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It was like chasing a ghost… At least, it felt like that in the beginning, as I was driving through the forests of the Black River Valley which, according to New England tourism officials, were past their much-publicised "fall-foliage" peak. This ghost-hunting feeling was enhanced by schizophrenic pre-Halloween displays of grinning carved pumpkins and plastic skeletons on the porches of clapboard country houses along the highway - as if they were smirking disdainfully at the sheer futility of my quest.

I was trying to find the former abode of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, this century's greatest Russian writer, near the town of Cavendish, tucked away among the hills of Vermont - the place, where he had spent seventeen nostalgic and highly prolific years of exile before returning to Russia in 1994.

I always wanted to see this house. Why? The answer can probably be found in the spirit of mystery and mass hysteria surrounding Solzhenitsyn's name in the Soviet Union of my youth. All his books were confiscated from shops and public libraries, and one could easily end up in prison for simply possessing, let alone reading any of his works. Bans and fatwas have always been the best publicity for writers, and I shall never forget the peculiar ticklish feeling of danger while reading a tattered copy of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", aged 16. Hiding the book under the blanket in my bed I read it in one sleepless night - next morning I had to pass it on to the next person in line - in the treacherous light of a small torch. My full awareness of all the dangers involved only added to the joy of reading. The book described one routine day of a prisoner of Stalin's Gulag, where Solzhenitsyn himself had served a stretch. And while heroic Soviet workers and peasants all joined in the well-rehearsed propaganda chorus of "unanimous condemnation" ("We haven't read his books, but we furiously reject Solzhenitsyn's views…"), I treasured an old copy of ‘Novi Mir’ magazine, with one of the writer's early short stories, which they "forgot" to confiscate from our school library.

Later we learnt that, "in accordance with the Soviet people's demands", Solzhenitsyn was "thrown out" of the country and, after a spell in Switzerland, settled in Vermont, USA, where he allegedly lived the life of a reclusive O'Reilly, penning down his "anti-Soviet drivels" in a palace, surrounded with barbed wire.

And here I was in autumn-ridden Vermont, on my way to that mysterious "palace", whose famous dweller, now 80, was no longer there. He was back in his ungrateful motherland, where his prophet-like beard and his laughable attempts at teaching the Russian people "how they should rebuild" their country became the subject of bitter comments and open ridicule. "There's no prophet in one's own fatherland," goes an old Russian proverb. Solzhenitsyn should have known better.

After the village of Plymouth, birthplace of America's mediocre ex-president Calvyn Coolidge, the road wound through desolate countryside, dotted here and there with broken agricultural machinery, left to rust in the field, and forlorn uninhabited houses in different stages of disrepair - as if I had left prosperous New England and was driving through some dreary time-frozen landscape, only slightly brightened up by the exquisite palette of autumn forests. It was not long before I spotted the first weather-beaten "Cavendish" sign, and shortly the town itself came into view.

To call Cavendish a town was a typically American overstatement: by European standards, it was but a medium-sized village stretching for a couple of miles along the track. Walking in its deserted main (and only) street was like going back 70 years, to the times of the Great Depression. Nearly half of the houses were abandoned. Shabby wooden sheds of "The Black River Medical Centre" and the "Mammoth Hobbies Full Line Hobby Store" looked permanently closed down. The only town service that seemed to be still running (at least, its sign had a phone number) was "Chimney Care".

In the town-square, next to a firmly locked hut of the "town hall", I spotted a granite obelisk, which - from a distance - could be mistaken for a regulation countryside war memorial. It was a memorial indeed, but not to the fallen of Cavendish (the town lost only nine men in all the wars of the 20th century), but to a 19th century local railway foreman called Phineas Gage, who, as it transpired from the carved inscription, once had his tamping iron accidentally blown through his skull and out the top of his head - and survived.

My first port of call was Joe Allan's general store, made world-famous by the hand-written sign "No Directions to the Solzhenitsyns" that used to adorn one of its walls. In accordance with New Englanders' traditional respect for other people's privacy, the locals had been unconditionally protective of their own eminent exile and stayed mum about his whereabouts, although few of them were able to comprehend who exactly he was and from whom he was hiding in Cavendish.

The sign was no more, and a stocky blonde woman, unhurriedly frying burgers behind the counter, initially claimed complete ignorance not only of Solzhenitsyn, but of Joe Allan, too. It took her half-a-dozen burgers to recall that the latter had sold the shop a couple of years before and had moved out of town. Well, the first pancake is always a lump, as they say in Russia (I am not so sure about the first burger).

