It flies away… a cooperative apartment building. One spring evening, with all its residents, it comes loose from the foundation and—rising high, like a gigantic airship—moves from the new-build district on Kooperatsii Street to the Petrograd Side, to near Tuchkov Bridge.
There it settles, blocking part of an old street.
From that moment on, all the novel’s characters begin to exist under new conditions, with astonishment rethinking what has happened and trying to figure out what to do next.