The Owl Path

«I knew, of course, this establishment hidden at the back of the Cadet Line, and had been here more than once. Who among the students of the historical or philosophical faculty was unaware of the café “Blindage”? Only a bookworm... and a hopeless fool...» The mid-nineties, St. Petersburg. Here, under the arches of “Blindage,” the “Order of Secret Mercy” will be founded, and the two main characters of the novel, charmingly reckless students, will half-seriously, half-jokingly knight each other into this order; from here they will head along the owl path — through the stable noughties and the roaring tens, through unmistakably recognizable Petersburg gardens, squares, embankments, and art galleries, through the art café on Belinsky Street, which is between the circus and the lecture hall of the “Knowledge” society (at that time, Petersburg culture was just in this interlude), where poets and artists held long conversations about the triumph of the impossible, — into the unknown and ominous future. «The beginning of September. Really the beginning — still summer, without the colors of autumn. We stood in the arcade of the Novobirzhoviy shopping arcade, designed by architect Quarenghi, in the fresh wind blowing from the Neva...»