‘The greatest privilege of childhood’, she said, ‘is to live safely in the present.’ — Simon Sebag Montefiore

War was simply a slaughterhouse on wheels, he thought. For most men, soldiering was tragedy expressed as a profession.

Nikolasha and Rosa had died for the romantic delusion: totalitarian love as reckless melodrama and desperate possession, an orchestra of trumpets and thunderbolts. Now he saw clearly that the real poetry of love was a meandering river, an accumulation of accidents, the momentum of details.

He hated Genrikh because true possession is to share the fabric of someone else’s life, he decided; it’s about proximity; love as geography.