He reaches for the book, fully planning on taking it and leaving, but as he leans over to pick it up, he catches a glance of what the stranger is writing. 01/01/1961. 12:01. It takes him a moment to mentally translate the time and date — they use the Gregorian calendar here, and even the length of the year in America is different — but when he does, he stops. One-one, January First. Directly after the midnight. But what would this man be writing about that night for, unless…

The book abandoned, Raskolnikov says sharply, “did you see those things too on New Year’s Eve?”