A second later, another explosion. A puff of smoke and dust rose in the square beyond the crossroads. Chunks of soil and asphalt fell on to those still outside, lying on the ground. Only the old lady, with her bag and stick, calmly walked away. K. and Nikolai stood on a landing between floors. Anton sat on a step and tended to his shortness of breath.

K. accepted the cigarette that Nikolai offered him, took a drag and handed it back. Nikolai blew smoke towards the ceiling.

“Before, we were driving with a coffin tied to the roof, just in case we needed to carry away bodies. And then this guy, Lumberjack, turned up. Did you see him just now, he’s tall, he’s got a beard? A real tough guy . . . Now he deals with everything. We only deal with the three-hundreds, the wounded.”

The stairwell was cool and smelt of burnt gunpowder and cats.

People stood motionless along the wall. Somebody was sobbing.

It was quiet outside. The birds were singing.

“It’s calmed down,” K. said. “I think we can go out.”

“Wait,” said Anton. “There’s going to be another round.”

“I don’t think so. Let’s go.”

Anton shook his head.

“I’m not going. I’m tired of this shit.”

“Here we go again,” said Nikolai.

K. didn’t know what this was about, but he continued insisting.

“The shells fell somewhere here. We have to go. There might be injured people around.”

“The injured can wait.” Anton’s face froze in irritation “If we die, there will definitely be no one to treat them. Let the soldiers carry them away. We’re still a civilian ambulance, we’re not supposed to be moving around at all during shelling.”

Lumberjack arrived. He turned to the standing people and invited them to leave.

“Anybody who doesn’t live here should go home. There’s going to be more shelling in the next half hour. That’s reliable information,” he said, nodding to Nikolai. “It looks like the shells landed on Mir Prospect. I’ll pick this one up and head off.”

Anton reluctantly got up, hobbled to the exit, silently shook Lumberjack’s hand and went out. Nikolai and K. did the same.

The line at the shop around the corner had grown longer. K. stared in shock.

“This is absurd, what are they all standing there for? There’s just been shelling.”

“They’re used to it,” said Nikolai.

“To what, the absurdity?”

“Absurdity is what we had at the start of the war.” Anton smiled bitterly. “The city was still pretty normal then and they were only shelling the outskirts. You’d tear out of Semyonovka with the wounded, it was like it was 1941: tanks, cannons, gunfire, smoke, dead people. Five minutes later, you were in another part of town at traffic lights. Cars would just stand there, patiently waiting for green. And you’ve got people dying in the back of the van. You honk your horn, shout, and the drivers just look back like you’re some kind of animal. They’d be all like: ‘Oh, look, the soldiers have arrived to throw their weight around.’ We weren’t in an ambulance then. We just had a regular van.”