Apart from the store, the only other Cavendish establishment which wasn't shut down on that Saturday morning was a small bungalow, insisting to be called Cavendish Fletcher Community Library. There I had a sudden stroke of luck. Joyce Fuller, the librarian, not exactly inundated with customers and whiling away her time in the company of a fashion magazine, was genuinely happy to see a fellow human. She pointed to a near-empty shelf with thirteen Solzhenitsyn volumes in English translation, presented to the library by the writer himself shortly before his departure. The glossy hardbacks were neatly spread out along the shelf to give the impression of abundance.

She confessed to having been present at both of Solzhenitsyn's public appearances before the townsfolk: in February, 1977 - to say hello and to apologize for the fence (a sacrilege, by Vermont standards) he had to build around his property to protect himself from "the reporters and the idle types", and in February, 1994 - to thank the people of Cavendish for their "kindness and hospitality" and to bid farewell. She then kindly offered to photocopy the text of both addresses for just 10 cents each, with a pamphlet on the extraordinary survival of Phineas Gage thrown in. From the latter, it turned out that the Phineas Gage Historic Festival and Anniversary Commemoration took place in Cavendish in 1998. The events of this Rod-Through-the-Head Commemoration Festival included: "pancake breakfast; parade; BBQ chicken lunch, hosted by American Legion Post; and Hot Dogs & Hamburgers by Cavendish Boy Scout Troop 211".

"Are there any plans to commemorate Solzhenitsyn's 17 years in Cavendish?" I asked her. She was not sure and suggested I call up Rich Speck, the town clerk, which I did without leaving the library.

The town clerk sounded suspicious, as if Solzhenitsyn was still there and waited to be protected. He assured me that there were no plans for a Solzhenitsyn memorial and added that his presence "had no day-to-day impact on the Cavendish community". Unlike that of Phineas Gage, no doubt …

According to Mr Speck, Solzhenitsyn's house was now owned by his two sons, but he was not sure whether they were in town.

Using a sophisticated, almost spy-like, map, drawn by Joyce Fuller, the librarian, on the margins of the hapless Phineas Gage brochure, I set out in search of the old Hoffman house and farm, bought by Solzhenitsyn in 1976 for $150,000. From the reminiscences of those few "reporters and idle types" who did manage to worm themselves on to the 50 acres property, I knew that it consisted of a two-story main house; a library-cum-study, where Solzhenitsyn wrote from 8 a.m. to 9-10 p.m. every day (without a single holiday in 17 years!) standing at a lectern; a guest house; a small pond; a vegetable garden, and a tennis court, where he would "gracefully but slowly and inexpertly" (to quote one of his biographers) hit the ball during rare intervals in his writing.

Whoever Solzhenitsyn was hiding from, he couldn't have hidden better.

I turned off the paved road into a dirt track, snaking through the thick forest alongside a bubbly creek. After an umpteenth zigzag, I finally saw it. Not the house itself, but the notorious fence and the gate with an imposing "No Trespassing. Police Take Notice" sign. Several closed circuit security cameras were staring at me blankly from near-by trees. The rusty intercom button got stuck in its socket when pressed, and there was no reply. It was evident that no one was inside the compound.

Three polythene-covered parcels with books lay on the ground, on the other side of the gate. They were addressed to Ignat Solzhenitsyn, the writer's elder son, and a one-time child-prodigy musician.

For a while, I stood in front of the locked gate, listening to the jolly chatter of the creek and to the soft rustling of falling leaves, as if nature itself was shedding the leafy luggage of the crazy epoch, when authors were either imprisoned or had to encase themselves behind fences and security cameras only because they wanted to keep writing the truth.

But, somehow, there was no finality about the scene. A leaf-carpeted path led from the gate towards Solzhenitsyn's house, which could not be seen from where I stood. The path climbed up the hill before disappearing from view. That was probably why - just like my quest - it seemed incomplete, as if cut in the middle. But it also implied continuation.

What was going to happen next? Vermont forest was offering no answers. Only the fallen leaves slowly pirouetted in the air, as if trying to delay the ultimate moment of dying. And the snow-white trunks of "Russian" birches were bursting through the red-brown sylvan setting - like piercing screams of discord through the harmonious symphony of autumn…

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