Zabulon glanced down at his feet in surprise. He really was standing on the corner of the mat that the granny had set out in front of the door of her flat. The mat had clearly seen better times. It had once been part of a big, bright carpet of synthetic fiber, the kind that people used to queue up for in Soviet times. And then, when even the polyvinyl chloride had faded with age, was covered in stains and worn right down to the bare threads, it had done time lying on an open balcony. The rain had drenched it. The insane city moths had tried to gnaw on it. A tin of paint had been spilled on it.

And now this putrid, semi-decayed floor covering had been hacked into crooked pieces and set out in front of the door as a doormat.

Zabulon gave an emphatically polite nod and stepped off the mat.

“Come up here to drink, have you?” asked the granny. “The ninth floor, that’s where the winos live! But we’re decent people here!”

The most surprising thing was that Zabulon wasn’t even slightly angry with the granny. He studied her with the intensely keen interest of an entomologist gazing at a cockroach and attempting to establish contact with it. Gesar was the one who was fuming.

“We’ve come to see your neighbors,” he said. “Everything’s all right, don’t worry.”

“To see Olka?” the granny exclaimed delightedly. “Police, are you? Not paying her loans, isn’t she? I warned her not to get carried away! Lives without a husband, raising that little dumpling all on her own, but she keeps on doing it, always having the place decorated or flitting off abroad somewhere”—at this point her words rang with the genuine hatred of someone who has never traveled anywhere—“or buying a flat TV, or taking that dumpling of hers to clubs and classes . . .”

“Anton, do something,” Gesar begged me. “I’m . . . afraid I might overdo it.”

“Yes, do a bit of work,” Zabulon said, with a nod. “Remoralize her if you like. I promise not to count it against your allowance for intervention.”

I probably could have tried to exert a positive influence on the granny. After all, she hadn’t always been like this, had she? People aren’t born like that. Something bad happens to them . . . or maybe it’s some special spitefulness virus, as yet unknown to science.

“I won’t remoralize her, I’m afraid I might rupture myself in the process,” I said. “Go to bed, grandma!”

I didn’t even want to read her name, as if I was afraid of soiling myself on her thoughts.

“To bed?” the granny echoed in amazement.

“You’ll sleep for exactly ten hours,” I said. “And when you wake up, you’ll forget about us.”

The granny nodded and closed the door, pulling her head back in through the crack at the very last moment.