My uncle was my most trusted confidant. He alone knew everything about my life, my successes and my failures. It was with him that I’d drunk my first glass of vodka. It was with him that I went to a night club for the first time. It was also thanks to him that I travelled outside Russia for the first time. I owe him a multitude of firsts.
We were both sitting in the lounge with a cup of coffee. This drink made a change from the alcohol we usually drank together. That day, my uncle revealed that he’d done cocaine in the past. He’d taken it during his youth and when the woman he loved abandoned him. He’d felt a need to escape far away from his romantic problems, far away from his temporary money troubles, far away from a type of deprivation that rules the world in part. But this deprivation
