But this is not an acorn. This is Marina! This is her daughter, a human being, not a goddamned acorn!

“I confess, I’m surprised that you would presume to deliver me a lecture on this subject, Comrade Grievskaya,” Lyudmila says, in the silky voice she uses to interrogate suspected oak trees. “A little like the arithmetic teacher presuming to instruct Einstein on calculus?”

Grievskaya shrugs her shoulders. “I am giving you the facts, Comrada Ivanova. I’m confident you will know how to use them. You are, after all, the child’s mother. You are responsible for her. Her character reflects upon your reputation.”

“My daughter is the most brilliant student in her class.”

“In a few days, school will close for the summer, and Marina will join the youth camp at Ekaterinburg, isn’t that right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then I will dare to offer you a piece of advice, Comrade Ivanova, because I have directed this school for many years, and I well understand how nature softens us and makes us blind to the true character of our offspring. Believe me, I am entirely sympathetic to your plight.”

Rage boils up inside Lyudmila. She presses her lips together so it doesn’t escape in some catastrophic eruption.

Grievskaya continues. “Here at my school, I prefer to address these infractions quietly, within the walls of my office, in conversations with parents. I find it’s the most efficient and effective solution, when the child is so young and his character still so soft and easily corrected. As you know, however, youth camp is different. The children are old enough to have some responsibility for themselves. They will be expected to understand the consequences of their actions, and it is the duty of the instructors at the camp to report any subversive behavior not to the parents of the child in question, but to the Soviet state. Do I make myself clear?”

It would be so easy to lean forward and apply some pressure to a certain point in Grievskaya’s neck that would render her unable to speak further. It would be so easy to return to Moscow Centre and make a telephone call or two that would ruin Grievskaya’s life, if not end it entirely by the most agonizing means possible.