“Open the door,” Filya managed to say in Rita’s direction, but she didn’t get as far as the front steps when Anna Rudolfovna screamed so terribly and so loudly that one of the patients fell down. Slipping and flapping his arms, Senya rushed to Filya’s aid. The old men froze lifelessly at the foot of the bus, Rita stopped halfway to the building, and Filya continued holding Anna Rudolfovna, who was moving in his arms as if she were being torn open inside by a volcano.

  To keep her from falling, breaking free of his arms, and hitting herself on the frozen asphalt, he squatted. The convulsions shaking Anna Rudolfovna’s body were being conveyed to him, and he was having a hard time keeping his balance. Senya, who had run up, was pacing uselessly behind him, muttering something in Yakut. Anna Rudolfovna kept screaming and throwing her head back unnaturally. When Filya finally lowered her to the dark, bumpy ice, she darted forward abruptly, as if Filya and the whole rest of the world were preventing her from getting free for something so important that she had to do it that very moment. She flung up her arms, and the cigarette she’d been clutching pointlessly flew under the bus, hitting a wheel and scattering a small heap of extinguishing sparks right there.

  The man in the construction vest readily dropped to his knees and crawled under the bus. A moment later he surfaced holding the butt. He then crab-walked toward the writhing Anna Rudolfovna and tried to put the cigarette in her mouth, but the woman’s head was thrashing desperately from side to side, and all his attempts to restore harmony were in vain. Filya tried to push him away, but the good man had firmly decided to help, and time and again the hot butt ended up in dangerous proximity to the women’s eyes, which were contorted in unbearable pain.

  When he burned her cheek and Anna Rudolfovna screamed even louder, Filya punched him in the face. The man fell on his side and his brothers started howling, but Filya kept shaking Anna Rudolfovna by the shoulders and repeated like an incantation: “There were two people in the car. Two people. The boy wasn’t with them.”

  “Who said he was alive?” Tolik shrugged as he put the old keyboard, which he’d detached from the computer a second ago, in his backpack. “We didn’t search around. Maybe he froze to death somewhere near the car. You can’t search the whole river.”

  Filya was shifting from foot to foot. “But what if someone picked him up?”

  “Who?”

  “Well, the people who drove by.”

  “Like you and your accomplices?” Tolik glanced at Filya standing in the doorway and winked at him with a grin. “I see there’s already blood on your hands. You decided to move on to active measures?”

  Filya looked down at his bandaged hands. There really were bloodstains on his right hand, where the bandage was coming unwound.

  “I hit an idiot,” he said.

  “Good going.” Tolik nodded approvingly. “Why get mixed up with them? Wait for them to approach you themselves. One neat punch”—he mimicked a brief, energetic uppercut—“and that’s it.

  “But it’s so ineffective just leaving it at that. Right, Muscovite?” Tolik said. “Tell me, did it take them long to die? You must have let them suffer, right? Don’t leave them anymore. Finish ’em off right away. Again—show some mercy.”

  The investigator opened the safe and stared pensively inside, trying to figure out what else he should take.

  “Give me the list of those license plates,” Filya said.

  Tolik turned around and winked at him. “Maybe I should give you my service weapon, too?”

  “I want to talk to those people.”

  Tolik bared his teeth. “To trade impressions? You’ve decided to find out what other people feel when they’ve abandoned people to die? Laudable.”

  Filya lowered his head obstinately. “One of them might have taken the boy.”

  The investigator’s tone was even more mocking. “You’re taking away my bread and butter?”

  “You don’t want to look for the kid. You don’t. I can tell.”

  Tolik fell silent, looking Filya in the eye, and, after a long pause, he pulled a file out of the safe. Opening it, he took out a piece of paper, put it on the table, and turned away.

  Filya walked over to the table. “Is this the list?”

  “Are you an idiot or something? The list is in evidence. We copied the numbers from it. The addresses are already there. Most of the owners live in outlying villages.”

  “They were all leaving town?”

  “Not necessarily. You and your accomplices were headed this way.”

