“... Calls rained down like hail, not giving Alla a break. The calls made Alla think that these multi-colored pieces of paper must really be valuable. Alla took out one of the stamps, opened it, and... the stamps did not make the slightest impression, except that each one was packed in a transparent bag. And there was a number attached to the side of the bag. Alla began to puzzle over what this number could mean. The price? Hardly. What else? Alla thought and thought and remembered that her ex-Third husband didn’t read books, but he read and re-read the French stamp catalog, although he didn’t know French. She found the catalog - a thick yellow book, began to leaf through and discovered that on each page there were photographs of stamps, and below them there are small columns of numbers. Alla was not so dark - after all, she worked as a registrar in a departmental clinic. ..."