“Yes. All that was left was bread. Crumbs, more like it. The shop owner, Yury, sometimes had items from black market, but that day I had nothing to trade him.”

“What did you usually trade him?”

“My rations of vodka usually. Sometimes US dollars.”

“Where did you get US dollars?”

She shrugged. “From trading something with someone else. That was how it worked. Once, I found fur hat on street. It was like finding gold. I ate very well that month.”

“Someone traded you their rations for a hat?”

“A fur hat.”

“Yeah, but if they were starving…?”

“You don’t understand, Jack. It was because people had nothing that they wanted something. How do I explain? It is not wealth that makes you happy. It is simply having more than your neighbor. If you are poor, but have more than your poor neighbor, you are rich. It makes you feel good. Human nature, I suppose.

“Anyway, my point, the system was broken. Nothing worked. Then the war in Chechnya happened and everything got worse. Violence everywhere. People planting explosives in apartment buildings. Murders, robberies. So, no, Jack, my students didn’t want to become astronauts. They wanted what they saw on TV, what they saw in America. Because you work hard in America, you can do anything, right? American dream, right? They just want fair chance in life.” She paused for a long moment. “So you ask me if I am with Jesus for money and visa? Da, maybe. Do I love him? Do you want truth, Jack? I don’t know love. I don’t know what this is. But I do know surviving, and I don’t want to survive always, I want to live. Can you understand that now?”

“Yeah, Eliza,” I said, believing her last statement to be an apt aphorism. “I think I can.”

“I hope so.”

“I can.”

“Good.”

5

We were quiet after that, during which time Elizaveta smoked her last two cigarettes and I finished off the vodka. Elizaveta’s revelations had caught me off guard. I’d had no idea how tough she had it growing up in the Soviet Union and the subsequent Russia that emerged from its ashes. All I’d really known of that part of the world was what I’d seen in movies, and this was more James Bond than Gorky Park: frozen tundra, international spies, Machiavellian women, and cold-hearted assassins. And what was that bit about Elizaveta not knowing what love was? What about her family, her friends? She made it sound as though she’d grown up in an icy hell.