‘Do you ski yourself, sir?’

Tulenkov shook his head. ‘After forty, a man is a fool to attempt to learn new sports. And although I enjoy our season here – from my own point of view, not merely because of the children – it always seems strange to me that snow should be associated with the pleasures of young men and women. In Russia, snow is a more serious business; our daily lives are conditioned by it.’

‘But you have sports in the winter, surely?’

‘Not such as this.’ He laughed. ‘Shall I tell you one of our favourites? It requires a pig.’

‘A pig?

‘A small one. We take him out with us, on the sleighs, and then someone holds him up by his hind legs. He squeals – and the squeal even of a little pig carries a long way over the snow. And we sit waiting.’

‘For what?’

‘For our friends who have heard the squeals and who come hurrying over the snow, spilling froth from their jaws. The wolves. And instead of pig they find bullets, and the little pig goes home to squeal another day.’