Grigori chose to treat the question lightly. ‘No police at all!’ he said jovially. ‘No criminal trials, no prisons. No counter-espionage department, as there will be no spies. No army either, since we will have no enemies! What will we all do for a living?’ He laughed heartily. ‘This, however, may still be some distance in the future.’

Ilya looked suspicious, as if he felt something subversive was being said but he could not put his finger on it.

Katerina brought to the table a plate of black bread and five bowls of hot borscht, and they all began to eat. ‘When I was a boy in the countryside,’ Grigori said, ‘all winter long my mother would save vegetable peelings, apple cores, the discarded outer leaves of cabbages, the hairy part of the onion, anything like that, in a big old barrel outside the house, where it all froze. Then, in the spring, when the snow melted, she would use it to make borscht. That’s what borscht really is, you know – soup made from peelings. You youngsters have no idea how well off you are.’

There was a knock at the door. Grigori frowned, not expecting anyone; but Katerina said: ‘Oh, I forgot! Konstantin’s daughter is coming.’

Grigori said: ‘You mean Zoya Vorotsyntsev? The daughter of Magda the midwife?’

‘I remember Zoya,’ said Volodya. ‘Skinny kid with blonde ringlets.’

‘She’s not a kid any more,’ Katerina said. ‘She’s twenty-four and a scientist.’ She stood up to go to the door.

Grigori frowned. ‘We haven’t seen her since her mother died. Why has she suddenly made contact?’

‘She wants to talk to you,’ Katerina replied.

‘To me? About what?’

‘Physics.’ Katerina went out.

Grigori said proudly: ‘Her father, Konstantin, and I were delegates to the Petrograd Soviet in 1917. We issued the famous Order Number One.’ His face darkened. ‘He died, sadly, after the Civil War.’

Volodya said: ‘He must have been young – what did he die of?’

Grigori glanced at Ilya and quickly looked away. ‘Pneumonia,’ he said; and Volodya knew he was lying.

Katerina returned, followed by a woman who took Volodya’s breath away.

She was a classic Russian beauty, tall and slim, with light-blonde hair, blue eyes so pale they were almost colourless, and perfect white skin. She wore a simple Nile-green dress whose plainness only drew attention to her slender figure.

She was introduced all around, then she sat at the table and accepted a bowl of borscht. Grigori said: ‘So, Zoya, you’re a scientist.’

‘I’m a graduate student, doing my doctorate, and I teach undergraduate classes,’ she said.

‘Volodya here works in Red Army Intelligence,’ Grigori said proudly.

‘How interesting,’ she said, obviously meaning the opposite.

Volodya realized that Grigori saw Zoya as a potential daughter-in-law. He hoped his father would not hint at this too heavily. He had already made up his mind to ask her for a date before the end of the evening. But he could manage that by himself. He did not need his father’s help. On the contrary: unsubtle parental boasting might put her off.