I assessed how easily the paving stones would come up. What other ammunition was there? No loose bricks, hardly any street furniture. I finished my coffee, walked up Lenin Street, past a T-34 tank on a plinth which turned out to be a monument to Kazakh independence. Small memorial stones lined the pavement, inscribed with the names of local military heroes. At the end of the road was a shabby department store. I went in, bought two rainproof jackets in green and black, a clean shirt, a black hoody, a grey baseball cap, a small backpack, then shaving kit and concealer cream from the pharmacy. At the shop next door I bought a disposable phone and pre-paid card.

I spent a moment circling back alleys to make sure I was alone, then headed up Dostoevsky Street to the rundown edge of the city, past the apartment blocks rising from the snow. Set back, as if removed from the present, was a log cabin, its shutters and window frames painted green. A small sign at the front announced the museum, with a picture of Dostoevsky and a list of prices. It looked closed, but the door opened when I pushed and an old woman stirred in the half-light. She tapped a price list taped to the desk in front of her. I paid 300 tenge, took a ticket and walked in.

It was empty. In the first room, a display of photos showed a dirt village, more wooden houses similar to this one, a horse in the street. I watched the reflections on the glass, listened for the drop of coins, the printing of a ticket. No one entered.

They’d reconstructed a bedroom, sitting room and study. Simple but solid furniture, a chintz print, matching armchairs, bouquets of flowers. In the study was a walnut writing desk with photographic reproductions of the writer’s notes amidst stationery, as if he’d just got up. I tried to imagine him here. My movements were followed by a second woman who’d appeared, solid and suspicious, remnant of the Soviet Union’s weaponisation of nosy grandmothers. I considered the study dutifully, just reverentially enough, and thought of various other unlikely museums I had used as refuge and counter-surveillance.

In the final room was an exhibition about his time in the gulag: portraits of prison labourers, quotations from The House of the Dead. Murals traced his journey through suffering to religion. What had Dostoevsky written? If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. I wiped dust from the window and gazed out across an empty square to the mint-green Tatar mosque.