“The year before last they built a bridge there,” the demon explained, not asking why Filya had stopped at the next intersection and was looking around in terrible doubt that he’d strayed in the wrong direction. “Now you can drive across.”

  Once the demon said that, everything around Filya more or less fell into place. In any case, he recognized one building a hundred percent. But in the windows of the second-floor corner apartment, red and blue flames flickered, as if there were a police light flashing inside. A little closer to the building and you started to hear bizarre siren-like wailing.

  “Did someone drive a car in there or something?” the demon conjectured slyly.

  Filya couldn’t have cared less about the demon’s new bag of tricks. He was already climbing the steep staircase leading straight to the apartment as fast as he could. As far as he remembered, there had been no such staircase before and you could only enter the building at the front, but right now the last thing he was going to ponder was where it had come from and what that sign was looming over the front door. He had to find a perch somewhere—even if it was in this apartment, even if it meant seeing the exact spot where the sofa had once stood by the wall.

  Filya had only been here once, and he’d really hoped he’d never have to come back again.

  “Just look how merry it is here,” the Demon of the Void shouted in his ear the moment they’d crossed the threshold. “Par-tay! Go with the flow!”

  Lowering the dog to the floor, Filippov slid down the wall beside it, stuck his hands under his arms, and stared dully at what was going on. He was still shuddering from the freezing cold, which was why he now moved away from the wall, so he wouldn’t hit his head.

  In the apartment, which had been transformed from a residence into a fur store, a small but energetic bash was in full swing. Two people holding toy semiautomatic weapons were banging away with their guns nonstop, firing light bursts at a third person, who was pulling fur coats off hangers and quickly stuffing them into huge sacks. The multicolored flashing lights, which picked the robbers’ figures out of the darkness, the crack and wail of the plastic toys, and the long-awaited warmth that brought tears to his eyes transformed this scene, as the still not entirely thawed-out Filippov experienced it, into an unexpectedly colorful and absolutely otherworldly carnival.

  “Looks like they just robbed Children’s World.” The demon gave him a nudge. “What are you sitting there for? Don’t be a lump. Over there—look. Reindeer boots.”

  Filya turned his head with difficulty and saw several rows of fur-lined footwear under the window. Before, there’d been an ancient bureau there. He remembered because that was exactly where he’d once noticed his own record collection, which Nina had taken when she’d left him for Venechka. All the LPs were rare, some bought from speculators for an unthinkable price, but that wasn’t what ticked off Filya most when he saw his own vinyl there. What killed him wasn’t even the fact that they were in some old-lady bureau—in his sense of the world, rock and roll and antique junk could coexist without offending each other much, although the very fact of old ladies’ existence now made him feel nothing but disdain for those days. But, no, that wasn’t what hurt most, either. What really stung, what struck and enraged him most painfully of all, was that Nina had commandeered his life. Not just commandeered it—she’d dragged it over to some punk stranger who’d had her on his granny’s ancient sofa right by Filya’s records and probably been crazily proud to have such a trendy squeeze. When Filya had met her, Nina liked to play songs by Ottawan on her pathetic cassette player and could hop around her room to them for hours. She didn’t know Deep or Heep or Pink Floyd or Dire Straits—basically she had no idea of normal music for normal people. She was a dark horse, albeit a very attractive one, and it was he, not some jerk from the port, who’d shone some light on that horse.

  “Time to get yourself some footwear,” the Demon of the Void told him. “They’re about to go for the boots. They’ll clean this place out, and you’ll get nothing.”

  The apartment had once belonged to Venechka the flight engineer. Or rather, to his granny, who for unclear family reasons had lived in town and not at the port. This was where Nina had run after Filya’s phone rang and there was silence at the other end. The silence was a signal, a summons to copulate on the old sofa while his granny was taking a mud cure in Saky, in the Crimea. It was for this apartment that Nina had ultimately left Filippov, because the mud cure didn’t do much for Granny, who six months later freed up that housing permanently. Regarding her death, Filya, still furious, decided it was he and his hatred that had buried that perfectly innocent old woman, but when he was thinking more clearly he came to the conclusion that if anyone was going to die of his black hatred then it was Venechka, and since it hadn’t affected him, then there was no dark power worth regretting and repenting.

