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"Bingo!" A voice calls out from across the hall before Vladya has had the chance to see if he has I-17 on any of his three cards. He scans the lines, up and down, side to side, but he is not used to the abrupt letters and numbers, so different from the rounded Cyrillic script he grew up with and knows so well. Though he sees these new characters every day now, they still take time to decipher.

    Megan, his eleven-year-old niece, harrumphs and dabs I-17 off his middle card. "You're too slow for bingo, Uncle Walter." She calls him that although he would prefer his real name. He goes along with it though, because he's a visitor on her turf, and believes it's easier than picking another fight with her. She returns to her side of the table, gets ready for the next game.

    "I." "1." And then there's "7," which is like "L" upside down and backwards. To his eye, English is a snarl of bewildering shapes. It must have been insanity or perhaps malice that caused the first writers of this language to make four characters so similar. If he chooses to move here in the fall, finds a decent job and a house for his family, he will learn the script, but right now, it's a waste of time.

    "I go for cigarette," he mutters. He needs a break from this fluorescent lighting, from the concentration on the bingo caller, from the smell of wet winter coats and boots. His sister, Lena, nods.

    Outside the bingo hall, it is frosty. A late spring cold snap. Two women butt out their cigarettes, exhale the last of their smoke and re-enter the hall. Too many stupid rules, Vladya thinks. Imagine a place in Novgorod where smoking was forbidden! The people would rise up. Nothing would be left standing in their wake. Or maybe this was a scenario from a time long forgotten. Maybe the people would calmly accept another arbitrary law and go about their business. Spiritless they'd become. A point his wife Yvegenya would say is another good reason to emigrate.

    He lights his cigarette. When he first arrived, six weeks ago, Lena would have followed him out here to make sure he wasn't being harassed or wandering off along dark streets with names like Cavendish Square, Garrison Hill, Duckworth Street. Names that sound like they have come from the foreign classics he had read aloud to Lena when she was just a girl, and he a teenager. They would snuggle together and read one chapter each evening. Vladya tried to make every book last as long as he could. True, the translations were costly, but he also cherished their time together.

    He clings to memories of those simple days. But he is sure Lena has forgotten since she has built a life here in St. John's.

    "Grand prize gone, buddy?" A man in a sheepskin jacket flaps his arms against the cold. "Bridey Byrne took 'er again, I s'pose? She got more luck'n a shithouse rat."

    Vladya recognizes a few of the words: "grand," "burn," too, but did he hear the Russian word for crosswalk?

    "Excuse, sir, please say again."

    The man's eyebrows rise. "Foreigner, are ya? Well, good luck t'ya anyhow." He enters the bingo hall.

    It has been like this since Vladya arrived. Forty-one years old, he is like a toddler. He stood with Megan at the counter at McDonald's last week, counted off items on thick fingers: one cheeseburger, two large fries, six chicken nuggets, two large Cokes.

    And then.

    He doesn't know what came over him.

    "Please, also, one soup," he added.

    "Soup?" The clerk looked puzzled. Megan rolled her eyes.

    "Yes, soup. Large." He craved potato soup, but would accept any soup hot and salty enough to remind him of home.

    "They don't have soup at McDonald's," Megan hissed. "Stupid," she turned her head as she said this, and he pretended not to hear. He tossed the clerk a crisp, red fifty-dollar bill, picked up the tray and walked away.

    "Hey, buddy, your change," the clerk called. He felt heads turn and watch him navigate through the moulded plastic furniture. But he pushed his shoulders back and marched to a table by the window. Megan was behind, clutching the change. She put it on the tray, took her chicken nuggets, unfolded her paper napkin.

    "Fifty dollars will buy practically the whole restaurant." She dipped a nugget into her sauce.

    And this was only one in a string of similar experiences. He is a disappointment to himself, to Megan and no doubt, to Lena, too. How could he ever have thought it possible to move his family here? He now believes this trip is a big mistake.

***

    Vladya stubs out his cigarette and goes back into the bingo hall. He tries to remember where Lena and Megan are. He wanders up a row of tables until he spots Lena's frizzy auburn hair.

