“God, you’re so pale,” exclaimed Andrei, once he was able to get into the ward and sit by her bed.

Maria felt the comfort of his large presence, she was soothed. She rubbed his hand.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Were you planning to do a runner?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“What is it? Do you still want to marry me?”

She smiled feebly.

“There’s more white here than any bride has ever seen. How can I say no?”

The next day Andrei arrived with a representative from the registry office and a priest. They got married right there in the ward. He was dressed in a new pixelated camouflage outfit, she had white sheets. Andrei was as proud of this effort, and the marriage overall, as he was of his participation in the war, but he was uncertain about what he hoped to get out of all this. There was something about this woman that he couldn’t quite understand, something that eluded him, something protean and contradictory. He had been irresistibly drawn to her from the first moment. Even when she was dressed in jeans and trainers splashing through the puddles and holding her four-year-old by the hand, was being rude to a cashier in the supermarket, stood sweating over the stove, or was in a foul temper after a day at work, even then he felt that something in her.

When Maria was discharged, they moved into Andrei’s flat. She and Tykhon moved in their clothes, the toys, books and started redecorating. Maria first turned her hand to painting the walls. They converted the small room into a nursery.

The windows were flung open that hot July and the wind carried in the city’s evening sounds. As they stretched out on the white sheets, Maria embraced Andrei’s shoulders. She murmured contentedly. Andrei admired the beauty of her compact body, he gazed into her eyes under the soft light of the table lamp and kissed her neck and shoulders with uncharacteristically patient tenderness. They made love carefully and quietly, so as not to disturb Tykhon. The bed creaked.

Suddenly, Tykhon woke up sobbing. Maria gently pushed Andrei away and went to get Tykhon, effortlessly carrying him, as if not feeling his weight. She swayed with him around the room, soothing him with a comforting nursery rhyme. When he finally went back to sleep, she placed him in his bed and looked at Andrei with embarrassment: “I should put on a T-shirt.”

Andrei was intoxicated by her beauty and warmth. He did not yet suspect the coldness underneath, how quickly they would grow apart. After the move, she threw herself energetically into rejigging the furniture, arranging crockery and ornaments, painting the walls in her preferred shade of white, assembling a new IKEA chest of drawers, but she never fell head over heels in love, never hung from his neck with gratitude, never shared in his fanatical patriotism. She never asked if he had had to kill. After the wedding, she seemed ever more tense and glum, growing quieter by the week. She took on another night shift and spent the other nights in the kitchen.