It was in one such hiding place that his uncle installed him. They went to a tiny hay barn, and by the half-light coming in between the planks Alexe'i saw it was an empty space, with no window and not the smallest corner where one could hide. Seeing his disconcerted look, his uncle smiled and explained softly, "It's a case with a false bottom." He leaned on a plank, which gave way, and, peering in through the opening, Alexe'i saw a kind of narrow passage between two wooden walls, scarcely more than eighteen inches wide, with a folding bunk, a shelf nailed to the wall, a bucket, a jug, a bowl. "You'll have to get your Moscow nose used to the smell of manure," his uncle added. "I put it all around the shed just in case they come with a dog."

Two days later his uncle announced to him, a little awkwardly, "I guess this'll go hard with you, but… that car… We've got to drown her. I'll show you the place where we can shove her in."

Alexeï rapidly learned to mold his body and his movements within the confined section between the walls. One day he managed to suspend his secret life in mid-gesture when a voice rang out on the other side of the planks, rebuking his uncle: "He's not far away, your nephew. Folks have seen him. It's in your own interest to help us, before we find him ourselves in your loft." The uncle, very calm, replied in a dull voice, "This nephew of mine, I ain't never seen him in my life. If you find him, I reckon I'll be meeting him for the first time." Alexeï remained frozen, a spoon close to his lips, not even daring to chase a fly away from his forehead.

In the middle of the night he would leave his hiding place. He would get up, change, stretch his legs. The serenity of the fields, the sky, the stars seen through a heat haze, called on him to have faith, to take joy in life. They were all lying.