Snow in May. Kseniya Melnik

      “Grazhdanka, it’s forbidden to sit here. Follow me.”

      Tanya looked up from her shopping list. The stewardess’s curt demeanor was so incongruous with her childlike face, Tanya felt a swell of pity. Here was someone already kicked around by life, her defenses permanently raised.

      Moments earlier, Tanya had sat in one of the open seats directly behind a group of men in identical blue T-shirts and track pants. On an otherwise full airplane, they were buffered both in front and behind by an empty row. Preoccupied with planning the most efficient shopping itinerary for Moscow, Tanya hadn’t given this much thought.

      Now she wrestled her frayed carry-on from the overhead compartment and followed the stewardess. The empty rows were puzzling indeed. When she looked back, the blue-T-shirted men grinned at her over the tops of their seats. There was something glossy in their appearance, something one didn’t see in everyday people. With their smooth faces, shiny hair, and lime-white teeth, they looked freshly washed and wrung free of life’s problems.

      Tanya’s assigned seat was in the last row, beside a middle-aged couple.

      The husband turned to Tanya. “The Italian soccer team,” he said with enthusiasm. “They’re trying to keep us away from them. International security measures, you see. But if seriously, what secrets do they think we could give them? That the country’s short on soap and rope?” He snickered. “Soap and rope, yes.”

      “Who thinks? The Italians?” Tanya said. She’d never seen a foreigner before, not even someone from the Eastern bloc—the so-called Soviet camp—although she’d heard they were easily spotted in the bigger cities. But these were real foreigners, real Westerners. There were separate hotels for them, and shops and restaurants. Separate seats at the Bolshoi Theatre. She felt embarrassed for having sat down behind them now.

      “Them. The—”

      “Sasha, quiet,” his wife said, glaring at him as though the plane was bugged by the KGB. And who knew? Maybe it was.

      The plane taxied for takeoff from Leningrad, where Tanya had spent five days slumped in a seminar room at the Hermitage. She curated the arts wing of the Regional Museum in her hometown in the northeast and every five years attended these educational programs, required and paid for by the countrywide arts board. During the day, she half listened to lectures on “the portrayal of socialist reality through painting and sculpture.” In the evenings, she strolled down the Neva embankment, its austere neoclassical buildings the color of cucumber flesh, omelet batter, sour-creamed borsch. What a shame it was that she had to travel so far to see real beauty.

      She closed her eyes and thought of all the things she needed to get in Moscow to take back home to Magadan, where the grocery stores weren’t empty but also had no variety. Leningrad, with its theaters and museums, was Russia’s starving artist; the capital was the rich merchant, the pride of the country—a requisite stop for everyone on the way back to the provinces. She and Anton had saved all year for this shopping trip. Baby Pavlik needed a winter coat, and Borya needed a backpack, notebooks, and all the bright school accessories to get him excited about first grade.

      Fruits and good vegetables. Avitominosis was common