A girl is sewing herself a dress for the first time. She bought three meters of cheap fabric (just over a ruble a meter), but the fabric turns out to be surprisingly pretty, black with bright bursts of…

I dreamed of Prague at night. It looked the way each of us to whom the words “Old City” speak at least a little would imagine. I knew the Golem had returned, and I ran through the streets…

His mother smiled stupidly, flapped her heavily mascaraed eyelashes, and missed the plate with her fork.

Her hand would travel around the board, creeping up on a piece as she mumbled in a kind of trance: “J’adoube, j’adoube, j’adoube . . .”

Grandfather was very strong. When he was working in the kitchen garden or whittling spade handles (for relaxation, he would always whittle handles-there were enough of them piled in a corner of the barn…