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Page 21.

— vi —

When Viktor and I spoke in that Moscow flat, now many years ago in itself, Stalin’s nightmare state had finally been nullified by its victims and their befuddled leaders. My journey around the world, in search of my long-lost true father, was nearly at its goal. Viktor and I spoke honestly and fearlessly for hours over Russian vodka, American cigarettes, Russian bread, German butter, Canadian cookies, and Finnish marmalade. Everything was on the table. There were no more secrets. Viktor should know about life and death, just as my father should know about time, and love, and clocks. As one of Stalin’s top assets, Viktor had killed many men and women, being a triple agent through night and fog, and licensed to kill without reflection, humanity, or guilt, like a god. Uncle Viktor said: “Everything ends as it begins, and in the end is its beginning.”

I found peace in that, at last. Our lives are finite, but they turn in circles forever, like the hands on a clock. Hours, minutes, and seconds are each bound up in the great cosmic clockwork mechanism in which no part is alone, and all are part of the infinite totality of a chain that has no beginning or end. Like an orbiting Sputnik, the wanderer always finds herself again in the place where she was not long ago, or even far back on an Arctic shore, alone with the poor, beautiful woman who died too soon and forever lies there in the granular sand, with only a few weeds and gulls to dance around her final bed.