Ever since the month of April in this year of 1941, and even earlier, but more confusedly, people in Moscow had been talking about the impending threat from the West. On such occasions his mother's thoughts turned to her sister's family, who lived in a remote village in the Ukraine – poor relations, so to speak, and never invited to Moscow. They pictured them in their hamlet very close to the Polish border, exposed to the increasingly predictable war. "But come, now," his father would interrupt her, "our army will never let the Germans cross the frontier. And even supposing by some remote chance they manage to drop a few bombs, there'd be nothing to fear. I simply take the car, drive to your sister's, and quick as a wink, I bring them back to Moscow." This scheme for an evacuation by car would come up again from time to time in their family evenings together.

Alexe'i recollected it now when he reached the suburbs of Moscow on foot at about six in the morning. His head buzzed with the names of fellow students at the conservatory who might come to his aid, names that, reviewed one by one, faded into uncertainty. Then he thought about this aunt in the Ukraine, remembered the plan for a journey by car, and eagerly seized on the idea before it came to seem too far-fetched.

The garage, some streets away from their apartment building, was squeezed up against the wall of a demolished monastery. At this time of day the place was still deserted, the doors to the other garages closed. He stood up on tiptoe, holding his breath, as if catching a butterfly, and reached out with his hand toward a little cavity beneath the corrugated tin of the roof. His father, being absentminded, often left the duplicate key there. His fingers fumbled feverishly in the depths of the hiding place and suddenly touched metal.

He put two cans of gasoline, kept in reserve, into the trunk, and before getting in behind the wheel, he looked around. His mind, drained by weariness and fear, came to life: the garage, with a dull lightbulb in the ceiling, the smell of gasoline, these objects his father had touched – the last glimpse of their old life?