  “How can I find out?”

  Tolik turned around and shrugged.

  “However you want, go find out. Why are you pestering me, anyway? My business is to bring you in under Article 125. And I will. Rest assured. Don’t think that this whole mess is going to help you wiggle out of this. They’ll restore heat in the city soon, everything will shake out, and then you’ll answer in full. People died because of you—just don’t forget that. You got away with it once, but you won’t again.”

  How Tolik knew about Filya’s part in Nina’s death remained unclear. The investigator hadn’t cited any direct proof of Filya’s presence at the dacha. He’d simply implied that he knew—that’s it. He’d actively prodded Filya’s conscience, tried to scare him. That first moment when he’d started in on the topic at Danilov’s house, Filya truly had been scared. Suddenly, Tolik had risen up before him in some kind of mystical light. What he’d said about criminal responsibility, Article 125, and leaving a person in danger had dumbfounded Filya far less than the very crushing fact that this Tolik, who had appeared out of nowhere, knew everything.

  Had he already been working for the police at the time of Nina’s death? If so, who could he have been at the time? A rookie? A junior detective? Why had he declared Filya’s involvement so confidently? Did he have witness testimony, or was this entire sortie just a conjecture, a dizzying guess? What about the statute of limitations? And, most of all, what reason did Tolik have to attack him? These questions came to Filya only later, much later, but at the time the investigator brought up the subject of dead Nina, it seemed to Filya that the fiery heavens above had gaped open.

  “Tell me about Tolik,” he said, getting in the car next to Rita and sticking in his pocket the piece of paper with the license plate numbers. “What does he want from you?”

  “I thought you were planning to go to the airport.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me about Tolik.”

  Filya truly had changed his mind about going to the airport. He’d decided to fly out tomorrow. Or the day after. Any day after whatever day the boy was found. For some reason he was absolutely certain the boy was alive and that he’d find him. He couldn’t not find him. After all, he now had the list from Tolik of the cars that had driven by. One of those people had to know something. Filya felt fresh and new.

  In his eyes he was now so fresh and so new that right in the investigator’s office, without even saying good-bye to him, he’d decided to go immediately to the first address on the list. He wanted, no matter what, to act on this long-forgotten freshness, to direct it into the proper channel, to be useful, worthy, and righteous. He felt a strength inside him, and this feeling, which replaced the languor he’d grown used to over the last couple of years, filled him with hope.

  “I can do this,” he’d said under his breath as he exited the barely heated police station and headed for the car, where Rita was waiting for him. “I can do this. It’s all going to work out. I’ll find you, kid. Hold on.”

  Muttering this “hold on” again, Filya clenched his teeth and squeezed his bandaged right hand so hard it hurt, as if he could physically strengthen his determination. However, in the warm car next to Rita, he suddenly realized he was very tired. The fog in front of the windshield was already filling with a dropsical blue. The blue numbers on the dashboard clock flickered: 16:08. It was too late to drive across the river. In town, even though it was calendar fall, the winter night had fallen, limitless, like everything in these parts. This place, this town, this piece of the planet knew absolutely nothing about moderation. Everything that happened here—night, day, people, events, cold—was excessive. All this had been so huge and perfectly resistant to the inner or outer gaze that Filya froze in dismay at the mere attempt to look at it.

  The events of this strange, insane day fell heavily on him and on his pains from yesterday. He felt like a squashed worm on which the narrow underground passageway he himself had dug out at incredible effort had collapsed.

  Unable to move a hand or a foot, he leaned back in the seat and repeated in a muffled voice, “Tell me about Tolik.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To Danilov’s. The hotel’s still cold, more than likely. Even the cops don’t have heat. Go on, tell me.”

  From Rita’s angry, confused, and not always well-connected statements, Filya was able to pick out a plotline. Not easily, but nonetheless. More than likely, Tolik represented a group of people interested in discrediting Danilov and pushing him out of power in the city. Obviously he’d been promised a serious promotion if he could dig up compromising material, and even better if he could lock up the local construction magnate, who was seriously hampering somebody’s style.

