The office door leads out onto the rear courtyard of the furniture factory. They keep it open. After the noxious acetone fumes it is absolute heaven. They can feel the sunny May breeze, still almost unscented, light and airy. In the distance a car can be seen, raising a cloud of dust, as if it were summer. The women produce modest provisions from their bags. With a knowing wink, the foreman removes from a small battered cupboard a filched bottle of alcohol, labeled "Acetone." They all become animated, lace the alcohol with jam, add in a drop of water, and drink: "To the Victory!"

"Tatyana Kuzminichna, how did you meet your Hero?"

And for the tenth time she embarks on the story of the little mirror and the hospital in the school that springtime long ago. They already know how it goes but they listen and are amazed and touched, as if they were hearing it for the first time. Tatyana does not want to go on remembering the village burned from both ends or the old, silent peasant woman leading her toward the barn…

"That year, my friends, it was one of those springs… One evening we walked to the end of the village. We stopped. All the apple trees were in bloom, it was so lovely it took your breath away. So what do apple trees care about war? They still blossom. And my Hero rolled himself a cigarette and smoked it. Then he screwed up his eyes like this and said…"

It seems to her now that they really did have these meetings and long, long evenings together… As the years have gone by she has come to believe it. And yet there was only that one evening in the icy spring, the black carcass of the burned-out roof. And a hungry cat sidling warily along beside the fence, staring at them with an air of mystery, as animals and birds do at twilight when they seem to stir things up in people's minds.