In Claudia’s dream, the three women are reflected in a mirror, which is being held by a princess who is imprisoned in the palace of the magician Koschei the Immortal. The princess spends two days pining away for the man she loves.

Then the women’s faces merge into one, Claudia’s. The Immortal looks into his magic mirror and sees the same thing as his prisoner, recognizing his daughter in Claudia’s face.

“My daughter, Claudia, what’s she doing in our mirror?”

Sergei appears in the reflection, alongside Claudia. The imprisoned princess (Claudia) looks into her mirror, too, and says, “It’s the one I love, with someone else,” and begins to cry. In the reflection, Sergei kisses Claudia (the daughter of the undying one).

The Immortal is afraid, because his death is imprisoned in his daughter Claudia’s tears. What a man the Immortal is, keeping two prisoners: death and the princess. In this story, Claudia doesn’t recognize the echoes of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, the one she saw at the theater. At the sound of Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, her dreams fall apart, fragmenting into several others that she won’t remember come morning.

40. The Plot

40. The Plot

Clementine is plotting. Together with her beloved Vladimir. The pain of his loss has altered him beyond recognition; he’s become a lapdog, and more recently a rabid wolf. He’s lost all sense of direction—a lapdog trailing after its owner, a wolf driven by rage.

Like Vladimir’s two phases, the hunt for the dissidents is also submissive and raging, driven by desire for the tsar’s approval, attacking the dissidents nonstop. Night and day, it doesn’t cease. It’s decimated the cell of Clementine’s accomplices: most of them are dead or in prison, with the exception of Clementine, the only one who still roams the streets.

Vladimir has been busy, and not because Gapon has been sending him on missions. The reverend has gone from living in secret to living in exile—with Gorky, then Lenin, then Kropotkin. He no longer uses his talent for picking locks either.

Clementine and Vladimir want to do something extreme that will cause the downfall of the state “in all its forms.” A contact gives them a valuable tip: Prince Orlov’s automobile, which the tsar likes to use, will be driving down the Nevsky Prospekt on a certain date before noon. Why won’t it be escorted by security forces? Because it will be a special trip to collect something very precious. “Could it possibly be a woman?” The tsar’s not the type to risk his hide for a pair of legs. Fearful of assassination—he has been for years—he’s sharp enough to realize this is a critical moment. Everything hangs in the balance—the present, the future, and the legacy of the past.