    Lena smiles. "You having fun?" she asks, in Russian.

    He shrugs. "If this is how people pass Friday nights, I should know it before I make up my mind."

    "You don't like it? Why not?" Two women in front of them crank their heads nearly backwards when they hear the foreign language. Their eyes ride an elevator up and down Vladya's body. Pick the eyes right out of his head and come back looking for the holes, he thinks. Another expression from this strange place he didn't understand until Lena spelled out the words on the table like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

    "Yvegenya would like," he adds then, in English.

    Megan wrinkles up her nose as he sits. Cigarette smoke. She has already told him it stinks. He pretends not to notice.

    He has missed one game.

    "Ladies, gentlemen. Angie'll call the next game. As this is her first time with us, please give her a warm welcome."

    Angie springs forward, a young woman with a wide, rosy-lipped smile planted between equally rosy cheeks. She eagerly snatches the microphone.

    "Thanks now, Kevin," she says. Her dress is as smooth, shiny and pink as her lips. "It's some good to be here tonight. I been callin' bingo down the shore for a coupla years now, and it's sure great to be up here in town." A few people applaud. "Course the folks down to Renews says I'm one a the best. But you can decide for yerself." Her head is heaped with frothy blonde hair. Vladya thinks it shines like a halo.

    "Tart," says Megan. Lena shushes her.

    "Nice to see so many handsome fellas. Hope yer ready for Angie!"

    Vladya laughs.

    "Let's get those balls rollin' now. We'll heat this place up tonight." Not a strand of hair falls out of place as she tosses her head.

    Vladya can't take his eyes off her. She is funny and beautiful - even under the fluorescent light.

    He wonders if he could get a job with someone like her. Hell, why like her? Why not work with her? Surely there is something in the bingo hall he could do. He must bring his resume here tomorrow and apply for a job.

***

    Vladya scanned the classified section of the Evening Telegram every day. He saw jobs in restaurants, gas stations, convenience stores. But nothing suitable for him. He'd been a line manager in a munitions factory since the end of the Russian-Afghan war. His skills were significant, yet apparently useless here.

    He recalled Yvegenya's parting words at the airport.

    "Keep an open mind. You will see Canada is where we should be." She kissed him and slipped an oily paper bag of piroshki into his carry-on bag. He salivated over the smell all the way through airport security and immigration. But he also worried the greasy, eggy piroshki would stain his new passport.

    He wondered now if Yvegenya would still believe there was a paradise here in Newfoundland.

    Lena sent him to a government office with job listings. But the only new postings were for people to deliver newspapers and flyers.

    "Did you ask anyone what you should be looking for?" she said, when he returned discouraged.

    "They were too busy." In fact, several people had offered help. But he walked out, pretending he was going for a cigarette, but with no intention of returning. Ever.

    Lena's husband, Tim, had a solution.

    "You need a résumé, Walt," he said at the supper table. "You can't apply for a job without a résumé."

    "Oh, brother," Megan said.

    "That's enough, young lady." Vladya had never had a résumé, but if Tim said he needed one, he must. Tim taught marketing at the college. He would know about these things.

    They sat at the computer after the meal.

    "Okay," Tim said, taking charge of the keyboard. "Address?"

    Vladya hesitated. "Should I put Russia? Or here?"

    "Use this address for now," Tim advised. "Now, let's start with your education. Where did you go to school?"

    "Leningrad," Vladya said.

    Tim typed. "Saint - Peters - burg." He tapped the return key with a flourish. "Now, what was the name of the school?"

    Vladya thought. It had been named after Stalin when he attended, but had changed since Glasnost. "Lena?" he called. "Do you know the new name of the our old school? In Leningrad?" He slipped into Russian. It was easier.

    "English, Walter, English," Tim said. "You need to speak the queen's English if you want to live in Canada."

    "What school name in Lenin - St. Petersburg?" he asked her in English, hesitating over the sentence, tripping over St. Petersburg, annoyed over Tim's use of Walter.

    "This is not so important," she soothed. "Put down about your work first."

    "Okay then. Work history." Tim typed. "Starting with your most recent job, which is -?" He looked up.

    "Munitions factory, Novgorod."

