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couple of shop
assistants hid behind the stands, avoiding eye contact with customers, as was the practice in Moscow. I passed through the bicycle section and, thinking that my legs could do with a rest, sat on a
child-size stool near the entrance. Next to the stool, a low table was covered in piles of small plastic bricks, identical to those I’d played with in my childhood. I gathered a few colourful
pieces and, without giving it much thought, began interlocking the bricks to form a wall. I then built four corners, joined them into a square which could serve as the base of a tower. I kept
adding bricks, layer by layer, enjoying the simplicity of the task, trying not only to create a solid foundation for my tower, but also to match the colours in symmetrical patterns as the structure
grew taller.
    ‘Do you need more time to finish?’
    I looked up. Lena was wearing a dark green anorak and tight jeans. Her blonde hair was airier than the night before.
    I wasn’t sure how much time I’d spent playing with the bricks. I stood up, awkward and embarrassed. ‘I thought we were meeting outside,’ I said. ‘What’s the
time?’
    Lena stared at me in silence, her blue gaze so intense that I had to look away, afraid she could read my thoughts.
    ‘Come with me,’ she said finally. ‘I’m going to show you my favourite place in Moscow.’
    She grabbed my arm and walked me out of the shop. As we crossed the street through the underground passage they called perekhod, I told her about my unusual Russian lesson in the morning, and
how Nadezhda Nikolaevna and I had been kicked out of the café.
    ‘Moscow is changing,’ Lena said. ‘In soviet times, communism gave us values to live by, a sense of community. People helped each other. That’s gone now.’
    She spoke deliberately, aware of my language limitations. I was glad to notice that, in broad daylight, without vodka, I still understood most of what she said.
    ‘Russia is lost,’ she continued. ‘People here need guidance. First we had God. Then we had Lenin. Now we have nothing.’
    We emerged on the other side of Lubyanka.
    ‘See that?’ Lena was now pointing at the square. The enormous roundabout was circled by dozens of vehicles that poured in from all over Moscow. Across the square, opposite the dreamy
world of Dyetsky Mir, stood the infamous headquarters of the secret services, where, I had been told, thousands of people had been tortured and murdered.
    ‘The Lubyanka building,’ I said, nodding, frowning, trying to convey my understanding of the historical suffering associated with the building.
    ‘Not that,’ Lena said. ‘I mean in the middle of the roundabout. What do you see?’
    All I saw among the fuming vehicles was an empty traffic island.
    ‘Nothing,’ I said.
    ‘Exactly. There used to be a statue. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the soviet secret services.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘The statue disappeared with the perestroika,’ Lena said. ‘It was never replaced. That’s what I mean: after the fall of communism, Russia’s soul is empty, like
Lubyanka Square.’
    We walked along Nikolskaya, then turned left into a narrow side street crammed with double-parked cars. I had visited these old streets of Kitay-gorod at night with the brothers, searching for
clubs, but in daylight the entire neighbourhood felt like part of a different, sleepier city. Lena stopped in front of a residential building that had no signs.
    ‘Here we are,’ she said, indicating a brown metal door.
    She rang a bell and the door was opened. Descending a flight of stairs, we entered a dimly lit underground room. A young bearded man with a ponytail sat behind a counter, reading in near
darkness. He greeted Lena with a curt nod, seemingly annoyed by our interruption, and reluctantly placed his book on the counter next to a burning incense stick. The counter was covered with cheap
booklets on Buddhism, Taoism, meditation, yoga. All the books bore handwritten price tags.
    We