Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five

Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

is mother was holding him, rocking him, kissing him, singing to him. The air was warm, and smelled like lilacs, the sky bright and clear. Those where nightingales, surely. No others made such music, like poetry. His mother spoke of Pushkin, recited Pushkin, taught him to think in Pushkin's iambic music, like the birds, the precious nightingales who were reciting on that morning in his little garden. A tear, a sudden cloud, a raindrop, a storm. Little nightingales frightened away by something big and brown with ruffled, torn, bloody feathers, swooping over the body of his father at Mukden, a Japanese bullet in his head. His mother holding him, crying ... Dawn ... Over ... The storm ... The vulture carrying something away, carrying something out of his heart that will never return ... forever.

Dmitri woke up with a shudder. Dr. Utka and the nurse were in the hospital room with Dmitri and Tatiana. Dr. Utka pulled Tatiana's sheet up over her face. He looked at Dmitri.

"Dead," he said. He yawned and went to the door. "When you finish saying your goodbyes, the nurse will take you to where you can make all the arrangements. She'll be just outside. I'm surprised it went this far. Very sorry." Dr. Utka and the nurse left the room.

It was 12:11 a.m., December 29th, a Saturday, a Saturday having just begun. Dmitri sank back into the chair he had been sleeping in; the chair he had slept in for the last four nights. A few feet from him lay the corpse of his mother, covered with a white sheet. A few minutes before, she had been alive -- comatose, but alive. She would have been 58 years old on January 6th. Dmitri stood up and removed the sheet from Tatiana's face. It was horribly emaciated, sunken cheeks and eyes, the skin looking green. That did not look like his mother. Dmitri began to weep.

"Why didn't you tell me? Perhaps there could have been something done. How long, how long had you suffered in silence? Lying ... alone ... thinking of the horror." said Dmitri aloud.

He began to gag and choke from crying, and trying to talk. He cursed bitterly, shouting,

"How could this be allowed to happen?"

Dmitri raised his eyes upward as if to implore ... then he thought how much his mother would have disapproved of such talk, such questioning of his faith, then he composed himself somewhat. He remembered what the doctor had said when he was in the room being surprised that it went this far. A curious choice of -- it -- not she, not, "I am surprised she lasted this long." -- but I'm surprised it went this far." What was "it," her life, her case, her staying at the hospital taking up bed space? Putting an imposition to these doctors and nurses? Or was "it" the cancer, its spread? Dmitri was weary from his eternal penchant for speculation, analysis. His mother had just died and he was questioning an overworked doctor's use of a pronoun. Enough!

"I will pray for you, mother dear! Please pray for us!"

After several minutes, Dmitri made the sign of the cross, leaned over and kissed her forehead, put the sheet back over her face, and left the room.

asha was asleep in his cradle. Zina lay in her bed next to him. She was about to fall asleep, too. She had a few more thoughts to go over before she could settle, and sleep would come. She was exhausted, but was kept awake by worry over Tatiana; and how to tell Dmitri about Podly, and about how she really felt about being a mother instead of a full-time artist. Now, there was nothing Zina could do about Tatiana. She surely would not survive. Zina felt the profound impotence of her position in that regard. But the Podly situation, and telling Dmitri its history, and the motherhood situation -- Zina had complete control over all of it. She had to tell him, but what would he do? How would he take it, with all that was complicating their lives now: his mother, the library project, and then ... Podly, and Zina's frustration?

Zina's bedroom was cold. It became exceedingly white. A gray fog oozed from all sides: the ceiling, floor and the walls. Zina felt all these changes, and her head was raised from the pillow. She looked to the right at the little window, the one where Anya was standing holding Sasha on Christmas Eve when Podly saw them. A flame licked at the window. Through the glass it slowly entered the room, growing large as it approached Zina's bed. From it, Tatiana Andreevna stepped forth to communicate something to Zina. From the foot of the bed, Tatiana spoke in a language unknown to Zina. After a short time, Zina realized what Tatiana was speaking was Russian, a broken, weird kind of Russified Greek, yes, Greek. Tatiana spoke. Zina held out her hand palm up, and Tatiana placed a single Tarot card on it face down. Zina didn't want to turn it up but she could see from the look on Tatiana's eyes, red and terribly swollen, that she must. With her right hand, Zina turned the card over. It was the Death card.

