Maria or Simply Maria (a male character) is another roommate of Pyotr's in the psychiatric hospital. After a head injury he has partly taken up the identity of "Simply Maria" - a character played by Victoria Ruffo in the soap opera Simplemente María which was very popular in Russia in the 1990s. In his hallucinations he is a manly woman who meets Arnold Schwarzenegger and after flying together with him on a military airplane through Moscow Maria is hit by the Ostankino Tower. His fantasies are full of phallic symbols.