Peary, a civil engineer, Sasha spent the lunch hour with Pavel discussing the inadequacy of Russian textbooks. “I wouldn’t go so far as to use the word ‘bias,’” said Pavel, “but omissions make my task all the more difficult. It would be one thing if the textbooks acknowledged other points of view, but in ours, we receive only the Bolshevik side of things.” “As you know, you have my full support to ‘fill in the blanks.’” Pavel stirred some sour cream into his steaming beet soup and sipped it slowly. The table had cold cuts and cheeses and a bowl with hard-boiled eggs. A loaf of black bread had been baked that same morning. Although Sasha had tried to dissuade teachers from taking a nip at lunch, a bottle of vodka stood within reach. Pavel never touched it, though he was known to be a tippler. He took a piece of brown bread, peeled and salted an egg, and remarked casually, almost apologetically, that he’d heard about Sasha having been denounced.
