A robber never gets robbed.’ This local saying meant that no one could be cleverer than someone who had spent his whole life playing the worst tricks on others to benefit himself. And Aunt Raissa certainly seemed to know what she was talking about . . . Yet she never noticed Lilla’s flushed cheeks, the rings under her eyes, her dishevelled hair when she came home. In summer, the young people would meet at one of the four public gardens: Nicolas Square, the Botanical Gardens, the Tsar’s Garden and Merchant’s Place. On hazy Sundays, they would walk arm in arm around the band stand, the girls in straw hats, the tops of their dresses stretched taut over their blossoming breasts, their skirts billowing around their hips, and the boys in light shirts, their belts with the Imperial Eagle around their waists and their caps tipped backwards, looking as if they could conquer the world. They exchanged longing glances and love letters. The brass instruments of the military band resounded through the pink evening. Supervisors from their schools wandered about, spying on the courting couples; the rules were strict. But there were ways around them: they met far away from the gates, at nightfall. They strolled slowly down empty streets where the only person in sight was the man ringing his bell to sell ice cream. Ada’s cousin gave her a little cup of chocolate ice cream and she ran on ahead of the couple, watching out for any suspicious figures in the houses, whistling if she saw a passer-by, while the ice cream slowly melted in the warm evening air.

One spring day, Lilla and her admirer had gone for a walk in the Botanical Gardens, Ada following behind. It was a rather isolated, overgrown spot. Some sleepy animals lived in iron cages: an eagle from the Caucasus crawling with vermin, some wolves, a bear panting with thirst. One of the cages was empty; its previous inhabitants, some foxes, had dug a hole in the ground and escaped a few years before, or so the story went. All that remained were the iron bars, a large, rusty lock, and a sign swaying in the wind that read: ‘Foxes’. But Ada always hoped that one of the young cubs might have come back home. She pressed her face against the bars and called out, ‘Come on, let’s see you, I won’t tell anyone you’re here.’ But in vain. Finally, disappointed, she would walk away, throwing a crust of bread to the eagle and the wolves. Ill and indifferent, the animals never stirred. She glanced furtively over at Lilla, seated next to that day’s lucky boy, a nice fifteen-year-old secondary school student. Lilla had forgotten her. Ada was bored; the mosquitoes were eating up her bare arms. She walked slowly along the paths, then hopped until she got to two blocks of stone that the locals called ‘didko’ and ‘babko’, the grandfather and the grandmother; their worn-out features vaguely resembled human faces. Ada had been told they were pagan idols from the past: the god of storms and his wife, the queen of fertility. At their feet, it was still possible to see the plinth where sacrifices were made, and a drain carved into the stone where the victims’ blood would run. But to Ada, they were familiar friends – they really were a grandmother and grandfather dozing outside their house, warmed by the sun. She had built a little hut of dead leaves and branches behind them, no higher than a molehill, and she imagined it was their house, that they’d come outside to rest in the sunshine and that they would go back inside when it got dark. She made a crown of yellow daisies and placed it on the head of the savage idol; the daisies had dark centres and a bitter smell. Then she climbed up on to the shoulders of the old god of storms and stroked him, as if he were a dog, but she soon got bored.

She went and tugged on Lilla’s skirt. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s go for a walk.’

Lilla sighed.