He did not know where his Oxana — his first pure love — had disappeared to. For a fleeting moment the tender and sensitive Polish girl surfaced in his memory. Then there was the beauty Hanna, a married woman he met when he, already a famous artist and poet, returned to his homeland. She had not responded to his letter which he wrote with blood dripping from his heart. Had she forgotten him? She must have never loved him, while her ardent words and kisses had been nothing but a game. And still her charming image haunted the poet as she seemed to look at him with eyes as blue as this sea, this strange and hostile but wonderful Aral Sea which had helped him escape the barracks and saved him from the abominable drill and horrible mental starvation.
Would she have recognized him if they were
