A fat, brightly smiling woman in a tattered cloth coat stood on the landing where the steps came up from the subway, waving her hands into the air so that the puppies at her feet would dance. They were happy little dogs, eight in total, each one thick-furred and multicolored, of some unknown Arctic breed. The woman was trying to sell them to the tourists who were exiting from the subway to the street.

Anatolie Petrushinsky grunted cynically as he watched the well-dressed westerners move quickly past the woman. Not one of them so much as looked at her fuzzy little dogs. Foolish woman, he thought. Or maybe she has sold everything else already. But she would have done better to kill the puppies and make them into hats. For why would a German or an Englishman or especially an American want to bring a live dog home?

Petrushinsky stood on the curb thirty yards away, hunched inside an old army jacket. His grim, lined face was burnt from the cold. His own fur hat, which had been made in a rural village near Peredelkino out of rabbit skins, was folded down over his ears. He silently smoked a cigarette, masking his disgust as he scrutinized the tourists who were making their way along the street toward him. They emanated a conqueror's condescending arrogance, pausing here and there with an airy cheerfulness as they examined the paltry goods for sale.

Dozens of bedraggled vendors lined the curbside, making this section of the Arabat look like an odd, gigantic yard sale. Petrushinsky himself was holding a case filled with military trinkets. The case was rigged so that it folded out into a portable tray, hanging open just below his waist, its top part up against his chest and strapped around his neck. In contrast to those who owned the little shops behind him, he and the other curbside merchants were selling their goods without official licenses. The licenses were expensive, and difficult to obtain. If the police decided to conduct a raid he could snap the tray shut and quickly disappear inside the curling roads and vast blocks of apartments just behind him, where most police officers were too lazy and too afraid to follow.

What do they care, he thought. Pieces from my own army uniform. To sell away my pride I need a license, or at least to bribe the police officer? Petrushinsky hated what had happened in his country over the past ten years. There was no justice anymore, no nobility of purpose, indeed no Soviet Union. Only silly police shakedowns and a cannibalistic selling-off of one's own heritage. And every new morning another fucking game.

And so it has come to this, mused Petrushinsky as he huddled against the bitter cold. It is not enough that the CIA agent Gorbachev sold out our empire to the west. It is not enough that our government collapsed into a comical, corrupt anarchy run on the inside by the KGB and on the outside by a murderous mafia. It is not enough that our military, once the proudest in the world, occupier of more foreign territory than any army in history, is reduced to living in slums and suffering defeat at the hands of ragtag militias in places like Afghanistan and Chechnya. No, it is not even enough that two-thirds of the men in our country now die in a drunken stupor while still in their fifties, their very hearts polluted by the hopelessness of our new existence. Now I must survive by selling the emblems of our greatness, pieces of the uniform I wore with honor and pride, to the same slime who took our empire from us.

There were about twenty people in this latest group, strolling slowly in their threes and fours along the Arabat. Just down from him a dark-haired, fortyish woman in an elegant gray wool coat had stopped to bargain with a man who was selling antique dolls. A fur collar hugged her neck just below the ears, framing her face as if it were a winter halo. From her coat and the cut of her hair, Petrushinsky decided she was German. He found himself admiring her flawless complexion and the clean features of her face. When she smiled he fell in love with her just for an instant, his mind lost for that moment in a memory of a town near East Berlin.

Then he felt himself begin to hack. He could not stop it. In seconds he was coughing violently, his hands over his mouth. The endless cigarettes caused him to do this. And the vodka. And the cold. As he coughed he felt the woman's eyes on him. Turning, he saw that she was fighting back revulsion as she looked at his bluing face and his reddened, bark-hard hands. And in that instant he hated her.

I could have had you, he thought. Not too many years ago you would have been begging me to take you.

Four well-dressed men had stopped before him as he coughed. They elbowed each other, speaking quietly as they examined the buttons and medals in his tray. Their scrubbed faces and perfectly cut topcoats told him immediately that they were Americans. Three of them were older -- from their slate-gray hair and etched faces perhaps in their fifties, but it was always so difficult to tell with Americans. The other one, a cherubic, animated man who smoked a pipe like an Englishman and seemed to be their escort, was considerably younger.

Petrushinsky could tell that they were speaking English, although he could not make any sense from their words. The younger man was pointing at him with an implied familiarity, and the three older men were now staring with fresh interest. Finally the younger man switched to Russian, speaking directly to Petrushinsky.

