My companion gets up, fetches two glasses of tea. On learning that I know Moscow well, he becomes animated, talks to me about the capital with an unexpected precision, with a fondness for this street or that subway station. It's the fondness of a provincial who has lived in the capital, I say to myself, and who likes impressing the people he is talking to with the originality of his personal guided tour. But the more he talks, the more I become aware that his Moscow is quite an odd city, with obvious gaps, with little networks of streets where my memory sees only broad avenues and open spaces. Paying closer attention, I notice several hiatuses in his narrative that the man attempts to avoid, sometimes by breaking off in mid-sentence, or again by telling an anecdote. "Before the war," "During the thirties"; these traces of the past slip out and suggest to me that he is strolling through a city that no longer exists. He finally becomes aware of this, falls silent. At this moment of embarrassment his ear must have detected the same discordant tonality as last night, when I came upon him at the piano. To change the subject, I begin cursing the weather and the delays that will make me miss my connection in Moscow. We prepare our supper: hard-boiled eggs that I take out of my bag, the bread he says he has in his case. He produces a parcel, unwraps it. Half a loaf of black bread. But it is the wrapping that catches my eye – crumpled pages of old sheet music. He looks up at me, then begins smoothing the pages with the rough edge of his hand. He no longer speaks in the tones of a sentimental traveler as he did just now. And yet he is still talking about the same narrow Moscow streets – and about a young man ("In those days I counted myself the happiest man in the world," he says with a bitter smile), a young man wearing a pale shirt soaked by a late spring shower, a young man stopping in front of a poster and reading his name with a beating heart: Alexe'i Berg.