  “How long are you going to mope?” the demon hissed. “They’re just about to rake it all up.”

  But Filya was only now thawing out. He didn’t have the strength to get to his feet. And even if he did, he probably wouldn’t have risked it. All of him below the waist was so frozen through that it wouldn’t bend; it seemed so fragile it was sure to snap at the merest wiggle of a leg. His long-frozen feelings ought to have snapped off in exactly the same way, presumably, and naturally he wanted them to, but instead of them smashing with a light ringing and melting immediately, leaving behind dirty, short-lived puddles, his aged experiences got stronger by the minute and gathered force, and Filya panicked that he was done for.

  For some reason he tried to imagine what the rest of his life might have been like if Nina hadn’t started running here after those hang-up calls. He thought about two sons and a daughter, about how impoverished and cheerful their life would have been, the five of them, and how little they would have needed, about how in the mornings in bed he and Nina would tell each other their dreams of war with the Chinese, and the children would bring in their potties and settle in around their bed to listen. One of them would suddenly start straining and turn bright red, and the others would start shouting that it stank. Then they’d all sit together in the kitchen and watch patiently while Nina fixed pancakes for them, because of the hundreds or even thousands of people he’d met in his whole life, she was the only creature created for him alone, and he’d known that from the very beginning.

  When she cheated on him, what hit Filippov hardest was that he stopped perceiving life in its pure form. Nina was always a part of everything he did, to one degree or another. No matter what he was doing, everything was multiplied by her voice, her shoulders, her ability to lie down beside him so that their bodies were meant to be together from the very start. Nina gazed out of every film he tried—and failed—to watch. Every song was about her. She flowed from every conversation. Every passerby knew about her cheating.

  “They’ve already gotten as far as the cash box.” The demon nudged him.

  Filya raised his head and saw that the attackers had indeed abandoned their sacks and were working on the cash box. They’d had no luck opening it, so they just ripped it out with a crowbar, bolts and all.

  “Let’s split,” his demon said, trying to hurry him up. “Grab some shoes and let’s go. The cops are sure to drive up any second. Or the owners.”

  “The alarm isn’t working,” Filya told him. “Split if you want. I’ll stay.”

  He really didn’t feel like going. For so many years he’d studied how to avoid any memories of Nina or what happened to her in the end, but the moment he walked into this apartment those memories ceased to frighten him. Once again, Filya was at her graduation, which he abducted her from by crawling into the school through the window in the men’s second-floor restroom. Bored by the commencement speeches, the stuffiness, and her pompous classmates, she gladly agreed to run away then, and in the morning they found themselves in his best friend’s apartment. After talking away about this and that, they somehow imperceptibly fell asleep in the two uncomfortable armchairs facing each other, and a couple of hours later they woke up simultaneously, as if they were already connected by a special disturbing thread. Nina hadn’t yet stirred, had barely opened her eyes, when Filya opened his. They were sitting motionlessly, examining each other, and he couldn’t find a single thing about her that was foreign to him. Before falling asleep, Nina had thrown a huge flight jacket belonging to Filya’s friend’s father over her graduation dress, and she looked like a ruffled sparrow that had found its way into another bird’s nest. Lowering her feet to the floor, she slipped out of the jacket, huddled, and slapped her narrow bare feet toward the open balcony door. Filya turned his head to see her but immediately flinched, blinded by the sun hanging over the railings. Following Nina out onto the balcony, he looked down on the deserted streets filled with bright light, at the street-washing machine creeping solitarily behind the shimmering arc of water that made no sound at this distance, and then shifted his gaze to her white, badly rumpled graduation dress and for a couple of seconds was blinded. Nina—delicate, almost weightless—soared above the city, her arms thrown back, doing something with the shock of dark hair spilling over her shoulders and raising her sleepy, smiling face to the sun. She was so transparent that he nearly reached out to make sure she was real. Nina yawned, stretched, and shook all over, the way a senseless just-awakened kitten shakes, and Filya realized he couldn’t live without her.

