Besides her scarf, the great love of Marya’s young life was books. By extension, she loved her lessons, since they meant discussing books and the wonderful things inside them. The one miracle of the twelve families in her house was that they had each brought at least one suitcase of books with them, and all those new books with all their new treasures were meant to be shared among all. Having once seen the world naked, the engine which drove Marya Morevna through the long, thin streets of Petrograd was a terrible hunger for knowing things, for knowing everything.
