He approaches the station. There’s another man ahead of him, so lost in his own thoughts that he doesn’t realize the station is closed until he reaches the ticket window. “Damn it!” he says, “They’ve closed already! There’s no one here!”

He turns abruptly to leave and almost bumps into Vladimir, who is pretending to walk distractedly too.

“What’s happened?”

“The tram’s not running anymore.”

“Already?” Vladimir says innocently. “Maybe the conductor fell asleep.”

Vladimir takes the man by the arm, and they walk along the jetty to the tram door. They inspect the tram’s interior. It’s empty, and all in one piece. Vladimir scrutinizes it, looking it over thoroughly. There’s not even a trace. He thinks, The bomb didn’t go off! Nisan Farber had the right idea, that’s why Nisan Farber blew himself up…. This thought burns in his mind. My Clementine….

“I’ll have to cross the bridge on foot,” his temporary companion says. “Shall we go together?”

“Good luck! I’ll wait.”

Vladimir waves goodbye and heads off in the opposite direction. He’s still not ready to go to the Karenin Palace to ask his sister to take him in for the night. He can’t go anywhere near a Gaponist enclave. On Nevsky Prospekt, he joins the Saturday meeting of a communist cell whose motto is “Brave as madmen, we’ll take heaven by storm.” Protected by the son of a former minister of Tsar Alexander—the Liberator, who freed the serfs—the cell was where he first met Clementine, back when she was still at the workshop, when she agreed to organize the seamstresses to fight for their rights, before she was taken prisoner.

The last time Clementine attended a meeting of the Take Heaven by Storm cell, she bid them goodbye, saying, “If you really want to seize heaven, you must have a strategy or they’ll strike back. We must seize heaven with our hands. To heaven with our hands!” The gathering listened, thinking she was crazy; Vladimir, on the other hand, fell for her. Or into her hands….