For a second, she raises her eyes and looks at Grandma’s dress hanging in the armoire, its little white stars beginning to twirl in a wild dance before her eyes, together with the whole room. I am now twenty-five, she wants to scream to him. I have lived my entire life with your paintings and your journal; with your disdain for the lies of our motherland; with your story of Nadia and the war, which to a large extent has defined my life. I have lived with your memory but without you, because you were dead. You were the first to leave us, before Mama, before Grandma, maybe even before Sima, who died in this house in 1942. You were our conscience, our truth. Just like Theater is for me. So why did you not return after the war? Why weren’t you here to give me guidance, to protect me from floggings and old neighbors’ gossip, to stand in for my father? Why did you abandon me?

As tears blur her vision, she sniffles them away and continues reading.

It took me so long to write because I was afraid to send you a letter from the United States. For all these years, I’ve been torn apart by not being able to contact you, to tell you that I am alive and well because of what we hear about Stalin and his terror. I’ve heard that a letter from the West could land someone in prison, and I didn’t want this to happen to any of you, so I decided to keep silent, as difficult and heart-wrenching as it was. But after Stalin’s death, and particularly after Khrushchev’s speech, things seem to be different, so I’m hoping this letter will reach you and cause you no harm.