Letters continued to arrive. Maria put them away without reading them. The envelopes felt weighed down, as if packed with chips of stone. At times, she imagined she could make out letters or whole phrases through the thick paper. Nonsensical, ingenious, beautiful, and awful, they flew into the box, into the jumble of toy building blocks.

She felt numb. In this teetering on the edge and in the pain in her lower abdomen, there was a detached calmness of a kind, something like the sensation that comes over somebody staring at length at ruins or abandoned houses. Was it the pills? Or was the regularity with which she received those letters—her only source of certainty these days?

Chapter 2

The envelope that came on the fourth of December was not like the others. But it wasn’t immediately obvious how. Something about it wasn’t quite right—like waking up to a painting you’d never noticed was there before. She flipped the letter over in her hands and tossed it into a drawer.

That evening she refused her sleeping pills. She waited until Andrei had dozed off and went to the kitchen. She picked up a knife and went to the stairwell. The envelope was too thin, the address appeared to have been written in a woman’s hand. Yes, that must have been it. Maria opened the envelope.

Two words in that familiar crooked handwriting: “Dreamtime.”

She crumpled the slip of paper. Then she unfolded it. Surprise. Finally. The cancer patient dies. No need to feel sorry. Serves him right.

Thoughts raced through her head. Maria studied the slip more closely, following the uneven scrawl as though it were a trail of crumbs leading into the depths of the forest. She sniffed the envelope. She went to her little boy’s room, stood on the chair, and slid the envelope under the lid of the usual box.

Tykhon’s breathing was too quiet. She got down from the chair, knelt by his bed, and stroked his cheek.

“Why aren’t you sleeping, kitten?”

“Mum, hug me tight, like I’m your teddy bear.”

“You are my teddy bear.”

She hugged him and kissed his eyelids. Some minutes later, he fell asleep. She stood up, turned, and started. Andrei was standing in the doorway, tall and silent. He was in his underpants. Maria tried to slide between the doorway and his wide chest. Andrei blocked her path and gripped her by the shoulders.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Maria contracted and froze.

“To bed. How long have you been standing there? Stop that, it hurts.”