Not That

“Eight years have passed—eight whole years! And to Vika it honestly felt as if none of those eight years had happened at all.

The same smell of geraniums and the kitchen in the little house beyond the fence of the Savior-Three Monastery—it’s the same. They eat the same way in the hall with windows looking into the garden, and mother and father are exactly the same. Old-fashioned, quiet, and forever submissive to everything they don’t understand. Without malice and without any special kindness—just…”