A sun ray peeked into Max's room and lit up the cluttered desk, piled high with books and photographs. It slid over the cup with unfinished tea, the saucer with a piece of cheese from the day before yesterday, over the dried-up stains from the developer solution that with their abundance of tiny crystals resembled salt lakes. A jar of cherry jam glowed like a huge ruby, golden dust particles began a dance over the red carpet, and the camera that lay on the nightstand next to Max's bed shot a reflected sunbeam into his eye.

Max raised his palm to his face, as a shield against the light and finally woke up. A summer breeze fluttered the net curtain, carrying the rustling of fresh leaves and the heady scent of lilacs from the street. There was no rush. School could be forgotten until September, the flat was all his, parents were off on an expedition.

Before they left, his dad said:

'Max, you've been around for nearly seventeen years and I can imagine what the flat will look like in a month. I have only two requests: refrain from irreversible actions and tidy up before we come back.'

'Sure,' Max replied.

His mother looked at him doubtfully:

'It's pointless asking you to eat anything but sandwiches and fried eggs, isn't it?'

Max promised:

'I'll make soup. Sometimes.'

They hugged, and his parents dashed down to the car.

In the following weeks Max didn’t give that conversation another thought.

He got up and went to wash his face. He looked at his reflection, thought that it was time to hang the mirror higher as he had to lean over too much, splashed a handful of water over his face, blinked, and patted his face dry with a towel. He smoothed down his dishevelled hair with his palm, squeezed the remnants of toothpaste onto his brush and started to clean his teeth.

I need to buy toothpaste, he thought.

He hadn't been to the shop for ages, so in the fridge, there were only three eggs, a piece of butter in a crumpled wrapper, an opened can of sardines with a lone fish tail, and a wilted horseradish root.

Max switched on the radio. 'Vacate extrajudicial decisions made during the period of the 30s, 40s and early 50s by the NKVD troikas...,' the speaker said. Max spun the vernier: ...Eurythmics, Phil Collins, Dire Straits. Our viewers will be able to see the concert from the Wembley Stadium at midnight Moscow time.

'I'll definitely watch that,' said Max, yawning.

He stretched for the drying rack in search of a clean cup and, finding none, sighed and retreated to the room to collect the dirty ones. 

They were on the table, on the nightstand, on the carpet near the dumbbells, and even in the bookcase behind the neatly closed glass.

'That makes four,' Max counted. 'Where are the other two?'

This was idle curiosity. He only needed one. From the pile of dishes in the sink, he took a fork and scraped off a thick layer of dried tea leaves that were already covered with white and green mould, tossed it in the bin, and rinsed the cup under boiling water from the kettle. 

I should probably wash the dishes, a lazy thought stirred. Max pretended not to notice it.

He heated the frying pan, threw in a piece of butter, which immediately melted and sizzled up, and swiftly, before the butter started burning, cracked in the eggs. He fried them till their edges were crispy, heavily seasoned, and ate the eggs straight from the pan to avoid washing a plate. He drank a cup of strong freshly brewed tea with cherry jam and thought: ‘No matter what you do, the number of dirty cups remains the same. I wonder if Lavoisier came to his conclusions running out of tea cups.’

He grabbed the camera with the telephoto lens from the nightstand and stepped out onto the balcony. The scent of warm asphalt and lilacs hung in the air – intoxicating fragrances of June. Max lingered for a moment, squinting and adjusting to the light before bringing the viewfinder up to his eye. He saw dazzling reflections off the tin roof, birch tree catkins, hawthorn spikes, a wooden bench in the yard, lilacs, and jasmine beneath the window. Down the alley, a girl, about twenty five, slender and graceful, walked towards him lightly, as if dancing. Not for everyone, just for herself. She barely acknowledged the wind billowing her colourful sundress, just held it lightly, preventing it from flying too high. Max caught the moment and snapped a photo: windswept hair, the dress in mid-flight, exposed bronzed legs, and a faint smile in her gaze, as if she saw Max as clearly as he saw her through his 135-mm Jupiter lens.

'Hello, Irma! What's up? I haven't seen you in a while,' he shouted, leaning over the balcony railing.

'Hey, Max!' she waved. 'Great! I’m waiting for the photo.'

So she really had seen him shooting.

'Next week,' Max said. 'I need to finish the roll.'

     'Well, when you're ready, bring it over. Though I'm moving to the city. Come to the theatre then or call Gosha, I'll leave with him my new phone number.'

'Moving out? Too bad.' Max said.

'It's nice here, but commuting is killing me.’

'Will you be at Kate’s today?' Max asked.

