What is left for her here? Even if it were possible to withdraw her emigration papers without penalty, even if she were permitted to remain in her job as a book illustrator, she will never be promoted beyond her current position. There’ll be nights and weekends spent in the flat — that’s if she were permitted to stay here alone — painting pictures that will never be seen by anyone other than herself. She supposes there’ll be a husband and a child or two whose own future would be as strained and stained as her own. As a Jew, she’ll never know the freedoms of other Soviet citizens, much less those experienced in the West. Gorbachev’s reforms, like all those that have preceded them, will not last. If she stays, this — what she has now — is the best she can hope for, this life stretching ahead to her own death.

Nadya must have realised that Galina’s thoughts were elsewhere because finally she stops talking. She pours more tea for them both, lights another cigarette, and when she speaks again, her voice is gentle, it is kind.

‘So, Galya, what do you plan to do?’

‘I’m still going to emigrate.’ The words come of their own accord.

Nadya stares at her. Sadness and pity are etched in the crumpled face, and suddenly she is apologising. It was wrong of her to have raised the subject of the future. It’s far too early to make decisions. Lidiya has only just gone, Galya is in a state of shock.

Now Galina reaches for Nadya’s hands. She holds them gently between her own. Her voice, however, is firm.

‘I’m going to emigrate … to Australia.’

The word fits uneasily in her mouth. She has decided to move to a country whose name has never before passed her lips.

Australia.

2 IN TRANSIT

2

IN TRANSIT

In February 1986, within two days of each other, Galina Kogan and the Australian mosaicist, Andrew Morrow, left Leningrad.

Andrew was returning home. He had a myriad of ideas for his own work, and was impatient to begin, but at the same time a queer foreboding he might never return to Russia made him reluctant to leave. Only a small portion of the interior mosaics of the Church on the Spilled Blood had been restored so far, and he could not bear to miss seeing the finished glory. Nothing on the face of the earth would compare.