  “Great liar you are.” The demon interrupted Filya’s memory. “You lived just fine without her for twenty years. And not badly, by the way. Come on, get some boots on. These jerks have finished.”

  The burglars had already managed to pry the cash box open and rake up the money, and now they were carrying their sacks outside, jostling in the doorway, quietly swearing at Filya, who was sitting on the floor, and sending waves of cold at him from the door that kept opening. The batteries in their toy semiautomatics had obviously run down, so they were now using their phones to light the way.

  “Get up.” The demon gave Filya a shove. “There are still a few pairs of reindeer boots left. Come on—shake a leg, or else you’ll be like the pilot Maresyev.”

  The demon chuckled and sang in his awful voice:

  “Gangrene, gangrene! The pilot’s lost his legs!”

  Filya made his way over to the window, struggled to pull off his stiff sneakers, and stuck his right foot into the narrow mouth of a boot. That foot got stuck, and Filya hopped on the other, lost his balance, and fell to the floor. One of the two burglars who’d just come back in turned around and shone his telephone in Filya’s direction, but the other immediately shoved his shoulder.

  “Fuck it. Let the stupid bum get himself some more clothes.”

  “Stupid bum,” the demon repeated gloomily as soon as the robbers had slammed the door shut again.

  “I can’t pull them on.” Filya could barely speak. “They’re really narrow.”

  “They’re women’s, idiot. Feel there, it’s all beaded in front.”

  “Which are men’s?”

  “Where there’s no beading. Has the cold fried your brains?”

  While Filya was dealing with the boots, the demon was staring out the window as if expecting someone. The mutt rose from where it’d been set down by the door and, its nails clicking across the floor, went over to Filippov, who felt the dog breathing on the open patch of skin at the back of his neck. It tickled and felt strange. His whole life, no one had ever once breathed on him so hotly. On the exhale, the mutt whimpered barely audibly, switching at times virtually to ultrasound. Shivers ran down Filya’s back, but he kept trying to pull on boots that just wouldn’t pull on, while the demon stood perfectly still by the window, merging in the darkness with everything else in the room. Had Filya not known for certain that he was standing there, he simply might have thought there was no one in the burgled store but him and the badly injured dog.

  “Tell me, are you happy now?” the demon asked softly. “At exactly this moment?

  “Right now?” Filya said. “I think so.”

  “Well, you’re a fool. A person doesn’t have to be happy. Happy is an unproductive state. Everything most important in their lives people do when they’re utterly unhappy. War, the agonies of creativity, the pain of loss—what about those comes from happiness? Only in moments like those is a person capable of the impossible. Therein lies the secret of greatness.”

  “So now you’re the one talking about people.” Filya grinned.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Have you heard? All people aren’t people. Some just seem to be.”

  The demon started chuckling. “Thinking about yourself? By the way, have you got those boots on there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Because time’s up.”

  The demon shrank back from the window and dissolved completely in the darkness. The next instant, outside on the stairs, came the sounds of tramping and loud voices. The door to the store opened wide and several men tumbled in from the street. They were all wearing down parkas, reindeer boots, and shaggy caps. They were all shouting loudly, and two were waving baseball bats.

  “I’ll tear the snakes apart!”

  “They’ve run away!”

  “No, there’s one left here!”

  The blinding flashlight rested like a train’s headlight on Filya sitting helplessly on the floor. He squinted and for some reason raised his hands over his head. The mutt bristled and started growling.

  “Waste him!”

