On Nevsky Prospekt, a woman dressed in a pretty, heavy pink dress made of velvet and lace crosses the avenue, causing the grumpy chauffeur to brake suddenly. He shouts at the top of his lungs:

“Stupid cow! Are you drunk? Why are you crossing without looking? I nearly hit you! That’s why you’re poor—you’re idiots!”

The woman is unperturbed. She wears a shawl of colorful flowers over her head; her long, shiny hair is loose. She moves slowly, crossing the street at an angle.

“Get a move on, you cretin!” the impatient, ill-humored chauffeur urges her. The motor rumbles, but the car can’t advance. “Go ahead, take your time!”

Piotr keeps singing:

I’m in a Mercedes, I’m flying,

at Anna Karenina’s side….

Giorgi also comes to a sudden halt, keeping his distance. Up ahead, a young man with his back to him crosses the avenue at an angle, just like the woman who is shuffling in front of the Mercedes, but more decisively. When he’s next to Orlov’s car, he reverently places something on its rear bumper. He stops beside the car, takes two steps back, and bows respectfully.

Giorgi moves the carriage forward a few yards to see what the young man has left there—what’s this about? It’s a large cushion, embroidered with the words “Our Father.”

“Hopeless,” he thinks. “They still believe in ‘their father.’ The tsar condemns them to lives of misery, slaughters them in cold blood, and in return they honor him with gifts. Fools! They adore their oppressor!”

He holds the reins tightly. The car’s motor will roar when it begins to move forward again at any moment now, and he doesn’t want the horses to rear. He keeps his eye on them.

He can hear Piotr singing:

I’m flying along in an automobile,

dancing with Anna Karenina….

At last the woman allows the Mercedes to proceed.

The chauffeur insults her once more as he passes.

“Laggard! That’s why you’re so poor!”

The fact that the wind’s not blowing makes no difference to Giorgi or any of the pedestrians up and down the Nevsky, and despite the lack of wind, the odds are that Clementine and Vladimir’s latest plot has failed. But thanks to that fact, the fuse the two anarchists have lit doesn’t blow out, burning the trail to the bomb they have planted on the bumper.

Prince Orlov’s green Mercedes, adorned with the handsome cushion at is rear, begins to move again. The sound of the motor startles the horses; Giorgi tightens the reins to control them. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the young man who left the cushion begin to run away from the moving car. Strange, he thinks, he’s dressed like … could it be Vladimir? Ahead of him—“Clementine!” Giorgi says. The woman dressed in pink is also running away from the automobile.