  Rita was irritated when she spoke about the investigator, so Filya kept grabbing her by the elbow.

  “Easy on the gas,” he said. “The fog’s bad. Someone could suddenly pull out in front.”

  The fog lights cast a flat, wide beam in front of the car, and this was the limit of what Filya could see in the dense thickness of this already dark-blue gel. Rita let up briefly, but a minute later the detested image again aroused her anger, and the gas pedal seemed to go to the floor all by itself.

  “Don’t speed,” Filya said. “We’ll be killed.”

  From time to time, continuing to restrain Rita, he gradually reached the conclusion that the detective had an ulterior motive in attacking him, that it was important for him to draw Filya over to his side; he wanted to use him for something. But what? What use could Filya be in local intrigues, and to whom? Deciding that he couldn’t and that Tolik’s recruitment efforts in this case were more aimed at that fool Wiki-Pavlik, who’d been behind the wheel at that unfortunate moment and who, due to his closeness to Danilov, really could be of interest to the investigator, Filya was completely reassured.

  “I guess it’s something personal,” he said out loud with a sigh.

  “What is?”

  “Oh, nothing. People sometimes latch on for no reason at all. They’re constantly imagining things, something squeezes them somewhere, their bathing suit wedges up their ass.”

  “What bathing suit?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  They rode in silence for a couple of minutes, and then Rita spoke again.

  “In one interview with you I read . . . you said each of us is a part of some text.”

  “Yeah? I don’t remember. Probably. Sometimes I rave on like that.”

  “What does that mean? What text am I a part of?”

  Filya snickered and held his tongue.

  “You won’t say?” She glanced at him searchingly.

  He shrugged.

  “Sure. You’re part of a very nice text. You have a good text—don’t worry.”

  “Is that true?” She looked positively joyful. “How do you know?”

  “You’re my daughter. Listen, can you go slower?”

  Still smiling, Rita let up slightly on the gas, but the car didn’t slow down so far as he could tell. The next second, the fog over the road broke up in shreds, and a few meters in front of them, Filya clearly saw a child standing right in the middle of the road.

  “Stop!” he yelled, pulling on the wheel.

  The car was thrown to the right and flew onto the shoulder, but in the split second before that, Filya heard a sound that made him want to scream.

  “We hit him!” he shouted, jumping out of the car and into the snow. “We hit him! I heard it!”

  It had been a glancing blow, so the body had been thrown to the opposite side. Filya saw him lying on the edge of the roadway. He rushed toward him, slipped on a well-worn rut, and fell—and right then an oncoming car rocketed by like a dark missile. In horror at the thought that the second car had run over the child they’d hit, Filya jumped to his feet, fell again, shouted something, and scrambling awkwardly, on all fours, wailing in terror, not noticing the burning pain in his hands, ran to the shapeless gray heap lying on the shoulder.

  “Stop, don’t touch it,” Rita said when she caught up to Filya. “It could be contagious. Herpes, or I don’t know what.”

  Filya turned around and looked at her from the bottom up, stunned. Nothing in Rita’s face expressed great concern. It—her face—held nothing but a little garden-variety sympathy. As if she ran over children every day and had long since grown used to it.

  “There’ve been a lot of them in town lately.” She sighed and shrugged. “They live in the heating mains . . . And now they’ve climbed out. It must be cold there, too. Maybe even colder than outside.”

  Filya, speechless, and still kneeling next to the dark, shapeless lump, grabbed his throat, which had suddenly been seized by the harsh icy air, and started coughing. Tears welled up. His eyelashes stuck together instantly, so he blinked hard and rubbed his bandaged right hand over his face to pull his eyelids apart.

  “Let’s go,” Rita said. “You’ll get sick. You shouldn’t be out in this freezing weather for long.”

