Tamara shook her head and lowered her voice. "I received a telegram from the Kolyma authorities in 1932-without right of correspondence, it said. You know what that means, don't you?"

Alexander didn't want even to hazard a guess.

"It means he is no longer alive to correspond with," said Tamara, her voice shaking and her head lowering.

She told him how, from the church down the block, three priests were arrested and given seven years for not putting away the tools of capitalism, which in their case was the organized and personal and unrepentant belief in Jesus Christ.

"Also forced labor camp?"

"Oh, Alexander!"

He stopped. She continued. "But the funny thing is-have you noticed the hotel down the street that had the harlots right outside a few months ago?"

"Hmm." Alexander noticed.

"Well, have you noticed how they all disappeared?"

"Hmm." Alexander noticed that too.

"They were taken away. For disturbing the peace, for disrupting the public good-"

"And for not putting away the tools of capitalism," Alexander said dryly, and Tamara laughed and touched his head.

"That's right, my boy. That's right. And do you know how long they had been given in that forced labor camp that you care so much about? Three years. So just remember-Jesus Christ, seven, prostitutes, three."

"All right," said Jane, coming into the room, taking her son by the hand and leading him out. Before she left, she turned around and said in an accusatory tone to Tamara, but addressed to Alexander, "Can we not be learning about prostitutes from toothless old women?"

"Who would you like me to learn about prostitutes from, Mom?" he asked.

"Son, your mother wanted me to talk to you about something." Harold cleared his throat. Alexander crimped his lips together and sat quietly. His father looked so uncomfortable that Alexander had to sit on his hands to keep himself from laughing. His mother was pretending to clean something in another part of the room. Harold glared in Jane's direction.

"Dad?" said Alexander in his deepest voice. His voice had broken a few months ago, and he really liked the way his new self sounded. Very grown-up. He also had shot up, growing more than eight inches in the course of the last six months, but he couldn't seem to put any flesh on his bones. There just wasn't enough of...anything. "Dad, do you want to go for a walk and talk about it?"

"No!" said Jane. "I can't hear a thing. Talk here."

Nodding, Alexander said, "All right, Dad, talk here." He scrunched up his face and tried to look serious. It wouldn't have mattered if he were sitting cross-eyed and sticking his tongue out. Harold was not looking at Alexander.

"Son," said Harold. "You're getting to be at that age where you're, well, I'm sure, you're-and also you're-you're a fine boy, and good-looking, I want to help, and soon, or maybe already-and I'm sure that you're-"

Jane tutted in the background. Harold fell quiet.

Alexander sat for a few seconds, then got up, slapped his father on the back and said, "Thanks, Dad. That was helpful."

He went into his room, and Harold didn't follow him. Alexander heard his parents bickering next door, and in a minute there was a knock. It was his mother. "Can I talk to you?"

Alexander trying to keep a composed face, said, "Mom, really, I think Dad said all there was to say, I don't know if there's anything to add-"

She sat down on his bed while he sat in the chair near the window. He was going to be sixteen in May. He liked summer. Maybe they would get a room at a dacha in Krasnaya Polyana again like they did last year.

"Alexander, what your father didn't mention-"

"Was there something Dad didn't mention?"

"Son..."

"Please-go ahead."

"I'm not going to give you a lesson in girls-"

"Thank goodness for that."

"Listen to me, the only thing I want you to do is remember this-" She paused.

He waited.

"Martha told me one of her derelict sons has had his horn removed!" she whispered. "Removed, Alexander, and do you know why?"

"I'm not sure I want to."

"Because he got frenchified! Do you know what that is?"

"I think-"

"And her other son's got French pigs all over his body. It's the most revolting thing!"

"Yes, it-"

"The French curse! The French crown! Syphilis! Lenin died from it eating up his brain," she whispered. "No one talks about it, but it's true all the same. Is that what you want for yourself?"

"Hmm..." said Alexander. "No?"

"Well, it's all over the place. Your father and I knew a man who lost his whole nose because of it."

"Personally, I'd rather lose the nose than-"

"Alexander!"

"Sorry."

"This is very serious, son. I have done all I can to raise you a good, clean boy, but look where we are living, and soon you'll be out on your own."

"How soon you think?"

