Bombs fell. Artillery shells whizzed and then the earth shook, like a
chair thrown against the wall, one chair after another after the next, the wall and the earth pushed
out and then somehow rebounding, shock and aftershock, the earth trembling more than it was
still. They destroyed the public buildings and the apartment blocks. All rubble now, all
blackened shells. Missiles whined overhead, sometimes ten or fifteen a day. The earth
shuddered. This can’t last forever, Svetlana thought. Someone will come to stop it, to make the
world rational. To open the schools. Or the earth itself will give out.
