Out-of-date addresses, curiously brief telephone numbers. A whole lapsed world Shutov is trying to bring back to life as he leafs impatiently through the pages of a notebook retrieved from the depths of an old traveling bag. The bag he had with him when he left Russia twenty years ago… A papyrus, yes, the comparison is no exaggeration: since then a country has disappeared, cities have changed their names, and the faces conjured up by the addresses survive only in Shutov’s memory. He glances at the window, which is starting to turn pale. He has made his decision. At ten o’clock in the morning Léa will come with her friend and they will find no one here. The visa in his passport is still valid. He will go at once, as soon as he has found her address, the one who… A silhouette outlined by the autumn sun against the golden leaves. She was called Yana. At the end of her studies she left Leningrad to go and work beyond the Urals. This he knows. Nothing more. The addresses in this notebook, like an encoded message, may perhaps lead him to this woman: a sequence of friends, who, stage by stage, may indicate the places where she made her home during that abyss of years.
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