"What do you think is going to happen when you don't know where the harlot you're with has been?" Jane asked resolutely. "Son, when you grow up, I don't want you to be a saint or a eunuch. I just want you to be careful. I want you to protect what's yours at all times. You must be clean, you must be vigilant, and you must also remember that without protection, you will get a girl up the stick, and then what? You're going to marry someone you don't love because you weren't careful?"

Alexander stared at his mother. "Up the stick?" he said.

"She'll tell you it's yours and you'll never know for sure, all you'll know is that you're married, and your horn is falling off!"

"Mother," said Alexander. "Really, you must stop."

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"How can I not?"

"Your father was supposed to explain to you."

"He did. I think he did very well."

Jane got up. "Will you just once stop with your joking around?"

"Yes, Mom. Thanks for coming in. I'm glad we had this chat."

"Do you have any questions?"

"Absolutely none."

The Changing of the Hotel's Name, 1935 One frostbitten late January Thursday, Alexander asked his father as they headed out to their Party meeting, "Dad, why is our hotel's name changing again? It's the third time in six months."

"Surely not the third time."

"Yes, Dad." They walked side by side down the street. They weren't touching. "When we first moved in, it was the Derzhava. Then the Kamenev Hotel. Then the Zinoviev Hotel. Now it's the Kirov Hotel. Why? And who is this Kirov chap?"

"He was the Leningrad Party Chief," said Harold.

At their meeting, the old man Slavan laughed raucously after he heard Alexander's question repeated. He beckoned Alexander to him, patted him on the head and said, "Don't worry, son, now that's it's Kirov, Kirov it will stay."

"All right, enough now," Harold said, trying to pull his son away. But Alexander wanted to hear. He pulled away from his father.

"Why, Slavan Ivanovich?"

Slavan said, "Because Kirov is dead." He nodded. "Assassinated in Leningrad last month. Now there's a manhunt on."

"Oh, they didn't catch his killer?"

"They caught him, all right." The old man smirked. "But what about all the others?"

"What others?" Alexander lowered his voice.

"All the conspirators," said the old man. "They have to die, too."

"It was a conspiracy?"

"Well, of course. Otherwise how can we have a manhunt?"

Harold called sharply for Alexander, and later on, when they were walking home, he said, "Son, why are you so friendly with Slavan? What kinds of things has that man been telling you?"

"He is a fascinating man," Alexander said. "Did you know he's been to Akatui? For five years." Akatui was the Tsarist Siberian hard labor prison. "He said they gave him a white shirt, and in the summer he worked only eight hours and in the winter six, and his shirt never got dirty, and he got a kilo of white bread a day, plus meat. He said they were the best years of his life."

"Unenviable," grumbled Harold. "Listen, I don't want you talking to him so much. Sit by us."

"Hmm," said Alexander. "You all smoke too much. It burns my eyes."

"I'll blow my smoke the other way. But Slavan is a troublemaker. Stay away from him, do you hear?" He paused. "He is not going to last long."

"Last long where?"

Two weeks later, Slavan disappeared from the meetings.

Alexander missed the nice old man and his stories.

"Dad, people keep disappearing from our floor. That lady Tamara is gone."

"Never liked her," put in Jane, sipping her vodka. "I think she is sick in the hospital. She was old, Alexander."

"Mom, two young men in suits are living in her room. Are they going to share that room with Tamara when she returns from the hospital?"

"I know nothing about that," said Jane firmly, and just as firmly poured herself another drink.

"The Italians have left. Mom, did you know the Italians have left?"

"Who?" said Harold loudly. "Who is disappearing? The Frascas have not disappeared. They are on vacation."

"Dad, it's winter. Vacation where?"

"The Crimea. In some resort near Krasnodar. Dzhugba, I think. They're coming back in two months."

"Oh? What about the van Dorens? Where have they gone? Also the Crimea? Someone new is living in their room, too. A Russian family. I thought this was a floor only for foreigners?"

"They moved to a different building in Moscow," said Harold, picking at his food. "The Obkom is just trying to integrate the foreigners into Soviet society."

Alexander put down his fork. "Did you say moved? Moved where? Because Nikita is sleeping in our bathroom."

"Who is Nikita?"

"Dad, you haven't noticed that there is a man in the bathtub?"

"What man?"

"Nikita."

"Oh. How long has he been there?"

Alexander exchanged a blank look with his mother. "Three months."

"He's been in the bathtub for three months? Why?"

"Because there is not a single room for him to rent in all of Moscow. He came here from Novosibirsk."