So they embarked on their plan to emigrate. It was exciting, it was nerve-racking, it was all-consuming. The easing of exit visas for Jews, begun in the late 1970s, was continuing, but for how long was anyone’s guess. The crucial requirement, they’d been told, was to be an insignificant Jew. Physicists and other scientists, dissenters and writers were likely to be lifetime refuseniks — not because the Soviet Union wanted to make use of their skills (it was common knowledge that most had been forced into menial jobs and some into internal exile), but because of the security risks of letting these people go. For ordinary people like themselves, people who were of little use to the Soviet Union and posed absolutely no danger to Soviet power, applications were being processed relatively quickly and successfully.

They made enquiries, they tapped into the information networks, and they filed their papers to migrate to Israel. But it was the paradise of America that was their true destination. They talked endlessly about American food and clothes, American TVs and stereos, American toasters and mix-masters; they talked about their American apartment, its central heating, the garbage chute, the reliable water and electrical supply, and a bedroom for each of them; they talked about the American ‘melting pot’ of Europeans and black people, of Latinos and Asians, of Catholics and Jews, all in together, everyone equal, everyone with the same opportunities. America thrilled them, America sent them into raptures. America was the destination of their dreams.

America, think about America, Galina tells herself as she walks through the darkening streets. But she is unable to think of an America without her mother. Tears again threaten, and she stops to collect herself — no time for tears, no place for weakness — presses the palms of her hands against her eyes, slows her breathing, steadies her nerves.

A short time later, she turns into her street. The snow has eased, but the sky is still heavy; a small elliptical smudge of cloud, slightly lighter than the rest, marks the location of the moon. She finds herself wishing for some sort of religion, not specifically involving God, but an afterlife, with her mother whizzing through the cosmos liberated from her stroke-struck body.

She may as well wish for wings.

She crosses the street and walks the last few metres to her building. She pauses at the threshold, then trudges up the stairs. She hears the slap of each step, she smells the ubiquitous karbolka, she feels her way through the dark stretches where the globes have been stolen. When she reaches the flat, she stands outside her no-longer home, unable to make the next move.