“And you know what I’m wondering . . . ,” Andrei says, glancing away from her, as if he is no longer able to look Sasha in the eye. “If I’d been born earlier, would I have also become an executioner, as my father-in-law insists? Would I have followed orders and murdered and tortured prisoners, as he did? Would I have shot a kneeling man in the back of his head?” He looks at her and squints. “It is a terrifying question. And if I’m willing to be honest, I don’t know the answer. That’s what really cripples me, what keeps me up at night.” He pauses and leans back.

“Every day we make choices.” His voice is thick, and his eyes are down. “Or at least, we think they are choices. I handed Marik that unexploded shell, a choice that killed him. Kolya decided not to return home, a choice that killed him, too, at least in the eyes of his family. You made a choice to go to Moscow.” He pauses after Moscow, and she knows that of the three, this is the most consequential choice for him. “But there is one thing my father-in-law told me about choices that has always stayed with me: you either pull the trigger, or you kneel on the floor.”

He straightens himself in his chair and then leans forward, as if to share another secret.

“That’s why you have to go to America. You have to get out of here before it’s too late, before the poison has seeped into your veins and you become just like the rest of us.” He peers into her face for a few moments as Sasha shakes her head. “I know you think this could never happen to you, but with time, it does happen. It happens without you even knowing it. It happens to all of us.” He props himself on his elbow and leans so close, she can feel his breath. “You were born in the wrong country, Sashenka. You’re naive and uncompromising. You don’t bend, and sooner or later, our motherland will break you. It breaks everyone.”

She is not sure he is right, but she knows one thing: this is what her mother used to tell her, too. She wasn’t as laconic, but she worried about Sasha’s lack of self-censorship as much as she worried about all the other dangers.

Like a flash of lightning, an idea makes her heart lurch with hope. “Then let’s go to America together,” she says. “We will leave the past here. All the past, yours and mine. We will start over.”