“If they have a jack-o-lantern on the front porch, yeah. If they don’t, it means they probably don’t want you knocking.”

“You Americans are like cartoon character. You live in cartoon world.”

“What are you talking about?”

Elizaveta was about to tell him if he walked down a street in Russia—the Russia she knew before she left four years before—with a pillowcase full of candy he wouldn’t make it to the corner before he was robbed, if not killed. Instead she simply shook her head.

They continued their “Easter bunny hunt,” moving in a general clockwise direction, discovering several more baskets filled with more vegetables.

The crawlspace turned out to be quite vast, and Elizaveta suspected it mirrored the floorplan of the cabin above. She wondered how long it had taken Solano to dig out. Even with a shovel and pickaxe it would have been long and laborious work. But what else did you do when you lived on an island by yourself with little to no human contact?

Elizaveta contemplated this. What did Solano do with all his time? He didn’t have company, aside from the occasional local who swapped him dolls for produce. He didn’t have electricity, which meant he couldn’t watch TV or listen to the radio, even if he found either in a trash heap on one of his jaunts to Mexico City. Then again, people had managed without such modern conveniences for the vast majority of human history. They were hardly necessities for happiness. Solano had his freedom, his heath, a tropical climate, food and shelter. Maybe this was enough. Moreover, he created, didn’t he? He built all the huts, and the cabin. He cleared the paths and constructed the bridges they had seen. And he hung up all the dolls, of course—and that was creating too, that was art.

Elizaveta recalled life in Saint Petersburg in the early- to mid-nineties. The brutal winters, the jostling for food and other basic supplies, the overcrowded buses, the cynicism and aggression, the robberies and racketeering, the misfortune and disdain etched on everyone’s faces. Despite all this, her compatriots certainly had more than Solano—yet were their lives any better than his? Were they more fulfilled?

“There’s another basket,” Jack said.

“My knees and back hurt,” she said.

“Okay, last one.”

They adjusted their course slightly and stopped before the basket. Jack raised the candle to see inside it. “Whoa. Check this out,” he said excitedly. He set the candle aside and withdrew from the basket a small, unadorned wooden box.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Beats me.”

“Can you open it?”

“No, it’s locked. Look, a keyhole.”

“Can you break it?”

“Not down here.” He glanced past her into the surrounding darkness. “Where the hell was the ladder?”

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