Scene 7

Finally the evening drew close – on meaningless days often the sole comfort. A peculiar comfort, in Maille's view – not because he knew that the following day would be better, but because at that moment he simply did not know what «better» really was. Was «better» perhaps just the absence of worse? Was it real relaxation or just the lack of tension? Was it luck or was it merely the invisibility of bad luck?

At any cost there was vodka, decided Maille, and stepped into a bar at 5 in the evening, in a departure from his regular habit. The first glass disappeared with no contact whatsoever with his mind or with the back of his throat. The second glass, however, created a pleasant feeling of warmth in his tummy together with a vague sense of being under anaesthesia. Yes, that was it, the sense of feeling «better». Maille resolved to stop with two glasses; after all, he had the whole evening ahead with Ruslan.

With a paean on his lips he marched across Red Square to a small but expensive supermarket that he had found on an earlier visit to the city. There, in the best of moods, he forked out, for two bags of grocieries, a price that would have more than covered the monthly salary of a Russian police officer.

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