of course, devils, and they had stoked it to give him a scare. Naturally he didn’t want to make their task any easier. He had virtually no doubt that this was a taste of the next chicanery from his old friend, so he had nothing to fear.

  “Come on, come on. This is all just your imagination . . . Nothing but sucky Buddhism,” Filya muttered, picking up his pace. “An illusion. There’s nothing here. I’m not here, either. That means I can do anything I want. Damn, it’s cold.”

  He felt the warmth from about twenty meters away. Physically, this was probably impossible, however he not only saw the flame but literally felt it, even at this distance. Like a child’s breathing that only the mother leaning over the cradle can discern, warmth touched Filya’s masklike face, and he realized he was about to start crying again. He had no reason for tears this time, but the heat mounting with every step he took evoked mechanical changes in him, as if something inside were melting, disintegrating, and these changes had compelled him to pull his cold-contorted hand out of his coat pocket and convulsively wipe his cheeks, which were burning from either singeing or thawing.

  “Good going, you devils,” he said, teeth chattering, as he walked up to the fire.

  Not one of the figures stirring the firewood under the enormous pipes turned around.

  “Hey,” he exclaimed quietly, stung that once again he had the smallest role. “I’m here! Have you completely lost your minds?”

  Two beings wearing huge sheepskin coats, those work caps with the white strings, and bulky quilted trousers straightened up and stared at him silently. In the smoke, he could barely see their faces. Fiery flashes danced on their shoulders like diabolical epaulets, and their sheepskin coats had an oily gleam. Everything around them was hissing, crackling, droning, and gurgling. The snow underfoot had turned from a concrete-hard layer into a dark, smacking mush—dripping and coiling up in steam. Filya could feel his sneakers start taking on moisture, and the smoke stung his eyes. After standing there immobile for a couple of seconds, the two in sheepskin coats went back to what they were doing.

  “Hey,” Filya repeated indignantly, setting off a painful coughing jag from choking on smoke.

  “Take him to the truck, Vitalik,” one devil told another. “He must have run away from the nuthouse. He’s about to buy it.”

  In the cab of the truck where the devil named Vitalik firmly seated Filya, it was light even though the lamp somewhere overhead went out as soon as the door slammed shut. The flame blazing ten meters or so from the truck filled the cabin with an even orange glow, and Filya now had an unimpeded view of the devil assigned as his escort. Vitalik was a short, sturdy fellow, about twenty-five years old by earthly measures, without any visible signs of infernality. Thickset and solid, he didn’t have any horns under his cap, and despite the dirt stuck to him, he was quite tidy, neat, and well formed, like a scar after a successful operation. The first thing Filya noticed was his raptorial Tatar nose, pointed at the tip and flat as a manta ray at the bridge. Then Filya’s gaze stopped at Vitalik’s upper lip, which had once been torn and hadn’t healed evenly. The overall picture was completed by his manner of holding his head. In this Vitalik resembled a well-trained fighting dog—slightly pressing his skull to the ground, he didn’t look from side to side, just straight ahead, but very confidently and with total indifference to any possible danger.

  From time to time, the flame opposite the truck picked up a merry and nasty strength, forcing Filippov to instinctively shield his eyes, which was why he didn’t notice Vitalik come up holding a sandwich and plastic cup, which he silently held out to his charge. Then he reached under the quilted vest lying behind him and fished out a bottle of vodka. Filya sank his teeth into the sandwich so he could hold the dancing cup with both hands. Tasting the sharp sausage, he remembered he hadn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. His mouth instantly filled with saliva, though he couldn’t have said with confidence that the sausage was the sole cause. The cup in his hands was still shaking hard, but this was no problem for Vitalik. Apparently, he’d encountered a similar phenomenon in his practice before, so he easily hit within the range of Filya’s oscillations, calmly and steadily filling the cup as if it were resting on a granite cliff. The vodka poured serenely into the white plastic, which turned a gentle pink in the flame’s reflected light, and Filya, like Pavlov’s dog, salivated more. The smell of diesel hovering in the cab also contributed its mite. The jacket smelled of machine oil, but in combination with the sausage in Filya’s mouth and the rosy vodka splashing quietly in the flimsy cup, smells nearer and dearer than these he could scarcely imagine at that moment. The huge world frozen through and through shrank to the size of the warm cab of a funky old GAZ-66, and in this world, peace reigned.

  After waiting for Vitalik to fill the cup about halfway, Filya nodded, took the sandwich out of his mouth, and drank. The vodka was cheap and warm, but it was just the ticket. Basically, everything that was happening was exactly what needed to. Filya had landed in the right place.

  He felt his strength returning and realized that everything was going as it should, in the best of all possible ways. Stylish restaurants, stylish friends, stylish scandals, showings, receptions, and trends—everything he was supposed to like because that was what other people at the top, inaccessible to others, liked—all that flew off into the black sky with the sheaf of sparks beyond the windshield, and he was left with the firm sensation that he wanted to like only this—the cab that smelled of diesel, the plastic cup in his hand, and the devil Vitalik, who’d already poured him a second round.

  Filya took a bite of the sandwich, inhaled sharply, and fell still, trying not to miss the slightest detail of his happiness. He wanted to make the moment last, register it, keep it for himself forever. He didn’t care that everything that was happening was just an illusion, that none of it was real. This was the best “none of this is real” ever.

  “Go on, drink,” Vitalik the demon said in a low but insistent voice. “Not too long ago we had a guy get thrown off the bridge.”

