“Let me walk you home. Then we can all go out for a stroll together.”

She smiled and took his wide palm into her own.

The following day he went round to hers with a massive bouquet of red roses and a box of chocolates. They went to a pizzeria on the waterfront, watched the lazy, shallow river, and strained to find things to talk about, studiously avoiding the war. Andrei could only talk about how he liked her white, off-the-shoulder sundress. Tykhon ran along the embankment, firing plastic darts with a toy pistol he’d just been given as a present. The boy knocked the hat off an old man sitting on a bench. Andrei egged on the scamp while Maria apologised to the old man and cast a cold glance at Andrei. She was a little distant with him after that, until half an hour later when Tykhon’s toy broke. Andrei bought the boy a consolation ice cream and then fished out a second pistol—he had bought a spare one—and swapped them.

Back at her place, they took a stroll around the courtyard. Maria removed her sandals, sat on a swing and placed Tykhon on her knees. The leaden walls of the block towered behind her and the warm May wind whirled dust and the scent of blossoming lilac around the yard. Eyes closed, she softly sang Taras Shevchenko’s “Days Are Passing, Nights Are Passing,” inserting “la-la-las” when she forgot a verse.

Her head down, she pushed away from the ground with her bare feet. She hugged her son tenderly and stroked the back of his head, as if wrapping him in a silk cocoon. Still and yet drifting through space, she radiated an inner light and femininity. For Andrei, crouched on the edge of the sandbox, her singing evoked a sense of home, her pose redolent of the Virgin Mary and Jesus that they carried on their shoulders every year at the Holy Week processions. He shared the thought with Maria. She smiled enigmatically. It wasn’t flirtatious. She closed her eyes, pushed back and swung upwards.

“Invite me to yours tonight.”

Andrei froze where he was crouching in the sandbox.

“Marry me.”

Maria stopped swinging for a moment, hugged her son tighter, planted both feet on the ground and thrust down hard, sending the swing even higher.

“I’ll think about it.”

In the end, the wedding had to be postponed. Andrei went to the rallies in Kyiv, then Tykhon fell ill. That was the little devil’s own form of protest.

The registry office had agreed to shorten the waiting period. Andrei’s camo gear and his military ID still had a magic effect. The ceremony was scheduled for the last Saturday of June. Two days before the wedding, Maria got a severe pain in her stomach. She was in the tram, looking out of the window, trying to hide the pain on her face until her stop. The pain made her want to scream. Then she fainted and awoke in the intensive care unit.