“We wrote to Leningrad to find out about Kolya,” her mother says. “Right after the war and then again, at least three more times. It was always the same answer: not listed among the dead or the living.” She takes a sip of the tea from her spoon, then pours it into the saucer because it is too hot to drink from the cup. “I even went to the island of Valaam soon after Stalin died. There was a holding pen for war invalids in the old monastery there, men without arms or legs, some without both arms and legs—they called them samovars. I don’t know how those people got there. There was a rumor they were rounded up at night in the streets and railroad stations of the cities where many of them begged for a living. They put them in cattle cars, the rumor went, and brought them to this faraway island on Lake Ladoga so people wouldn’t have to see their deformities and be reminded of the war. Anyway, that’s what we heard.” She lifts the saucer to her lips and takes several sips of the tea. “And then there were some who chose to go there because they didn’t want to be a burden on their families after the war.” She pauses. “This is what Kolya would’ve done, I thought, if he’d been badly wounded. So I took a train to Leningrad and boarded a boat—they had excursion boats going to Valaam once a day. It’s a serene island, with a striking northern nature, stark and beautiful. I knew they didn’t let tourists visit the invalid home, and even giving someone directions could cost you your job. So I’d packed my white doctor’s coat and hat. The monastery wasn’t difficult to find—it was the tallest structure on the island. The white coat worked: the nurses and doctors all wore white gowns, as I knew they would.”

Sasha sits over her cup of tea and listens: today seems to be a day for revelations. She can’t imagine Uncle Kolya maimed, with missing arms or legs or with his face burned away—disfigurements that would make him unrecognizable to her. She doesn’t want to think of him ending up in such an inglorious place as this invalid repository on some remote island.