That autumn in Moscow was breathtakingly lovely. The weather seemed to me a metaphor of beauty and energy. Everything was a youthful green. I rubbed my shoulders on the gleaming trees, breathed in the silky air, and gazed at the luminous mystery of the sky, lost in reverie.

I realize now that all this was a manic spell—a relatively mild one—part of my bipolar tendencies.

Lena Tenina and I were walking south down Vernadsky Avenue. The sun, as it set somewhere behind Nikolskoye and Ochakovo, cast long shadows on the sidewalk and endowed her cheeks and forehead with a delicate pink glow.

My head was spinning all the time; the gentle breeze was a clear harbinger of freedom. The giddiness of flight was starting to get hold of me, a bird's free soaring and an escape from a prison–like country.

In the Dean's Office, I explained that my father was gravely ill and I had to go back to Riga to take care of him. I said that once he got better, I'd come back and ask to be reinstated in the department. I don't think my story fooled anybody. For one thing, people in such situations don't drop out but arrange an academic leave of absence: instead of ceasing to be enrolled—and having no guarantee of a future reinstatement—they remain students who can by rights resume their course of study whenever they like. For another, it's more than likely—considering the well–developed network of informants, that someone had told the department authorities about my real plans. Only a few of my closest friends knew about them, but we all know how a careless word gets around.

I said to Dean Kulakova—a tough woman who was always smoking and always wore a leather jacket (perhaps she had a whole assortment of them, but to us it had always looked like one and the same jacket)—that at home in Riga I'd have to find employment and for that purpose needed a character profile from her, in addition to the usual academic transcript. She said all this would take some time.