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lumbers up from the greenhouses. She stands at the window of the ward, talking to a soldier whose pajama top hangs loosely on his shoulders. One afternoon Rudik notices the same soldier hobbling through the grounds on crutches, the bottom of the pajama leg knotted just inches beneath his knee, the soldier moving determinedly from tree to tree. The soldier shouts to him—something about a dance—but Rudik is already gone, scared, looking over his shoulder, out the gate, along the rutted dirt streets. As he runs he imagines himself ripping stars from the sky like nails. He returns home, hopping one-legged through the darkness.
    Where’ve you been? asks his mother, stirring in the bed beside Rudik’s sister.
    In the palm of his hand he holds out the lumps of sugar.
    They’ll dissolve, she says.
    No they won’t.
    Put them away and get to bed.
    Rudik puts a lump between his gum and his cheek, drops the rest of the sugar into a dish on the kitchen table. He looks across the cabin at his mother, who has pulled the blankets high and turned her face towards the wall. He remains motionless until he is sure that she is asleep, then leans into the wireless radio and steadily adjusts the dial along the yellow paneling: Warsaw, Luxembourg, Moscow, Prague, Kiev, Vilnius, Dresden, Minsk, Kishinev, Novosibirsk, Brussels, Leningrad, Rome, Warsaw, Stockholm, Kiev, Tallinn, Tbilisi, Belgrade, Prague, Tashkent, Sofia, Riga, Helsinki, Budapest.
    He already knows that if he stays awake long enough he will be able to turn the white knob to Moscow where, at the stroke of midnight, he will hear Tchaikovsky.
    *   *   *
    Well well well! His father stands in the doorway shaking snow from his shoulders. A black mustache. A strong chin. The voice raked with cigarettes. He wears a pilotka with the brims down fore and aft, so he looks as if he is both coming and going. Two red medals pinned to his chest. A Marx pin on the collar of his tunic. His mother hurries to the doorway while Rudik huddles in the corner beside the fire. Looking at his father is like looking at a painting for the very first time—he sees the painting exists, sees the colors and the textures, sees the frame within which it is hung, yet he knows nothing about it. Four years at war and another eighteen months in the territories. His older sister, Tamara, has long since made lace prints and jars of berry juice as homecoming gifts. She thrusts them into her father’s arms, clings to him, kisses him. Rudik has nothing to give. Still his father comes across, knocks away the high-backed chair in his joy, picks Rudik up and holds him in the air, spins him twice, all wide cheeks, yellow teeth. What a big boy! Look at you! Look! And how old are you now? Seven? Seven! Almost eight! My! Look at you!
    Rudik notices the large puddles his father’s boots have left at the door, goes to the threshold and stands in the wet prints. My little boy! His father has a number of smells to him, not bad smells, a strange mixture, like trains and trams and the smell you get after wiping chalk from the blackboard with your elbow.
    They walk in the street along the rows of cabins and wooden houses, into the late afternoon. Icicles hang from lampposts. Snow coats the rows of gates. The frost-hardened mud crunches beneath their feet. Rudik wears his sister’s old overcoat. His father stares at the coat, says the boy should not be dressed in his sister’s castoffs, tells Rudik’s mother to switch the buttons from one side to the other. His mother pales and nods, says of course she will. They watch the wind rip the cardboard and sackcloth from the window frames of the wooden houses. Men drink vodka in an abandoned car. His father looks at the men, shakes his head in disgust, links his arm with Rudik’s mother. Whispering, they seem as if they have years of secrets to tell each other. A cat wanders lean-shouldered along a crooked fence. Rudik flings a