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shore I see partially collapsed concrete buildings. According to Stambek, that’s all that is left of the lightbulb factory. I try to imagine a time when the thousands of lightbulbs were new, unbroken, their nickel wires incandescent, but it’s a waste of time. That era is gone, just like Vassili’s orchard, just like my life as a baby in my mother’s arms, or like the peace in the Caucasus.
    I look for worms in the mud, and Stambek hooks them on the nail. We look at them as they squirm and we cast our fishing line. Then we wait in silence, motionless, for fish to bite.
    Fishing is a little like holding out your hand at Kopeckochka: it takes a long time to get anything, and even then it’s often disappointing. If the wind weren’t so strong, I’d fall asleep.
    After a while, though, the line moves and suddenly tightens. We jump up. Stambek begins pulling with all his strength.
    “A big one! A big one!” he shouts as a silvery back and fin float up. “Hurry, Koumaïl!”
    I rush to help. I lean over to catch the line, when suddenly I slide on the slippery bank and fall into the ice-cold lake. I sink! I choke on a mouthful of water!
Helpmehelpme!
    Stambek lets go of everything and pulls me out. I’m shaking all over, my lips are blue, and my ears are sore. The big fish is gone, together with the radio antenna, the line, and the nail.
    I’m the only thing that Stambeck has caught.
    I cough up putrid water from my lungs, then I throw up, and Stambek takes me back home straightaway.
    Back in the shed my teeth are chattering so much that Gloria says she thinks she hears Spanish castanets. She swears as she undresses me. My clothes are so stiff with cold that they’re like cardboard.
    “God damn it, Koumaïl!” she groans. “What a strange idea to go swimming in this kind of weather.”
    She rubs me hard enough to skin me, but I keep shivering and I can’t say a word. My thoughts are frozen in my head.
    Stambek and Mr. Betov come back, their arms loaded with blankets. They take me to the corner of the room where Gloria has set up a stove, and they cover me with several layers and start a fire. Stambek mumbles some excuses as his father slaps his head.
    “There’s nothing in there!” he keeps repeating. “Nothing but wind!”
    I fall into such a deep sleep that it feels as if I’m sinking to the center of the earth.

chapter thirteen
    I’M sick. I can’t get up. I can’t do anything.
    Gloria can’t stop working, otherwise we won’t have any money. So Mr. Betov asks his daughters Suki and Maya to take turns watching me while Gloria drives the truck.
    “We are a large family and yours is small,” Mr. Betov says. “I can lend my daughters for a few days!”
    My illness lasts exactly six days.
    The twins stay by my bedside. They burn fragrant herbs; they dab my feverish forehead with a wet cloth and put their cool hands under my neck to help me sit up. They make me drink tea. Liters of it! With honey and extracts.
    I try to remember the names of the medicinal plants old Lin taught us at the university for the poor. In the fog of my fever, I recite: “Suma powder, excellent tonic … 
Eucalyptus globulus
to treat sinus infections … cinnamon oil to soothe a cough and fever … camphor for massages …”
    Suki takes my pulse. Her fingers are as light and delicateas a bird’s legs. I tell her silly things, and when she laughs, I see her beauty spot disappear in a dimple.
    Maya sings. Her voice lulls me and I go to sleep without coughing, submerged by a flow of sweetness. When I wake up, I feel her face near me, with the beauty spot that punctuates the sentence of her eyebrows. I ask her what is written there.
    She squints a little and answers.
    “Suki is right! You just say any foolish thing, Koumaïl!”
    Unlike Stambek, Maya and Suki don’t have wind in their heads. They tell me what their life was like before the war, when they lived in a large brick house, far from Souma-Soula. One day a bomb