The ruler received her seated behind his heavy desk: as she came in his brows were furrowed, and he continued to draw energetic lines with a red pencil on the pages of a brochure. A whole stack of identical little pamphlets was piled on his table.

"Good day, citizen!" he said finally, holding out his hand to her.

They spoke. And with stunned incredulity Charlotte became aware that all the official's remarks seemed like a strange, deformed echo of the questions she put to him. She spoke of the French Aid Committee and heard, in echo, a brief speech about the imperialist designs of the West under the cover of bourgeois philanthropy. She referred to their desire to return to Moscow, and then… the echo interrupted her: foreign interventionist forces and internal class enemies were engaged in undermining reconstruction in the young Soviet republic…

After a quarter of an hour of such exchanges Charlotte longed to shout, "I want to leave! That's all!" But the absurd logic of this conversation would not loosen its grip.

"A train to Moscow…"

"The sabotage of bourgeois specialists on the railways…"

"The poor state of health of my mother…"

"The horrible economic and cultural inheritance of tsarism…"

Finally, exhausted, she whispered weakly, "Listen, please return my papers to me…"

The administrator's voice seemed to hit an obstacle. A rapid spasm crossed his face. He left his office without saying anything. Profiting from his absence, Charlotte glanced at the pile of brochures. The title plunged her into extreme perplexity: "Eradicating Sexual Laxity in Party Cells (recommendations)." So it was the recommendations that the administrator had been underlining in red pencil.