Catching myself trying to sing along out of tune with the quiet female voice, I tugged out the earphones and switched the player off. No. I hadn't come here to lounge around doing nothing.
What would James Bond have done in my place? Immediately found the mysterious renegade Other, his human client and the author of the provocative letters.
And what was I going to do?
I was going to look for what I needed desperately. If it really came to it, there had to be toilet facilities downstairs, at the security point.
Somewhere outside the window – it seemed very close – a bass guitar began growling ponderously. I jumped to my feet, but couldn't see anyone in the apartment.
'Hi there, you mob' said a voice outside the windows. I leaned out over the windowsill and surveyed the wall of the Assol building. I spotted some windows open two floors up – that was where those unusually arranged, aggressive chords on the bass guitar were coming from.
I haven't squeezed my guts out for a long time,
It's a long time since I've squeezed out my guts,
And just recently I happened to notice
How long it is since I squeezed out my guts.
But I used to squeeze them out so fine!
No one else could squeeze them out so far!
I squeezed them right out there for everyone,
I was the only one squeezing them out!
It was impossible to imagine a greater contrast with the quiet voice of Zoya Yashchenko, the female singer with The White Guard, than this extraordinary song. But there was something about it I liked. The singer ran through a three-chord bridge and continued with his lament:
Sometimes now I still squeeze them out,
But now it's not the way it used to be.
They just don't squeeze out the same way at all
I'll never squeeze them out again the way I used to . . .
I started laughing. It had all the distinctive features of Russian 'gangster' songs – a lyric hero recalling his former splendour, describing his present fallen state and lamenting that he will never recover the glory of former days.
And I had a strong suspicion that if this song were played on Radio Chanson, ninety per cent of the listeners wouldn't even suspect it was a send-up.
The guitar gave a few sighs. And then the voice launched into a new song:
I've never been in the loony bin,
So stop asking me about that . . .
The music broke off. I rummaged in the cardboard box, found a bottle of vodka and a stick of smoked salami. I skipped out onto the landing, pulled the door shut and set off up the stairs.
Finding the midnight bard's apartment was about as hard as finding a working pneumatic drill in the bushes.
The birds have stopped their singing,
The sun no longer shines
There are no vicious kids frolicking
Round the rubbish tip outside . . .
I rang the bell, certain that no one would hear it. But the music stopped, and about thirty seconds later the door opened.
Standing there in the doorway with an amiable smile on his face was a short, stocky man about thirty years old, holding a bass guitar. With a certain morose satisfaction, I observed that he had a 'bandit' haircut like me. The bard was wearing threadbare jeans and an amusing T-shirt – a paratrooper in Russian uniform slitting the throat of an American soldier with a huge knife. Below the picture was the defiant slogan 'Let us remind you who really won the Second World War!'
'That's not bad, either,' the guitarist said, looking at my T-shirt. 'Come on in.'
He took the vodka and the salami and moved back inside.
I took a look at him through the Twilight.
A human being.
And such a confused jumble of an aura that I decided there and then not to try to understand his character. Grey, pink, red and blue tones . . . a really impressive cocktail.
I followed him inside.
His apartment turned out to be twice as big as mine. Oho, he didn't earn the money for that by playing the guitar . . . But then, that was none of my business. What was really funny was that, apart from its size, the apartment looked like an exact copy of mine. The initial phase of a magnificent finishing job hastily wound up and left incomplete.