After a moment, I read the story on the link. Nothing, lively written (Fitzgerald, anyway), although the translation is not very. You know, they wrote a lot of such stories in the period between the two wars. There and Hemingway attached, and Somerset Moam. The story is typical: Americans in Paris stumble in search of the meaning of life. And the Russians at this time are digging the White Sea Channel - apparently in search of the same.