In the courtyard, the Zhiguli was parked next to a dog van. Two dogs with bristling backs were chained to the van’s rear bumper. Ostensibly Arkady had two official cars, but gas coupons enough for only one because the oil wells of Siberia were being drained by Germany, Japan, even fraternal Cuba, leaving a thin trickle for domestic consumption. From his second car he’d also had to cannibalize the distributor and battery to keep the first one running, because to send the Zhiguli to the shop was equivalent to sending it on a trip around the world, where it would be stripped on the docks of Calcutta and Port Said. Gas was bad enough. Gas was the reason that defenders of the state slipped from car to car with a siphon tube and can. Also the reason dogs were leashed to bumpers.

Arkady got in through the passenger side and slid over to the wheel. The dogs shot the length of their chains and tried to claw through his door. He prayed and turned the key. Ah, at least a tenth of a tank of gas. There was a God.

Two right turns put him in Gorky Street’s gamut of shop windows, still lit. What was for sale? A scene of sand and palm trees surrounded a pedestal surmounted by a jar of guava jam. At the next store, mannequins fought over a bolt of chintz. Food stores displayed smoked fish as iridescent as oil slicks.

At Pushkin Square, a crowd spilled into the street. A year before there had been exhilaration and tolerance between competing bullhorns. A dozen different flags had waved: Lithuanian, Armenian, the czarist red, white and blue of the Democratic Front. Now all were driven from the field except for two flags, the Front’s and, on the opposite side of the steps, the red banner of the Committee for Russian Salvation. Each standard had its thousand adherents trying to outshout the other group. In between were skirmishes, the occasional body down and being kicked or dragged away. The militia had discreetly withdrawn to the edges of the square and to the metro stairs. Tourists watched from the safety of McDonald’s.

Cars were stopped, but Arkady maneuvered up an alley into a courtyard of plane trees, a quiet backwater to the lights and horns on the avenue outside. A playground’s chairs and a table were set into the ground, waiting for a bears’ tea party. At the far end, he drove up a street narrowed by trucks straddling the sidewalk. They were heavy, with massive military wheels, the backs covered by canvas. Curious, Arkady honked. A hand drew aside a flap, revealing Special Troops in gray gear and black helmets, with shields and clubs. Armed insomniacs—the worst kind, Arkady thought.