The Tsar of Love and Techno

Alexei, Kolya’s brother, narrates the title story for the collection. First, Alexei visits Galina, Kolya’s old girlfriend in St. Petersburg. As they meet and reminisce at her house, she shows him the landscape mentioned in the previous story. Galina gives him the painting. Alexei remembers in Kirovsk when he and Kolya were in their early teens listening to their father speak about a space capsule that would protect them in the event of a nuclear apocalypse. He also remembers when he and Kolya witnessed a murder, an event that has traumatized him and epitomized the dangers of his childhood. Still, Alexei’s memories and dreams serve to characterize him as somewhat of a romantic.

Alexei is now 28, ditching classes and letting many of his dreams fall by the wayside. His most treasured possessions are his mother’s ashes and the Zakharov painting from the landscape where Kolya died. His entire family is dead now. Eager to move forward with his life, he eventually calls Galina and decides to go to the Chechen field where Kolya died.

Alexei reminisces again, recounting the story of when Kolya and Galina met in high school, when Kolya taught Galina to dance, ironic because of Galina’s family history. Alexei recounts how he became fascinated with dance club culture, after he was first introduced to it as a 12-year-old boy. Kolya, the smooth and irresistible womanizer, had been the ideal first mate of this first voyage. After years of fascination, Alexei started making mixtapes of his own, most notably of which was the mixtape he gave Kolya before his brother left for Chechnya to the city of Grozny, where he would eventually die.

Back in the present, Alexei arrives in Grozny, where a man named Akim takes him to a museum by the fateful field where Kolya died. After Akim leaves, Alexei once again remembers his brother and his unfulfilled dreams and expectations, and he thinks of the life that Kolya could have had with Galina. Finally, Alexei finds the field where his brother died.