Bulgakov met the writer and journalist Aron Erlikh in autumn, 1921, in the literary department of the Chief Committee for Political Education at the People’s Commissariat for Education. Bulgakov depicted the meeting with him in Notes on the Cuffs (‘Tall, very young with a pince-nez). In April 1922, Bulgakov chanced upon Erlikh on Stoleshnikov Lane – Aron Erlikh helped him get a job at the newspaper Gudok as a ghostwriter of letters.

Erlikh’s memories of the meeting on Stoleshnikov Lane have been preserved: ‘He walked towards me in a long, fur coat like a bearskin, in a hat deeply pulled down over his forehead… He had an indifferent, somewhat distracted expression on his face. I called out to him. We hadn’t seen each other for two months… “Mikhail Afanasevich, you haven’t happened to have worked at a newspaper before, have you? Do you want to work with us?”’ Bulgakov descibed the meeting with Erlikh in his short story, To a Secret Friend, in the scene of the meeting between Maksudov and a, ‘nice journalist called Abram’.