“I’m sorry,” he repeats over and over again, to which she says nothing, turns, and walks away without looking back.

On Sasha’s bed is an open suitcase, and she has just told her mother that two weeks earlier, she bought a one-way train ticket to Moscow for June 16, eight days from today.

“This is nothing but a stupid childish whim,” her mother says sternly. “You’re too young to know what’s good for you. I won’t allow you to leave.”

Sasha straightens her spine. Her posture makes her feel that she is looking down at her mother, and she realizes that in the past year, she must have grown taller.

She is wise, her mother, so she turns away and takes a few breaths, swallowing the furor bubbling up on her tongue.

“Do you know how fierce the competition is?” she asks, switching to a different strategy. “You must have extraordinary connections to get accepted. You must be related to the Minister of Culture. No one gets in, especially not a girl from the provinces.”

Her mother knows what to say to make Sasha feel even more frightened than she already feels. You know she is right, a little voice inside her whispers; you’re nothing but a provincial girl with no connections. She feels a gnawing sensation in her gut, as if a determined hand were trying to unravel her intestines.

“I’m not saying you don’t have talent,” her mother adds in a conciliatory gesture, sensing Sasha’s dread. “But with all those hordes of youth with connections, whose names are already on the list of the admission board—honestly”—she pauses and gives Sasha a sorrowful smile—“you don’t stand a chance.”

17

17

Every night leading to her scheduled departure, as she packs the notebook into which she has copied Uncle Kolya’s journal by hand, along with a few skirts and dresses Grandma sewed for her, she hears her mother and Grandma whisper in the kitchen. Her mother’s voice is sibilant and injured; her grandma’s—reassuring and calm. She hears Grandpa at his drafting table pressing thick, angry lines into yet another plan for a movie theater or a music school that will remain unbuilt.

Her hands feel unsteady, and her stomach churns, but she cannot show anyone, even Grandma, that she is terrified. She cannot admit, even to herself, that this is the end of everything she knows, that, just like Andrei’s house, her Ivanovo life is about to go up in flames.

The train station is a wooden structure with “Ivanovo” written in big brown letters on its facade. A leak under a second-floor window has reduced the final o to a dirty smudge, so her town’s name is now the same as Chekhov’s play.