She turned to her new country for distraction. She read books about Australia, she was alert to anyone with a connection to the country, and, most significantly, she saw a documentary about Italian migration to Australia. According to this film, there were so many Italians living in Australia, they had built a mighty hydro-electric scheme, started the tobacco-growing industry, owned most of the market gardens, and supplied the main labour for the building industry. Australia, it seemed, was built on the backs of immigrant Italians. The main urban precinct for Italians was located in the city of Melbourne in an area called Carlton — she grabbed a pen and wrote down the name. In the film, the Italians of Carlton were shown in cafés, eating pasta and drinking espressos, talking and laughing and smoking. Students from the nearby university sat at adjacent tables also eating, drinking, chatting and smoking. Everyone looked happy and relaxed. In the street, Italians and students clustered on the pavement, or strolled along against a backdrop that appeared to be delightfully cosmopolitan — exactly as the man from HIAS had said. This, she decided, was where she would live in Australia, this location of Carlton.

Nine months after Andrew Morrow returned home, Galina Kogan’s plane descended towards Melbourne airport. The estimated arrival time was only minutes away, and her terror was such that she might have been heading into a KGB interrogation. The land below was mostly uninhabited. There was an occasional house, a few clumps of cows, muddy ponds, and grass that looked as dead as the winter grass at home. The nothingness stretched unconstrained to the horizon. Galina looked around at the other passengers. Were they seeing what she was seeing? Was her view of nothingness their view of home?

She understood Melbourne to be a city of millions. Might she have been mistaken? Might Melbourne be the Australian equivalent of a Siberian outpost? With a jolt and a roar, the plane touched down. Still no people, no vehicles, no buildings. No city. The plane turned, and the air hostess announced they were taxi-ing towards the terminal. Galina stared out the window. There was still nothing to see, just the brown, empty, dried-out land. She could not possibly have mistaken the size of Melbourne. She leaned forward to take in the view through the windows on the opposite side of the plane, saw the same bristly grass, the same grim flat land, the same empty sky.