A very slow chord resounds lingeringly at the other end of the corridor. I make my way toward it, guided by the fading sound, push open a door, and find myself in a passage into which a little light now filters. Lined up along the walls stand banners, placards with portraits of the Party leaders, all the apparatus for demonstrations. The passageway leads to a room that is even more cluttered – two wardrobes with open doors, pyramids of chairs, piles of sheets. From behind the wardrobes shines a beam of light. I move forward, feeling as if I had caught up with the tail end of a dream and were taking my place in it. A man, whom I see in profile, is sitting at a grand piano. A suitcase with nickel-plated corners stands beside his chair. It would be easy to mistake him for the old man sleeping on the pages of his Pravda. He is dressed in a similar overcoat, longer perhaps, and wearing an identical black shapka. An electric flashlight laid to the left of the keyboard illuminates the man's hands. He has fingers that are nothing like a musician's fingers. Great, rough, lumpy knuckles, tanned and wrinkled. The fingers move about on the keyboard without depressing the keys, pausing, springing to life, accelerating their silent course, getting carried away in a feverish flight: one can hear the fingernails tapping on the wooden keys. Suddenly, at the very height of this mute pandemonium, one hand loses control, crashes down on the keyboard; a shower of notes bursts forth. I see that the man, doubtless amused by his own clumsiness, breaks off from his soundless scales and begins emitting little suppressed chuckles, the quiet mirth of a mischievous old man. He even raises one hand and presses it to his mouth to restrain these splutters of laughter… All at once I realize he is weeping.

I withdraw with awkward, hesitant steps, one hand behind my back, feeling for the door.