The Cormorant

The village of Perm on the Kama River was the final outpost between Europe and Asia, Russia and Siberia, a provincial town peacefully sleeping in the anteroom of culture. Garrisons were quartered in a fortress outside Perm. The army officers stationed there were clean-shaven and better educated than most of Perm's citizens. Between the garrisons and the town lay a small colony of wooden houses. In the whole town only two decent houses were built of wood and brick with iron roofs. In one of them lived the Prozorov sisters: Olga, Masha, and Irina, and their brother Andrei Sergeyevich.