Some time ago I was passing – as I usually do on Mondays – near the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. It was just before eight a.m., every scrap of concentration that was available to be me at that early hour was concentrated on keeping me up right and preventing me from dancing a sliding dance on the very slippery metro stairs and pavements covered with snow. It was dark. Around me I could only hear the even steps of other dawn ghosts, going to work for the way-too-early shift. Suddenly, right above my head, the bells started ringing at that bitter, grey hour. It wasn’t just one, deep, rumbling bell, but a conglomerate of all sorts of bells, small and big, the chaotic sounds of which gathered together in one, uniform melody: