Someone has arranged everything: her theater? Vladimir Ivanovich? Her mother’s medical institute? Feeling numb, Sasha throws a handful of dirt into the grave, just as Grandma did, because this seems what a funeral requires. She cannot remember the custom from Marik’s funeral back in Ivanovo. She must not have been paying attention, just as she is not paying attention now. Her insides feel as quivery as the swamp that claimed Liza’s life, its rancid ooze rising in her throat, making her take a few steps and hide behind a thick linden tree as she fights the spasms of nausea that bring tears to her eyes. Or have the tears been there all along? She rubs her eyes with her fists, and when she opens them again, she sees Andrei standing in the distance between two birches. She blinks to make him disappear, but he still stands there, black suit and black hair, as beloved as ever, until he realizes that she sees him, and then he raises his hand slightly and walks away.

She is back in her apartment, with the dining table open to its maximum length and lined on either side by the bed and the couch turned into seats. The table is filled with the usual zakuski: pickled mushrooms and cucumbers, baked pirozhki filled with egg and scallions, potato and beet salads bathed in mayonnaise. She can’t eat; everything inside her feels parched. Instead, she drinks. There is a bottle of vodka on her right, and the man next to her, probably a professor from her mother’s medical institute—maybe even the one she hoped Sasha would meet and marry—is attentive and generous in keeping her glass filled. Maybe her mother was right, after all, and Sasha should have met him. Maybe if she had, they wouldn’t be sitting at this table now, drinking toasts to her mother’s heroic life, bemoaning her death.

Then she is on a stool in the bathroom, leaning against the washing machine, a cold towel on her forehead. How did she get here? She doesn’t remember. She opens her eyes and sees Grandma fanning her with an old copy of Pravda.

“Nu, nu,” Grandma says, dabbing Sasha’s face with the wet towel. The room is spinning, but Grandma’s hands fix it in place. “Mama loved you,” she says in her soft, cottony voice. “She knew you loved her, too.”