"We saw the tattoo on your hand when you were coughing," said the younger man. He had an accent so perfect that he might have been an academe. "I told my guests that you must have been a member of an elite airborne unit."

Involuntarily, Petrushinsky glanced down at the parachute that was tattooed on the back of his right hand, remembering for a moment the proud night that the tattoo gun had burned its image into him. Then he gazed back up at the four men who stood before him. Their eyes were bright, as if now viewing him with some vicarious camaraderie. From somewhere deep inside his spirit, a pride burst forth. We were as good as you, thought Petrushinsky. Maybe we were better than you.

"Yes," said Petrushinsky. "I was airborne, for many years. I know you are Americans. It may surprise you, but I served in Cuba, twice!"

The rotund younger man quickly laughed, translating the remarks for his three guests. Petrushinsky had now decided that the escort was probably an intelligence agent working out of the American Embassy and that his guests were visiting businessmen or perhaps government officials. Petrushinsky's remarks seemed to electrify the three older men. They spoke rapidly to one another for several seconds and then to their escort, as if ordering him to respond.

"These gentlemen are American businessmen," explained their escort. "But when they were younger, all three served in Viet Nam."

"I was in Viet Nam," answered Petrushinsky, determined not to be outdone. The shock that pulsed across the three men's faces when his words were translated filled Petrushinsky with a silent but gleeful pride. They began chattering, their eyes round with discovery, peering at him with an intense curiosity.

"When?" asked their escort.

"Many times. The first time, 1968. The last time, 1987."

The three men became even more intense as their guide translated for them. They spoke quickly, all at the same time, looking at one another as if on the edge of some profound discovery. Finally their guide translated another question for him.

"You were in Viet Nam in 1968? What were you doing?"

Petrushinsky shrugged nonchalantly, eyeing them as if they were stupid. What was I doing? What did they think I was doing? "I was a soldier!"

As the four Americans grew even more excited, a nervousness that bordered on nausea began to creep through Petrushinsky. He had not thought that such a casual boast would cause such an eruption of emotion. What was Viet Nam, after all? So many years ago. So much had happened since then. The war in Afghanistan, the emergence of the traitor Gorbachev, the collapse of the east, the drunken chaos of Yeltsin, the murderous, criminal shadow government, the folly of Chechnya. So much. What did it matter that he had been in Viet Nam?

"Where were you?" It was becoming overwhelming, an interrogation. The three men were asking him in English, leaning forward over his little tray, their voices tight with amazement and even disbelief, as their guide persistently quizzed him in Russian.

"What does it matter?" Petrushinsky finally muttered. "Soldiers go where they are told. I was in many places."

"No one has ever admitted there were Soviet soldiers in Viet Nam during the war! After the war, certainly. But during it? How many times were you there? What did you do?"

Petrushinsky stared in horror at their taut, incredulous faces, amazed at the reaction that had followed such a simple statement. He did not understand it, and now he deeply feared it. If he gave them any more answers, what would come next? Would they try to detain him and bring him to an American television camera? Would they call the police and request their assistance, causing his arrest for peddling without a license? Would they corral him and bring him to the American Embassy for further interrogation? Had he committed the breach of an oath he no longer even remembered?

No, he decided. There had never been an oath, because there had never been a need for one. There had never been journalists or probing, arrogant American businessmen or even the ability to ask such questions when the Soviet army was supreme. It was only now, after the army and the empire had been disgraced. He spoke fiercely now, startling them. "Why do you want to know all these things? Who are you? I ask you, why do you want to know?"

Quickly, he snapped his case shut and began walking away from them. One of the older men stepped forward as if to follow him, and Petrushinsky pointed at him, a threat. The man raised both hands as if pleading with him to be patient. And immediately Petrushinsky began running.

The four men's calling voices grew fainter, and then finally he could hear them no longer as he ran behind a row of shops. He turned onto a side street with more shops and other people lined against the curb, selling their pitiful bags of nothing. Across the street a fire had been lit inside a trash can, and a half dozen weather-beaten men were standing around it, warming themselves. My people, he thought, jogging past them. Soldiers who served the empire and today have nothing to look forward to but the bottle and an early death.

But he could not stop to be with them, not yet, not even for a moment to get warm. He disappeared inside a cluttered alleyway, still clutching his peddler's case. Maybe later he would come back. But now he kept on running.