of dato and alekothey get into a car wreck and datos face is horribly scarred aleko steals datos wife and dato challenges him to a fight when aleko beats dato up dato pulls a gun and shoots the man until he is almost paralyzed dato meanwhile lives the rest of his life with his mother hooked on heroin not really pushkin is itlarge abandoned objectsthe author drives to abkhazia with several journalists to see incumbent ardzinba win the presidential election the journalists rename it the presidential farce since ardzinba is the only one running the author marvels over the abandoned relics of the ussr she sees along the roadsiderusting tractors bits of pipline lines of coal cars shunted and left along a rail line etc for her birthday the author goes to gorbachevs dacha a palatial house he built but never got to inhabit because of the collapse of the soviet union the house is a metaphor for the ussr impressive only for its sheer size but actually full of empty space and tat