...of a name

Her father died from typhoid; the hungry, orphaned girl went out of the house and never went back there again. Remembering neither people nor space, her soul gone to sleep, for several years she walked and ate up and down her motherland, as if in an emptiness, until she came to herself in a children's home and at school. She was sitting at a desk by a window, in the city of Moscow. The trees on the boulevard had stopped growing; leaves were falling from them without any wind, covering the now silent earth for its long sleep to come. It was the end of September, and the year when wars all ended and the transport system began to function again.
Moscow Chestnova had been in the children's home for two years. It was here she had been given a name, a surname, and even a patronymic, since the little girl remembered her own name and early childhood only very indefinitely. She thought her father had called her Olya, but she had not been sure of this and had kept silent, like someone nameless, like that nighttime man who had perished. So she had been given a first name in honour of Moscow; a patronymic in memory of Ivan, an ordinary Red Army soldier who had fallen in battle; and a surname in recognition of the honesty of her heart - which had not had time to become dishonest, in spite of long unhappiness.

[Happy Moscow, Platonov, A. P.]