Just as he disappeared, a pair of Russian soldiers walked slowly through the main gate carrying a huge wreath between them, holding it in both hands. Their faces were as white and translucent as wax, their lips a fiery red, their eyes blue as sapphires. Their uniforms looked freshly ironed. If they’d come all the way from Russia to pay their respects, it was a miracle their uniforms hadn’t gotten wrinkled on the way. Or had they worn Adidas sportswear on the plane and changed at the hotel? Wondering if the bones of the dead, buried deep in the earth, would start rattling when they saw the wreath, I stared at the ground, but felt no stirrings.

Without exchanging a word, their faces perfectly solemn, the soldiers left. They could have played around a bit—after all, there were just the two of them, with no commanding officer around, and only me watching—but they must have thought there was a security mirror somewhere high in the sky, and they had to keep up their act until they were out of its range. I couldn’t believe they were contemporaries of those American soldiers who’d been gabbing and laughing as they left the grounds.

The stone picture book was nearing its end now, with scenes of soldiers coming home from the war, welcomed by their families. A soldier face-to-face with his wife, who hands him a bouquet; though the flowers are laughing, the wife, seeing the darkness in her husband’s expression, doesn’t know what to do. The little boy with his arms around his father’s waist cannot see his face. “Isn’t it wonderful—your papa’s home,” the wife says to her children as if trying to quiet her own anxiety. He’s completely changed: though she can’t explain what’s different about him, this is what she thinks to herself. The soldier himself is troubled. He was looking forward to coming home, but now that he’s here, his family seem to be strangers. Though he takes off his uniform and scrubs his entire body, the feelings he had before the war do not come back. He has no words to describe the things he saw on the battlefield. And because he cannot talk about it, he’s alone in his own house. He doesn’t feel like going back to work, either. He wants to meet the guys he fought with in a bar somewhere and drink until morning. As if stripped of normal, everyday life, he is exhausted during the day and wakes up at night, night after night.

An ordinary photograph of this moment of homecoming could be ripped up and thrown away. On a digital camera, memories can be erased with a push of a button. But once they are honestly carved into stone, memories remain forever.

I climbed up the side of the hill, a mound of earth like an ancient tomb. I was probably meant to use the stone steps at the front, but I was afraid that that would make a believer of me before I’d found out what religion I was joining—all those statues and sarcophagi on the top of the hill made me suspicious, even if people said they had nothing to do with religion. Had I been told, “This is a Christian church,” or “This is a Hindu temple,” I’d have felt much more at ease.