“This is what did him in,” says Baba Yulia. “His dedication. For a new car model he was building at home, he needed ten special screws.” She chews on her lip, and Sasha notices that she has only four teeth, three on the top and one on the bottom, all brown as crumbling stumps. “Stores didn’t have the screws. Stores didn’t have anything, but we looked anyway. We looked everywhere. His wife, Lusya, may she rest in heaven, took a day off from work to go all the way to a department store in Luzhniki.” Baba Yulia pauses and stares into space, as if she could see the heaven where Uncle Seryozha’s wife may be resting.

“I told him, leave this project be—work on something else until we find the screws.” Baba Yulia shakes her head. “But did he listen? He took the ten screws from the factory where he worked.” She stabs her fork into the boiled potato on her plate and mashes it down ferociously, as if it were the potato’s fault that Uncle Seryozha didn’t listen to her. “All I can say is he was lucky they arrested him on criminal, not political, charges. Ten years in camps, a year for each screw.”

“That’s the only reason he was able to come back last year,” Katya chimes in. “Had it been a political crime, he’d still be rotting in Magadan.”

“Where is Magadan?” Sasha asks, but her mother frowns. Maybe she thinks that it is impolite to ask questions about a place that makes people rot.

“In Siberia, on the other side of the Urals,” says Katya. She cuts off a slice of cheese and puts it on Sasha’s plate. She likes Katya. Her tight curls tremble when she speaks, and her round cheeks with freckles look as if someone splashed muddy water onto her face. She likes the sound of Katya’s job—telefonistka—an elegant and impressive title, a word that rolls off her tongue like a whistle.

“He’ll sober up in a day or two,” says Baba Yulia. “It’s the damned holidays, with all those banners and balloons. It’s all that cheer.” The door to Uncle Seryozha’s room is behind her, and Sasha can almost see him crouched by the keyhole, half-rotten, listening. Baba Yulia grabs their empty plates and, with a deliberate clatter, stacks them up on the oilcloth. “But what can you do?” she asks, addressing a ballerina in a porcelain tutu bending on the sideboard shelf. The ballerina doesn’t answer, and Baba Yulia picks up the plates and shuffles out, mumbling something through her four brown teeth.