CHAPTER NINE
He smoked “Inter” or “Stewardess”, Bulgarian filter cigarettes that were elite and rare. To get them he had to go all the way to the railway station of the Old Town to the restaurant car of a stopover Moscow train. Unlike most his contemporaries who puffed out smoke, showing off in the school lavatory or somewhere behind the bushes –invariably in the company of others – Sidelnikov felt self-conscious about doing it in public, having decided for himself that smoking was a solitary occupation. And indeed, he was solitary again, even though he saw Lora almost every day.
Those were strange encounters. Coming from the dark street into her flat, they would almost immediately go to bed, as if gravely ill. That is, not really to bed, but, half-undressed, they would cover themselves