"I regret not spending more time with the baby. I am truly sorry." Tatiana wept bitterly. "I am sorry I didn't tell you and my son about my illness ... I ... could not ... you understand ... do you understand? Tell me that you understand!" begged Tatiana.

Then she told Zina something very important about Dmitri, and Dmitri's future. She went on for quite a while about Dmitri and she stressed the importance for Zina remembering what was said.

Tatiana said, "I kissed Sasha goodbye and he woke. You must go to him. Goodbye, Zina!" Zina woke up. She got out of bed and went to Sasha's crib. He was awake, too, and crying softly. It wouldn't be time for him to be fed for another hour or so. Zina held him and kissed him. It was a little past midnight. Something woke Sasha. A nightmare? Zina remembered her dream. Sasha stopped crying and was falling back to sleep. She put him in the cradle.

Zina got back into bed and lay there thinking about her dream. The first thing she recalled was the Tarot card. Zina was convinced that Tatiana had just died, and that she had come to her to say goodbye, and be on her way back through her 57 years and out somewhere, beyond it all. What Zina tried to concentrate on was what Tatiana told her about Dmitri. But try as she might, Zina could not remember. Zina kept thinking how profoundly sad Tatiana was. Sad about not telling anyone about the illness, sad about spending so little time with her grandson because of her secret.

"Try to think of something else, more pleasant, then maybe I'll remember what Tatiana said about Dmitri," thought Zina. She remembered the day she learned she was pregnant. It was December 2nd or 3rd of the previous year. When she left the hospital after seeing Dr. Vrach, she went to the Kremlin to tell Dmitri. Then she went to the school where Tatiana taught. She peeked into Tatiana's classroom, not wanting to disturb the lesson, and yet, on the quiet get Tatiana's attention. Zina watched with wonder for several minutes as Tatiana taught her students a lesson in Russian perfective verbs. Tatiana moved around the room in a constant fluid motion, from the blackboard to individual children. In that short time, Zina witnessed the children's expressions change from ones of amusement, from the gaiety Tatiana evoked even during the exposition of such a serious subject; to profundity and amazement from the intricacy of what was being taught. In awhile, Zina caught Tatiana's eye from the classroom door that was ajar. Tatiana went to the door and ushered Zina into the room. The teacher introduced Zina to her class as a wonderful artist, who just happened to be her wonderful daughter-in-law. The class exploded in applause. Tatiana asked Zina, on behalf of the class, to draw something for all of them on the blackboard with vari-colored chalk. In a few minutes, Zina had drawn a charming scene of St. Nicholas like the pied piper, leading a group of children into the Savior Tower of the Kremlin as large flakes of snow fell all around. Tatiana's students were ecstatic and rushed up to talk to Zina and touch her. After the class ended, Zina told Tatiana about being pregnant. Zina felt quite ambivalent about the situation. She felt like her career as an artist was in jeopardy. But Tatiana was so ecstatic when she heard she was going to be a grandmother, so full of hope for the future of the little one, that Zina got caught-up in the joy of that moment, and managed to feel reasonably happy for a time. It was the blissful look on Tatiana's face that Zina remembered as the last thought she had the early morning of December 29th, 1921. Zina fell asleep.

van Drugo would be taking the train to Marburg Germany in a few hours. It was nearly 4:00 a.m. Sleep at that point was out of the question. Anya was a little later than usual. He was waiting for her to come home from the Red Rooster. He would say a few words to her; tell her that he loved her, and that everything would be fine between them; and inform her that he had to leave that morning on a mission, probably anywhere from three days to a week in duration. He was wandering around their bedroom, hovering dangerously close to the big picture window where Anya loved to stand and peer out with her binoculars. He wanted to stand right up against the glass where Anya loved to stand, but he was afraid. From where he then stood, at the foot of the bed, all he could make out were undifferential points of light scattered on the glass.

