The first policeman, a tall, gangling man, has finished ripping apart the slashed mattress and has turned to the pillows, unleashing a blizzard of feathers that rivals the snow falling behind the window. Having failed to find anything (Sasha can’t imagine what anyone could possibly hide inside a pillow), he strides to the table and pushes Marik’s father away from his wife and toward the door. It is a small push, but there is a pent-up force in it; while still restrained, it makes Sasha think that it may be a precursor to upcoming, less civilized shoves.

This is when her friend Marik storms out of the corner where he has been cowering and flattens himself against his father, his arms like a vise around his father’s waist. For a moment, the taller guard freezes, uncertain of what to do, but then his features reassemble into the earlier official mask, and the moment of hesitation melts away, like snow on the roof of the police wagon outside. He grabs Marik and tries to wrench him off his father. But Marik doesn’t let him. He dives under the guard’s arms and punches him on his thighs and kicks him on his shins. “Leave my father alone, you scum, you asshole!” he yells at the top of his lungs, words that sound incompatible with Marik and his house, adult curses Sasha hears only from drunks behind the liquor store. That’s when she, too, plunges between Marik and the guard and tries to grip her friend’s arm to pry him away from the policeman, but the next moment, she and Marik are rolling on the floor, slammed against the wall. She hears Marik’s mother scream and sees her pound the policeman with her fists, even though it is evident that he is oblivious of her, pushing Marik’s father toward the front door, still open, as if the private life of her friend and his parents has already ceased to exist.

“Put on your coat, Citizen Garkovsky,” says the former fan of Lermontov in a flat voice, trying to normalize what has just happened. He stuffs the briefcase with mathematical formulas under his arm, his eyes flickering from Sasha and Marik on the floor to the police wagon in the window, still unable to look at his teacher.