The three men had steadfastly remained at their posts, two inside the grocery store and the other just outside the door. The men inside the grocery store often masqueraded as inspectors, watching every customer who walked past them, peering into their bags as they left the store. The customers usually laughed and simply played along the best they knew how. The other “mayor” acted as a policeman. He always had a pencil and a small notepad of paper, and would walk around the cars of the customers, stopping, staring and pretending to write something down. Occasionally he would babble something unintelligible in a demanding tone to one of his “offenders,” but this was always shrugged off and laughed about later. They were essentially harmless, and the townspeople regarded them as fixtures of the town. Like well-loved pets, everyone nurtured them.

Seeing the “mayors” reminded Tonya of her two best high school girlfriends, Natalie and Nina. High school in Russia continues only until the tenth grade, and the girls enjoyed every minute of it. They had been nicknamed the “trio” by their classmates, an inseparable group of friends bound together by their commonalities and their love for one another. They were always full of fun and laughter, sharing jokes and lightening the spirits of everyone around them. Nina was considered the jokester of the trio and delighted in gently poking fun at them all.

On one occasion she said, “Tonya, yesterday I saw your future husband, but he was out of his usual place.”

Tonya asked, “Who was he?”

She jokingly replied, “Don’t pretend you don’t know! He’s a ‘mayor’ of course! A policeman!”

The girls doubled over with laughter, and Tonya joked back, “But your husband was so annoyed with his customers this morning. I’m afraid he might lose his job and won’t be able to support you!”

This type of joking continued on until the “mayor” assigned to Natalie was brutally murdered one week before they graduated high school. Somehow, their jokes had lost their appeal with his death, and they never again commented on the men as they walked past them.

The loud babbling of the “mayors” brought Tonya back to her present reality, and she surveyed the busy scene around her. As she walked on, she thought to herself that she was glad to see that the other two were still alive.

The workings of the town continued on as usual, as people went about their daily business struggling to survive. Soon after, she came upon Natalie’s house and thought of the many happy times she had experienced there. She was always happy to visit with her girlfriends, and sometimes she thought that their mothers loved her the same way as they loved their own daughters, but their kindnesses only extended so far and never fully filled the place of emptiness between Tonya and her own mother. She had wanted to knock at the door, but she would never dream of telling them of her mother’s scolding and of their argument over finances. Tonya hated money, even talk of it. Money, or rather the absence of it, had brought so many problems to Tonya’s life that it was enough to make her mind shut down. There was never enough to make ends meet, and it seemed to be the root of all hostility between her and her mother.

Dusk was quickly approaching. Although Tonya was used to the darkness of night, the increasingly cold air chilled her to the bone, and she reluctantly made her way back to her parents’ house and to the stillness that awaited her there.

Tonya was a junior in college when she decided to travel home on the weekend before the First of May, the most important holiday in Russia. Everyone had traveled home to be with their loved ones, and she did not want to remain at the college alone. She wanted to be near those she loved most on this holiday. Although Tonya was looking forward to the upcoming vacation, she had no idea that this visit would turn out to be one of the most devastating visits in her memory.

She had just found out that her friend, Ivan, who had been her classmate from first grade through graduation and was lovingly known by everyone as Vano, was brutally murdered by a gang of teenagers. He was returning from his girlfriend’s home late at night and ran into a group of eight or ten teenagers. They had asked him for matches to light their cigarettes.

He answered, “I’m sorry, boys, but I’m not a smoker.”

After he said these words, they began to beat him with the hard, flat knuckles of their fists. They kicked him with their boots and then knocked him to the ground, nearly unconscious. The outer fence of the school of music was next to them, and when the strength of their own bodies began to fail them, they pulled wooden stakes from a nearby fence with the nails still protruding from the wood. They beat Vano with the fence posts until he stopped attempting to defend himself and lay motionless on the ground.

When Vano regained consciousness, there was nobody around. The teenagers had left him in the street to fend for himself or to die. He somehow managed to crawl nearly one hundred feet back to his girlfriend’s apartment and all the way back up to the fifth floor. He could not stand tall enough to reach the button for the doorbell, so he used the remainder of his strength to knock on the door.

There were very few people in the town who had working telephones in their home, so it took quite some time for Vano’s girlfriend to find a telephone and call an ambulance. Despite the ambulance, Vano’s injuries proved to be too great, and he died on the way to the hospital. He only had enough strength left to tell the paramedics that he had never met anyone from that group before. His single mother worked so hard to bring up her three sons, and she lost two of her boys. Vano’s oldest brother had been killed two years earlier. He was a talented artist. No one was ever charged with those crimes.

Ironically, Vano was killed next to the school of music, the dearest place in the entire town to Tonya. When Tonya used to sneak out to the school of music, she had been sure that nobody knew about her secret practice sessions, but one day Vano’s friend had come to Tonya during a class break and asked her, “Why don’t you ever come to the dance? Vano is always very sad about it. Don’t you notice at all that he is in love with you?”

Tonya studied his face for signs of teasing, but deciding to herself that he was inquiring seriously, she replied, “I’m just busy with practicing the piano.”

“He knows it too; sometimes he waits and follows you until you get home safely. He knows all your tricks to lose strangers. If he did not know where you lived, he would not have been able to follow you. Vano said that even if you do not pay attention to him, at least you do not pay attention to anyone else. So he said he will wait for the day when you leave your black box of keys and join his company.”

Tonya was very upset to hear about Vano’s unrequited affections toward her. If he liked her so much, he could have told her himself, without the need of a messenger.

“I don’t want anyone to pick on me about his love towards me.”

Tonya quickly recalled the long year of fourth grade when one boy had come up to her during class and kissed her on her cheek. All of the children had started to laugh hysterically and teased her about it mercilessly, particularly the boys, until it reached a point where she no longer wanted to attend school. As if they could not find enough hours during the school day, they teased her whenever they met her on the street, even outside the school, walking with her parents. She had the strength and courage to handle it in public, but when she was left alone at night to her own musings, she cried. Since then, she had never let any boys come close to her.

Tonya had fought for this independence to the point where it became problematic at school. After one parent-teacher meeting at the school, her mother came home and punished her.