"Is Fabienne happy with that?" asked the other.

"Absolutely! She adores sailing!"

In the spring of 1982 no one in the country yet knew that it was going to be a quite extraordinary year. In November Brezhnev would die and Andropov would accede to the throne. The liberal intelligentsia, gathered in their kitchens, would begin to be tormented by the worst forebodings. Everyone knew he was once the head of the KGB. He's bound to crack down hard. Under Brezhnev you could still risk opening your mouth frqm time to time. Now there's going to be a reaction, that's for sure. They say he's already ordering police raids in the streets. You step out of your office for five minutes and the militia pounce on you. Let's hope it's not going to be another 1937…

But History, as likely as not, had had enough of the dreary monolithic solemnity of those long decades of socialism and decided to have a bit of fun. The man whose character the alarmed intellectuals identified as that of another "Father of all the Peoples," or even another "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, turned out to be a mortally weary and sick monarch. He knew that the majority of the members of the Politburo ought to be put up against a wall and shot. He knew that the Minister of the Interior, with whom he chatted amiably on the telephone, was a criminal against the state. He knew how much each of his colleagues in the Politburo had in Western bank accounts. He even knew the names of the banks. He knew that a feudal system had long since been reinstated in Central Asia and that the right place for all those responsible was prison. He knew that in Afghanistan the American scenario in Vietnam was being replicated. He knew that in the villages in the whole of the northwest, there was a shortage of bread. He knew that for a long time now the country had been run by a small family mafia who detested him personally, and who despised the people.