Nikita Street is the Moscow thoroughfare along which Yurii Andreievich travels by trolley on his first morning going to work at Botkin Hospital. The street is presented through the delays and the passing view from the car: a familiar urban route becomes a frame for close observation amid stalled traffic and gathering heat.

Setting and Route

At the end of August, Yurii boards a trolley at a stop on the corner of Gazetny Street. It is traveling up Nikita Street toward the Kudrinskaia terminal. His destination is Botkin Hospital, then known as Soldatenko Hospital; although he had visited once or twice for work-related reasons, this is his first morning traveling there to begin his job.

The Street from the Trolley

The trolley’s defective motor repeatedly interrupts the journey. Repairs and further stoppages leave the car caught in a growing line of traffic, with passengers moving between cars in the hope of getting ahead. From his single seat by the left window, Yurii can see the left side of Nikita Street, where the Conservatory stands. His gaze follows the people walking and driving past while his attention remains partly elsewhere.

The stalled traffic makes the street a scene of enforced waiting rather than mere passage. The crowded, stuffy trolley and the advancing thundercloud provide the immediate conditions for Yurii’s sustained view of the pavement, where an elderly woman repeatedly comes into sight as the car alternately starts, passes her, and breaks down again. Nikita Street thus enters the narrative not only as the route to his new workplace, but as the moving frame through which an ordinary urban encounter is observed.