The Big Green Tent

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Do not be consoled by the injustice of our time. Its immorality does not prove our own moral worth; its inhumanity is not sufficient to render us human merely by opposing it.

—Boris Pasternak to Varlam Shalamov, July 9, 1952

PROLOGUE

Tamara sat before a runny omelet on a plate, the vestiges of sleep still clinging to her.

Trying not to yank at the living pelt, Raisa Ilinichna, her mother, nudged a wide-tooth comb through Tamara’s hair as gently as she could.

The radio disgorged strains of triumphal music, but it wasn’t terribly loud: Grandmother was asleep behind the partition wall. Then the music died out. The pause that followed was too long, and seemed to portend something. The familiar, solemn radio voice resounded: “Attention! This is Moscow speaking. Transmitting an official announcement to all radio stations of the Soviet Union.”

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