  One of the bat-wielding men took a couple of steps forward, raising his weapon over Filya’s head, but the mutt lunged at him, digging its claws into the attacker and knocking him over before rushing at the next one, who waved his bat clumsily, hitting the mutt with a glancing blow, and leapt aside. The others took a step back.

  Desperately looking around in the flashlights’ dancing beams, Filya saw a pile of dog furs abandoned by the robbers. Scrambling straight for them on all fours, he pulled his lighter out of his pocket, flicked it, and waved the fire over the fur pile.

  “I’ll set it on fire!” he shouted, breaking into a scream. “I’ll burn it all! Get the hell away!”

  The guys in the down parkas froze in dismay, and those seconds were enough for Filya to jump to his feet and make a dash for the door. The mutt rushed after him.

  Outside they fell head over heels down the stairs, flew across a sidewalk and snowdrifts, and then jumped out into the thoroughfare. There were significantly fewer cars now. Filya ran like a swift Arctic deer through the frozen nighttime city and thought about happiness. In his mind, joyous, disconnected fragments were bouncing around about how good it was that he’d been able to run away again and how wrong his demon was in saying that a person didn’t necessarily have to be happy.

  “He does. He does,” Filya repeated chaotically to himself. “There has to be happiness. Otherwise, you can’t go on. I’ve got warm, comfortable shoes now, and I’m happy because it’s not at all slippery running. My feet are almost warm—Lord, I can feel them. I’m running, and this sweet mutt is with me. We’re all unhappy only because we have too little, and others always seem to have more. Roman Abramovich has yachts. Paris Hilton has freebie millions. But if you think about it, does Abramovich have it so easy? Probably not, really. A lot harder than everyone else. I’d definitely lose my mind. Although, more than likely, I already have. Doesn’t matter. Even if I have . . . I want to be happy. I’m giving myself permission. Because none of us has the right to consider himself unhappier than Abramovich. Or Paris Hilton. Poor little rich girl. That’s not even a name . . . just some address.”

  In that vivid moment of insight and unexpected understanding of happiness, he totally rejected his usual complaints about life and humanity. He no longer felt a void. His usual boredom suddenly receded, and everything that had seemed banal and flat acquired new meaning. Friends, celebrating the New Year, tedious children whom you had to compliment routinely to their stupid parents, the saccharine attitude toward old people—everything that usually weighed him down, that he’d always fled like the devil does incense, in the extreme case agreeing merely to pretend to be a normal person—all this had ceased to irritate him, and he felt that he was prepared to reconcile himself with this, and all this not only would not evoke in him the usual bile but quite the opposite, it would fill his void, and he would stop feeling like the half-inflated covering of a downed dirigible.

  At the entrance to Peter’s building, Filya again had to pick up the mutt, which could barely get up the iced-over concrete stairs. Once it had limped after Filya into the foyer, the dog immediately dropped down on the floor.

  “What’s with you, little buddy?” he murmured, leaning over the mutt and flicking his lighter. “Don’t give up. Just a little more to go. We’re nearly home.”

  The mutt guiltily beat its tail against the floor and dropped its head on its front paws. Filya had to carry the dog to the fourth floor in total darkness. He kept bumping into the ubiquitous potato crates and snagging his quilted jacket on the railing, but he wouldn’t let go.

  Next to the door to Peter’s apartment, he paused for a second, because he wasn’t sure whether it was the right door, and then he kicked it twice and listened.

  “Please let him be home,” Filya whispered to the dog. “Please let him be here . . .”

  He heard firm, confident steps behind the door.

  “Thank God,” Filya said. “Now . . .”

  The door opened, and on the threshold glowed the figure of Peter holding a huge, obviously souvenir candle.

  “Petya,” Filippov said. “We’re freezing. Let us in.”

  Peter looked at Filya in silence, at his coat sticking out from under his soiled jacket, at the mutt in his arms, at his burns.