Chapter One:

The story starts off talking about how unbearable the heat and humidity was in the city. Alik goes on to explain and describe how the women of the house went with out clothes for many days. In this chapter we are introduced to Five women sitting in the bed room, Nina, Valentina, Gioia, Irina, and Maika. Valentina is the first person the Alik introduces to the reader. She is described as being large breasted and early ever wore a bra. Nina is a young thin women with long hair. She is not Jewish because he makes note that she wears a gold cross. Gioia is an italian women who lives next door. Gioia hangs out with Alik and the rest of the women hoping to learn some Russian. Since she isn't Russain she is always taking offense to the things that they say around her, however she is always forgiving to them not matter what they say. Irina was a former circus acrobat, but now works a highly paid lawyer. Alik goes into further detail about her beauty. He describes how she "looked stunning with her waxed bikini line". Maika is Irina's 15 year old daughter.  Miaka is a small plump girl with glasses, she's been given the nickname Teeshirt by everyone. Also out of the 5 women sitting in the bedroom, Maika was the online wearing clothes. Ludmilla style of putting great detail into the description of her characters, helps the reader paint a picture of them early off into the story. Also I find it odd that she would start off a story about death with 5 women (4 of which are almost naked) sitting in a room. The first thing that came to my mind when I read that section of the story I thought to myself that, it doesn't relate to death at all. The beginning of the story paints a picture of love, compassion, and sex. But upon further reading in the chapter we find out that Alik and Nina are married. However they have never had any children, and even if they wanted them now, they are too old and we find out that Alik is in no shape to function. Ali has some sort of slow paralysis taking over his body. To make things worst has been along time since he had had any money.