The first group had the calm indifference of the predator in their gaze: not malicious, no, the wolf harries the sheep without malice—more likely, in fact, with love. Pastukhov simply steered clear of their kind, trying hard not to attract any attention in the process.

The second group, who were more like that first young drunk, had a dog-like look in their eyes. Sometimes guilty, sometimes patient and concerned, sometimes sad. There was just one thing that bothered Pastukhov: that wasn’t the way dogs looked at their masters, at best it was the way they looked at a master’s whelp. And so Pastukhov tried to steer clear of them too.

And for quite a long time he managed it.

If children are life’s flowers, then this child was a blooming cactus.

He started yelling the moment the doors of the Sheremetyevo-D terminal slid open and he came in. His mother, red-faced with anger and shame (the shouting was obviously a repeat performance), was dragging him along by the hand, but the boy was leaning backwards, bracing himself with both feet, and howling: “I won’t! I won’t! I won’t fly! Mummy, don’t! The plane’s going to crash!”

His mother let go of his hand and the boy slumped to the floor and stayed sitting there: a fat, hysterical, tear-stained, unattractive child, dressed a little bit too lightly for the Moscow weather in June—there was obviously a flight to warmer climes in prospect.

A man sitting at a cafe table about twenty meters away from them got up, almost knocking over his unfinished mug of beer. He looked for a few moments at the boy and the mother who was trying to din something into her son’s head. Then he sat down and said in a quiet voice: “That’s appalling. What a nightmare!”

“I think so, too,” agreed the young woman sitting opposite him. She put down her cup of coffee and gave the boy a hostile look. “I’d call it sordid.”

“Well, I don’t see anything sordid about it,” the man said gently. “But it’s certainly appalling . . . no doubt about that . . .”

“I personally—” the young woman began, but stopped when she saw the man wasn’t listening.

He took out a phone. Dialed a number. Spoke in a quiet voice: “I need a level-one clearance. One or two. No, I’m not joking. Try to find one . . .”

He broke off the call, looked at the young woman, and nodded. “I’m sorry, an urgent call . . . What were you saying?”

“I personally am child-free,” the young woman declared defiantly.

“Free of children? Are you infertile, then?”

The young woman shook her head. “A common misapprehension. We child-free women are opposed to children because they enslave us. We have to choose—between being a proud, free individual or a social appendage to the population’s reproductive mechanism!”