SCENE SEVEN
Chiaroscuro
A few days later, “Hello, Moscow. Connecting you to Magadan.” Weariness, loneliness, but not despair. He felt her new life acutely, as pain. In hospital during the day with her mother. She said the right side of the body was paralyzed and her speech was impaired. She was staying overnight with some Yekaterina Filippovna, her mother’s former landlady. She was a good woman. Money? Her mother had set some aside, she had something saved. Not a word about herself, or them. Then the connection was lost.
Sky, a plane, and he was alone. Sasha had said nothing, suffocating him with silence, and everything in herself was stifled. Absent, getting money from somewhere, buying a ticket. She packed without asking him for anything. Before that, she disappeared, returning in the
