ABSTRACT
I saw the girl for the first time near the Pushkin monument. It was the beginning of October and the city was immersed in a thick, gray fog, broken only by intermittent drizzle. Trees with yellow leaves shone weakly. A group of schoolchildren, restless and bored, surrounded their teacher or tour guide, who was pointing toward the monument, but the children were ignoring her lecture and having more fun studying the pigeon perched on the bronze curls of the figure on the pedestal. I was waiting for someone and all my thoughts were focused on him. Only my eyes, alert and perceptive in those moments of bitter indecision and fog, were taking in the people around me. I was glancing at the identical faces of the children, wanting to single out at least one to interrupt my train of thought, when I saw her. Fate presented me with her face. A girl came up to the monument. She was in her teens, I think, and everyone who saw her that day must have remembered her and told their people at home, "We saw a crazy girl walking around town today."
