They choke with laughter, as do I, infected by their mirth, above all because of the comic pantomime Little Lev starts acting out – the young novice knocking back a pint of spirit, running into the taiga, and raping a bear. At this moment Valya approaches, bearing a dish of steaming potatoes. Little Lev, still in the middle of his performance, rushes up to her, grabs her from behind, his hands clinging to the woman's hips, his chin digging into her broad back. A female bear assaulted by a Muscovite simpleton. She turns with a smile on her lips but eyes ablaze with fire: how dare he, this midget? Her hand lands a blow on Lev's head, just the way a bear's paw would, with nonchalant power. The man is hurled against the wall, his face smeared with flour.

That night the howling of the blizzard forms the single background to all the other noises: the snoring of the two Levs, the crackle of wood in the stove, and from time to time, the rustle of a page. In the other room, Valya is reading the thick book I noticed on a windowsill when I arrived. One of those novels of the sixties where love took its course against a background of vast electricity-generating stations under construction, the conquest of the taiga, the glorious exploits of the mother country. A fiction not too far removed, actually, from this woman's life or her dreams? Who knows? I do not notice the moment when she turns out the light.

Toward the middle of the night, the lashing of the squalls drowns out anything else the ear could still hear. I think about the tiny dot of my presence in this corner of the world. What point of reference can one find? The icy fringe of the Arctic Ocean? The Bering Strait? The Victory Peak, nine thousand feet high, to the west of this house?