Sasha thinks of Kolya’s voice reaching over to her from the past, the voice of a man who won’t, for her, remain forever young. A man she knows only from his paintings, his war journal, and his prewar photographs in the family album, a man who had in Sasha’s mind, for so many years, replaced her father. A man who did cross over to another life, almost an afterlife, from which, back then, there was no return. Is there a chance that today may be the dawn of time when crossing to the other side will become possible, despite what Grandpa thinks? Possible with Andrei’s help, which she is going to accept as the last arrangement he will make for her, the final manifestation of this corrosive, mutilated love.

On her way to the office of the administrative director, Sasha passes a sign for an upcoming meeting of her theater’s Art Council. The sign announces the agenda: Why don’t Communist Party members play more leading roles? She doesn’t know if this question deserves a meeting-length discussion or if it is even a valid question that merits an answer, but she knows what she is going to say to Pavel Petrovich, their chief administrator, who presides over the daily machinery of her theater. She is going to tell him she is leaving.

His narrow features tense, gathering even closer around his nose. “You’re leaving to go where?” he asks, peering at her from above his thin-rimmed glasses, his brow furrowed.

Sasha knows that the word America would explode in this stately office like a bomb, taking him and her and everyone else in the building with it, so she remains silent.

He gets up from his desk and paces to the wall and back, his hand hugging his sharp chin. “Alexandra Alexandrovna,” he says, using a formal way to address her, something he has never done before. “You are our leading character actress,” he says in a solemn voice, trying to maintain authority. “You are engaged in five performances. How do you expect us to function without you?” He turns to her from the wall. “Please enlighten me.”

She has nothing to say to offer enlightenment. Instead, she says what she has wanted to say to him for months.

“You refused to allow me to go to the hospital when my mother was dying because I had a performance to deliver. Do you remember? You didn’t let me travel to Ivanovo to my grandmother’s funeral. It was more important that the shows kept running. The performance was more important than a human being. Theater was more important than life.”

He stops before his desk and leans forward, his palms on the glass.

“This job has cost me dearly,” she says, “and now I need to leave.”