Gurov woke up to a dull, drilling pain in his temples. In the silence of the hotel room, he could clearly hear his heart thumping in his chest—right in rhythm with the steady clicking of the mechanical alarm clock that the kind Aleutina Nikanorovna had put at his disposal, fulfilling in this “hotel” a strange mixture of duties. In one person she combined the roles of porter, corridor attendant, and responsible administrator. In none of those roles—naturally—did she excel, but that never bothered her at all. Aleutina Nikanorovna’s ideas about hotel service had frozen at the level of the 1970s, when being allowed to spend the night on a hard sofa in an unheated vestibule could pass for an act of mercy, and cold water in the room was considered an extra service.