The Diamond Eye

Mila’s narration here turns retrospective as she intersperses her postwar story with memories that are absent from her published memoir, presumably due to Soviet censorship. Quinn employs this device in several chapters. Official accounts of Mila’s life would require her to emphasize patriotism at the expense of reality. June 1941 finds her in the Black Sea city of Odessa, a popular tourist destination, though she is working in the local library to earn money before her final year of university. Mila refers to her thesis as a “dissertation,” though the Russian term may also be rendered as “senior thesis.” She is studying Bogdan Khmelnitsky’s decision to ally Ukraine with Russia rather than the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, but her friend Sofya persuades her to go swimming.

Mila and Sofya join their friends Vika and Grigory. Mila is lost in thoughts of her son, as she has just separated from him for the first time for this temporary job. She rebuffs Grigory’s attempt to flirt with her, as she has little in common with him and no room for distractions. In her narration, the older Mila reflects that all their concerns of that day would soon vanish, and “within the year half the people at our table would be dead” (35).