“...A young woman was sitting on a narrow sofa in a stuffy corridor of the clinic, waiting in line to see a doctor, and looking at a drying cactus - the only representative of the flora on the nearest windowsill. She was in her eighth month of pregnancy, and the memories stopped tormenting her. She felt great, just great! Bianca Levitskaya is thirty-two years old, and this is her first pregnancy. Very desirable and very forced. She is Polish by blood - she was born and lived all thirty-two years in Siberia. Nationality was read only in the names and remained a piquant feature of the family. The girl did not need anything from early childhood (her father worked at a furniture factory and went from technologist to director, her mother was the chief accountant in a large retail chain). She got used to prosperity and good taste, traveled with her parents throughout the country and spent every summer at sea - Crimea, Yalta, Pitsunda, Bulgaria, the Baltic states. And when the family of a close school friend left for Cuba, Bianca, by invitation, spent the winter holidays on Liberty Island every two years, at the very time when the Soviet-Cuban friendship seemed indestructible and eternal. She bathed in the rays of the sultry tropical sun and the warmth of the ocean surf, like fresh milk, devoured fresh fruits and enjoyed the exotic, and there, at home, frosts crackled, snow blizzards howled, sweeping waist-deep snowdrifts. As a gift for her father, the girl brought traditional Cuban cigars, and for her mother - real Havana coffee, whose magical aroma hovered in the air for a long time, reminiscent of a wonderful and carefree time...”