By Emmanuel Carrère, from Limonov, to be published in October by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Carrère’s books include The Adversary, My Life as a Russian Novel, and Lives Other Than My Own. Translated from the French by John Lambert.

There were two or three hundred people on the square in front of Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater, and around them just as many riot police equipped with helmets, shields, and heavy clubs. It started to rain. Umbrellas opened above the candles and signs that people were holding in memory of those who’d died when, in 2002, Chechen terrorists had taken the…