Daineka opened the box she found hidden in the attic of her grandmother’s house. She saw a stack of papers—everywhere the letter “ять” appeared. It was the correspondence between the artist Nikolai Berezhny and the baroness Aynаudi, whose hopeless novel tragically ended more than a hundred years ago… Hardly managing her excitement, Daineka carefully took a letter from the envelope.
“I’m sending you the deed of sale…” the baroness wrote.
Before unfolding the second sheet, Daineka knew it was the original. The deed of sale for a mansion in Venice, with no statute of limitations… Carnival madness swept through the squares, narrow streets, and canals of Venice. Two men in golden masks stood near Daineka. Their black, fur-trimmed, three-cornered hats made them look like guards of some sinister order. Daineka still didn’t know what gift this foreign Italian city with its gentle name, Venice, had prepared for her…