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Three years have passed since I graduated from university. One cheerless October morning I am walking down Chistoprudny Boulevard to the editorial office of Supplement to Moscow Evening Standard. I want to put in an ad, ‘cello for sale.’ I don’t play it now, and I need the money. My mother has diabetes, I have to buy her medicine. The Boulevard is half dead, all but deserted, the dry leaves rustle under foot. Reflections of reflections flicker in the pale windows of the restaurant in the middle of the boulevard, ripples of the morning pond.
I run into Lyudmila on the corner. She’s a former student of S. B.
“He’s a wonderful teacher,” she says. “He should write books, he’s burying his talent in the ground.”
“Maybe he is,” I think. “But where’s that ground? Don’t ask ‘On what grounds?
