Die Damen aus Sankt Petersburg

Berberova continues to explore the Revolution and its aftermath in the next two novellas. "Zoya Andreyevna" follows the fortunes of a young woman caught up in the midst of the fighting. Zoya has left her worthy but dull husband and moved in with her lover. When war breaks out, the lover enlists in the White Army and Zoya is left on her own, fleeing from town to town and at the mercy of common people who despise her as much for what she has lost as for who she once was. In the final story, "The Big City," Berberova injects a note of grace into the émigré experience as she chronicles a day in the life of an unnamed narrator who discovers after a day of small adventures that

every person brings whatever he can to this big city ... some dream, or thought, or melody, the noonday heat of some treasure, the memory of a snow-drifted grave, the divine grandeur of a mathematical formula, or the strum of guitar strings. All this has dissolved on this cape and formed the life I plan to take part in too from now on. With you, who are not here with me but alive in this air I breathe.