A week later a man moved in who wore the uniform of the Commissariat for State Security. When he passed his neighbors on the staircase, he stopped and stared at them obstinately, waiting for them to greet him. And his son looked like a young boar. In any event, it was with that animal's brutish violence that he had one day pushed Alexei up against the wall and muttered between clenched teeth, "So, rotten intelligentsia. Still banging away on your stinking little piano, are you? Well, just you wait. One day I'm going to take a hammer and nail down the lid on your music!" Alexe'i had said nothing about it to his parents. And in fact, shortly after that, toward the end of 1938, the apartment was emptied once again…

He pressed his forehead against the glass. The curtains in his parents' apartment seemed to be moving. No, nothing. His mind went back to that young boar-man, his bulging face, his scorn. And especially to the threat, quite fanciful, of course, but one that had often seemed very real: his piano, its lid nailed down with great carpenter's nails. In fact, if he was still watching at this cobweb-covered window now, it was because of that young boar. Thanks to the man's disappearance one December night, he had realized no one was safe. Not even the victors. Not even those who had fought valiantly against the enemies of the people. Not even these fighters' children.

At this moment he saw the chess player crossing the courtyard with a measured tread. The old man raised his arm in greeting to a woman watering the flowers at her window, then disappeared through an entrance door. The dusk was already making it impossible to see the expressions on people's faces. And, as if in response to this perception, the light came on, lending a glow of color to his parents' bedroom curtains.