He was not afraid of death. He could remember death. His father, Weiwei, had died at home. Vlad could remember it several ways. He could remember his father’s own dying moment—broken sentences forming in the brain, the touch of the pillow hurting strangely, the look in his boy’s eyes, a sense of wonder filling him, momentarily, then blackness, a slow encroachment that swallowed whatever last sentence he had meant to speak.
