When dusk was beginning to fall Ivan went back into the town, walked along the streets once more – the "Progress" Cinema, the District Committee, the militia. Beside the Gastronom store there was a long, serpentine line. One of the men at the end of the line dropped a bag full of empty bottles. He started picking up the pieces, cut his fingers, and swore in a weary, monotonous voice. "If only I could buy half a liter and down it first… otherwise I don't think I'll have the courage," thought Ivan. But he had nothing to pay with. "Okay, I'll try to find the sleeping pills. But it'll have to be done later, or else the neighbors will suspect something."

And he continued wandering. When night came the cold made the stars glitter. The icebound snow crackled underfoot. But there was already a smell of spring on the wind. Close to his home Ivan lifted his head – almost all the windows were already dark. It was dark, too, in the courtyard beside the apartment building. Dark and silent. In the silence Ivan heard the light crunch of the snow beneath the feet of a stray dog. Happy at the thought of being able to stroke it and look into its anxious, tender eyes, he turned around. The night wind was causing a ball of crumpled newspaper to roll along the ground…

Ivan went in through the main door and was preparing to climb up to his apartment on the third floor but remembered he should look at the mail. He hardly ever opened his box for weeks at a time, knowing that if something was dropped in it, it was almost certainly by mistake. His daughter sent him three cards a year: on Soviet Army Day, his birthday, and Victory Day. The first two dates were already past, the third was still a long way off. This time he found a letter. Only the upper floors were lit, and where the box was almost total darkness reigned. " Moscow," Ivan made out on the envelope. "It must be the bill from the sobering-up station. Hell's bells! They don't waste any time. That's the capital for you…"

In the course of his wanderings through the town he had had time to gather his thoughts. He had been thinking about it all with surprising detachment, as if it concerned someone else. He recalled where there was a razor amid the chaos in the kitchen, and in which of the drawers in the chest the pills were kept. He was no longer on good terms with his neighbors on the same floor. Which is why he decided to slip the note asking for someone to come and see him under the door of the apartment below, where Zhora, a robust warehouseman lived. He got on well with him and occa-sionally they had a drink together. "It's all right, he's tough. He's not one to be scared," thought Ivan. "That's important. Someone else might have a heart attack…"

As he climbed up the stairs he was fingering his neck, trying to find where the blood throbbed most strongly. "That must be it, the carotid. Oh! It's really pounding away there. The main thing's to hit it first time off. Otherwise you're going to be running around like a chicken with its throat half cut!"

In the apartment he took out the razor and found the sleeping pills. On a piece of paper he wrote: "Zhora, come to number 84. It's important." Then he went and slipped the note under the door.

Back at home, he made a tour of the apartment, glanced at a photo in the wooden frame: Tatyana and himself, still very young, and in the background palm trees and the misty outline of the mountains. Then, he filled a glass with water from the tap and began to swallow the pills one after the other.

Soon Ivan felt a thick fog that muffled all sounds revolving slowly in his head. He opened the razor and, as if to shave himself, lifted his chin.

At that moment he remembered he had slammed the door shut and that he needed to leave it unlocked, otherwise Zhora would not be able to get in. His mind was still functioning and this afforded him an absurd satisfaction. In the entrance hall he took the medals, wrapped in an old piece of newspaper, out of his coat pocket, together with the letter from the Moscow sobering-up station. He tossed the medals into the drawer and, holding the letter up to the light, opened the envelope unhurriedly. There was nothing official there. The page, covered in regular feminine handwriting, began with these words: "Dear Dad! It's been a long time since I last wrote you, but you've no idea what life is like in Moscow…"

Ivan picked up the envelope and read the sender's address with difficulty: " Moscow, 16 Litovsky Avenue, Flat 37, Demidova 0.I." Feverishly, muddling up lines of text that were already growing blurred, his eye seized upon fragments of sentences: "I've got to know a nice young man… We're thinking of getting married in July… His parents would like to meet you. Come for the May celebrations… You can stay with us for a week or two…"

Ivan could never recall the very last sentence in the letter, even though he saw it absolutely clearly, even repeated it, as it seemed to him, whispering, "The bells are ringing in Moscow… The bells are ringing… And who's going to hear them?"

It was not until the afternoon that Ivan came to. He opened his eyes, then screwed them up against the blinding sunlight beating on the window panes. He was lying on the floor. Above him crouched Zhora, shaking him by the shoulder.

"Dmitrich, Dmitrich! Wake up now, you goddamned veteran! You've sure been boozing it up! Where did you get plastered like that? No, don't shut your eyes, you'll nod off again. Why did you send for me? What's this urgent business, then? To wake you up? Eh? D'you think I've got nothing better to do than come and sober you up?"

Listening to him and scarcely grasping the import of his words, Ivan smiled. Then just as Zhora was preparing to go, Ivan forced open his swollen lips and asked softly: "Zhora, let me have five rubles. I'll pay you back next pension day."

Zhora whistled softly to himself, got up and thrust his hands into his pockets.

"My lord, Dmitrich, you've got some nerve! Now you've found yourself a Pioneer who's done his good deed for the day, I guess you'll be wanting me to bring you the occasional bottle and give you the nipple to suck…"

Then he glanced around the shabby, empty apartment and at Ivan, his thin face devoured by his beard, and said in a conciliatory voice: "Look, I don't have five rubles. Here's three. That'll be enough to take care of your hangover. Yesterday at the Gastronom they had a strong one in at two rubles seventy a bottle. The guys say it's fine…"

Feeling a little better, Ivan doused his head pleasurably under the cold tap for a long time, then went out into the springtime street and made his way unhurriedly to the store, smiling at the warm sunshine.

On his return he cooked some noodles in a saucepan. He ate them slowly with some cheap canned fish. After the meal he emptied a whole packet of washing powder into the bathtub, gathered up all the linen and clothes and did a great, clumsy wash, the way men do.

When Ivan caught sight of Olya at the railroad station, in the middle of the dense, teeming crowd, she had changed so much it took his breath away. As they made their way toward the subway he could not get used to the idea that this svelte young woman was his daughter. Everything about her was so simple and naturally harmonious – neat light gray shoes, black stockings, a full jacket with broad shoulders.

"Goodness, Olya! You've turned into a real westerner!" he said, shaking his head.

She laughed.

"That's right, Dad. 'When in Rome do as the Romans do'! I can't help it. You know what big fish I have to deal with. Only yesterday I was just having my last session with a capitalist who's got factories in seven different countries. With people like that we have to look reasonably presentable or they don't sign our contracts."

"And look at me, a real peasant. You must be ashamed to walk beside me."