Natalya Zakharova

During the war, the Germans exported breeding horses from Russia, among which was Ermakov’s favorite. After the war, he managed to find her and return her to Russia, but the tribal certificate was lost. And now, forty years later, the granddaughter of this horse - the magnificent race mare Secunda - is being sold for pennies at an international auction to a certain Baron von Ritter. Ermakov guesses about the true owner of the “lost” document and, in the end, returns it to himself.

In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of seriocomic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin's, who, he discovers, is Mary's husband, temporarily separated from her by the Revolution but expecting her imminent arrival from Russia.