'Maybe I'll stop by for a minute, if it's not too late. But, I am performing tonight, so, better not wait for me. And cheer up, see you soon!'

She waved at him once more and disappeared into the neighbouring entrance.

Irma was a theatre actress. She had been living in their house in Kylmäjoki since last summer. Over the past year, the entire cream of the Leningrad underground community had paraded past the astonished eyes of the grannies sitting at the entrance: actors, directors, musicians, long-haired hippies and provocatively-looking punks.

Max found it easy to be around Irma, despite their seven-year age difference. Perhaps it was because she sensed that Max wasn't in love.

One day Irma saw Max with a camera and asked to take a picture of her. They spent the entire evening trying out different lighting options, poses, and sets. In the end, Max printed five photos, and Irma chose one. She hung the portrait in the living room, and it became Max's calling card. After that, Irma's guests stopped mocking Max and no longer called him ‘the kid’. 

Irma's move certainly saddened him, but not for long. It was indeed a pity that he wouldn't be able to drop by for a cup of tea, but on the bright side, he now had an extra reason to head into the city.

In the evening, Max was sitting on a folding chair by the fence of Katherine’s garden on Nevsky Prospekt, chatting with artists and smiling. Two months of holiday lay ahead. Two months of freedom.

The grey-haired artist sitting next to Max finished another portrait, pocketed the money he had received, and waited for the next client. 

'Are you not tired of hanging out, Max?' he asked. 'I need an assistant for painting signage. Would you like to work with me?' 

'Misha, all academic year I've been walking around like a goat on a leash. From here to there. I toil for the greater good, in the name of the highest purpose, and all that jazz. Honestly, I'm not going to be tired of hanging out anytime soon!' 

 ‘Well, I can’t force you,’ sighed the artist.

From the stream of people walking down Nevsky, appeared a charming, short-haired girl in a light dress with a sketchbox on her shoulder. She set it down on the asphalt, kissed Max and said:

'Hi, Max!'

'Hi, Masha!' He replied.

She sat down next to him, pulled out a thin stick of incense from a pack with an unintelligible inscription, stuck it into a boat-shaped holder and flicked a lighter. She attached a clean sheet of paper to her sketch board and began to draw. The smoke curled in streams, forming rings; they floated, clinging to clothing, intertwining and dissipating a few metres from her. Max was glancing at the girl and at the facade of the Comedy Theatre, which was rapidly taking shape on paper under her pencil. The soft violet twilight lent an inexplicable mystery to the profile of the pretty artist and her drawing.

Pleasant chatter, the strange foreign scent of sweet-smelling smoke and perfumes, the warm evening, the unusual people around – all of this was intoxicating and filled his idleness with great significance, transforming it into inaction, into a harmonious blend, into a peaceful coexistence of very different lifestyles within a small patch of land.

Artists were painting, three punks with flaming red mohawks were singing to their guitars, sitting on the pavement. Passers-by, for a moment as if waking up, looked in surprise at this colourful island in the grey river, but immediately shifted their gaze, returning to their heavy black-and-white thoughts.

 Max was smiling serenely in his non-action meditation, and two middle-aged, long-haired men with plastic coffee cups in their hands were quietly conversing near him.

'Writing anything?' one asked. 

'Sort of,' the second replied. 'At the moment, it's just an inkling. A sense of oddness, as though the camera has shifted and caught the corner of the set, revealing that the room is actually built in a pavilion. But this isn't a film set, it's everyday life, and I feel like I'm seeing the flip side of reality. Do you get what I'm saying?'

'Not entirely,' the first one replied.

'Well, I was on a train this spring. It was already braking at the station, we were slowly passing wooden houses by the railway. Fences, sheds – and suddenly a snow-covered roof drifts by, with a vivid blue toilet seat on it, like an eye of some forgotten deity. It was so absurd, it seemed like a revelation.'

'Interesting, is it?' Masha smiled, noticing how attentively Max was listening. 'How about heading to my place in the country? We've got a small crowd assembling. Kostya and his brother are also coming.' She nodded towards the long-haired men. 'You have to decide quickly, though, the last train is soon. If you want to, of course.' 

'Are you kidding? Of course, I'm on board!'

They carried on, chattering excitedly about the upcoming evening and didn't notice Irma approaching. 

'Max, sorry to be a party pooper, but could you take Lara home? She's got another one of her life dramas going on. She's popped some pills and it's not safe to leave her on her own. I absolutely have to be at my new flat before midnight to get the keys.'

All that Max had managed to imagine: an evening at Masha's, engaging conversations, a sleepover which might have been more than just a sleepover, all vanished like smoke in the wind. He sighed deeply and said, 

'Of course, Irma, I'll take her home. Masha, I'm sorry, I can't make it tonight.'

