“He wasn’t killed in the war, like we all thought. He made it to Berlin and then, instead of coming back home, he went in the other direction. He lives in New York now. Or at least he lived in New York twelve years ago.”

Her sentences come out short and hesitant, almost reluctant, as if her mouth refuses to wrap around the strange words and validate them with sound.

For a few moments, Andrei is silent, processing the news, his face expressionless, a functionary’s face. She doesn’t know what is brewing behind this Party mask and its practiced lack of emotion. Is he going to tell her that having a relative abroad has now placed her into the category of traitors? That she is now an enemy of the people, just like all those arrested and sent to the camps?

“This is good news,” he says after a minute of silence. “An even greater reason to celebrate.”

Is this what he really thinks? Sasha gives him a squinted-eye look, hoping to see the cracks in the stone of his face, the openings into the human features under the mask. Should she believe that he is sincere? And is it possible that he is right?

Why has she doubted Kolya’s intentions? Why did she blame him for not coming back to look after her, like a father would, or to search for Nadia? Why does she blame him that he was determined not to die, that he made a choice to avoid the fate of Uncle Seryozha, Uncle Volya, Nadia’s family, and millions of others? Why didn’t she see Kolya’s letter the way Grandma would’ve seen it—a triumph of life over death, a cause for celebration?

“I have no one else to tell this to,” she says. “You are the only one left who knows about Kolya.”

“Kolya and Marik, our two big secrets buried in Ivanovo. And here we are, in Leningrad, still stalked by them a half-life later.” He pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offers her one. “I often think about how we itch to run away from home and then keep searching for it for the rest of our lives.”

He is right. Ivanovo, she knows, is tattooed onto her heart. But she also knows that if she hadn’t left it to go to Moscow, they wouldn’t be sitting here today, sharing their memories, talking about the transience of home. Sasha knows that Andrei knows this, too. Just as he knows that she knows. They are both poster children for vranyo, pretending that they live in a normal country, pretending that there is no fiery connection between them. Pretending he is simply helping out an old friend at a trying moment of her life, pouring her a few shots of cognac, offering a cigarette to calm her nerves. Nothing improper, nothing that the Party would frown upon.