Deborah Treisman

We start in the KGB policeman's eyes.

But there's a tone in the narration that is almost evidence of a character speaking.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

There's someone there with a sense of humor who's using exclamation marks and pointing out things that are funny or interesting apart from what we see through Boris Ivanovich's eyes and so on.

Do you think that that is Ulitskaya herself, or do you think that she has in mind a person telling this story?

Yeah.

Why do you think she starts us off in the mind of Popov?

So you start the story and you sort of feel like, oh, we're in a police story, procedural in a sense.

Here they are knocking on the door.

They're about to search the apartment.

And then it becomes something quite different.

Well, so we have this, you know, almost comic scene with the KGB and his KGB captain and his stooges, as you said.

And then off goes Boris kind of scurrying out the back door and plowing through puddles and gets himself out and free.

And then we're plunged into a completely different world.

He's out in rural Russia, which is new to him as well.

And I feel like the story at that moment becomes a different story in a way.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean, it's amazing in the moment, you know, after the captain leaves and they're writing on pieces of paper to communicate and so on.

The only person in that scene who seems afraid is Boris's wife.