As always, the driver hurried out into the reserved central lane and Kalenin settled back in the deep leather seat. The final snows still clung defiantly, white in the chimney crannies and on the roofs, but black and traffic-gritted at the pavement edges and gutters. Helmeted babushkas, so swaddled in layers of cloth and rough-cut sheepskin that it was difficult to imagine a human body beneath the mushroom shapes, chipped and swept and gossiped at their brooms. In another month, thought Kalenin, it would be spring, the hills outside the city still wet but proudly green and with the new flowers under the birch and fir.

The signs said the grass should not be walked upon, so the Alexander Gardens were still white and obediently untrodden. The car passed the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Monument to Revolutionary Thinkers and swept into the red-walled Kremlin through the Trinity Tower gate. There were already tourists, crocodiling through the museums and cathedrals to the right, where the public were allowed. There were a few foreigners, animated with cameras and brightly dressed. But the majority were Russian, bundled like the street cleaners and following their tour leaders with dull-faced, placid acceptance. Only the children appeared to be smiling, not seeming to regard the visit as an official comparison of past decadence with the improvements of the present. Why did Russians need vodka to make them laugh, thought Kalenin. That couldn’t be anything to do with the past; they’d drunk as much under the Tsars as they did now. And under the Tsars had been allowed to fall down and freeze to death during winters like this. Now there were nightly street searches around the capital and sobering stations to which drunks could be taken and hosed back to sobriety.