Han Ong

So this is sort of thrilling.

You know, it's part of the buoyant, ebullient energy of the story that he is so capable.

He probably knew that they were coming for him.

And so he had a contingency plan should this scenario crop up.

Well, it says earlier in the story that he comes from a family where either the father or the grandfather was a priest who was killed in the 1930s.

So he is well prepared.

Yeah.

So I think a lot of...

Russians of a certain ilk have probably run rehearsals in their mind about what to do in case of X, in case of Y. Catastrophe is always looming around the corner.

Snitches and the hounds of a regime are always sniffing around.

So it's par for the course for this set of characters.

Except I would argue that it is because when Boris and Nikolai go to the grocery, is it the grocery?

It says that Vera has known about Boris's presence in the village for some time.

And the phraseology, I think, is that the country telegraph had been at work all along.

Right.

You could say that this might be a kind of optimistic gloss that Ulitskaya puts on the grim reality because in the interview –

She did that ran with a story.

She says that the Nilovi Gorki is in fact a real place.

And she paints such a drab picture of it being a remnant of its former vital green self.

But in this place, though that is present in the physical surroundings, I mean, just to get there is such an odyssey.