One Fine Day

One day in the life of the actor Leonid Pavlikovsky. As his father likes to say: “Excuse me for the fact that it did not come without a scandal.”
Veniamin Borisovich Smekhov

One fine day… Monday morning, 14 March 197… for the dramatic actor Leonid Alekseyevich Pavlikovsky began as usual—at seven in the morning by his own alarm clock. Nothing special: a morning brighter than winter, but still darker than summer. At seven o’clock, the first concern of Leonid woke up—and his fatherly conscience, while the others slept. It seems that the whole world slept: all people, homes and affairs, and also punctuation marks together with capital letters…