Drugo looked for Anya's binoculars. He wanted to put them around his neck with their leather straps. He searched the bedroom, but could not find them. He went down the stairs to the first floor of their duplex where the living room, kitchen, and little bathroom were. He finally found them standing upright on the kitchen table. Under them was a folded piece of notebook paper. Drugo knew that the paper contained some sort of message from Anya. He sat down at the table and stared at the binoculars. He imagined looking through them into the distance and finally finding Anya's face among a vast crowd of people. Her beautiful and clear blue eyes were like a lighthouse in a dense fog to a lost ship searching for shore. When those eyes spotted him looking at her, their blue pools filled with black horror. Anya turned and ran away, fighting her way through the crowd.

Drugo read the note:

"Sleeping tonight at work, in one of the little rooms, think about what's happening, crying, tomorrow we'll talk, shall we?"

On the blank side of the paper, Drugo wrote a note of his own saying that he had to go on a mission for three days to a week. He told her he loved her. He put the piece of paper on the sink in the bathroom where she would be sure to find it. Then he went upstairs, packed his suitcase, and called a taxicab to take him to Moscow's Kiev Railroad Station.

series of filthy rooms by themselves, or with other runaways or the homeless in abandoned buildings ...throughout the spring and summer of 1916 ... on the Arbat Zina and Rudolf ... he unloading goods at the railroad yards, she making sketches of people in Red Square. Zina didn't bring in as much as Rudolf but she took great satisfaction in being able to earn money by drawing, something that came so easily to her. She could have made vastly more money by prostituting herself. The fact was, that she actually did that on occasion, only when she and Rudolf were starving, or someone else they knew had no money or prospects. Zina never told Rudolf where she obtained the extra money. She didnšt believe that it was really his business. Just like she never told him or anyone else, until much later, about Podly. By that time, toward the end of summer, Zina had developed her own moral code. She did what she had to do.

Zina never felt that what Podly did to her was her fault. She had no sense of guilt over what happened. Zina was a child. Podly was physically powerful man, a man in a position of authority. He forced her. It was his sin, not hers. She believed that with all her heart from the beginning, right up until early 1913, when it all finally stopped when Podly left Novgorod for Moscow. Zina integrated Podly's sexual abuse into the fabric of her life. She accepted it! She did not allow it to destroy her or change her. Not that she ever tried to minimize its horror, its disgust! Not that she ever enjoyed it, or thought it to be in any way normal. She hated Podly profoundly! She told him she would kill him every time he came to her. Zina was too strong of a person, even at the tender age, to be destroyed. To Zina, the Podly situation was akin to her mother dying when she was six years old. It was the same as her fatheršs drunkenness, his losing his business and the family home. To Zina, it was the same as having to give up her beloved dog, Muffet, when she left Novgorod forever to start a new life in Moscow at age sixteen. All of it was integrated into the fabric of her life. It was Zina.

"My god is my heart! Do you believe that, Rudochka?"

Rudolf Dubrosev looked rather desperately around the windowless closet-sized room where they were staying that night.

"Zina! I can't breathe! We're hungry ... and you speak of God, and of things I do not understand! The religion I left Novgorod with, it does not seem to be here with me in Moscow. My faith ... I'm afraid ... has been beaten down."

They were lying very uncomfortably on a couch that served as their bed. Zina kissed him. Then she said, "That's what I mean! What is best for me is what I must do. It is neither good or evil. Sin and law, created by others ... whoever, or whatever, makes no sense. Oh, I can be locked-up for stealing ... or some other 'crime' ... but that's the chance I take under my system."

Rudolf's blue eyes widened at Zina's words, "my system." He shook his head in a kind of disbelief at the complexity of that beautiful girl there in his arms. He kissed her ...