Spiridonov started to pour alcohol into glasses, mugs and the lids of pots. Everyone fell silent, watching him attentively. The look in their eyes was calm and serious, full of faith.

As he looked round, Krymov said to himself: 'It's a pity Grekov's not here. He deserves a drink.' But Grekov had already drunk all he was ever to drink.

Glass in hand, Spiridonov got up.

'Now he'll go and spoil everything,' thought Krymov, 'like Pryakhin.'

But Spiridonov just sketched a figure of eight in the air with his glass and said: 'Well, lads, it's time for a drink. Cheers!'

There was a clinking of glasses and tin mugs. The drinkers cleared their throats and nodded their heads.

There were all sorts of people here. Before the war, the State had somehow kept them apart; they had never sat down at one table, clapped each other on the shoulder and said: 'No, you just listen to what I'm saying!' Here, though, beneath the remains of the burning power station, they had become brothers. And this simple brotherhood was so important that they would happily have given their lives for it.

A grey-haired night-watchman began to sing an old song. Before the Revolution, when Stalingrad was still called Tsaritsyn, it had been a favourite of the young lads from the French factory. He sang in the thin, high voice of his youth. This voice was unfamiliar to him now and he listened to himself with the amused astonishment of a man listening to a stranger who's had too much to drink.

Another old man, with black hair, frowned as he listened to this song about love and the pain of love.

There was something wonderful about this singing, about this terrible moment that had brought together the director, the orderly from the bakery, the night-watchman and the sentry, that had brought together the Kalmyk, the Georgian and the Russians.

When the song was over, the old man with black hair frowned still more fiercely and himself began to sing, very slowly and quite out of tune.

'Away with the old world,

Let's shake its dust from our feet…'

Spiridonov and Nikolayev, the delegate from the Central Committee, both laughed and shook their heads. Krymov grinned at Spiridonov.

'So the old man was once a Menshevik?'

Spiridonov knew all there was to know about Andreyev. He would gladly have told Krymov, but he was afraid Nikolayev would overhear. For a moment the feeling of simplicity and brotherhood disappeared.

'Pavel Andreyevich, that's the wrong song,' he interrupted gently.

Andreyev fell silent, looked at him and said:

'I'd never have thought it. I must have been dreaming.'

The Georgian sentry was showing Krymov where he had rubbed the skin off his hand.

'That's from digging out my friend, Seryozha Vorobyov.'

His black eyes glittered. Then, rather breathlessly, he said:

'I loved that Seryozha more than my own brother.'

The words were almost a scream.

Meanwhile the grey-haired night-watchman, covered in sweat and a little the worse for drink, had fastened onto Nikolayev.

'No, you listen to me now! Makuladze says he loved Seryozha Vorobyov more than his own brother. I once worked in an anthracite mine. You should have seen the boss we had there. He really did love me. We drank together and I used to sing. He said straight out: "You're just like a brother to me, even if you are only a miner." We used to talk, we used to eat our lunch together.'

'A Georgian, was he?' asked Nikolayev.

'What do you mean? He was Mr Voskresensky, the owner of all the mines. But you'll never understand how much he respected me. A man who had a capital of millions. Is that clear?'

Nikolayev and Krymov exchanged glances. They both winked and shook their heads.

'Well, well,' said Nikolayev. 'Now that really is something. You live and learn.'

'That's right,' said the old man, apparently unaware that he was being made fun of.

It was a strange evening. Late at night, as people were beginning to leave, Spiridonov said to Krymov: 'Don't start looking for your coat, Nikolay. You're staying here for the night.'

He started preparing a place for Krymov to sleep. He did this very slowly, thinking carefully what to put where: the blanket, the padded jacket, the ground sheet. Krymov went outside; he stood for a while in the darkness, looking at the dancing flames, then went back down again. Spiridonov was still at it.

Krymov finally took off his boots and lay down.

'Well, are you comfortable?' Spiridonov asked. He patted Krymov on the head and smiled a kindly, drunken smile.

To Krymov, the fire in the power station was somehow reminiscent of the bonfires in Okhotniy Ryad on that night in January 1924 when they had buried Lenin.

Everyone else who had stayed behind seemed to be already asleep. It was pitch-dark. Krymov lay there with his eyes open, thinking and remembering…

There had been a harsh frost for some days. The dark winter sky over the cupolas of Strastny monastery… Hundreds of men in greatcoats, leather jackets, caps with ear-flaps, pointed helmets… At one moment Strastnaya Square had suddenly turned white. There were leaflets, government proclamations, lying all over it.

Lenin's body had been taken from Gorki to the railway station on a peasant sledge. The runners had squeaked, the horses snorted. The coffin had been followed by his widow, Krupskaya, wearing a round fur cap held on by a grey headscarf, by his two sisters, Anna and Maria, by his friends, and by some of the village peasants. It might have been the funeral of some agronomist, of a respected village doctor or teacher.

Silence had fallen over Gorki. The polished tiles of the Dutch stoves had gleamed; beside the bed with its white summer bedspread stood a small cupboard full of little bottles with white labels; there was a smell of medicine. A middle-aged woman in a white coat had come into the room; out of habit she walked on tiptoe. She had gone past the bed and picked up a ball of twine with a piece of newspaper tied to the end. The kitten asleep in the empty armchair had looked up as it heard the familiar rustle of its toy; it had looked at the empty bed, yawned and then settled down again.

As they followed the coffin, Lenin's relatives and close comrades had begun reminiscing. His sisters remembered a little boy with fair hair and a difficult character. He had teased them a lot and been impossibly demanding. Still, he had been a good boy and he had loved his mother and his brothers and sisters.

His widow remembered him in Zurich, squatting on the floor and talking to the little granddaughter of Tilly the landlady. Tilly had said, in the Swiss accent that Volodya found so amusing:

'You should have children yourselves.'

He had stolen a quick, sly look at Nadyezhda Konstantinovna.

Workers from the 'Dynamo' factory had come to Gorki. Volodya had forgotten his condition and got up to meet them. He had wanted to say something, but had only managed to give a pitiful moan and a despairing wave of the hand. The workers had stood around in a circle; watching him cry, they had started to cry themselves. And then that frightened, pitiful look of his at the end – like a little boy turning to his mother.

Then the station buildings had come into view. The locomotive, with its tall funnel, had seemed even blacker against the snow.

Lenin's comrades – Rykov, Kamenev and Bukharin – had walked just behind the sledge, their beards white with hoar-frost. From time to time they had glanced absent-mindedly at a swarthy, pock-marked man wearing a long greatcoat and boots with soft tops. They had always felt a contemptuous scorn for his Caucasian style of dress. And had he been a little more tactful, he wouldn't have come to Gorki at all; this was a gathering for Lenin's very closest friends and relatives. None of them understood that this man was the true heir of Lenin, that he would supplant every one of them, even Krupskaya herself.