The worst thing an artist can have is too much freedom.

They wanted people to wake up to a city that had been transformed into a gallery, bursts of colour amid the pigeon-coloured buildings. They wanted their posters to be the only thing people talked about that day.

It was eleven days before Christmas and an orange-tailed carp swam in the bathtub, opening and closing the slick tunnel of its mouth.

Seven floors below us, tanks were lined up on the streets. Soldiers gathered by in green uniforms and fur-trimmed caps. They held out their hands to cages of burning coal.