The artist smirked, seemingly a touch disappointed, and returned to her sketch.

'You're a lifesaver!' Irma placed her hand on his shoulder. 'Just, you'll have to hang on a bit. They're giving Lara coffee right now. Care to wait in my dressing room?' 

'I'm better off staying here.' 

Irma nodded and headed towards the Alexandrinsky Theatre.

 With the approach of night, the stream running along Nevsky began to dry up. It split into several small streams, which gradually broke up into single drops: night tourists, students, members of different subculture groups, and couples in love. The painters' time was over. Masha closed her sketchpad and, along with the long-haired men, got on the approaching trolleybus. The punks put their guitars in the cases and took off. The grey-haired artist left with a wave of his hand. Night fell, the garden was almost empty, and Nevsky once again transformed.

A drunk musclehead in a tank top passed by on auto-pilot, swaying and flexing his muscles. He gave Max a hostile glance, muttered something under his breath, and slumped onto a bench at the bus stop. Two ostentatiously dirty beggars were squabbling noisily, jingling change and arranging large bills in two unequal piles.

Two plump and smooth men in black suits with bow ties nestled against the concrete foundation of the garden fence.

'Bartenders, or maybe waiters', Max guessed.

One of them, moustachioed and resembling an overfed cat, took out a bottle of vodka and poured himself and his companion a drink. They drank, talked, and had another round. Max didn't like them.

He stood up, seeing two young women coming from Alexandrinsky Theatre. One of them was Irma. She was leading along the weeping and heavily intoxicated costume supervisor Lara.

'I don't know how to live, Irma,' she cried, rubbing her eyes and smearing her mascara and lipstick across her face. 'What do I do?'

They approached him, and Irma said: 

'Lara, it's time for me to leave. Max will take you home, and when I get to the phone, I'll call.'

And to Max:

'Thank you, love! I don't know what I'd do without you.'

She pecked his cheek and flitted towards Gostiny Dvor. Max propped Lara against a pole and tried to console her. When her sobbing had almost subsided, he started to hail a car.

The moustachioed man, who had been observing them with interest, approached Max and, swinging his bottle, offered him a drink.

'I don't drink,' Max replied.

'Then maybe the lady will have a tipple?' The moustachioed man persisted.

'She's certainly had enough.'

'Who knows? Life's tough, you need to relax sometimes.'

He glanced towards Lara with apparent indifference, but there was something in his gaze that Max strongly disliked, a certain damp gleam and tension.

'She's had enough,' Max repeated.

Then the second man, not feigning friendliness, retorted, 'Maybe it's time for you to head home, lad?'

The moustachioed one calmly added, 'And leave her here.' He nodded towards Lara. 'We'll give you money if you want.'

With that, he reached for his wallet. Max winced in surprise and disgust. These mature men with sleepy, half-closed eyes and the manners of satiated cats were straightforwardly offering to buy Lara from him. There was something profoundly alien about these two, as if cats had stood on their hind legs, dressed up in suits and, smoking cigarettes, started speaking human language.

Max took the woman by the arm and said, 'Let's go, Lara,' led her aside and continued to hail a car.

The moustachioed man returned to his seat, took his glass, and resumed the interrupted conversation. For these two, nothing had happened. The fish had slipped away. No worries, another would come along. 

Max finally got a lift, loaded the woman into the ZAZ, commonly known as the soap box car, squeezed in himself, and they headed off to Liteiny. He took her to a basement apartment nearby the KGB headquarters, called by the people simply The Big House. She was no longer sobbing, but was sad and resigned to her fate. When she’d closed the door behind him, Max went out into the courtyard and sat down on a bench.

He sat motionless for a few minutes, looking up at the sky over the rooftops, then noticed a black cat crouching next to him and asked:

'Tell me, you're not like those... people, are you?'

The cat yawned tiredly and took a step forward, making it clear that he was more into the fish business. If there was cod or hake around – that he would enjoy, and to any human philosophy he is not exactly indifferent, but, it’s not his cup of milk. 

Realising that there would be no fish today, he cast a reproachful glance at Max and dived into a basement window.

'No, you're not like them,' Max said. ‘You're an honest cat, and you don't pretend to be human.’

There was no one to answer him. Max lingered for another minute, inhaling the scent of poplar dissolved in the night air, and leisurely made his way over the Liteiny Bridge towards Finlyandsky Station. After a few metres, Max began to hum 'Try Not To Get Worried' from Jesus Christ Superstar, and a couple of minutes later he was smiling again. He was walking towards a new day. Another day of freedom.