  Filya opened his eyes.

  “What for?”

  “He bogarted the package.”

  After Filya drained the cup a second time, Vitalik filled it for himself, pinched off a crumb from the sandwich, gave it a sharp doggy sniff, and downed all he’d poured in one swallow.

  “Why do you just have a cap on?” he asked on the exhale. “Decide to kill yourself? Or are you on the lam? Have they got you stashed at the hospital?”

  He clearly thought Filya was crazy, which was why he used a tone of voice that, in his opinion, suited a conversation with someone who’d lost his mind.

  “You want me to give you my jacket? Look, it’s padded.” Vitalik pulled out the tattered jacket from behind. “It’s warm. A filthy son of a bitch, but warm. Put it over that coat of yours or you really will buy it.”

  Filya was certain, in turn, that he was dealing with a devil, which was why he behaved accordingly, trying to say as little as he could. He thought it best not to draw more than necessary attention from one of these brethren. You never knew what kind of compromising material it was collecting.

  “What do they feed you there?” Vitalik went on. “Do they give you vodka?”

  Filya shook his head and silently started pulling the gifted jacket over his expensive cashmere coat.

  “Well, drink up then. Hold on, I’ll pour some more.”

  Filya readily took the empty plastic cup from him and waited for the refill.

  “It’s a good thing you showed up.” Vitalik winked at him. “I’ll just sit here with you a little bit. We’ve been lighting these bonfires all over town for five hours. I’m bushed. And I stink of smoke.”

  He sniffed his coat and laughed.

  “A firefighter, damn it. I can’t go home.”

  “Why?”

  “My woman doesn’t like me stinking of smoke. Gives her a headache.”

  Filya sniffed the air and shrugged. “I don’t smell it. Why are you making these bonfires? Did the boss demons tell you to?”

  “Who?” Vitalik gave him a slightly worried look, then scratched his forehead under his cap. “Oh yeah, right. Them. The heating mains—they say they have to be kept warm. If they burst, we’ll have a city frozen solid come spring. Everyone’ll have to flee to their dachas and villages. They’ll have to take you fools away somewhere, too. They can’t abandon you, after all. And these demons, yeah, they’re really harassing us.”

  Vitalik grinned and wearily wiped his soot-stained face.

  “My granddad’s for sure as nasty as an evil spirit,” he said. “Today he didn’t get some money from a customer. He and his brigade sat there across the river for three months or so. They had everything nearly done, and then this accident at the power station. A rolling blackout. He never did get paid for his shoddy work. All the brigades were called into emergency headquarters. But he was building Danilov a house. He had an agreement with the bosses that he wouldn’t even show up at his regular job. He wanted a lot of money. I tell him, ‘You’ll get it tomorrow. Your Danilov’s not going anywhere,’ and he chucked me out to the heating mains for that. Really angry. He loves money that much.”

  Filya vaguely remembered he’d already heard that name today—Danilov—and more than once even, he thought, but doubts concerning how this grubby devil could know a real person quickly evaporated.

  Who knows what tricks they get up to. The thought came to him smoothly and very cozily after his third cup of vodka. They disguise themselves, the demons. They came up with this accident. Heating mains.

  He looked at the fire, entranced, while Vitalik continued to share his resentment toward life.

  “After the army I wanted to go into professional boxing, but my granddad told me I shouldn’t. My mother obeys him, and she forbade me. She says, you’ll be a foreman like him and get an apartment fast. But I once saw that boxer Kostya Tszyu at the airport in Tyumen. Can you imagine? Like I’m seeing you now. Just walking along, smiling. What does this have to do with an apartment?”

  Vitalik sighed and poured himself another splash of vodka. Everything he was talking about sounded very much like the life of an ordinary person, but Filya had firmly decided that the devils weren’t going to trick him today.

  “So tell me,” Filya said, “could you kill a person?”

  He was sure that if Vitalik was a devil, he absolutely would try to deceive him, acting like a human being and saying you shouldn’t kill, or something like that. But Vitalik was wilier.

  “Probably,” he said without thinking too long. “It just depends what for.”

  “Well, in a war, for instance.”

  “I could in a war. There’d be an order. I wouldn’t be guilty of anything.”

  “What about without an order? Out of jealousy, for instance. Could you kill your wife if she cheated on you?”

  Vitalik sniffed and braced his whole self, instantly resembling a huge cobblestone. “Listen, why are you asking these questions?”

  “I want to check something out.”

  “Well, I’m about to check you out across your blockhead with a left jab. Do you know what mine’s like?”

  “What?”

  “Slaughter.”

  “Then don’t check me out,” Filya said sensibly. “I believe you as is. You wanted to go into professional boxing. I get it.”

  “What do you get, you dumbass? What are you talking about, anyway?”

  Vitalik started for Filya, and his left hand was already trembling suspiciously, as if taking aim itself. As a boxer, Vitalik could have given some poor slouch a thrashing in the ring, not out of hatred for the human race but just like that, unintentionally. Looking at his trembling, Filya thought there’d been no point putting the question outright. He should have taken it gradually. He could have started with something random, not necessarily actual premeditated murder. Or even better, he should have asked whether Vitalik could have, say, left a sleeping person at a dacha while knowing that someone had closed the flue by accident and the person probably wouldn’t wake up because the firewood hadn’t burned up completely—with the proviso, naturally, that this person had caused him the kind of pain no one ever had before.