Albat, also known as Kuybyshevo, is the Crimean village near which Sergey Sergeyich places his hives after leaving the grey zone. Its two names mark more than a difference between a sign and a local name: as Sergeyich comes to see it, they disclose two ways of inhabiting the same landscape, one associated with Russian-speaking Kuybyshevo and the other with the Crimean Tatar identity he imagines as Albat. The village becomes both a place of refuge and a reminder that arrival does not make him at home.

Setting and Names

Sergeyich approaches the settlement from Akhtem Mustafayev’s apiary, where he has placed his own hives. The village lies below him beyond a dirt road and vineyards. The walk appears short when he sets out, but the heat and rising ground make the distance feel greater; from the road, the village shimmers in the sun. The terrain makes his new surroundings tangible, while his bodily fatigue and his thoughts of home keep the journey from feeling like a simple outing.

The road signs call the village Kuybyshevo, but Sergeyich notices that they do not name it Albat. The dual naming shapes his reading of the place: its official, visible identity is not the only one he can imagine there. When he later walks away, the lights of what he thinks of as Albat recede behind him, while the signs continue to say Kuybyshevo. The difference is carried by ordinary details of travel, not by a formal explanation of the village’s history.

A Village Seen in Two Lights

Sergeyich’s most complete reflection on Albat comes after dark. From the heights, he sees street lamps tracing the roads and illuminating at least two dozen streets and lanes. In this nighttime view, he imagines the village living and speaking its own Albatian language behind lit windows. The name becomes a means of recognizing a community that the road signs leave unspoken.

Daylight gives him another picture. Before the lamps come on, he associates the settlement with Kuybyshevo, a Russian-speaking place that he considers little different from Little Starhorodivka apart from its southern vegetation. These impressions are Sergeyich’s interpretations, not an objective account of two separate settlements: the same houses and roads seem to change identity according to the time of day and the language he attributes to their inhabitants. The contrast gives the village a layered presence without making either name disappear.

The lights also connect the place to the conditions of life there. Sergeyich supposes that when power fails, the village remains Kuybyshevo at night, its darkness relieved only by candles. He recalls the stove that warmed his home in the grey zone, now far away and being watched over by Pashka. The lit streets draw him back from that sadness, though the calm they offer is described as an illusion of happiness rather than a recovered home.

Refuge, Work, and Exchange

Albat and its surroundings become the setting for Sergeyich’s attempt to continue beekeeping after displacement. His work depends on attentive care: he watches the bees’ health, protects the hives from wasps, and gathers honey, wax, and pollen. In summer, the sound of their wings confirms both that the colony is well and that he himself has a presence there. He sees himself as representing the bees’ interests, while leaving their internal life to them.

The move also gives honey a practical role in his new life. Before leaving his former home, Sergeyich plans to load his hives onto a trailer, cover them against the rain, and bring jars of honey, which he regards as a dependable form of value. At the new site, he exchanges honey for food at a shop and receives credit amounting to 560 hryvnias when he cannot take enough groceries to equal the honey’s price. The arrangement restores a feeling of stability; later, the shopkeeper pays him cash in advance for honey, and money begins to accumulate in his car.

That economic foothold grows out of human connection as well as work. Galya visits his campsite when she has not seen him for several days, while Sergeyich goes to the village two or three times a week for water, food, and her company. Their relationship remains warm and friendly rather than being reduced to trade. Galya hopes he will bring his bees to live in her orchard, but Sergeyich remains attached to his independent campsite and the land around his hives. The village thus offers a provisional social and economic home without resolving where he belongs.

Encounters and Limits of Belonging

Sergeyich’s presence near Albat does not make him part of every event there. When he approaches a crowd outside Aisylu’s house, he sees about fifty people, several cars, and policemen wearing mottled uniforms and black bulletproof vests. He wants to understand what has happened but is unsure whom to ask: the Tatars speaking among themselves or the armed men speaking Russian. His hesitation registers the distance between being physically present and knowing how to enter a community’s urgent moment.

The same distance appears in his private thoughts. While walking through the landscape, he imagines Pashka beside him, ready to find something to complain about, and then imagines his estranged family and Galya joining him among the vineyards. These imagined companions reveal how he measures the new place against the people he has left and the closeness he might build there. Albat can be beautiful and sustaining, yet his mental company remains divided between a distant family, an absent neighbor, and a new relationship.

Narrative Significance

The village’s double name gives form to a larger tension in Sergeyich’s displacement: a place may be entered, worked, and even loved without becoming a single, settled home. The signs offer Kuybyshevo; the night lights allow him to imagine Albat. Neither view cancels the other, just as the bees’ successful work and his growing connection with Galya do not erase his memory of the home entrusted to Pashka.

The contrast between daylight and lamplight also makes perception itself part of the setting. Sergeyich sees one village in the sun and another after dark, while recognizing that power cuts can alter the scene again. His interpretation is personal and tentative, but it lets the village carry questions of language, belonging, and continuity. Albat is not merely a backdrop for his apiary: it is the place where he tries to make a life after leaving home, and where the limits of that attempt remain visible.