    "Okay, munitions factory." He typed. "Does it have a name?"

    "It is Anton P.B. Nikalochev - uh -" He looked to Lena.

    "- Memorial Weapons Factory," she finished. "That's the English."

    "Who the heck was Anton P.B. what's-his-name?" Tim asked. "Oh, never mind. How do you spell that?"

    And this was only the beginning. Vladya, Tim and Lena spent three nights discussing names, dates, locations and translations. Finally, Tim clicked on print, and the printer spit out a single page.

    "Looks good, Walt," Tim said. "How many copies?"

    Vladya felt cheated. "But I have done much more than what is written here."

    "Better to be brief, buddy. Take this down to the unemployment tomorrow."

    Vladya sat up with Lena after Tim and Megan went to bed.

    "I'll never find work here," Vladya said.

    "Don't give up." She took his hand. "Maybe you could take something else for awhile."

    "Like what? There is nothing."

    "You could drive a taxi."

    Vladya scoffed. "I'm not a taxi driver. I'm a manager."

    "Okay then. You could try another city. Maybe Toronto."

    "But what's the point of that? When you are here?"

    "Look, Vladya," Lena said. "Lots of people come here and do work they are over-qualified for. They move to different cities. Live more modestly. But that's the way it is. Eventually, they get something better. But not overnight."

    "I can't do that."

    "Why not?"

    "I'm not a kid anymore."

    "You have to make another beginning."

    "I can't. And I'm not changing my name to Walter," he added, his face afire.

    For the first time since he arrived, Lena seemed to lose her temper. "Well, that's your choice."

    Lena's words saddened Vladya. That night, as he brushed his teeth, he looked into the reflection of his eyes, noticed the depth of his wrinkles.

    "You are an old man now," he said. "You cannot adapt to this world." He realized that immigrating would mean one senseless struggle after another. And why?

    Well, Yvegenya wanted it. And though Vladya hated to admit it, she was right about their teenage son, Lev. He would flourish. There was the university, colleges besides. McDonald's. And the rest of the country to explore.

    He spat into the sink.

    Lena was right. He would just have to try harder and make the most of his three weeks remaining.

***

    "N-33," Angie calls. Vladya looks down and is surprised to see not one, but two N-33s. He dabs them off. Megan slouches. She has no N-33.

    "Under the O, sixty-four." Angie scans the room. Her head moves like a ballerina traversing the stage, Vladya thinks. He swears their eyes meet for a second. Then he looks at his cards. There is one O-64.

    Angie speaks to the machine. "C'mon now, you! Give the lucky numbers t'Angie so's I can make some fella here happy t'night!"

    "Let me know if you want to go home," Lena whispers.

    "Shhh," he chastises. He may miss the next call. He watches Angie, her fingers like feathers around the microphone.

    "G-48," she calls. "G-48." Vladya has two G-48s. He cannot believe all his numbers are being called. Angie must be good luck. He blocks out Megan, Lena, the two women in front, the entire hall.

    "I-27," Angie calls. "Under the I, twenty-seven." She flips her hair over her shoulders. Vladya is momentarily blinded as it catches the light. But he pulls his eyes back to his cards. There is one I-27. He is astonished. He needs only one more to finish a line across the bottom of his third card.

    Megan has folded her arms. "Uncle Walter ..." she begins.

    "Shhh," he chastises her, too. "Later."

    "But Uncle Walter ..."

    "I said don't disturb!" He speaks louder than intended and the two women in front turn again. Their frowning faces make Vladya think of pelemeny dumplings left too long in the boiling water, their skins pasty and shrivelled. Megan throws herself back in her chair in a sulk. Vladya draws his attention back to Angie.

    "And the lucky number is ..." Angie pulls a ball from the machine. "B-3. That's B-3 fellas ... and ladies, too!"

    "Bingo!" Vladya shrieks. He waves his card. "Bingo!" Lena's mouth gapes, Megan's eyes roll, and the two women in front twist their necks so suddenly, Vladya expects to hear a crack.

    "We got a winner!" Angie shouts. "Some excited he is, that one." Vladya jumps up, hugs Lena, squeezes her face against his chest.

