Voskoboev and Elizaveta

Fifty-three years and three years on the corner of Arkhangelskaya Street and Klara Zetkin stood a kerosene shop; it was demolished as unnecessary and replaced by a five-story pink residential building with a boiler room and gas stoves. Apartment number two was taken by Air Force captain Voskoboyev and his wife, Elizaveta. They moved in with a heap of nomadic junk that they had been carrying with them from one borrowed corner to another for five years. All those stools, sideboards, and pillowcases were supposed to be thrown out and replaced with something solid—not shameful. Among the new, serious junk the newcomers bought for the day of moving-in was a cabinet “Matilda,” delivered in a container from Leningrad, and a dinner service “Madonna,” sent as a gift for the new neighbors by their old friend from Wünsderf.