The sky behind the large, curtainless windowpane is jet-black, yet it is already morning. It is the moment when the night sinks to zero and the day begins from number one. Catherine can imagine this...

He had met her in the Hungry Duck, in the heart of Moscow, where the ladies can drink as much as they like free of charge until half eleven at night. The two of them happened to be at the bar. She with a Hanky-Panky, he a Vodka Martini. Their eyes fell first on the glasses; then, they looked at each other...

My childhood was filled with sounds, sounds behind the thin walls of my room covered with birch-tree forest wallpaper. I lived in a birch forest, at night I looked at the ceiling criss-crossed with moving streaks of light from cars passing in the street below my window...