For several years there had been a standing offer of a visiting professor’s chair from the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies; the Institute would be thrilled to have Lemuel patrol his Pale on its turf. The day Lemuel discovered the exit visa in his mailbox, he remembered the Institute’s offer of a chair at the same moment he realized that he badly needed to sit. He had been on his feet for forty of his forty-six years, queuing for food, for toilet paper, for windshield wipers for his beloved Skoda, for permits to Black Sea spas, for mud baths at the spas, for the apartment he shared with two couples eternally on the brink of divorce, if not murder. He had joined queues simply because they were there, without knowing