    "Mom - " says Megan, but Lena again shushes her.

    "That was some fast! Lucky boy - and handsome, too. C'mon up and get yer five hundred bucks!" People applaud. He freezes.

    "Five hundred dollars!" Lena says. "Go, go." She pushes him.

    Angie beckons with her finger, a sidelong glance. "Don't be actin' shy. C'mon now. Bring yer card."

    "Go!" Lena says. He stumbles to the front. A helper takes his card as Angie turns him to face the crowd. She entwines her arm through his and presses into his side.

    "What's yer name, handsome?" She pushes the microphone into his face.

    "Vla - ," he hesitates. "Walter. Walter Golenishchev."

    "Not from round here, are ya?"

    "From Russia," he offers. "But I will move here. Canada - number one!" He cannot believe he's said it, but it's true. He has made up his mind. Angie is his good luck angel. Five hundred dollars. And a job in the bingo hall. This is just the beginning. Yvegenya will be so happy. "Number one!" He holds up his index finger and people laugh.

    "Well, tonight yer number one, Walter. Where ya staying to?"

    "With my sister," he points to Lena, who waves bashfully.

    "Whaddya gonna do with the money then?"

    Vladya is barely conscious of the helper who has reappeared, card in hand, his head shaking, and the frown that crosses Angie's brow. "I buy flowers for you, beautiful lady. You are my good luck."

***

    Most of the war slipped by Vladya. Posted to a remote barracks this side of the border with Afghanistan, he and fifty other men were charged with waiting. And watching. Atop a barren peak, they had a clear view of the border.

    Most of the action was far away. And while Vladya was sometimes grateful he was not laying landmines or dodging sniper fire, more often he was bored. The troops spent days polishing their new boots, washing and pressing clothing and bedding that wasn't really dirty, checking and re-adjusting guns and grenades. They invented games with sand and stones. Told endless stories, dirty jokes, taught one another new lines to get a woman in bed, new curses. But it was still boring.

    So Vladya was astonished when one day while he was surveying the northern vista, a child appeared carrying an empty can. She was barefoot, underdressed and Afghani.

    "What the hell?" Yuri, his partner on watch, pointed his rifle at the tiny child.

    Vladya pulled the barrel down. "No. Stop. She's a child." He approached. "What do you want?" She held out the can. Said something he could not understand. He turned to Yuri. "She came from the north. This is not possible."

    Yuri raised his rifle again. "She's a spy."

    Vladya again grabbed the barrel. "She's a little girl. Maybe lost."

    "Lost? Let go, you fool."

    Vladya and Yuri began to tussle. The girl, spooked, turned and ran. Vladya pushed Yuri away and chased her. He easily grabbed her arm, held her close enough that Yuri would never dare to shoot.

    "We're taking her to the sergeant," Vladya said.

    "But we have orders to shoot."

    "So, shoot me, my friend," Vladya taunted. He pulled the girl closer and headed to the camp.

    The sergeant was as divided as Vladya and Yuri about the girl. How she had arrived, what she wanted, what would happen if they released her. Would she tell stories that would set them up for attack? He decided she could not be released. He tied her right ankle to a huge stone. She became a prisoner of war.

    She cried a lot. They fed her. Brought her into the barracks at night and gave her a blanket. She slept by the door. But mostly they ignored her. Vladya watched for hours as she dragged the rock around the compound, wishing he could read to her as he had to Lena so long ago.

    "What will happen to her?" Vladya asked the sergeant.

    He shrugged. "She will go to the prison at Kolchozabad at the next change of troops." Six weeks from now. But Vladya knew they were often late arriving in the remote camps.

    The girl continued to cry. She never spoke. Vladya watched her eyes stare off into the stony horizon to the north. The more he studied her, the more he knew she was only a lost child caught in a conflict that had nothing to do with her. His pictured Lena again and again, tied to a rock just like this girl and wondered if in spite of what he'd always believed, this was what war was all about.

    One night in the barracks, the girl began sniffling. Maybe more tears, maybe a cold.

    "Too much goddamn noise in here," Yuri said from his bunk. "How can anyone sleep in this racket?" He approached the girl.