  Filya turned around and looked again at what they’d hit. Lying on the snow in front of him was a dog. The same dog that had wandered through the city with him half the night. And it was alive. Its left side was heaving from frequent, broken breathing. Clouds of steam were gushing from its mouth.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Rita said when Filya, carrying the mutt and panting from the strain and strange happiness, told her to open the back door. “This is Tyoma’s father’s car. We’ll stain the whole seat. He’ll draw and quarter us afterward.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Filya said, laying the filthy, shuddering mutt on the light-colored seat. “This is just the ticket.”

  “For Tyoma’s father?”

  “Yeah, him, too.”

  Blood from the injured animal immediately started seeping onto the expensive leather upholstery and dripping onto the little carpet under the seat. Filya got in the front seat and slammed the door.

  “Faster,” he said, simultaneously exhaling a cloud of steam. “Now you can drive like mad!”

  Filya kept turning around, and for a long time he rested his hand on the mutt. It was as if he were listening to it with that hand, sensitively catching the almost inaudible—practically on the edge of ultrasound—whimpering that intertwined with the dog’s heavy breathing. The mutt glanced at Filya’s hand and tried to wag its tail on the seat gratefully, but all he could see was a very faint shudder. The blood and melted snow caked to the fur on its obviously injured tail made it definitely too heavy to lift. The mutt kept shuddering and, with just its gaze, apologized for its helplessness.

  Filya’s hand rested on the cold, wet, and dirty fur, the car rattled over the ruts of the suburban road, and the dog was thrown in the air from time to time, but Filya no longer asked Rita to slow down. Like a pitiful scrap of paper in the wind, he was tossed from side to side by bursts of the most contradictory emotions. First, he rejoiced that the struck child had turned out to be a dog. Then he grieved because once again he’d nearly killed a poor mutt. Then he started rejoicing again, and frightening Rita a little by this, he even smiled—because the mutt was there, and Filya hadn’t imagined everything that had happened to him yesterday, and the mutt was now lying next to him, alive and real, if slightly crippled. Then Filya started thinking that maybe it wasn’t so slightly, and this thought led him to despair. But on the other hand, the mutt’s existence in real life, in that part of it which Rita sitting beside him now could easily confirm, proved that he hadn’t lost his mind after all and that what had happened yesterday had, after all, happened. The thought that he wasn’t insane was reassuring, and for some reason Filya, holding the mutt by its dangling paw, even took pride in it.

  Turmoil awaited them at Danilov’s house. Tyoma was walking around with a black eye. Pavlik was trying to keep Zina in their room, but she was absolutely irrepressible and kept bursting out onto the stairs where she loudly declared that she would not step foot in this house again and she’d rather freeze in her own apartment in town than put up with this sort of thing any longer. After that, she would go back to her husband in the room, only to invariably reappear soon thereafter. To whom she was directing her philippics remained unclear. Other than Inga, who greeted Filya and Rita in the front hall, Zinaida had no other audience.

  Busy with getting the mutt settled and searching for some sort of medicine, Filya at first didn’t pay much attention to all this. He was just aware that there’d been an open clash between Danilov and Tyoma and that Tyoma’s shiner was the result. What the cause of the conflict was, Inga didn’t know or wouldn’t say. Not that Filya particularly cared right now.

  “Hold his paws!” he shouted at Rita. “He’ll get away!”

  “I am!” she replied, tensely twisting her face and grabbing the injured mutt by its front paws, which it was furiously beating in the air as if it were falling into an abyss.

  The dog gave a nasty yelp and scratched Rita’s jacket sleeve a few times, and if she’d had time to remove her coat when she’d come in, she’d have been left with scars on her arm.

  “I’m sick of this,” Rita squeezed out through firmly clenched teeth, and she let her whole body collapse on the mutt, which whimpered pathetically.

  “That’s easier.” Filya sighed as he dealt with the broken back paw.

  After pouring nearly an entire vial of iodine on the large open wound, he was now trying his hardest to bandage to the paw a slide rule he’d found in Danilov’s office. Shards of glass crunched underfoot. A smashed coffee table was lying by the wall. Filya didn’t remember breaking it.