A country in desperate straits, but what a gift for happiness! Whereas in the West, they would have…" My wits dulled by the merriment, I was about to pursue this analytical comparison of mine between the Slavic soul and the soulless West, when suddenly the happiness found its perfect expression in the face of a child. A little girl of nine or ten, almost preternaturally beautiful, walking along holding a woman's hand, her grandmother's no doubt.

They stopped a few yards away from me, and the child looked at me inquiringly I smiled at her. And suddenly I realized that this incredibly beautiful little face was made up. Discreetly, and by an expert hand, an adult's. Not daubed with a carnival mask, but transformed into the thrillingly angelic face of a doll-woman. I also noticed that dusk was beginning to fall, that the booths had closed. My head was still ringing with laughter and sunlight… The first streetlights were flickering with a mauve glow. The woman turned and stared at me with an appraising eye. Then, fondling the child's chin, murmured: "The fair's over. You won't get your candy now…" The child looked hard at me. At the last moment I bit back the words that were already on the tip of my tongue: "You have a very pretty granddaughter…" I thought I had guessed what was afoot. The woman tugged at the child's hand and I saw them making their way toward a great prefabricated shed, the "beer bar." In a hissed conversation behind my back, two market women were heaving outraged sighs: "Did you see that? The old woman's back again with the kid." "Well, what do you expect? That child's her meal ticket…" "I'd hang them, the bastards who do that…"

I saw their two figures at the end of the alleyway, the big one and the little one, silhouetted against the lights of the "beer bar." I should have caught up with them.