Life changed suddenly for Igor Stanislovich Abishley, and it started as a river boat trip that the tourists who take it now marvel at. One of the reason Igor did not appreciate it in the same way was because the year was 1953, one year after the canal opened, and the land had yet to recover from the ravages of the siege. Another reason was more pertinent to the situation. Igor was only three years and eight months old and didn"t appreciate much, other than the meagre food his mother fed him and the clothes that she found to clothe him in. Then, however, purely through the fault of lack of age, he never realised that the sacrifice Yelena made helped to keep him safe from the pneumonia epidemic that Stalingrad suffered that year.
The elder Abishleys had experienced a rare war, and a common
