Olga Konstantinovna studied herself in the cracked lift mirror. The lift was shaking, and she couldn’t get the beret to fit right. Indecent declarations of love were scrawled along the walls of the booth. Olga Konstantinovna was dejected. “Time, the eternal curse of all women,” she thought. “You wake up one day and find out you’re all alone. What a nightmare.” It’s a good thing she had a daughter. Only after having a child did Olga Konstantinovna understand what loneliness meant. The world had taken her daughter away: children always leave their parents. But it was a consolation to see her own mannerisms reflected so strongly in her daughter, even as she struggled vehemently to disassociate herself from her mother. After making a point of giving birth in Kyiv, Maria returned and settled back into her childhood bedroom. She dropped her principles for a while. It was good while it lasted. But at the first chance, she ran away to Andrei.

All her life, Olga Konstantinovna had received and given care. Coming to terms with solitude was going to be hard. Her husbands had died. Her friends were dropping off one by one. But she was not one to complain. Never. Her pride wouldn’t allow it.

The lift jolted to a stop at the ground floor. She made the sign of the cross: “God bless my daughter.”

Olga Konstantinovna had over her lifetime witnessed two eras and the death of four husbands. None of this weakened her resolve, even if nobody needed her anymore; not the country, not her daughter. In her youth, though, she was stunning, not pretty like Maria, but truly beautiful. For a quarter century, her photo in profile hung in the display window of a photo studio in Salamander House, on the city’s main drag. Golden sepia. Wavy hair, a long neck and a smooth aristocratic nose stood out against a matte black background. Passers-by stopped to look.

Her first husband was a talented composer, and he had been a soldier. Boris. Dear Borenka.

Handsome and young. But rotten and selfish, often ill and depressed. They lived in an interwar building, in a small apartment. They were full of hope for the promised bright Communist future, but all they got was need, a way of life embroidered by red flags, quarrels, and cockroaches running across the kitchen table. He left.

“Don’t be so quick to marry a soldier,” Olga Konstantinovna sighed. “They bring war home with them. You’re making the same mistakes I did.” Maria, of course, refused to take any notice.