Red Square
“Andy, I’m leaving, I’m going home to Moscow.” After many years in the U.S. Sasha Nova still spoke with that soft Russian sound, like a zephyr in summer swishing through a Birch forest, like the sound of her name. Sasha Nova. “Andy, my father found me an apartment and I’ll be in Red Square for May Day.” Sasha Nova left home when she turned twenty-one. She’d fallen in love with a Russian woman ten years older who’d migrated to America and soon she would follow. She’s not really Russian, she’s Ukrainian, born on the Black Sea in Crimea in the capitol, Simferopol. She was an only child and her parents were intellectuals, art critics and university teachers versed in classical Russian history and art. They were not members of the Communist Party so walked a tightrope between intellectual honesty and supine Party politics. They were Russian realists. As a young girl, Sasha was encouraged to read widely and she developed a taste for all kinds of literature. She read many of ...
