“I guess these kids have seen that the old words don’t seem to mean much. Till death do us part. They know better.”

After a moment, the woman picks up Marina ’s fork and spears a chunk of melon. “How about some fruit?”

Marina nods and takes the proffered fork and puts the melon in her mouth.

“Do you want some lamb?”

When Dmitri returns with his plate, the woman in pink is coaxing Marina through her meal.

“How’s this for irony?” she says. “Me trying to get her to eat?”

“She’s just tired. So many people, it tires her out.”

“Papa, I know. I know about her condition.”

Dmitri looks down into his lap and purses his lips. His chest lifts and falls.

“Andrei and Naureen and I talked last night.”

There is a prolonged silence and Marina ’s attention fades away.

“I wish you’d told me.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“She’s my mother.”

Dmitri nods like a chastened child.

“You haven’t touched the salad, Mama.” Marina hears a voice in her ear. “It’s tomatoes and mozzarella. You like tomatoes.”

No one mentions food. It is bad manners to refer to one’s hunger, worse to provoke the hunger of others with memories of meals eaten in the past. But at night, she dreams of feasts. In dreams, she moves inside a Baroque still life, walking down aisles of tables, some heaped with whole fish and glistening hams, others with rabbit and game. The abundance is heady, and she is drunk with the fragrance of apples. Here is a tableau of fruit and flowers, silver bowls heaped with lemons and grapes, and a pomegranate split open to expose a honeycomb of rubies. Goblets are brimming with red and white wines; they glisten with condensation. Next to them, breads and cheeses are carefully arranged on the heavy white linens. For the Baroque painter and his contemporaries, each of these objects was freighted with religious meaning. The red wine and bread symbolize the Eucharist, Christ’s body and blood. The tablecloth is Christ’s shroud. The glass decanter is the Virgin Mary, so pure that light shines through it. Oranges are the fruit of the Garden, but lemons are the bitter fruit of sin.

Her eyes fall on a peach, so ripe and round that she can almost feel the weight of it in her palm. She cannot remember what the peach symbolizes, but as she reaches toward it, she is stopped by the booming voice of Director Orbeli. He warns her that these are national treasures. “These are the lifeblood of the people. We must cradle them in our hearts and minds until they are safely returned.” She is flooded with shame.

When she turns away, a beautiful goddess in a flowing white gown offers her a slice of cake. She leans over and kisses Marina ’s cheek.

“Don’t cry, Gran,” she says. “This is a happy day.”

Something far away explodes, a small popping sound like a champagne cork. She is waking up. She hears a stirring in the darkness, a few voices murmuring, and then someone at the far end of the shelter lights a candle. There is whispering; a shell has hit the museum. Her eyes follow the wavering light until it is snuffed out at the top of the steps. The darkness returns.

In the morning, Viktor Alekseevich Krasnov is dead.

There is such a fine line between the living and the dead that his death is detected only when Nadezhda brings him his tea and he does not raise himself from his bed. When Marina awakens, she sees Nadezhda sitting on the pallet with the body of her husband draped over her lap.

“He is gone,” she says flatly. She doesn’t cry, and there is no expression on her face. The tea cools on the floor beside her.

Marina comes and sits down beside her, and they watch the archaeologist as though he might move, though of course he will not. She is momentarily reminded of Veronese’s Pietà, a sixteenth-century Italian painting depicting the dead Christ hanging in the arms of Mary. In the flickering light of the single candle, the hollows in his face are sunken in deep shadow, and the skin pulled over his nose and cheekbones is like beeswax. She has always assumed that the Italian painter exaggerated the chiaroscuro to heighten the drama, the contrasts of light and dark, warm tones and cold, were so marked, but here it is.

It is strange what one can get used to. Every day now, people around her die, people she knew. At first this was cause for tears, but it turns out that human beings have a limited capacity for grief. Now, when the residents of Bomb Shelter #3 wake up in the morning, someone among them will have expired quietly in the night.

They are supposed to report the death, but if they do not, Viktor’s ration coupons can be shared between them for the remainder of the month. This is what Marina is thinking. Though the thought shames her, it persists: two hundred and fifty more grams of bread a day, one hundred and twenty-five grams apiece for the next eighteen days. Some people who lose loved ones are unlucky-the person dies at the end of the month and his death is of no benefit to anyone.

“He was a good man,” she says to Nadezhda.

Nadezhda sighs hollowly. “At least the children are not here to see their father like this,” she says.

Marina leaves her and goes to the bakery to get their bread rations. When she returns two hours later, Nadezhda seems not to have moved. Olga Markhaeva is sitting next to her, and Marina guesses that it is due to her that Viktor’s body has been moved over to the far side of the pallet. A blanket has been pulled up under his chin and his eyes have been closed.

Olga whispers to Marina, “I didn’t want her to sit alone. Did you hear? A shell blew out the skylight in the Spanish Hall last night. Every last pane of glass.”

Marina nods. News travels fast. In line at the bakery, several members of the Hermitage staff asked Marina to pass their condolences on to Nadezhda. She remembers the bread in her pocket and her ever-present hunger surges. It would be rude to pull out the bread without offering some to Olga.

“Please stay, Olga Markhaeva, and eat. We have extra now.” She unwraps the three thin slices of damp bread from their paper.

Olga quickly averts her eyes. “No, no,” she demurs and pats her stomach as though she is full. “I’ve eaten. Besides, I must go help with the cleanup. Of course it would be snowing.” She shakes her head wearily.

“Of course.”

All month, it has been too cold to snow. No one can remember such a winter, not even Anya. Minus thirty. Minus twenty-six. Minus thirty-five. But now, when the windows shatter, it warms up enough to snow.

“These people who believe in a god, why would they worship someone who does this?” Olga complains. “Ah, well, don’t get me started. Woe rides on woe and uses woe for a whip. I’ll leave you two to your breakfast.” She pulls herself to her feet and leaves.

Marina removes her bread from the paper and passes the two remaining slices to Nadezhda, who carefully divides Viktor’s ration in exact halves and returns a portion to Marina.

They eat the bread in silence.

Marina is already planning what must be done. They will have to fetch water to prepare the body and then find something to wrap it in. There are no coffins left. Even the museum carpenter, who built hundreds of coffins, was wrapped in a blanket when he died last week. There is no wood left for the dead. For now, the best they can do is to take Viktor down to the cellar room beneath the library that serves as the Hermitage’s morgue. Somehow they will have to carry him.

After they have finished their bread, Marina takes a bucket outside to the embankment fronting the Neva. She eases herself down the slippery steps to the river and waits in line to draw water through a hole cut in the ice. Full, the bucket is too heavy for her to lift, and she must pour more than half the water back out in order to carry it. Shifting the weight from one arm to the other, she trudges back across the street, through the museum, and downstairs to the cellar. While Marina was gone, Nadezhda has managed to undress Viktor’s body. The sight of his emaciated corpse is too awful, too horribly intimate. Eyes averted, Marina helps her to lift his body onto a bench and then pours the icy water over his limbs while her aunt gently washes.