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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Pashka take the narrator to observe?
(a) A calf being born.
(b) A prostitute having sex with soldiers.
(c) A student at the school have sex with a prostitute.
(d) A student at the school making out with an older woman.

2. What does Paska occasionally do when he is out with the narrator?
(a) Breaks through the ice.
(b) Work out complicated mathematical problems.
(c) Takes the parrots to the pond for a bath.
(d) Speaks a long monologue in French.

3. What does the narrator believe about the soldiers he watches?
(a) No outside thoughts can penetrate their minds.
(b) They join the military seeking honor.
(c) They join the military seeking redemption.
(d) They were coerced into the military.

4. Why is the narrator not allowed to travel to the USSR?
(a) He is wanted for treason.
(b) He was granted refugee status.
(c) He relinquished his Russian citizenship.
(d) He is allowed to travel to Russia.

5. What does Pashka ask of the narrator?
(a) To lend him some money.
(b) To introduce him to a girl.
(c) To stay and look at the stars.
(d) To teach him to dance.

6. What does the narrator realize about Charlotte?
(a) She is unhappy.
(b) She is dying.
(c) She wants to leave Russia.
(d) He can learn nothing else about France from her.

7. Who is Beria?
(a) The narrator's mother's uncle.
(b) A French baker.
(c) The crazy man next door to the narrator.
(d) A Russian leader who stalks women.

8. Who is Pashka?
(a) The headmaster at the narrator's school.
(b) A math teacher.
(c) A fisherman.
(d) The janitor at the narrator's school.

9. Where does the narrator seek shelter when it begins to rain?
(a) A family tomb.
(b) Under a large sycamore.
(c) Under a rock ledge.
(d) Under an overpass.

10. Where has the narrator's older sister gone?
(a) To France.
(b) To Moscow.
(c) To England.
(d) To Leningrad.

11. What does the narrator think Charlotte would never leave?
(a) Her friends.
(b) Her status as a foreigner in the tiny village.
(c) Her job.
(d) Fyodor's grave.

12. What does the narrator do that makes him feel comforted?
(a) Drinks a bottle of absinthe.
(b) Lies down with his head on a velvet prie-dieu.
(c) Eats ten chocolate bars.
(d) Picks up a woman.

13. What thoughts overwhelm the narrator?
(a) Thoughts about women.
(b) Thoughts about escaping Russia.
(c) Thoughts about his father's final hours.
(d) Thoughts about death.

14. To what does Charlotte compare people who die?
(a) The stars' patterns.
(b) The revolving earth.
(c) Geese who migrate.
(d) Animals who are born.

15. What does the narrator's dad begin doing?
(a) Watching television all the time.
(b) Disappearing for hours at a time.
(c) Walking in the park for hours each day.
(d) Sleeping on the couch.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the narrator try to visualize about the three women in the photo?

2. How long does the narrator spend in France after leaving his grandmother for the last time?

3. Where has the narrator just quit a job?

4. How does the narrator feel as he is wandering the streets near his temporary home?

5. Where does the narrator find a photo of three women in black dresses?

(see the answer keys)

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