    "You have too much time to cry. You should do some work around here instead." He stood over her. The sniffling stopped. "What are you? Lazy? Another lazy Afghani?" Some men laughed. "Or maybe this is the way your mother led her life. On her back." He laughed. "But her legs were open, girl. Not like yours." He forced his foot between the girl's legs.

    Vladya sat up in his bunk. "Stop it."

    "You must do something to earn your keep." Yuri's shadow deepened over the girl.

    Vladya was at his back in an instant. He twisted Yuri's arm. Yuri lost his balance. They fell to the floor. He rolled Yuri away from the girl. Lena, Lena, he thought as he pounded Yuri's body. Yuri's boots scrabbled on the dusty floor as he tried to get up. The others finally pulled Vladya off. They stood, panted, glared like two street dogs.

    It was then Vladya understood something about war, about faith and disappointment, about choices. And about how things are often not what they appear to be. Not at all.

    The next time he was on the northern watch, when his partner was grunting behind the rocks emptying his bowels, Vladya cut the girl's rope and pushed her down the slope. "Go!" he whispered. Her feet flew.

***

    "Just a minute now," Angie says to the crowd. "Gonna take a look at yer card, handsome," she says to Vladya.

    Angie listens to the helper, then nods as though she knows what she must do. She takes the card.

    "Apologies, ladies and gentlemen. A bit of a mix up here. We don't have a good bingo. Please take yer seats. I'll be callin' s'more numbers now." She covers the microphone. "Sorry, duckie, ya called too early." She hands Vladya his card. "Ya dabbed I-17," she whispers. "It was I-27. Not the same thing, m'love."

    Something is dreadfully wrong, but Vladya doesn't understand what. He takes the card. "What is happening?" he says, in Russian.

    "Can't understand ya, Walter," Angie says, turning his shoulder. She pushes. "G'wan now. Sit down. Better luck next time." He looks into her face. He notices a smear of pink on her front tooth, which is crooked. She smells like iodine now. Her hands are rough on the small of his back. He has no choice but to return down the aisle.

    His face red, he sits.

    "I tried to tell you," Megan says.

    The dumpling-faced women turn their heads. They have followed Vladya's disgrace with gusto all the way back to the table.

    "Under the N, forty," Angie calls. "N-40." Vladya thinks her voice hard now, hard like the fluorescent light.

    "Let's go," he whispers in Russian to Lena. And he picks up his coat before she can say a word.

***

    "Do you want to drive by Signal Hill on the way home?" Lena offers. "It's still early in the season, but maybe we'll see an iceberg outside the harbour."

    "No," Vladya says, pulling the collar of his coat closer.

    "I'd like to," Megan says, but falls silent as Lena looks at her in the rearview mirror.

    They drive by snow piled on the sidewalks and the road's edge, snow dirty with salt and debris. It is grey in the street light.

    Vladya thinks about Angie's lipstick-smudged tooth, the way it pointed off into the back of her mouth. Why didn't he notice it before? He should have known. No one except Yvegenya has called him handsome in years.

    It is cold in St. John's, not as cold as Novgorod, but the dampness makes it worse. It bites into your bones, Vladya thinks. Nothing can warm you here.

    He thinks about a time long ago when he felt warm. And loved. He was a teenager. His parents had taken him and Lena to the zoo. He had imitated the monkeys and made her laugh. They tried to count the spots on the leopard, but gave up when they reached sixty-two and the leopard rolled over in a sunny stupor.

    In the afternoon, they had a picnic in a sun-drenched field. There was sausage and black bread, some plums. Their mother had made a sweet raisin cake and didn't say no when they asked for seconds and then thirds.

    Vladya remembers the scent of wheat from a nearby field. The glitter of sunlight through the leaves of the tree they sat under. He remembers the cakey smell of Lena, the little burps from her satisfied stomach, as she curled into him and he cracked open a fresh chapter in their latest novel. He remembers thinking nothing in this universe would ever spoil the perfection of that moment.

    He looks at his watch and calculates the time difference. In the morning, he will call the travel agent and change his ticket. Then call Yvegenya and tell her he is coming back home.