He hastened to his stash, breaking off a pea-sized amount, his fingers fumbling, the opium falling to the dusty floor. On his knees, he picked it up, regarding the dust-covered lump. He blew it. The dust remained: the opium was sticky. It didn’t matter. He placed it in the cup of the steel holder and lit a candle, impatiently waiting for the flame to take. Opium did not burn easily like tobacco and required a constant source of heat. Lying on the bed, on his stomach, he positioned the steel pot over the candle, eyes on the opium, hungry for it to melt in the flame and the smoke to travel up the pipe. The opium began to burn, the shape of the lump changing. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs, the smoke slowly dissipating the sense of restlessness, re-dissolving the frustrations and failings.

Sedating his emotions in the way that a surgeon’s team anaesthetizes a patient before operating, Leo was able to return to the memories of Raisa, examining them with opium-induced distance as if they belonged to another man from a far-away world. In Moscow he’d been surrounded by the life he’d created with her, from their apartment to the city itself, the parks, the river; even the sound of the tramcars rattling past caused him to stop mid-sentence, his chest gripped by a physical pain. The bitter winters, the hot summers – there was nothing that her memory wasn’t stamped upon. In the months immediately after her murder the desire to investigate blazed in his mind as bright as the surface of sun, consuming all other concerns. He had no other thoughts from the moment he woke to collapsing on his bed, catching only a few hours of fretful, disturbed sleep. He petitioned officials, wrote letters, begged for the chance to go to New York only to be told time and time again that what he asked was impossible.